I would like to introduce a thinking skill that is very simple to learn and use. I call this skill Dialectical Synonyms, or DS for short. If you remember from English class, synonyms are two words that ...

In the previous blog post, we learned that certain thoughts can sometimes provoke certain emotions which in turn can sometimes provoke certain actions. That’s why it’s so important to figure out what’s ...

Have you ever looked at yourself in one of those funny mirrors? Whose image did you see? It was you, of course. After all, it wasn’t George Washington or Michael Jordan staring back in the mirror—it ...

Psychologists have long noticed that thoughts, emotions, and actions all influence each other. Since the 1960’s, psychologists have especially focused on how certain thoughts can inspire certain emotions ...

We’ve already learned about the three minds: The Thinking Mind, the Feeling Mind, and the Balanced Mind. Do you remember how both our thoughts and our feelings can get off balance when we are not using ...

A sequence we have seen repeatedly throughout these blogs is this: Awareness, Acceptance, Action. As we have already learned, awareness and acceptance alone can often transform our lives from unbearable ...

Not everything that happens to us in life is something we signed up for. There are some things in the past we desperately wish never happened to us. There are other things in the present we desperately ...

In the previous blog series, we learned all about mindfulness. In particular, we learned that applied mindfulness involves a three-step sequence: Awareness, Acceptance, Action. First we need to become ...

So far in this blog series, we have further developed the themes of awareness, acceptance, and action. We have learned that we cannot accept difficult facts or make difficult changes until we first overcome ...

In the previous blog, we talked about five stages of acceptance. Now we are going to talk about five stages of action. Do you remember why we talked about acceptance first? Because we can’t change reality ...

All of us struggle at times to accept the reality we have been dealt. Sometimes reality is so painful we would rather pretend that some things do not exist or never happened. However, there are many reasons ...

Have you ever noticed something about someone else before that person did? Maybe that person has a funny tic or says the work “like” way too many times in one sentence. On the flip side, have you ever ...

In the previous blog, we discussed the first three components of mindfulness: 1. To be aware2. On purpose3. In the present However, there is one more component of mindfulness: “Without judging.” ...

When people hear the word mindfulness, sometimes they think of meditation or great mystical experiences. However, the concept of mindfulness is actually quite simple and ordinary. In this blog, I would ...

Perhaps you have heard the term “mindful.” “Mindfulness” seems to be the latest buzzword in treatment circles, not to mention society in general. But actually, the concept of mindfulness has been ...

As previously mentioned, trauma has a way of throwing our lives out of sync in many different ways and directions. In this blog, we will focus on how trauma affects two mental processes: awareness and ...