Have you ever been told you need to "clear your head" or "get rid of all the clutter"? For many, including myself, the idea of sitting quietly with an empty mind seems impossible. If fact, this idea is often a barrier to any attempts to meditate or try mindfulness exercises.

If you are stuck "doing the right thing" while sacrificing what you want, your beliefs about how you "should" act may be holding you back.

No dieter plans on eating emotionally from Halloween to New Year's Eve, and yet, that's what the overwhelmed majority end up doing year after year after year. If anyone is equipped to reverse this unhealthy trend, it's Jennifer Taitz.

It is possible to change how you communicate with others. You may have habitual ways of interacting, but like driving or playing the piano, communicating is a skill that can be practiced and learned.

When left unattended, strong emotions can lead to destructive behaviors. Attending to times that you feel hurt, belittled, let down, disrespected, insulted or threatened is key to dealing with the anger that often comes from those experiences.

Job demands can certainly cause stress. But your own reaction to those demands can have a significant impact on the intensity of stress you experience.

We all smooth over the truth and bend in our standards from time to time in order to reduce conflict and make relationships work. But when pleasing others becomes a habit you may find yourself resentful, which ultimately damages your relationships.

What we too frequently overlook, when we try to make changes, is what is happening around us that either boosts motivation or contributes to slipping back into the status quo.

Let's face it: How you interact matters. In fact, how you act when you communicate may matter as much as and sometimes more than the words that you say.

It's painful to be stuck in negative thinking. When this goes on for a long period of time or when it interferes with your ability to function it's important to find strategies to lessen these symptoms.

When you have good reason to be stressed out, it's hard to make positive changes. However, it's important to ensure that positive life experiences balance out stressful and overwhelming times.

If you've ever been threatened and felt that rush of strength and energy that made you more physically capable than you have been at other times, then you've experienced the body's stress response.

DBT skills are flexible and can be used to help with self-esteem issues, other emotional problems, and simply to help you live a healthier, happier life.

Borderline personality disorder, the whispered thing I'd heard, was a wicked jungle-bred stepchild of a diagnosis. Borderline was Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction."

The main reasons DBT is so effective in such a wide range of problems, is that it teaches people to manage their overwhelming emotions more effectively.