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If you’re familiar with the feeling of “no matter how much I do, it’s never enough,” then this post is for you. Most people-pleasers know it well. There’s always one more thing you could do to make someone happy, to prove yourself, or to earn acceptance. And yet, no matter how many times you push … Read more

Over the years of practicing psychotherapy I have found that there’s a lot of people pleasing going on.  Its forms are legion.  David keeps taking more and more projects on at work because he can’t say no to his boss and is worried about losing his job.  Mary wedded her husband 25 years ago, but … Read more

I’ve written elsewhere about inheriting a negative attitude about desire. I interpreted the opening line of Psalm 23 ( “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” ) to mean I shouldn’t want. Obviously, it means something more along the lines of God provides, chill out. Whether that’s true or not is beside the … Read more

Failures of love, physical or emotional, persist in the psyche. They are disastrous, and in my experience there is no magic way to “get over” them. But they don’t have to run your life either. When we break through the denial that we were devastated by failures of love, it becomes possible to live in … Read more

Thoughts take me out, out of my body, out of now. Molars grind. I am grinding out a problem to occupy this mind. I am this grind. It is a demanding sport, this getting lost in thought. This figuring out of a future that is a replay of a bad season in which all was … Read more