My "9 Holiday Depression Busters" are featured in a Beliefnet gallery. Click here to find them.

It's supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year--but not if negative emotions take hold of your holidays. So let's...

Awhile back I wrote about the four kinds of friends you need in your life to become more resilient. Now let's talk about the kind of friends you actually have! Or at least the 10 types of female friends described by author Susan Shapiro Barash in her new book,...

With rumors of Tiger Woods having an affair, talk of cheating surfaces once more. Here are eight great tips for marriages where one or both partners have been unfaithful. They come from my friend, psychologist Elvira Aletta. You can get to the original post by clicking here.

Few things...

You're almost there. You want to quit. In fact, 80 percent of your brain is sure you can. But 20 percent insists that you can't. How do you make it over to the other side without falling SPLAT on your face?

Do this. Make a list. Of ten reasons you...

To get us in the mood for the Thanksgiving Holiday!

Cicero said that "gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." The English preacher John Henry Jowett wrote that "every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road." And...

I was all set to interview Eric Swanson, coauthor (with Yongey Mingur Rinpoche) of "Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom," when I realized that my main question -- Can you give me some concrete steps to quiet the mind? -- was already addressed in his book!

He...

I'm a tad over hearing about how depression and other mood disorders are yuppie diseases for folks with the time and resources to ruminate and obsess. I could do without all the advice on how to transform my thoughts into happy campers, even as I try every mindfulness strategy and...

I spent my adolescence and teenage years obsessing about this question: Am I depressed or just deep?  

"Time Magazine" just published the results of a landmark survey gauging where America stands on the battle of the sexes. The results show that women are much more powerful than they were forty years ago. In the 60s, one-third of all workers were woman. Now half are. Almost forty...

Until recently, "no" was a dirty word to me. As a stage-four people-pleaser, my vocabulary was rich with affirmatives: "yeah," "sure," "okay," "absolutely," "no problem." But my mouth just couldn't seem to form the consonant-vowel combination required to say "no," even when "yes" was simply impossible due to time conflicts...

Fears are like annoying relatives. You can't avoid them forever, and ignoring them won't make them go away. Come Thanksgiving, they'll plop down right next to you and ask to borrow your fork. So you'd better figure out how to confront the little devils before they eat your dessert too....

There's a story ... of a lovely lady ... who meets her prince charming and the two of them with their six combined children live happily ever after.

NOT!

Having been Cindy Brady myself--if you changed my stepsister into a boy and fused my twin sister and I...

You hear about peer pressure when you are in the sixth grade, but no one talks about it once you've graduated from college, have a job, and especially once you're mature enough to find a mate and make babies.

But the kind of folks you hang with influence you more...

Resilience.

That's what I'm after.

To be able to find my balance after hitting a pot hole. To wake up with hope after enduring a series of frustrations. To look beyond the circumstances of my life in order to enjoy the moment.

Yes. I want to become more resilient....

I dance the Macarena whenever I come across an article that argues against healthy living. I cautioned you against too much positive thinking a few days ago. I laughed while reading research about dark chocolate firing up the happy brain. And I high fived the doctors who warn folks...

Back in July, John Cloud wrote a piece for "Time" Magazine called "Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking." In the article, Cloud lays out the research why "cognitive restructuring," the process of retraining your thoughts--of changing self-defeating attitudes to constructive ones--simply doesn't work.

Actually, it's worse than that....

Even as I love the autumn season, it is full of anxiety for me.

I start to mourn the ending of summer when I hear the cicadas grow louder the last two weeks of August and when I feel the crispness in the air at that time, which brings...

Most of us circle a few days of the calendar year that we know will be difficult to get through: the anniversary of a death, traumatic event, or even happy occasion. These dates are charged with emotion. September 11th falls under that category for most of us, and especially those...

I was recently invited by Caren Osten Gerszberg and Leah Odze Epstein who write and compile the fun blog, "Drinking Diaries" to contribute my two-cents on where I am with the whole drinking thing. Check out the other interesting pieces at www.drinkingdiaries.com.

It's been 20 years since I...

Larry Drain of the Hopeworks Community blog wrote an excellent post on three things we can do about our moods: prevention, coping, learning. He writes "Moods are processes--not event. They have a coming and a going." Like mindfulness specialist Elisha Goldstein, he reminds us of our mood's...