Therapy

Experts suggest that when diagnosing depression, professionals should look to recurrence rates of symptoms for accuracy, rather than simply presence of symptoms...

Andrea Schneider, LCSW - If you've been devalued and discarded by someone with narcissistic behavior, one of the best things you can do after is avoid all contact....

Experts say there may be many reasons middle-aged adults tend to avoid negativity or unhappiness, including higher levels of emotional intelligence and regulation....

“To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” Oscar Wilde, De Profundis “And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.” D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover We all do it: deny certain things just so we can get through the day with less stress, fewer negative interpersonal issues, and a minimum of cognitive dissonance. Perhaps, we stop counting how many drinks we had, how much money we spent, or how many chocolates we ate. It is all in the name of avoiding the truth. What truth? The truth that we may find our job meaningless, haven’t the slightest interest in our mate, feel constantly overwhelmed from the demands and responsibilities of raising a family, experience physical aches and pains we ignore, drink way too much caffeine, take a plethora of medications to quiet the demons, and live with an inner cacophony of self-criticism. Those certainly sound like a boat load of genuine issues, and they are. However, they are also all capable of distracting us from our deeper unconscious conflicts. Some people carry their issues to the grave through denial, while others choose to face their fears and do the scary work of plumbing their depths through self-revelation. It is extremely frightening to acknowledge how much you might dislike your mate, feel ambivalent about child rearing, or work in a soul deadening job; however, allowing anxiety (about the possible fall-out of looking at your life) to stymie your ultimate growth could ultimately create more pain. My mother likes to say she hates change even when it’s for the better. I know she’s not alone in that view. Unless you are an excitement junkie, you probably agree with her. Facing the hard realities of life, with its potential for intense upheaval, is typically something we go into kicking and screaming. Who wants to clean up the mess after an emotional tsunami? No one. The good news is just the way you have to pulverize everything to make a great smoothie, things may be smashed to bits, but there will be gains you can’t even begin to imagine. Focusing on possible losses only delays your growth. That’s OK, too, as we often have to feel a situation is untenable before we actually do anything about it. Bear in mind, it is natural to live with some denial. If we didn’t we would feel constantly overwhelmed and too numb to do anything. Give yourself credit for having the courage to plumb your depths, and lavish yourself with compassion as you gently explore some of the following options for getting more in touch. Ask yourself: What am I avoiding facing? This is a very tough question. A portal to it may be asking yourself when do I feel my most difficult and challenging emotions? Is the situation triggering guilt, anger, depression, anxiety, or a combo plate? Is there any pattern I can discern? What might I be denying that I am distracting myself from seeing? A good way to ferret that out is by looking at your favorite addictions, habits, and dependencies. When do you most typically engage in them? Are there certain triggers that activate those behaviors? If so, simply delay your usual habit for five minutes and see what emerges. You might also want to try writing down your thoughts and feelings before engaging in your addiction, during it, and afterwards. I know this will intrude on the mind-numbing loveliness the habit engenders, but the insights you gain will be worth it. If all that seems too heavy for now, you might want to try asking yourself what is really going on when you feel any unpleasant emotion, even something as mundane as frustration, annoyance, or irritability. What are you thinking? If you are angry,

Michael Fraser, PhD - Next time you take a vacation, consider these three tips for minimizing the use of modern technologies and maximizing your time....

Dr. William Bernet is a professor of psychiatry at and his research is in forensic psychiatry, in particular effects of divorce, child custody disputes, child maltreatment, and methodology of distinguishing true vs. false allegations of child sexual abuse. Dr. Bernet is the author of is the author of Parental Alienation, DSM-5, and ICD-11 and other books. Welcome, Dr. Bernet. We’ve been receiving conflicting information over the past few weeks. Is parental alienation (PA) listed as a disorder in the DSM-5? The actual words, “parental alienation,” are not in DSM-5. We were told about three years ago that the leadership of the DSM-5 Task Force did not consider PA to be a mental disorder because the condition “is not located in the child.” They said that PA should be considered a type of relational problem and they pointed out that DSM already had a condition called parent-child relational problem. They thought that PA was simply a type of parent-child relational problem. We responded that the Task Force should state that explicitly in the discussion of parent-child relational problem in DSM-5. In DSM-5, the description of parent-child relational problem does allude to PA, but unfortunately does not include those actual words. The discussion explains that cognitive problems in parent-child relational problem “may include negative attributions of the other’s intentions, hostility toward or scapegoating of the other, and unwarranted feelings of estrangement.” That is a pretty good description of a child’s view of the alienated parent. That is, the child attributes negative intentions to almost everything the alienated parent does; the child scapegoats the alienated parent by persistently blaming him or her for every bad happenstance that occurs; and the child experiences unwarranted negative feelings and attitudes toward the alienated parent. The authors of DSM-5 clearly were describing PA in the discussion of parent-child relational problem, but they went out of their way to avoid using the actual words, “parental alienation.” The DSM-5 has two important new diagnoses that can also be used by clinical and forensic practitioners in cases involving PA. There is a new diagnosis called child affected by parental relationship distress, which should be used “when the focus of clinical attention is the negative effects of parental relationship discord (e.g., high levels of conflict, distress, or disparagement) on a child in the family, including effects on the child’s mental or other physical disorders.” That is a good description of how PA comes about, in that it describes how children are injured during high-conflict separation and divorce, especially when the parents experience distress and persistently disparage the other parent. The second new diagnosis in DSM-5 is child psychological abuse, which is defined as “nonaccidental verbal or symbolic acts by a child’s parent or caregiver that result, or have reasonable potential to result, in significant psychological harm to the child.” In many instances, the behavior of the alienating parent constitutes child psychological abuse. When these three diagnoses are considered, it is clear that DSM-5 is a great improvement over the previous editions of DSM when it comes to identifying, classifying, and diagnosing PA. The plan is for DSM to be revised and updated on a continual basis, not just every 20 years, which is why this edition is called DSM-5 rather than DSM-V. In future years, we will see DSM-5.1, DSM-5.2, and so on. As time goes on, we hope that the leadership of DSM-5 will lose some of their resistance to the words “parental alienation.” They are unlikely to adopt a diagnosis of PA with its own separate coding number, but they could easily say that parent-child relational problem or child affected by parental relationship distress sometimes takes the form of PA, and then give a brief definition of PA. Please explain why it

A new study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC-James) has identified a biochemical pathway in cancer stem cells that is essential for promoting head and neck cancer.The study shows that a protein called Nanog, which is normally active in embryonic stem cells, promotes the growth of cancer stem cells in head and neck cancer. The findings provide information essential for designing novel targeted drugs that might improve the treatment of head and neck cancer.Read More... Xie, X., Piao, L., Cavey, G., Old, M., Teknos, T., Mapp, A., & Pan, Q. (2013) Phosphorylation of Nanog is essential to regulate Bmi1 and promote tumorigenesis. Oncogene. DOI: 10.1038/onc.2013.173 Phosphorylation of Nanog is essential to regulate Bmi1 and promote tumorigenesis

While there is growing recognition that (surprise, surprise!) men are not immune to eating disorders, men are still underrepresented in the literature about eating disorders. We know comparatively little about what it is like to be a man with an eating disorder, and less still about recovery and life after recovery for these individuals. Recently, Björk, Wallin, & Pettersen (2012) conducted a qualitative study that asked men who had been diagnosed with an eating disorder and completed treatment to describe how recovery factors into their present lives. The researchers interviewed 15 men aged 19-52 (mean age 23) in Norway and Sweden, 10 of whom had been diagnosed with AN, 4 with BN, and 1 with EDNOS. The authors did not specify duration of illness. PHENOMENOGRAPHY The authors used a phenomenographical approach to study recovery among men. Though I am familiar with qualitative methods, this approach was new to me. From what I gather, phenomenography is an approach that focuses on a particular phenomenon (in this case, recovery from an eating disorder), and the similarities and differences in how … You May Also Like: Personality Traits after Recovery from Eating Disorders: Do Anorexia and Bulimia Patients Differ? What’s it Like to be a Man with an Eating Disorder? Eating Disorders: Do Men and Women Differ?... Björk T, Wallin K, & Pettersen G. (2012) Male experiences of life after recovery from an eating disorder. Eating Disorders, 20(5), 460-8. PMID: 22985242 Male experiences of life after recovery from an eating disorder.

According to recent research that shows the influence of depression on taste buds, there may be a reason for food cravings in depressive states....

Kyle S. King, LMFT, LCPC - When a dyad becomes strained, a third party often is pulled into the picture. When is triangulation a good thing and when is it not?...