These days, I’ve been thinking a lot about why people are so polarized and so angry and hateful toward one-another. The right wing of politics has tremendous animosity toward the left and vice-versa; race relations are at an all-time low; Poland is lately declaring certain communities “LGBT-free;” and it seems like every other day we […]
Climate change is a terrifying reality and that much more frightening for people who have children. Many parents wonder what kind of world their children are inheriting and they’re unsure how to help their children cope, let alone answer their children’s questions about climate change. In the wake of the devastating landslides and fires in […]
Many of us are feeling pretty anxious about climate change these days. The situation is confusing and overwhelming and we don’t know what to do. Anxiety is a state of feeling helpless in the face of frightening possibilities, so the way to deal with anxiety, and specifically climate anxiety, is to take measures that will […]
A lot has been written about the kinds of people who choose to lead a cult. Like Charles Manson, Jim Jones or Sun Myung Moon, these are power-crazed narcissists and sociopaths, highly invested in manipulating and controlling others to do their bidding. It’s not enough for these individuals to have personal power; they’re compelled to […]
For many, many human beings, it’s painful to see the truth about our loved ones, and most especially about our parents, so we choose instead to go into denial. Denial is a powerful human defense mechanism. We deny that the pain in our chest is serious because we don’t want to believe that we have […]
Lately, I’ve been noticing how a lot of people who are in abusive relationships have a habit of minimizing the bad behavior of their abusers. They rationalize and justify the other person’s behavior and it allows them to tolerate the unacceptable. It’s sad that people are being abused but it’s even sadder that those who […]
Like many people in Canada and the US these days, I’ve been intrigued by the Trump vs. George Conway feud. Trump has never shied away from a good scrap. The list of his adversaries wraps all around Washington and then some, and on a given weekend we can typically find him spewing out vicious tweets […]
Most of us come from a family. Many of us have perfectly lovely families, but for those who don’t, our family can be a source of great unhappiness. If you come from a challenging or dysfunctional family, you might be wondering if there’s anything that you can do to improve your situation. Sometimes we grow […]
In the wake of the college admissions scandal, I’ve been thinking about the role of money in raising kids. Those wealthy parents who threw millions of dollars at a corrupt “consultant” to ensure their kids’ admission into elite colleges may have been trying to do the best for their kids but I believe that they […]
This week, an explosive story broke in the news about how dozens of wealthy parents have been paying certain “educational consultants” (who, in turn, were paying off university athletic coaches and academic test administrators, among others) to get their children into prestigious universities. Many high-profile individuals were named in the scandal, including Hollywood actors […]
