Happy? Nearly 2,000 years ago Epictetus noted that "What upsets people is not the things themselves but their judgments about the things." Lincoln suggested that "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Both research and experience suggest they were both right. Naturally we do not see a lot [...]

Two common presenting problems our clients tend to share are precocious emotional maturity and a lack of assertiveness in personal relationships. Let's look at the maturity problem first - and yes, it can be a problem. People mature, emotionally and psychologically, based primarily on four variables:  You need to be smart - not "gifted" but [...]

The Very Real Benefits of Alcohol Abuse Much of life consists of both a conscious and unconscious cost/benefit analysis. Weighting the pros and cons of a particular choice, we decide what to do and what to skip, what to maintain and what to let go of. Most of us eventually decide that the benefits we [...]

If you want better answers, start with better questions. One of the most important services we provide our clients is to help them ask better, more powerful, more solution-focused questions. Most of us waste time on questions that only keep us stuck - ones like "Why me?" and "Why can't this problem just go away?"  [...]

Interventions? Not just a bad idea..... Whether you're considering doing an "intervention" on a family member or friend, or are the target of one yourself, it's still a bad idea. Why? Interventions are supposed to break through a person's "denial" and get them packed off to treatment where their "problem" will be cured. It must [...]

Success is achieved by becoming more yourself, not less... Treatment programs, like old military training, rely on isolating and dehumanizing you and regressing you to the level of a 5 year old. They then attempt to indoctrinate you and gradually mold you into a conformist 12 year old and freeze you there for the rest [...]

"Deprogramming?" One of the first things we recognized when we began this practice was that most clients needed some degree of "deprogramming" from all of the pervasive AA/12 Step mythology. We were getting calls from people who were finding it more difficult to give up AA than they'd had ending their alcohol abuse. And, again, [...]

The Spanish philosopher, Ortega, observed that, "Life is fired at us point-blank, and we must choose." That is both our curse and our blessing and it's also called "Free Will." Yet most of us usually decide not to choose, side-stepping the fact that that too is a choice. Or we decide that we must make [...]

We don't waste much time mucking around in your past. A lot of therapists, counselors, and programs spend a lot of time digging around in your past history. That's all a nice exercise, but it doesn't actually fix anything. The other problem is that your history is constantly being rewritten by the present. What looked [...]

When "victim" is a major part of your self-image you are destined to live an unhappy life whether you were a victim or not. Embrace victim-hood and you might as well sign up for "powerless" too, and head off to AA where both conditions are celebrated. Yes, lots of us, men and women alike, have [...]