Posts Tagged ‘Authenticity’
The Trauma of the Bisexual Experience
We bisexuals are used to receiving messages—explicit and implicit—from the world surrounding us. Some classics? There’s no such thing as bisexuality. You’re just confused and trying to sort things out. You’ll have sex with anyone to get what you want. You have the privilege of getting to “pass.” All of these messages can install damaging…
Social Comparison: How Do I Stack Up?
Living in San Francisco in 2016 is enough to make the most well-adjusted individual grapple with inadequacy. If you look around, you are likely to see many highly educated, successful, productive and intelligent people. These folks seem to have it all: money, fitness and health, attractiveness, successful careers, loving relationships, well-behaved children, and time to…
What the Hell is Self-Love Anyway?
Chances are you’ve heard about this magical thing called self-love and have been trying to get some. Self-love is supposed to give us all good stuff: the confidence to set boundaries at work, the motivation to find our life’s purpose, the ability to feel fulfilled and happy alone, and the guts to give our Mr.…
Whoa-Man! A Fou Fou Ha Performance
“ Simply put, longing for the love of another is more so longing for the love of yourself, and when you can find that love, is when the mask can finally come off” – Closing speech of Whoa-Man! Four female clowns with three-foot tall iPhones looking for love. Twin shape-shifting male dream messengers entwined in…
Speak! (Even if your voice shakes)
“Wow,” the pastor of my former church said, looking over the coffeeshop counter at me. Jessica had stopped into the Peet’s where I worked on her day off. She was wearing her usual hiking boots in the middle of the city, with her unruly hair that she was letting turn fully gray after years of dying…
Understanding Depression: Void vs. Emptiness
Depression is a pretty odd thing, different from other “illnesses,” in that it ranges between very grungy and visceral experiences like fatigue, through problems with sleep and eating, and then into the lofty realms of the meaning of life. Well, I suppose to its credit, at least it’s not boring. Understanding depression calls us to…
Small changes are big changes
One November morning, when I was early in my graduate training to become a therapist, one of my professors stood at the front of the classroom, with his wild hair and even wilder eyes, and said slowly: “I want to talk to you all about something important.” The room fell silent. This man was known…
Sharing the Road: how driving keeps us emotionally distant from one another
When I was 14 ½ I signed up for driver’s ed, just barely old enough to take the class. The day I turned 15 I passed my permit test. The week I turned 16 I took my behind-the-wheel test. Anxious to get in the beat-down old hunk of steel my older brother so generously handed…
A Couples Therapist watches TV — Parenthood
Like many others, my wife and I are eagerly looking forward to tonight’s premiere of the new season of Parenthood, though with considerable wistfulness that it’s the final season. With our kids off to college, we forsook our basic cable last year for a streaming box. Not only are we saving nearly $100 a month,…
Tuk Tuk Riding and Psychotherapy
I am riding on the back of a tuk tuk, a small, motorized three-wheeled vehicle ubiquitous in the streets of Southeast Asia. I’m about 16 miles outside of Siem Reap, Cambodia, and I’m alone except for Mr. Laim, my tuk tuk driver who I have known for a couple days, and the people we are…
Sharing the Shame
Mortified: connecting with others to find relief from shame When I was 15, I wrote some pretty silly things in my diary (because I was 15). When I was 17, I went back through those entries and edited them, leaving critical comments about my intelligence and maturity as a 15 year old. Actually, a big chunk…
Don Draper falling forever: false advertising and the search for authenticity
Arguably the best TV drama of the last decade begins each week with a silhouette of a man in a perfect suit falling in slow motion from a skyscraper, through a boundless field of perfect ads for the perfect life. Mad Men centers on a very troubled yet relatable man who hides his real identity…