I will get to the lovesick goat, but not yet. First, let’s talk about cat videos. A few years ago, I attended a conference on using technology for good. At a session about promoting citizenship through the use of the Internet, someone asked the speaker about YouTube. The man said, despondently, that half of YouTube was videos of cats flushing…
Do the aftereffects of traumatic events we suffered as children follow us into adulthood in a physical way? Research about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) proves that enormous childhood stress absolutely leads to increased potential for adult illness and disease. The original Adverse Childhood Experience study (conducted from 1995 to 1997) examined the link between childhood trauma and the likelihood of…
Brent Baum is an important person in my life and a remarkable man. He’s a therapist and a teacher who developed Holographic Memory Resolution (HMR), a method combining meditation, exercise, and emotional reframing techniques to ease the impact of stress and trauma. He defines trauma as “any experience large or small that overwhelms us in our daily existence.” Left unresolved,…
My teenager is home on break from college and my husband quit his job to freelance, so now we both work from home. I love having them around, so I couldn’t figure out why I’d been feeling stressed out. Then I went for a long walk alone and immediately understood what I’d been missing: talking to myself. I talk to…
The value of mindfulness for promoting compassion for others and ourselves has drawn a lot of attention in recent years. And few have done more to help people bring self-compassion into their lives than Christopher Germer, Ph.D. A founding member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, Dr. Germer has led countless mindfulness workshops and is the author of one…
In our age of overbearing parents and high school students driven to the point of exhaustion because they define success by the number of extracurriculars on their resumes, it’s no wonder the life of an adolescent has sped up light-years. Fifty years ago, being young was associated with contemplation and rebellion, but today the free time needed for such luxuries…
Sam is having a great day. Springtime: The earth smells dank and robust with thaw. The sun shines like an orange neon bulb in an endless blue sky. A bird sings from the high branches of a fully leafed oak tree. Sam feels good, positive, and confident as the soles of his new sneakers hit the pavement with purpose. He…
In my previous post about how your brain codes information in neural pathways, you learned that you can change your brain. Through a process of severing negative neural pathways and creating new ones with more positive associations, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) can help reduce feelings of tension or disturbance. Getting ready for a job interview? Have to spend time with your…
