Is There Life After Therapy?

This blog is dedicated to all my single friends and all singles who have struggled with their status at some point in their singlehood.

I recently heard an interview on NPR with the film director and documentarian Werner Herzog whose newest film “Into the Abyss” focuses on the ripple effects of criminal acts on both the perpetrators and victims of murder.

In the interview, Herzog says that when you ask inmates who have been sentenced to life or who are on death row about their life’s regrets and their conclusions as to - “how should we conduct our lives? How should we raise our children?” the remarkably similar thread you hear from them is how important small family values are, how much family matters. They talk about how important it is that we listen to our children, attend to them and be present for them and that this is what matters in the end. Many of them have learned from what they didn't have in their own upbringings or from the poor choices they've made as parents.

The convicted are teaching us that beyond all the isolation one must feel in jail, it is also a place that provides a great deal of distance from one’s life-  from which observation, reflection and pausing can take place. Inmates have an imposed pause. We don’t. So it takes some intention, discipline  and motivation to create this space for ourselves in our own lives.

I just came across an article in the New York Spirit about Jena LaFlamme, a woman who designed her own weight loss program called “Pleasureable Weight Loss”. Her program helps women take the focus off restrictive, punitive diet and exercise regimens that lead to binge eating and teaches them how to find pleasure both in eating healthier foods and in other areas of their lives.

The article inspired me to write a piece about conscious eating  since there are SO many articles and advice columns written about eating that make it sound as if it's just simply about portion control and will power which really minimizes the struggle people go through with food. Simplifying also adds to the shame people may feel if they can't "just make up their mind to lose weight like.." the newest person on the cover of People Magazine's weight loss issue. These simplistic approaches also fail to take into account JUST HOW DIFFERENT each person's body really is. Some people have thyroid problems, some are addicted to sugar which fuels cravings, others have medical issues, some are on medications that slow weight loss... it's way more complex than the way it's portrayed.

So what are we doing here on this earth?

Do you ever ask yourself this on yet another draggy Monday morning? I wonder about this a lot, especially as a therapist who sees people’s suffering quite a bit. What’s it all for anyway?  Here’s something to chew on for this week if you’re someone who likes to reflect on the whys and hows of being a person.

Facebook is amazing on many levels. You can connect with old friends you never knew how to locate, look up an ex-girlfriend you might want to reconciliate with, find people to date from your friends’ lists of friends (not so much) and connect socially even when you’re home sick or having a lonely weekend.

A stage of sorts, Facebook is a place where you can strut your stuff when you’re in the mood, get support from people on your accomplishments, experiment with projecting how you want to be seen, test out a joke, find out you’re actually funny etc.  But, like anything else- it can also create some turmoil in your emotional life depending upon what mood you’re in and how you use it.

Self help, fashion magazines, the spa and gym culture are all full of good ideas of how to “pamper” yourself. And sure why shouldn’t you? It’s fun, it can make you feel good about yourself for a little while to let yourself be nurtured, slow down, tone up or relax your muscles a bit.  But is that all there is to caring for yourself?

Beyond working out and getting tended to in a spa- it’s also important to take care of your internal world and to consider this question: What have you done for your mind lately?! The same applies for your body. More than doing cardio and pilates- this refers to dialoguing with or tuning in to what your body wants and learning about the inner workings of your mind – not just what you THINK or what the culture tells your body you should want.

I heard a meditation teacher discuss this idea once. She said “you take so much care of your teeth- twice a day you brush, you floss then you clip your toenails but what do you do for your mind?!! “

Forgiveness is a complex and loaded topic especially to blog about briefly so I've decided to forgive myself (!) for not shortening this blog and accept that I have a lot to say on this topic that I hope can be helpful to you.

We have so much access every day to seeing other people and how they look to us. We know the facial expressions and gestures of our loved ones, colleagues and friends so well that we can imitate how they move and the way they look at us- with great accuracy in our minds. The funny thing is-  we don’t have a way of actually seeing how we look to the other, in quite the same way as we are seen!

Yes, we have mirrors, pictures and videos which capture some moments of us in real time- but we really don’t know how our face looks when we sit across from someone else and empathize with their sadness over a recent breakup or how we look when we kiss someone we love or greet our pet at the door.  This is probably why we spend a whole lot of time looking in the mirror- trying to see what others see in us… trying to get some glimpse of how we appear to others in our spontaneously lived lives.

Welcome to my blog! I am a manhattan based psychotherapist,  passionate about my work with people. In addition to the many trainings I have had in psychotherapy practice, I spent a decent amount of time (and money..) as a psychotherapy patient which was invaluable for personal growth.

Knowing what it’s like to be a client (sometimes fun, sometimes maddening… sometimes the most powerful experience ever..) and constantly refining my own development as a therapist since I believe life is always about continued growth (even if you're a therapist who has a lot of answers), I have had a lifelong interest in finding ways to help us take what we learn in therapy and learn how to practicalize it into in our daily lives.