Essays Articles

Listed by most recent articles first.

• Life Gets Better: The Unexpected Pleasures of Growing Older
  In the film Gigi, Maurice Chevalier sings about the advantages of aging in the song titled "I’m glad I’m not young anymore."  Wendy Lustbader would agree with him.  As she puts it in this book, ...
• Navigating College with Borderline Personality Disorder
  I was recently diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) after spending two weeks in a mental hospital following two failed ...
• The Writing Cure: Poetry As a Tool for Self-Expression
  Annie Dillard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, says “the purpose of a book is to serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.” Language (and literature ...
• When We Lose an Animal Loved One
  In Loving Memory of Tycho, 1999-2010. Do not underestimate how deeply the loss of our animal loved ones can affect us. Our loved one is a part of our identity. We are everything to him. We ...
• Why Intelligent People Do Foolish Things
  Society is replete with examples of intelligent people doing foolish things. This seems puzzling considering that intelligent people (as indicated by intelligence tests ...
• What We Eat: Morality and the Dinner Table
  We humans enjoy dividing things into categories. Doing so helps us form cognitive shortcuts and organize large sets of information. ...
• My Trip to the ER: Attention Must Be Paid
  I'm a psych patient. My primary diagnosis is bipolar II, but there’s a little anxiety, PTSD and other stuff ...
• Eliminate Outdated Attitudes on Mental Health
  Spring is a time for new beginnings. This year, let’s celebrate the season with a new approach to America’s mental health -- one that will save Americans much shame and suffering even as ...
• A High School Project on Depression
  I tutor a number of students from my local high school, which offers a remarkable English course called Psychology and Literature. What an idea! Although I’d never heard of such a course at any other ...
• Depression and Teenage Identity Building
  One day of high school, I distinctly remember realizing that I had more friends who were taking some form of psychiatric medication than friends ...
• Depression and the Fishbowl
  I like fish. Fish live in a world all their own, but one that can teach us something about our human problems, including depression (have ...
• Depression vs. Anger: Discovering the Lesser of Two Evils
  A few years ago, I received some news that sent me spiraling into depression. Not the kind of clinical or major depression that’s best treated ...
• A Chance to Live
  Inside every human being is a drive. Sometimes the drive is clear cut: he or she wants to be a doctor, a lawyer, a wife, a mother, a husband, a father, or something else entirely. ...
• New Year’s Resolutions: Exercise and Nutrition Tips
  “This year, I’m going to start exercising.” “This year, I'm going to lose all my extra weight.” “This year, I'm going to take better care of myself.” For many people, exercise and nutrition are common “new year’s resolution” ...
• New Year’s Resolution: World Peace 5 Seconds At A Time
  It's almost the new year, a time to stop and reflect and make promises to ourselves to improve on something. I've been mulling it over for days. Big items like hitting the gym more ...
• Unhealthy Self-Talk: Yelling at Myself
  I felt like the magazine was yelling at me. As I read the borrowed copy of “Runner’s World,” article after article made me feel like I was not running enough. I identify myself ...
• My Adversity, My Son
  I watched "Hawthorne" on TNT tonight. One of the story lines was about a woman who came into the ER with a broken arm and during the examination she was discovered to have many bruises ...
• Ordinary Heroes
  Last night I went to a convenience store. I was joking with one of the two female cashiers working the late night shift when this guy stormed in, shouting obscenities, totally agitated. I was scared—sure ...
• Hiding Behind the Pulpit with Bipolar Disorder
  I have an illness that affects nearly 1 out of every 17 Americans, and affects 1 out of every 5 families. This disease is chronic in nature, and can only be controlled, not cured. It ...
• Too Much Togetherness Solution: A Hat
  As a child I remember my great aunt saying irritably, “I promised you ‘for better or for worse’ but not for lunch!” ...
• When Everyone Else Is Married with Children
  It started in my mid-twenties. At first it was a slow trickle, then the downpour exploded. Almost all of my friends started getting married. I was a bridesmaid so many times that ...
• Yoga Journey
  I started going to yoga classes when I was a sophomore in college. This was in 1995, so the yoga craze had not yet begun. I didn’t know much about yoga, but liked ...
• Quitting Therapy
  Yesterday I quit therapy. This was a big decision; one I thought long and hard about. Psychotherapy has always been helpful, but I simply didn’t want to go anymore. My sessions had ...
• An Unlikely Reminder of Personal Growth
  I think it really sucks you jumped to such a conclusion before taking anything I would have to say into consideration and also feeling the need to tell me of your planned selfish act. Based ...
• Three Men, One Month: The Match.com Journey Continues
  I have now been on roughly a month’s worth of Match.com dates. None of them was completely awful, but some were definitely better than others. Date One: The Liquid Hater I started with a man I ...