What does it mean to have a difficult mother? All mothers go through difficult periods due to fatigue, stress and the demands of adult life and parenting. However a truly difficult mother is difficult all the time and presents a child with an unresolvable dilemma: you can either sacrifice yourself and have a relationship with me or be your true self and I will ridicule, disapprove of or reject you. The child’s dependency on the mother is then exploited and he/she will have difficulty trusting others and developing close relationships in adulthood. Some of the characterisitics of a difficult...

What should you spend your money on? How effective is therapy at increasing happiness? The latest research from the Journal of Health Economics, Policy and Law ( Boyce and Wood) has an article entitled Money or Mental Health: Alleviating Psychological Distress with Monetary Compensation versus Psychological Therapy. This research analyzed data sets where thousands of people gave reports on their well-being. They compared well-being ratings for subjects who got a 4 month course of psychotherapy to the ratings of those who had a sudden increase in income through winnings and pay raises. The...

Because springtime is coming and many people feel a burst of energy with the increase in sunlight, it seemed like a good time to discuss some of the normal cycles that many people experience. When you are feeling a burst of energy , starting new projects, coming up with new ideas and generally moving out into the world, you are in what is called the expansive mode. This is the cycle that feels good as you expand out from your typical ways of being in the world. It is possible to get a little scattered as you take on a number of new things or make changes in your life. Although this cycle has...