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Close Enough

For people who are lost on a desert island, wish they could be lost on a desert island or feel like they are and desperately want to get off.

society & culture philosophy

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Normative Masculine Marital Despair

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2019/05/08

Normative Masculine Marital Despair is the fancy name I have given a thing that I could probably do a research project on with 12 participants and then call it a thing-conclusively-proven-by-science, then trademark it and write a book and go on a speaking tour, but for now I will content myself with a humble blog post. Never pick up a cat by the scruff of the neck Many men, myself included, have moments where we feel that we are incapable of pleasing our female partner

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Great Resource for Anxiety for People of Any Age

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2019/05/06

So here’s my theory about Lawrence J Cohen’s great book “The Opposite of Worry: The Playful Parenting Approach to Childhood Anxiety and Fears.” He wrote a book for anxious parents and then decided he would have more luck getting them to read it if he said it was for helping their kids be less anxious. I love the title and for that alone is worth it; the absence of anxiety isn’t the opposite of anxiety. Feeling playful, full of creativity, joyful as when we are goofing around with someone we love

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What to consider if you want to become a therapist

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2019/05/06

Recently a lot of people have spoken to me about becoming therapists. Some of these people are just starting in the world of work and some are looking at second or even third careers. It occurred to me that it might be helpful to list some of the things I talk about with people who are considering therapy as a career path.1. Being a therapist can be really rewarding, stimulating and challenging. It isn't for everybody but if you are curious about people's inner workings, if you are reasonably

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Sleep: Balm of hurt minds

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2018/08/29

I have begun to assess sleep routinely when I see new clients, particularly those with emotional or attentional problems. Sometimes sleep hygiene is the first area I work with on clients who are depressed or having difficulties with concentration or impulsivity.It is very nice to look at the possible roots of depression in childhood or how poor attention is impacting a couple but the fact is that if someone is sleeping poorly, it is very difficult to make headway on feeling better in just about any

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00:34:40

Close Enough, Episode 2, "Very Carefully"

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2018/07/16

Jokes about clarinets and porcupines. A very grumpy German philosopher. Discussion about a parent and a child who are very different. The very grumpy German philosopher's mother gets her say.

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00:30:40

Caprice - Close Enough Ep. 1

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2018/06/20

Music from Tinyfolk.

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Reality fights, shared mental states and couples

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2018/01/09

Some couples I see have what I call reality fights.Neither person is psychotic, neither has a brain injury but they can't agree about basic things relating to a fight they had last week.These aren't simply questions of perspective, they are disagreements about things that happened. And they are vexed about it. I want my partner to admit that events happened the way I say they did."You came downstairs, I was working at the kitchen table and you opened the fridge and you started complaining about the

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Do we feel together or alone?

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2018/01/03

To what degree are our feelings products of our social environment and interaction and to what degree are they uniquely inner states?Sometimes when I am talking with a couple, I ask "How did you feel when that happened?" The person's response is "Disrespected." Disrespected is the most obvious example to me of words that both describe an emotion but also put it in the context of an interaction, something that happened to me, rather than purely an inner state. Think of frightened, disgusted, enraged,

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Do we marry the wrong people?

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2015/06/22

An article about "How We End Up Marrying the Wrong People" in the Philosopher's Mail is wonderfully thought provoking, full of great insights and very wrong. I probably should agree with it since it recommends that people undergo lots of self-reflection and guided psychological processes before they get married. In fact, the last line is a call for "psychological marriages." Sounds like it would be good for business.The good. The article -- which, oddly, is unsigned -- has many fantastic

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Therapy: who decides?

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2015/05/27

Nobody knows why therapy helps. We have theories but no solid understanding of the mechanisms involved and we probably won't for a long time. Therapy isn't alone in this. Nobody knows, for example, why SSRIs, a commonly prescribed class of anti-depressant works either.We do know that for certain categories of psychological problems -- some couple and family distress, mild to moderate depression or anxiety, certain personality disorders, and some psychotic disorders -- psychotherapy helps a

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Dinosaur Shame: Emotion and Self

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2015/05/05

Prof. Heather Macintosh spoke last week at McGill on Childhood Trauma and Emotional Regulation in Psychotherapy. She was talking about shame and jokingly differentiated between "felt shame" and "dinosaur shame," primordial shame at a level largely inaccessible to language or cognition. She talked about the difference between feeling shame and shame as an identity.

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Why science won't improve mental illness treatment

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2015/04/29

Science made tremendous strides in treating mental illness in the years between 1800 and the 1930.As Edward Shorter points out in his "A History of Psychiatry" perhaps the greatest challenge of 19th century psychiatry was neuro-syphilis. Nobody treats neuro-syphilis today with talk therapy or anti-psychotic medications because we know what causes it. In the developed world syphilis is treated with anti-biotics before it ever destroys a person's nerves and brain. But the days of simple cures for

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The Zeigarnik effect: Uncompleted Tasks and Passover...

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2015/04/02

"There is a story of a certain pious man who forgot a sheaf of grain in his field [thereby allowing him to fulfill the commandment of leaving the forgotten sheaf in the

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Am I crazy?

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2015/03/26

"Do you think that you might be crazy?" It is one of those impolite questions that I get to ask that makes being a therapist fun and rewarding. When people come in to see me they are sometimes half-convinced that they are crazy. Sometimes people confuse the intervention with the malady. Smart people can have the unexamined belief that "If I take the pill, if I see the therapist that means that I am crazy." Recently, I've started asking more. A lot of people who come to see me are. Worried, that is

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Resistance is where the work begins

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2015/03/20

Ginger Campbell host of the Brain Science podcast, after a great interview with Norman Doidge about neuro-plasticity, said that doctors often don't prescribe behavioral therapies because they have the experience of patients not following through (1:05:00). "Many patients would rather take pills than follow treatment regimens that require them to do most of the work themselves." I will write about Doidge at some point soon, but I thought a lot about Ginger's statement about homework and follow

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Does your insurance company flout Quebec's...

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2015/03/12

When I get a referral for my private practice I ask people if they have private insurance. If they do, I tell them to check with their insurance to see if they will be covered. As often as not, they won't be covered for my services as a Social Worker - Psychotherapist. Despite years of graduate and post-graduate training, despite the Quebec government's law 21 which requires all professionals practicing psychotherapy to meet the same rigorous standards -- not to mention additional fees -- in order

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But it's not fair

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2015/03/04

There is almost always a moment in couple's therapy (often lots of moments) where one or both partners says, "It's not fair." I am not talking about "it's not fair" relating to housework or money or other life tasks. I'm talking here about the cry of "its not fair" about the burdens of the relationship; "It's not fair that I always have to put my feelings on hold to listen to her." "It's not fair that I have to take responsibility for initiating every conversation about making changes." "It's not

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Cheese factor five; the therapist's secret fear of...

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2015/01/30

I broke down and did it. Between appointments, I wrote index cards that said, "Your partner's favourite band," "What your partner was wearing when you first met," and "Your partner's secret ambition." These come from a series of exercises developed by John Gottman called "Love Maps". You hand the cards to the client and s/he says what s/he thinks is the right answer or asks his/her partner. Gottman is one of the most prominent and serious researchers of couples ever. There's a whole lot of theory

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Couples therapy & Mental Illness

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2015/01/27

Jess says, "I want him to be more understanding of my mental illness." I ask, "What do you want him to understand?" Jess: "How to talk to me when I am upset so that I will calm down." I ask Steve, "What does Jess look like when she is upset?" Steve hesitates. He doesn't know how much it is okay for him to say. "She can't stop moving. She walks all over the house for hours. She's talking, talking, talking." Jess says: "I know I talk a lot but I just want him to tell me its going to be okay. I know I

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Should Quebec pay for your therapy

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2015/01/07

"After slaying the giants, perhaps we should have a go at barriers to accessible psychotherapy, Sancho?" Spring 2014

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