If You Have No Part in the Problem, You Have to Power to Improve the Situation

Practical Psychology: What Works and What’s Nuts . . . For any change effort to make a difference in a relationship or experience, we must switch attention away from what other people are thinking and doing and direct attention toward thinking about and better understanding our own emotions and behavior. …

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Me Change? You’re Kidding, Right?

Practical Psychology: What Works and What’s Nuts …I have fired only one client. Mrs. X. Mrs. X, a fifty-one-year-old divorcee, came to see me because she’d heard that I work from a theory of family systems and she had a family problem. Or, at least her daughter and her husband …

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Complaining is Bad for Your Health: “Eat it the Way It Is!”

Complaining is Bad for Your Health: “Eat it the Way It Is!” Back in graduate school I had a course in behavior modification design. The first assignment was to set up a plan to alter a self-destructive behavior of our own. Of course, the instructor did not recognize that, just …

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The Opposite of Love is Using People

The Opposite of Love is Using People How Far Would You Go to Be a Winner? One of the Envied People? **This entry was difficult for me to write. The story is true and disturbing. At least I was disturbed. I don’t know that readers who have grown up blasted …

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Over-Dosing on Back Braces

MysteryShrink Shorts Overdosing on Back Braces “Good afternoon,” I said from the podium a couple of days ago. “My name is Barbara and I’m a back-brace addict.” I didn’t start out as an all-out back brace fiend. Neither of my parents had an unhealthy attachment to medical devices—though my brother, …

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“Me Too” and the Greater Truth

“Me Too” and the Greater Truth First, what happened: The first time I was fourteen and working at a dry cleaning pick-up station inside a megastore. I noticed that the forty-some owner, who was the father of a classmate, seemed to hang a lot while I was working and then …

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Las Vegas Shooter: How Far Will We Go to Get Attention?

Las Vegas Shooter: How Far Will We Go to Get Attention? “Look at Me!” When did we morph into a culture in which seeking attention is a way of life? And death? It’s easy to divide the world into good people (people like us) and bad people (people who aren’t …

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