When Holiday Gift Giving and Receiving Gets Scary
There I was, browsing in an upscale shop famous for its wine accessories (a fact which already indicates that I have WAY too much time on my hands), and I found myself tempted to buy a diminutive Santa...
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Humanists Challenge Congressional Prayer Caucus
In an interview on Fox News on Tuesday, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) called the American Humanist Association (AHA) “extremist” because the group launched a campaign to inform newly elected members of...
View ArticleThis Is Your Brain On Holiday Shopping
As evolved human beings, we’re rational, in-control shoppers. We weigh costs with benefits, compare prices, and never buy on impulse or more than what we need. Right?In the past 20 years I’ve...
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Royal Hysteria! Is Hyperemesis Psychosomatic?
If you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past week you may not have heard: Kate and William are expecting their first child.(For the rock hiders: Prince William and Kate Middleton are members of the...
View ArticlePostscript to the Death of Una
Una – my German shepherd, Collie, and Golden retriever mix – of whose death I wrote about in my last blog post, was a very special kind of dog; not all dogs possess such intuitive powers of...
View ArticleHillary Clinton: Finally The Cool Kid
Madeleine Albright once said, “Anybody who thinks the world would be a better place if it were run by women doesn’t remember high school.” She may have a point.Most research into the lives of teenage...
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Coolest Kid on the Block—Christmas Tree AND Hanukkah Bush!
It’s Hanukkahtime and it’s (almost) Christmastime! Hanukkah is celebrated according to the Jewish calendar. The calendar that we use every day (the Gregorian) is based on the earth’s movement around...
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The Power of Fiction
In my ongoing series, Conversations, I talk with interesting people who have something compelling to say about family relationships. Today I'm chatting with Rachel Simon, bestselling author of The...
View ArticleWhere American Education Went Wrong
Historian Vincent Harding quoted a West African poet and said, “I am a citizen of a country that does not yet exist.” He went on to assert that this is a country that we still must create—a country...
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Serial Killer Suicides
This week, confessed serial killer Israel Keyes committed suicide in his jail cell. He was awaiting trial for the kidnapping death of Anchorage teenager Samantha Koenig. Embedding a blade from a...
View ArticlePace & Productivity: Higher Isn't Always Better
What's your personal workday pace? Maybe it's slow and steady or blazingly fast. For you, it's normal. Perhaps the bigger question is: what's normal for your team? Especially if you are a manager, it's...
View ArticleImages of Mid-life and Older Women Affect our Self Image
I was struggling with the topic of “images of mid-life and older women” for awhile and then it happened: I saw the photo that pulled it all together. The Huffington Post’s photo of Hillary Clinton and...
View ArticlePartial sleep deprivation hinders weight control
Are you keeping an eye on your weight this holiday season, hoping to avoid adding the extra pounds that often result from the excesses and indulgences of the season? Here’s a weight-control strategy...
View ArticleDo We Really Want Political Compromise?
With the fiscal cliff debate looming large in Washington and on the national news agenda, there is increasing talk of the importance of political compromise. This call for putting aside differences and...
View ArticleChoosing Positive Words Improves Mindset and Performance
Mary Kay Ash said famously, “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t you’re right.” Cognitive scientists continue to explore how the brain processes negative versus positive sentence...
View ArticleWrite a Letter This Holiday Season
I had a publishing company with my mom and my sister. After we experienced our first business crisis, my mom wrote me a letter—not a typed letter, a handwritten note from her heart. That letter was a...
View ArticleDogs, Dominance, and Cesar Millan Redux: Dominance is Real
Dog expert Mark Derr's recent essay called "Cesar Millan and the Tradition of Pack Bully as Pack Leader" is an excellent review of what we know and don't know about the behavior of our best friends and...
View ArticleCan the Cocaine-rush of New Love be Sustained for 50 Years?
In the first chapter of my book, to make my argument that new love is like smoking crack cocaine, I looked up the specific effects of smoking crack cocaine on the website cocaine.org. I then...
View ArticleFriends With Benefits: Four Rules to Avoid Heartbreak
Some people say that a friends-with-benefits (FWB) situation is the ideal of all possible romantic scenarious: You can have your cake, and eat it, too. Well, the truth is that many of these situations...
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Are You Bullied At Work?
Over the years in our clinic we’ve worked with numerous clients who have experienced workplace bullying. But recently we’ve noted a disturbing upswing in the number of bullying cases – especially...
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