Blog
Getting To Know “Parts” Involved With Medical Conditions, Part 2
If you missed Part 1 of this series on the marriage of the Six Steps To Healing Yourself with Internal Family Systems (IFS), you can catch up in Getting To Know “Parts” Involved With Medical Conditions, Part 1. To go deeper, join me and Harvard-trained psychiatrist,...
Getting To Know “Parts” Involved With Medical Conditions, Part 1
When I first wrote Mind Over Medicine in 2012, I wasn’t aware of Internal Family Systems (IFS). But for 6 years, I had been writing daily love letters from my “Inner Pilot Light” to my hurt parts, first to myself and then to my online community as The Daily Flame,...
The 5 D’s of Coercive Control: Double Binds, Double Speak, Double Standards, Double Vision & DARVO
With all the autocratic rulers seeking world domination these days, and with more and more awareness of how power hungry narcissists do not have our best interests at heart, public conversations are flourishing about culty dynamics, narcissism, sociopathy- and how to...
“I’m Sorry I Have To Hurt You In Order To Heal You”
*Photo credit Monique Feil I’ve been lucky to mostly avoid hospitals, at least as a patient. Other than childbirth, I was always on the practitioner side of being in hospitals- which is not always a good thing. As portrayed in the movie The Doctor, any doctor who has...
Healing The Doctor-Patient Relationship, Part 2
In Healing The Doctor-Patient Relationship, I wrote about the traumas that can happen for both patient and doctor, when the doctor-patient relationship is a patriarchal, hierarchical “power over” structure. But what’s the alternative? How else might we consider...
Healing The Doctor-Patient Relationship Part 1
When I was training to become a physician, the rules of the broken, outdated, patriarchal medical system were made clear to me. They went something like this. As your doctor, I will sacrifice everything in my personal life in order to fix what is broken in you. I will...
A Global Apology On Behalf Of Physicians Everywhere
When I was working on my New York Times bestseller Mind Over Medicine, a friend of mine wrote to me right after leaving her doctor’s office. With her permission, I published her letter in Mind Over Medicine. She wrote: Lissa, if this doctor robs me as I leave the...
Four Years Later: Reflections On The Covid Pandemic
It's hard to believe it's been four years since the world stopped. I'll never forget the terror I felt when I saw the spooky, surreal, apocalyptic images of Times Square completely empty. I remember vividly the tears that flowed when the strictest part of San...
Why Making Art Supports Trauma Healing & Could Save Your Life
I want to talk to you all about something I rarely talk about these days- ART. I want to talk about it because I used to teach encaustic art classes while also practicing medicine. But I quit teaching art after I left the hospital and started a full-time writing and...