Why Am I in Pain?

Pain is the number one reason people begin to seek help.  Humans tend to not like pain, especially severe pain.  We’ll do anything to not be in pain. However, pain is a perfectly normal experience.  Moreover, pain is an important experience. Pain tells us when...

The Problem with Pathologizing

I hear more and more people describing experiences and narratives of sadness or heightened stress as depression and anxiety.  While anxiety can get away with being a term used to describe a feeling of nervousness, depression, in my opinion, is a much more...

Fighting The Post-Holiday Blues

My mother, intrigued, informed me the other day that Martin Luther King weekend marks what many psychologists call the beginning of the holiday blues. Essentially, this is because all of the joyful winter holidays and festivities have come to a close until around...

Dreading the Holidays: Differing Values

As we continue our Dreading the Holidays series, today we will be looking at how having differing values from our family members can cause extra holiday stress. This one is difficult because as young children, we tend to adopt our parents values with black and white...