How do you learn to move past your inability to trust a therapist so that you can go to therapy?
First of all, trust must be earned. It’s not a given. OK, so you have broader trust issues. I understand that. There’s probably [...]
How do you undo several years of self inflicted psychological damage on your own?
In much the same way you’d heal from damage inflicted on you by others. First, you try to understand why such a thing [...]
When mental progress begins with new awareness, is it normal for things to get worse before lasting progress occurs?
While I don’t love the word, “normal”, this is very very common, and is something I’d expect in many cases. This is how [...]
Are therapists ever attracted to their clients?
While many of my clients are attractive in various ways, I have never wanted to be involved with them in any other kind [...]
What are the dangers of not addressing unsolved issues from our past?
The danger is that those issues will continually impact and shape our lives without us understanding what is going on. This means that [...]
Can you truly be in love with someone that does not return the same intense feelings for you?
I think we need to deal with some semantics before answering this question. First the “truly” is associated with a romantic notion of [...]
What is the most potentially dangerous mental illness out of the ones we tend to observe around us everyday?
Without researching the specifics, I’m confident that depression results in more deaths due to people taking their own life then any other mental [...]
Why are those with personality disorders encouraged to have relationships for their mental health, when healthy people are told to avoid the personality disordered because they’re abusive and unstable? Shouldn’t the personality disordered isolate?
My initial reaction is to be very disturbed by such a stigmatizing and negative perspective of anyone with a diagnosed personality disorder. In [...]
Can psychotherapy cure anxiety?
The word, “cure”, is generally not used in mental health because it implies an either/or binary relationship between what is seen as “mental [...]
Is it true that untreated depression can cause you to be apathetic? What else can untreated depression lead to?
Yes, depression can lead to symptoms that resemble apathy. Depression can lead to excessive sleeping or poor sleeping. Depression can lead binge eating [...]