I had a conversation with a high school teacher the other day that disturbed me. She described a practice on the part of her school administration in which final-year students could go and get their marks raised by several percentage points if they were trying to get into a good university or a professional program. […]
Many people today are, at best, ambivalent about intimate relationships. These individuals have been hurt in their childhood, by parents they counted on for love and support, or they were rejected in their adult lives by people they loved. As a result, they approach intimate relationships with trepidation, often inadvertently sabotaging their chances at love […]
I’ve been talking to some of my patients lately about how to maintain a good relationship, once they’ve found the person they want to be with. We’ve discussed some attitudes and behaviors that they’ve carried with them from their early lives and how some of these aren’t necessarily conducive to success in intimacy. For many […]
In my creativity and empowerment group for women the other day, we were having a very interesting discussion about the fear of criticism. It turns out that many of the participants were afraid to put their artwork out into the public space, because they didn’t feel they’d be able to tolerate the nasty criticism they […]
Too many of us have a hard time trusting other people when it comes to our intimate relationships. Maybe it’s because we weren’t treated well as children, or perhaps, we’ve been hurt in love. The good news is that even if one or both of these is true for us, we can still learn how […]
According to recent estimates, there are between 500,000 and a million feral cats in Toronto. This is the result of people failing to spay and neuter their pet cats and then abandoning the kittens on the streets. Cats are resilient and resourceful, to a point, and these ferals live long enough to have several litters. […]
Lately, Canada has been in the news a lot, and not for any good reasons. First, last week, human remains were being sent to members of our political parties by a crazed young man who had murdered his lover in Montreal.He also had a penchant for torturing kittens and posting videos of these depraved acts […]
An essential part of being an adult involves taking responsibility for ourselves. This means making conscious, empowered choices on our own behalf. Very young children aren’t fully capable of doing this because they are too unformed and helpless to understand or deal with all the things happening to them. These children need the adults in […]
Our feelings about our parents can be very complicated. Some of what we feel depends on how they treated us when we were growing up as well as how they treat us today. Sometimes, we just go along with what our culture or society tells us we should feel. If we have loving, supportive parents, […]
Recently, I found myself sitting with a patient Elsa, who was crying inconsolably in my office. It turns out that her sister had stolen her inheritance out from under her. It wasn’t the loss of the money that was making her feel so devastated, though; it was the shocking betrayal by her only sibling. Elsa’s […]
