Everyone wants intimacy. But it’s not dependent on the other person—it starts with us
Every year many of us engage in a ritual that leads to failure and disappointment: creating and breaking New Year’s resolutions. In December we decide, say, that we want to lose weight, declutter our homes, make better choices in relationships, or practice meditation or yoga regularly. And several weeks after January 1st, we realize that we have failed and…
“I have all the time in the world,” a confident, aggressive, thirtysomething financial manager I’ll call “Mr. Endless Time” told me, his therapist, many years ago. “I have plenty of time to settle down and be more disciplined and responsible. For now, I’d rather have fun, play the field, and enjoy my life.” Yes and no, I thought. He…
What do books about dog brains, a year spent in a tiny French village, mindfulness at work and in our daily lives, and new perspectives on mental and physical health have in common? They all involve some sort of transformation—to our thinking, to our behavior. Here’s a list of some of the Rewire Me editors’ favorite books of 2013. How…
Creativity is more complex than the maps we fashion to understand it. “There being no known method from the known to the unknown,” as the narrator of James Joyce’s über-imaginative Ulysses said, ascertaining what facilitates creativity might seem like a fool’s quest. Psychoanalyst Marion Milner’s On Not Being Able to Paint, a neglected classic in the literature on the creative…
I am empty. A hole as big as the moon inside of me. Bottomless, so I cannot fill it. Nothing in my realm of experience offers knowledge of how to replenish the void that swallowed my soul. I hurt. Each new injury either self-inflicted or by another—emotional or physical—stretches and extends the cavity. Like the tearing of skin and muscle…
Of course it’s far more complex than booking a flight, but online psychotherapy has just passed a major milestone of success and efficacy in treating moderate depression. And this should prove to be good news for patients, families, and clinicians alike. In a groundbreaking research study recently published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers from the University of Zurich…
Learning to become independent, in thought and action, is one of the hallmarks of growing up. But independence for some is elusive. About one million American adults may suffer from Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD), a condition that compels them to continually seek out and defer to the authority of others. The need for direction and approval is pervasive in DPD,…
