On bloated resilience

“Why can’t I just get better, Brady? It’s crazy! And no one knows. No one really knows how depressed I am. I’m such a fraud. I just can’t seem to get over it like I should! I’m crazy!” … Admittedly, when I conduct therapy, I deal with a lot of resiliency narratives that are slippery, insidiously undermining, and hard to dismantle. People can come into therapy wanting to conquer depression, cure anxiety, rid themselves of insecurities, overcome every obstacle, and succeed at life in the most positive way possible. To this point, one of the first agenda items I write in …

On judging judgment

“Brady, my friends are so judgy. It’s hard being around them because they hate on everything. They’re so negative. I love them, but can’t stand them sometimes. I really try to be non-judgmental. Love everyone. You know?” … I don’t. Usually in conversations about judgment, people’s feelings about being judged, personally judging others, others’ experiences of judgment, and so much more, the definitions of judgment and non-judgment are ill-defined. On a rudimentary level, I like to think that there are “yes” judgments (like, want more, delight, love, etc.) and “no” judgments (dislike, want less, disgust, hate, etc.). Non-judgments then are simply …

On fake people

“Brady, I can’t stand fake people! I get so annoyed by them, pretending to be nice, pretending to be something they’re not, and all the lying. What’re some good ways to shut them down, call them out, or, I don’t know, get them to stop being so fake? You’re mean, so I want to be too.” … Admittedly, you probably won’t like what I’m about to write. For those gentle readers who are unaware, that bastion of contemporary catchphrases, if clichés, Urban Dictionary, would say: A fake person is someone who is not genuine and will do whatever it takes …

On coming home

“So hey, Brady. I don’t like the holidays, not simply because I don’t believe in them, but also because if I were to go home, well, it comes at a cost. Give me some advice, not that I’ll take it.” … So, yeah… the idea of home, and the idea of the holidays as a reminder of a home to come back to, troubles many people. It makes sense that coming home is stressful to many people because there are many expectations and nuances of what home should be like. As I like to think of it, the act of …

On evil, monsters, and tragedy

“Brady, I think it’s safe to say if you kill 18 innocent kids, you’re pure evil, totally sick, deserve to be vilified!” … When the Columbine High School shooting occurred, I was a junior in high school, studying journalism. I was told to no longer wear my long coat by my school administrators, because they wanted to prevent something like that from occurring in Porterville, California. My trenchcoat kept me warm on those frosty mornings, but I was informed that it would be better if I, “didn’t look like that.” I didn’t want to challenge the administration, so I left …

On forgiving yourself

“Brady, … I also find it hard to forgive myself for missed opportunities, fear, mistakes, etc. That’s hard to live with at times. … As a response to my previous post, I want to thank you for sharing this sentiment, and I’d like to spend some time with it. Forgiving others and being forgiven by others has a different shape and texture than forgiving yourself. It feels different too, because you must acknowledge what you have done and also how it has impacted others, as well as yourself. I like to think that most of us want to be seen …

In dismissing gratitude

Offering thanks and appreciation to a person, either for what they have done for us or simply for being in our lives, is an act of gratitude. Underneath that act is the feeling itself: an earnest acknowledgement of the importance of another and a desired response to reach back to them, with kindness, with warmth, with love. However, there are many ways that we can dismiss gratitude and many reasons that we make for not wanting others to reach back to us. We might have been the recipient of having our gratitude dismissed, and the messages that we have received …

On the idea of being better than

An old friend, Andrew Schwartz, whose intellectual historian work focuses on rational conservatism, tossed a question my way a while ago that I would like the opportunity to unpack here. He asked me about motivation and superiority, explicitly, “do the superior somehow strive for inferiority, or at the very least, strive for the acceptance of the inferior?” As a psychologist, I’ll spend a bit of time with the two layers of this question, namely the idea of being better than others, and also what constitutes not becoming better. To begin to answer this question, I’ll offer a tentative, “no.” I believe …

On feeling our feelings

In my practice, I see many people that have a difficult time understanding their feelings. Those persons often know their feelings as only “good” or “bad” and it is painfully difficult undergoing emotional exploration, or discovering particular shadings of each emotion. In most cases, those persons that have a hard time understanding their feelings also come from a personal history in which they were not allowed to feel their feelings. What do I mean when I say that a person, “isn’t allowed to feel his or her feelings?” Feelings can be silenced, strangled, or disallowed in many interactions. As children, …

On hope remaining

The myth, Hesiod’s telling of it and Bruce MacLennan’s translation, goes that Pandora was the first woman on Earth. She was given gifts by all of the gods, including a jar that contained all the evils in the world, which had one, “‘evil thing that all shall cherish in their hearts, embracing their own scourge.’” As we know, she opened the jar and let loose all the evils and vices upon the world except for one, Elpis, known as Hope. Hope wasn’t let loose in the world. Hope was kept inside. Hope remained. For many people, hope, in the lower case, is …