Articles
Choosing Our Relationships
When we boil it down, marriage and relationship is a choosing. When we couple, we are in effect stating to our friends, our families, to the universe and to our partners that we pick this person. It is stipulated in the marriage vows. “I take (choose) this person as my lawfully wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, for as long as we both shall live.” This is a truly profound statement of choice. To know that we are chosen in our relationships is...
read moreDeveloping Your Inner Fact Checker
Like any juicy tabloid magazine sometimes our minds can “print” something that might not be necessarily true, especially when we are under stress or experiencing anxiety. When we find ourselves in an anxious state, our minds can read to us endless stories of impending doom and fear. Though sometimes the mind can give us these high stake stories as tales of warning we should pay attention to, our brains can also hand us a list of who, whats, wheres and hows that are as false as any story printed by the National Enquirer, and are only in...
read moreMy Mind is like a Bad Neighborhood…
In the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy classes, we have been focusing on the way feelings manifest in the body. We have been learning to use the body’s wisdom to increase our awareness of pleasant feelings (leading to more joy!) and to also to allow difficult feelings to be held and experienced in a wider space. This allows painful feelings to follow a kind of natural arc of arriving, abiding and leaving, and by paying attention, we notice this flow happens more easily, FASTER, and it deepens our awareness of their passing and the...
read more5 Incredible Anger Tips the Hulk Never Used
Dr. David Banner, as many of us know, is a mild mannered doctor who when injured or pushed past his limit turns into the raging Incredible Hulk. The image of the Hulk has become an archetypical icon with respect to anger in our culture. 5 Incredible Tips: HURT is what usually causes anger. UNDERSTAND how your expectations are influencing your frustration. LEARNING what defended parts of you are present in any given situation. KNOWING, that just breathing, can relax your nervous system and bring unmanageable emotions to a more manageable...
read moreHow Not to be a Chicken Little
Many of us at some point in our lives have heard the tale of Chicken Little. The story begins with Chicken Little having a perfectly normal day minding his own business when suddenly an acorn falls on his head. Chicken Little instantly perceives that the sky must be falling, the world is ending and that he must inform the king of the coming apocalypse. Along his journey he meets his friends, Henny Penny, Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Lucky and Goosey Loosey who all immediately accept his claim of the worldwide collapse and band together until they meet...
read moreLove is Not An Emotion…
Some of you may have already heard that love is not one of our basic emotions. It may sound like heresy but love is not what you feel about another nor is it what you might say. Love is what you do. With the couples in my private practice in the East village of NY (www.eastvillagecounseling.com) and in my Couples Communication Workshops at Midtown Marriage and Family Therapy (www.midtownmft.com), I am trumpeting the news about love ad nauseum. Invariably in my work, I hear either one or both partners say “well, I love him” Or...
read moreNew Women’s Anger Group in NYC begins June 26, 2012
Women’s Anger Management Group, Anger Class, in NYC, Midtown, New York!! When anger is kept inside without a voice or when it continually erupts it can cause great distress. When anger is expressed safely it can be a great catalyst for change and discovery. At Midtown MFT, we provide a safe space for women to explore and discover all their anger is, where its rooted, and how to create change in their relationships. This Group Meets Tuesdays at 6:30pm @ $60/session. This group focuses on: Techniques to help moderate reactive anger by...
read moreWomens Anger Group in NYC Begins June 26, 2012
WOMAN’S ANGER GROUP Tuesdays at 6:30 pm Women’s group focusing on anger and relationships. Our support group for women offers a safe forum in which women can find ways to transform their anger through insight, self-expression, and awareness. This group will focus on: Techniques to help moderate reactive anger by learning about our own needs and what is behind our “upset” How emotions impact our body and ways we can use body sensations to help us become aware of our reactivity How to be more compassionate and empathic with...
read moreUnfolding Your Own Myth
Prepare Create a comfortable quiet space for yourself and put a large sheet of paper before. Have your favorite journal by your side. Use a gratifying writing instrument, be it a sharpie, an ink pen, a paint pen, a pencil, or even a collection of colored markers. I have a favorite ink pen that feels wonderful to write with and it makes such a difference in the quality and fluidity of my writing. Take a moment to close your eyes or soften your gaze and breathe deeply. Settle yourself, longer exhales naturally relax the body. We are...
read moreThe Calling of Spring
The change of seasons is a time when nature leads us through transition. She wakes us up and reminds us of the passage of time, puts us in a temporary state of confusion, excitement, loss, and/or expectation. Each of us harbor inner associations and memories of each season, implicitly and explicitly. We may love the opening scent of a lilac, suffer the fogginess of allergies, feel renewed at the site of the first sturdy daffodil, or awaken to a new memory from a springtime of our youth. Winter to Spring can be a particularly evocative...
read more8 Weeks to a Better Brain
The current issue of the Harvard Gazette has a fascinating article entitled Eight Weeks to a Better Brain that shines new light on the real and measurable positive effects of mindfulness practice. It was incredibly gratifying to read this, and of course I immediately forwarded the article to the participants in the current eight-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy course. We discussed it in class the next day, and it was clear that this news gave several people a new hope that in fact what we are doing might actually work for them. It...
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