Having received therapy from about seven different therapists in my life (including couple’s counseling), I was shocked at the age of thirty-six to first learn about the Stephen Karpman “Drama Triangle” model of trauma and conflict psychology because it is a well established and accepted model that not a single therapist had ever mentioned or even addressed it in any of our sessions.
Read MoreSaying the last decade has been chaotic is quite the oversimplification, as many of us have been through quite a lot of stress, upheaval, loss, and inconvenience. Several years prior to the pandemic my life fell apart as I became sick with cancer, abandoned by the love of my life, and began recovery from alcoholism and addiction. Yet even in the midst of that tumult I naively thought every year that good times must be just around the corner,
Read MoreSo, I am NOT a clean person. I mean, I am—I like a clean house. I find a clean kitchen to be very calming, and there are few pleasures as wonderful as beginning to cook a great meal in a clean kitchen. But cleaning for me has always been a source of serious anxiety.
Read MoreTell me if you’ve heard this one— “I’m sorry you were offended.” Because of my past tendency to be drawn to narcissists, this statement and many like it were peppered liberally throughout my life, and I wasted many years trying to communicate to those who spoke this way that they had hurt me and not succeeded in repairing the damage.
Read MoreLike most people in Western societies at this time of year I will be traveling to visit my family, and like a great portion of these people I found myself experiencing some intense anxieties about my upcoming trip which were making my daily life at the moment a bit unbearable
Read More“You look so ugly when you talk like that,” said my mother one day when I was seventeen, “I wish I could record you so you could see how ugly you are.” I don’t remember exactly what we were fighting about—I had recently been discovered as homosexual and our relationship had become yet more strained under their dismissal and increased persecution. I was a very good kid—I got the best grades in my family, never tried drinking or smoking, was still a virgin…
Read MoreI spend much of my time ruminating on the possible origins of who and why we are as human beings and the various dynamics that might have lead to establish everything from the size of our brains to the reasons we enjoy fried potato chips (it’s because they resemble crunchy bugs which roughly four billion people on the planet still consume).
Read MoreOne Saturday when I was sixteen our family was driving home from my Dad's office buildings doing janitorial work where we earned extra money instead of having normal summer jobs. I was staring out the window like a proper brooding teenager, dreaming of all the ways life could be better than it was while my five siblings, tired from the day’s janitorial effort were silent and nodding off in the back.
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