If you’re allergic to dogs, happiness is not a warm puppy. Metaphors about puppies, or anything else, are potentially dangerous. Even knowing where happiness — like any other emotion — occurs on the emotional spectrum doesn’t give the whole story. The only way to really know about someone else’s happiness is for you to ask and them to tell. Thinking in deep and different ways about happiness isn’t easy. Here […]
First published on Disability.gov For 70 years she put up with his (sometimes volcanic) rumblings. He doted on her with diamonds, and was a poorer father for it. The youngest of 5 much older siblings, she was babied into being passive and timid. He was a blustering bad boy who loved control; a lifelong natural at most things mechanical. He took seriously his duties as a man, a spouse, […]
Originally posted on ilikebeingsickanddisabled:
Hawkeye the dog lays beside the casket of his friend, Navy SEAL Jon Tumlison. Tumlison was killed last year in Afghanistan when the Chinook helicopter he was riding in was shot down by the Taliban. Like all who served and died for our country, Tumlison died a hero. He also died a wealthy man.For to have a companion like that says more about the riches of…
Women, can you think of the last time your man brought up something that bugged him about you? Maybe it was that you talked to your friends too much, your mother too much, or him too much. But unless really, really pushed – like during an argument – men aren’t usually relationship-complainers; at least mine isn’t. It’s not that women do more talking than men – that truism got […]
The other day I was talking with a friend whose two children were going through predictable stuff – the yuckiness of the opposite sex, trouble with Social Studies, and the usual overload of growing up in a fast-paced world. The kids’ world was a whirlwind of soccer, the mall, computers, friends, dance, and school. My friend monitored sleep-overs, made it a point to know other kids’ parents, and whenever possible attended […]
In a blend of contradictory emotions – from ecstasy to torture – human beings repeatedly demonstrate an addiction to love much the same as an addiction to, say, nicotine or cocaine. That’s not surprising, since the same reward circuitry in the brain reinforces both. Feeling good comes from neuro- and biochemicals, too, like oxytocin and seratonin. Love’s intense longing and pining are singularly human and serve an evolutionary purpose: no […]
The watchword of Sly & The Family Stone, a multiethnic band from the late sixties, was about being accepted for yourself. Their everyday people were skinny, rich, fat, drummers, bankers, long hairs, short hairs, white, green, blue, and black. You get the picture. “Everyday People” songwriters Sylvester Steward and Todd Thomas didn’t say anything about married people in the 1968 chart topper, but I’m sure they would’ve had marriage been […]
A young military couple, married a short time, sat on the loveseat in my counseling office. With no college and not much rank, the husband’d learned at The School of Hard Knocks about irresponsible purchases, credit card debt, and overspending in general. Some women are easy to buy for: Some of us are into birthstones. Others die for pampering massages, facials and manis. Me, I’d kill for a personal chef and […]
Junk. That’s the name I give to those reams of paper already printed on one side, fit only for recycling. The remains of old binders of stuff from grad school account for this week’s batch of junk paper for my printer. Like a paper I’d written almost 20 years ago: Assumptions, Approaches and Issues in Marital Therapy: A Personal Definition. Amazingly, what I believed then, minus the naïveté and lack […]
Millenials: They’re (over)educated,tech savvy, passionate about social causes, and cocky. Also called the Peter Pan Generation, these 20- and 30-somethings seem confident that the U.S. will change for the better in many social and economic ways, even as they resign themselves to a future without Social Security. A wave of immigrants greater than the one in the early 20th Century will become part of a country already becoming culturally and […]
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