Josh and Ann are fighting because Josh saw Ann flirting with an “old friend.” Jerry and Laurie are fighting because Jerry is always on his phone Bill and Terry are fighting because Terry has had it with his drinking Abe and Sarah are fighting because they never can make ends …
How To Deepen Any Relationship
Choosing to be vulnerable is the one sure way to deepen any relationship. When you choose to be vulnerable, you put yourself in an emotionally dangerous position by telling the truth about how you feel about another person or any sensitive issue in your life. Choosing to be vulnerable is …
The Eight Habits of Emotionally Healthy People
They listen to and learn from their feelings. Emotionally healthy people understand that their feelings provide them with invaluable information. The rabbis teach us that there are forty-eight ways to spiritual empowerment. One of them is binat halev, which means, “understanding the heart.” Emotionally healthy people listen to their heart. …
Love and Commitment
The Torah tells us that a person should love his fellow as himself. The implication is that since it is a commandment, we are obligated to love everyone and that we have the ability to do so (evil people being excluded from this obligation). The truth is that it is …
Accommodators and Pleasers
As an eight year-old, Allie found herself constantly in the middle of her parents’ fighting. She did her best to make peace, but paid a huge price for doing so. Feeling forced to attend to her parent’s feelings and needs was unconsciously interpreted by her to mean that her own …
Seven Big Mistakes That Parents Make
A colleague once introduced a parenting class in the following way: “All parents make mistakes. It’s just that some make bigger mistakes than others.” Here are seven serious mistakes that parents make that hurt their children. Fighting in front of your children There can be nothing more destructive to a …
On Tolerance
Recently, a very secular well-known, high powered lawyer asked me point blank, “Since you’re a religious person, do you think you have the truth?” I was a bit stunned as I fumbled for an appropriate response. “Truth” is a very complex philosophic and linguistic idea. What I said was, “Actually, …
The Story of Your Life
Joanie, a 30 year old single woman and a survivor of childhood trauma, talked to me about how hopeless and helpless she feels about making anything meaningful out of her life. The more she shared her story of futility, the more overwhelmed I felt by the intensity of her despair …
Becoming Our Best Self
Everyone wants to become their best self. Here are seven ways to insure that you are on the path towards becoming your very best self. Be Self-understanding. To become our best self, we must know ourselves. One of the most powerful ways to achieve self-understanding is to listen to and …
Self-Esteem
It is extremely important to understand that the emotional experience of low self-esteem is the experience of shame. Shame is the feeling that is generated when we evaluate or judge ourselves or some aspect of ourselves as defective, inferior, or bad. People with low self-esteem believe they are bad in …