A Sixth Grade Boy Interviewed Me About Mind Over Medicine. Read My Answers.
Sometimes I can’t believe that it’s been twelve years since Mind Over Medicine hit the New York Times bestseller list right out of the publication gate and five years since I had the chance to completely rewrite a revised edition in 2020. (Buy the revised edition...
A Lesson In Vulnerability, Accountability & Forgiveness From Ted Lasso
My partner Jeff and I are a bit behind the cultural times. While everyone else was binging Ted Lasso during the pandemic, we were busy on the front lines of trying to support a world in crisis — Jeff on the front lines of the mental health epidemic at Harvard, and...
Boundaries For Thanksgiving
There’s a saying in spiritual circles- “If you think you’re enlightened, go home.” No matter how great your childhood was, nothing brings up our core triggers and most regressed behaviors more than being around our family of origin. I remember helping my mother...
How to Pause Instead of Reflexively People-Pleasing
I had a very hard time learning to say no to my mother. She didn’t ask me how I wanted to live my life when I was growing up. She ordered me to do what she wanted, which usually was whatever she thought the church wanted. Having grown up in California during my...
What Is Fawning?
I once had a (very brief) romance with a guy who I suspect is a sociopath. He suspects he’s a sociopath too, so it’s not just me. In a book he wrote, he even has a whole chapter about sociopaths and was very openly curious about whether he, too, was one of them....
How To Get Out Of Paralysis When Making Decisions- The IFS Way
My partner Jeff is facing a lot of big decisions right now. He has two very different job opportunities potentially pulling him into two vastly different lifestyles. He has to decide where he’s going to live once our short term Airbnb in Forestville, CA, which came...
How To Deepen Your IFS Practice Outside The Therapy Office
I love one-on-one Internal Family Systems (IFS) parts work. I am forever indebted to my IFS therapist Nancy Morgan and to IFS founder Dick Schwartz, who I’ve been blessed to do some one-on-one work with from time to time. I highly recommend seeing an IFS therapist...
How To Discern Whether Your Unbalanced Relationship Is Fixable- Or Not
Pop psychology uses a lot of lingo to describe various imbalances in relationship: Overfunctioning/ Underfunctioning Narcissist/ Codependent Neurotypical/ Neurodivergent (ADHD, autism, etc) Caregiver/ Disabled care receiver Falsely empowered/ Disempowered One up/...