Incrementalism

January 16, 2012

I must have heard Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech a hundred times. Today, as we celebrate his birthday, I heard something new: This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises [...]

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On ease and happiness: What history can teach us about therapy and depression

January 16, 2012

On Christmas morning I happened to catch CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewing historian David McCullough, loosely on the topic of a McCullough’s new book about the wave of 19th Century American emigrants to Paris and more broadly on the topic of what we can, at our present moment, learn from history. I was not expecting a [...]

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Beyond managed care: Out-of-network psychotherapy in NYC

January 9, 2012

For the purpose of this conversation, psychotherapists in NYC (the market is quite different elsewhere) can be roughly divided into two camps: those who accept insurance as an in-network provider and those who do not. When we talk about psychotherapists, by the way, we’re including a whole lot of folks: psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers, [...]

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People hate me on Yelp

January 2, 2012

Google Local, too. No kidding. A friend of mine brought it to my attention a few weeks ago, as delicately as she could: “You have a Yelp problem.” It took a moment for it to click. I hadn’t even remembered that I was on Yelp, so the concept of having a problem with Yelp was [...]

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An activity-ist walks into a bar

January 1, 2012

I’ve talked quite a bit here about the critical question in shaping a life being whether you’re an activist or a passivist. What I should have done was use two made-up words: Activity-ist and passivist. The position I mean to advocate is really one that places what we do (activity) at the center of a [...]

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“Astoria for grief” and the managed-care swap meet

October 31, 2011

You can imagine my momentary confusion on spotting this subject line from an unfamiliar email address: “Astoria for grief.” The title reminded me of one of those 1970′s only-in-NYC thrillers, like The Taking of Pelham 123, or The French Connection, or even the Spider-Man series, and I began to envision a hospice-worker protagonist rushing to [...]

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Diversifying your (relationship) portfolio: Pop songs lie

October 25, 2011

I’m not much of a stocks and bonds guy, but practicing therapy not far from NYC’s financial district, I’ve learned a few things about investing from some of my patients. Among the more straightforward pecuniary principles is the notion of a diversified portfolio. The idea is that, no matter how psyched you are about a [...]

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Optimism v. pessimism? Bo-ring! The real question is, are you an activist or a passivist?

October 20, 2011

Every now and then I get accused of something truly awful: Being an optimist. I object (strenuously) not because the real story is that I’m a pessimist (I’m not) but because the very premise of a categorization of optimist versus pessimist is grounded in passivity. The assumption in the very asking of the question is [...]

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Emotions are like 4 year-olds

October 11, 2011

I love my niece. She’s brimming with curiosity, she’s generous with hugs, she’s silly and sincere all at the same time. Her parents love her too, of course. But they do not, under any circumstances (and as much as she may plead) let her drive. Sometimes she gets a choice about whether or not she [...]

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Two kinds of anxiety

September 6, 2011

1.The mysterious, complicated, mushed-up kind of anxiety: You wake up and for seemingly no good reason you feel anxious. The sound of the shower turning on makes you jump; you feel a creeping anxiety as you leave the house; and the anxiety ebbs and flows in waves throughout the day. It’s an ordinary day, and [...]

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