10 Reasons You Used to Be Neurotic and Now You’re Anxious
Many 20th-century psychiatrists and psychologists would agree that neurosis is not a personal failing but the price of admission for our minds being meaning-making machines.
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What No One Tells You When the ER Doors Close
Most people leave a mental health crisis with a list of phone numbers and no map. A 23-year ER physician—and patient—shares what actually comes next.
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How to Be a Good Explorer on the Lifelong Expedition to Yourself
Life is an ongoing expedition into the brambled tendrilled wilderness of ourselves, continually stymied by all we mistake for a final destination — success, superhuman strength, the love of another. Along the way, we keep confusing experiment and exploration. An experiment proves or disproves an existing theory; its payoff is data, fixed and binary. An…
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The Stoic Antidote to Frustration: Marcus Aurelius on How to Keep Your Mental Composure and Emotional Equanimity When People Let You Down
The art of tempering your fury with an infuriating existential truth. The vast majority of our mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering comes from the violent collision between our expectations and reality. As we dust ourselves off amid the rubble, bruised and indignant, we further pain ourselves with the exertion of staggering emotional energy on outrage…
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Cookies & Politics: Consumer Advocacy
In my previous essay I discussed the company side of corporate advocacy. As noted in the essay, in the before time the group One Million Moms called for a boycott of Kraft in response to the rainbow Oreo. However, what motived my decision to write about consumer advocacy was the quandary faced by a friend…
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What’s the Right Mix of The Four Tendencies in a Team?
An earlier version of this article appeared January 21, 2020 The key takeaway:There’s no single right mix of the Four Tendencies for a team. The best balance depends on what the team is trying to accomplish, but a team that leans too heavily on one Tendency loses access to the strengths of the others. Watch…
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Clinical Wisdom: Why Myths Still Matter
The story of Hercules and the Augean stables can be seen as a metaphor for what happens (or needs to happen) in psychotherapy.
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Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss
“Fearlessness is what love seeks… Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.” “Love, but be careful what you love,” the Roman African philosopher Saint Augustine wrote in the final years of the…
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Why Vaccine Hesitancy Is Unlikely to Go Away
Natural cognitive dispositions surrounding contamination avoidance may fuel vaccine hesitancy.