Articles

One mistake I frequently see is treating emotional discomfort as evidence that something is wrong. This is particularly common with parents. Their child becomes anxious, frustrated, embarrassed, or upset, and the parent has an almost panic response of their own. They...

Your feelings are real, and they are important. But that does not necessarily mean they are giving you accurate information about what you should do. One of the thinking errors we address in CBT is called emotional reasoning. Emotional reasoning occurs when we assume...

Helping the people we care about is generally a good thing. But there is a point at which helping can become overfunctioning. Overfunctioning occurs when you routinely take responsibility for things another capable person could and should be doing for themselves. You...

In my last two posts, I've written about allowing children to experience ordinary hardship and about what can happen when parents continue overfunctioning for their children well into adulthood.  There is another part of this conversation that is much more difficult. ...

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of allowing children to experience ordinary hardship. But what happens when the child is no longer a child? This is something I encounter with surprising frequency in my practice. A young adult has finished high school or...

I don't work with children. Everyone I see in my practice is over 18.  And yet I spend an extraordinary amount of time dealing with the consequences of how people were raised.  Sometimes I see those consequences in the adult children themselves. Other times, I see...

Choosing a life partner is one of the most consequential decisions most of us will ever make. Yet I'm often struck by how little actual choosing sometimes takes place. People meet through work, school, mutual friends, or some other circumstance that puts them in...

Many people wait until they feel motivated before exercising, tackling a difficult project, having an uncomfortable conversation, or making an important change.  But motivation is an emotion, and emotions fluctuate.  You don't need to manufacture the right feeling...

Many people think resilience means never feeling stress, never struggling, or never being shaken. It doesn’t. Resilience is the ability to remain steady under difficult conditions. It means being able to: stay relatively calm during adversity regulate your emotions...

They know they grew up in a dysfunctional home. They know an alcoholic parent, chaos, criticism, or instability contributed to anxiety, people-pleasing, weak boundaries, or fear of conflict. That insight can be interesting. It can even be somewhat helpful. But...