Episodes

Assassination often involves a complex interplay of psychological factors. Perpetrators may become fixated on a particular target due to a sense of grievance or perceived injustice. These feelings may be exacerbated by social...

Denial is a defense mechanism in which an individual refuses to recognize or acknowledge objective facts or experiences. It’s an unconscious process that serves to protect the person from discomfort or anxiety. For example, a...

Repression is a defense mechanism in which people push difficult or unacceptable thoughts out of conscious awareness. Repressed memories were a cornerstone of Freud’s psychoanalytic framework. He believed that people represse...

Somatic symptom disorder involves focusing too much on physical symptoms such as pain or tiredness. This focus causes major emotional distress and makes it hard to function. You may or may not have another medical condition t...

Mania is a state of elevated energy, mood, and behavior, most often seen in those with bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, or who have taken certain drugs or medications. While the feelings present in mania can be pos...

Curiously, many of my clients report that they don't feel "chosen" by their significant other, while remaining uncertain about what it would mean to feel chosen. Life partners are engaged in choosing or not choosing one anoth...

Freedom, as described by the German social psychologist and humanist philosopher Erich Fromm (1941), is the final goal in the process of individuation. Fromm’s concept of freedom is close to David Shapiro’s (1981) concept of ...

No one enters marriage expecting it to fail. You enter with hope, commitment, and the faith that love will see you through the hard times. But when things fall apart, it’s generally not because partners didn’t care. Often it’...

It's not easy to break a covenant. Grounds for divorce in a covenant marriage are limited to abuse or adultery; otherwise couples must seek counseling and wait two years, as opposed to the six-to-12-month separation that is i...

In the realm of psychological inquiry, much focus has been placed on the "knowledge-action gap," which separates what we know from what we do. However, another critical yet underexplored area is the "question-answer gap." Thi...

Erikson's old age, the age of wisdom, started at 50. In his 1950 book, Childhood and Society, Erikson called the eighth stage of development, old age, a crisis of integrity versus despair, a stage of generalization of sensual...

Childhood trauma significantly impacts brain development and function, leading to long-term psychological effects like anxiety, depression, PTSD, emotional dysregulation, trust issues, and self-esteem problems, alongside phys...

Human development is influenced by, but not entirely determined by, our parents and our genes. Children may have very different personalities, and different strengths and weaknesses, than the generation that preceded them. Ca...

BDSM is an umbrella term for a wide range of sexual practices that involve physical bondage, the giving or receiving of pain, dominant or submissive roleplay, and/or other related activities. The acronym is a combination of B...

Anxiety is both a mental and physical state of negative expectation. Mentally it is characterized by increased arousal and apprehension tortured into distressing worry, and physically by unpleasant activation of multiple body...

Our lives begin within our most intimate tribe, our family, whose job it is to protect and nurture us until adulthood. But then gradually, over time, we get introduced to members of other related tribes — our racial and ethni...

Thoroughly woven into the tapestry of American culture has been the mythology or cult of the millionaire, a term which originated in France (by Disraeli in 1826) but was rarely used in the United States until the late 19th ce...

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (c-PTSD or cPTSD) describes a set of disruptive symptoms that emerge after experiencing inescapable traumatic life events, especially those of a horrific or threatening nature or which r...

With marriage having a fifty percent no‐go rate it’s obvious that people don’t follow their best thinking, just like people don’t eat healthfully even when they know what’s good for them. Paradoxically, it’s in our most endur...

Constant criticism, even if it’s self-inflicted, slowly chips away at your sense of self-worth over time. Before you know it, you’re left feeling inadequate and like you can never measure up. Tune in and learn how constant cr...

Schadenfreude[emdash]the sense of pleasure people derive from the misfortune of others[emdash]is a familiar feeling to many, yet it's poorly understood. The complex emotion may provide a valuable window into the darker side o...

Intercultural relationships are increasingly common, especially in “hyperdiverse” Western cultures, where mixed marriage has been steadily rising over the decades. What used to be controversial, even anathema, is now commonpl...

Transactional communciation helps people see how these three states operate within them and how they shift between states in different situations. It can be applied flexibly. It may be brief and solution-focused, helping clie...

The conscious mind can be described as whatever you are currently aware of. What you are feeling, doing, seeing, touching, experiencing. You are conscious of it, or aware of it. Consciousness does not involve stored informati...