Episodes

Brain fog is a type of cognitive dysfunction characterized by poor memory, difficulty focusing, confusion, and mental fatigue. People who experience brain fog often describe their thinking as sluggish or “fuzzy” and report that they find it challenging to form coherent thoughts or translate those thoughts into words. For this reason, persistent brain fog can be a significant obstacle to academic and workplace success, as well as interfering with other aspects of day-to-day functioning. Tune and ...

•Does your child procrastinate, forgets homework, resists chores or seems to “check out” during lessons? It is easy and tempting to label them lazy when this happens but decades of psychological research show that “lazy” is usually the wrong diagnosis. What looks like unwillingness is more often a symptom: an immature or overwhelmed executive system, sleep deprivation, low perceived control, task-avoidance driven by fear of failure or neurodevelopmental differences such as ADHD or sluggish cogni...

•Existential angst not only derives from the human inability to think, feel, and act in the world or experience a love for life, but also from the fear of the possibility of nonexistence and/or death. It can be lonely, isolating, and outright terrifying if one’s very existence is in question. Tune in and learn all about Existential Angst and how it effects you!

Everyone puts things off sometimes, but procrastinators chronically avoid difficult tasks and may deliberately look for distractions. Procrastination tends to reflect a person’s struggles with self-control. For habitual procrastinators, who represent approximately 20 percent of the population, "I don't feel like it" comes to take precedence over their goals or responsibilities, setting them on a downward spiral of negative emotions that further deters future effort. Tune in and learn how procras...

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 or political influences. The planning and execution of an assassination can also provide a sense of power and control to the perpetrator, appealing to their desire for significance or influence. These factors, along with others, contribute to the intricate psychology of ass...

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 loved one may insist that she doesn’t have a problem with alcohol, despite the fact that it interferes with work and family life. Or a loyal employee may refuse to see signs that his boss is stealing from the company. Tune in and learn all about denial and how to heal it!

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 repressed memories that were too difficult to confront, particularly traumatic memories, and expelled them from conscious thought. Tune in and learn how repressed emotions can run your life and how to prevent them!

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 that causes these symptoms. But how you think, feel and behave because of the symptoms can be extreme. Tune in all learn how to identify and work through somatic pain!

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 positive, energetic, or even euphoric, they may also manifest more negatively—as emotions like irritation, anxiety, or grandiosity. Tune in and lern how to recognize and work through manic episodes!

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 another. It typically remains unspoken and may lie just below the surface of consciousness. To be clear about what counts toward feeling chosen brings a new level of depth and meaning to a relationship. Tune in and learn the power of being chosen!

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 autonomy—becoming an independent agent in the world. It encompasses a capacity to manifest what makes you uniquely yourself without recourse to either self-absorption or self-abnegation. Murray Bowen’s concept of “differentiation of self” also entails this idea and ideal 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’s because they felt disconnected, hurt, or unsure how to find their way back to each other. Tune in and learan how to keep your marriage strong!

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 imposed in no-fault divorces. Tune in and learn all about staying in a covenant marriage!

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." This gap is where uncertainty, the unknown, and the unknowable live, marking the distance between the questions we pose and the answers we seek. Tune in and learn all about how to live in uncertainty!

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 modes with the basic strength of wisdom. Tune in and learn al about how aging effects us and how to realize we are getting old!

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 physical issues such as chronic health conditions, sleep disturbances, and altered stress responses, often manifesting as behavioral challenges, learning difficulties, and relationship problems in adulthood. Trauma can rewire stress pathways (fight-or-flight), affecting how chil...

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. Caregivers should pay attention to their children's distinct traits and the pace of their development, and not assume that the approach to parenting that worked for their mothers and fathers will be equally successful in their own families. Parents, and the home environments t...

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 Bondage/Discipline, Dominance/Submission, and Sadism/Masochism. Though BDSM has long been socially stigmatized or thought to be a sign of mental illness, recent research suggests that it has no clear connection to psychiatric disorders and can in fact be a part of healthy, lo...

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 systems—all to facilitate response to an unknown danger, whether real or imagined. Tune in and learn all about anxiety and how to overcome it!

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 ethnic groups — with whom we share many of our most basic traits, including our phenotypes, genetics, and cultural histories. And then there are the tribes we choose, based on religion, politics, the places we live, the schools we attend, the teams we root for, and even the cars ...

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 century. The word was reportedly first used in America in a newspaper obituary for Pierre Lorillard I, founder of the tobacco empire. “Mr. Lorillard was a ‘millionaire,’” the obit read, this was made possible by his giving people something they could “chew that which they coul...

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 recur or accumulate over a period of time. Such events are typically interpersonal, often involving abusive relationships with parents, caregivers, or other responsible adults at a young age. It may also be sparked by torture, the experience of being a refugee or asylum seeke...

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 enduring and important relationships that we’re least likely to be our most mature and thoughtful selves. Tune in and learn what it takes to be married!

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 criticism can effect a person!