When I was little, my grandmother used to make hot peanut butter cookies for me. I would sit on a stool in her kitchen and watch her mix the ingredients, bake...
Pay Attention to What You Don’t Notice
read more
Addiction
Dealing with Addiction: Restoring Balance in the Family
Human homeostasis refers to the body’s ability to physically regulate its inner environment to ensure its balance in response to fluctuations in the outside...
Toxic Help: Enabling Others to Live in a World That Doesn’t Exist
To enable is to make possible. Enabling occurs when we allow someone to do something. Sometimes we hear the word enabling with respect to helping others do...
Shouting at the Water: Facing What You Can’t Ignore
Many years ago a very thirsty traveler stumbled upon a stream. After the traveler finished drinking, he shouted at the water: “I am finished drinking now, you...
The Last Leaf: It’s Never Too Late to Turn It Around
Jeff likes to smoke marijuana. In fact, he told me that over the last 40 years, the only times he has gone without smoking weed were once during a “four month stretch” while he was in the military (though he reported smoking “at times even then”), and once during an...
Digging Holes: Managing Other People’s Expectations
You’ve always known Pat to be a hole digger. Pat used to literally dig holes for himself, and then stand in them. In fact, for the longest time, every time you saw Pat, he had a shovel in his hands, and he was digging a hole. Pat didn’t like digging holes, because he...