personal growth

Preventing Gang Violence: Why Kids Become Violent

Read an exclusive interview with Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention group in the country. What Homeboy Industries Does: My name is Greg Boyle, I’m the Executive Director and Founder of Homeboy Industries, located in Los Angeles, the largest gang intervention program in the country. We serve about 12,000 people… Read more »

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Is Sexting Cheating You Out Of Real Intimacy?

There is a good, sound argument for how technology can bring two people together. Countless couples have now met, married, forged unions, and had children as a result of a dating website, a Facebook chat, or a bold text message. Technology has provided a new platform for millions of people to take that first step… Read more »

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Understanding Our Style of Relating When Triggered

When we are triggered emotionally, it can all feel sort of choiceless; like we have lost control of ourselves. Even if we have the awareness of our reaction, it is difficult to stop our emotional response, because the nervous system, the brain, the memory centers are all interacting. Our learned style of relating Most often… Read more »

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Staying True to Your Core Values in a Relationship

  “Feel the Feelings, but Do the Right Thing” Anxiety of changing when you’re moving toward new behavior is normal, expected, that’s why one of the lines I hear myself saying a lot in therapy is “Feel the feeling; do the right thing.  Feel the feeling, but do the right thing” because feelings are rooted… Read more »

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Dr. Pat Love Defines Four Basic Keys to Loving

Dr. Pat Love describes four basic actions to take that constitute a concrete offering of love and can, therefore, dramatically improve a couple relationship: There are really four things, let me just tell you, four things that every baby needs, every child needs, every adult needs.  It’s just basic to homo sapiens, to the human… Read more »

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Selling Out: Compromising Integrity in Intimate Relationships

All partners in successful intimate relationships know how to compromise when negotiating each others needs. They fully expect to give up some things and strive for fairness in those decisions. When couples cooperate openly, most desires are met, negotiated, or willingly given up for the sake of the relationship’s success. But sometimes one partner wants something… Read more »

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Dr. Pat Love on Parenting

Dr. Pat Love on what it is to parent, and the mistaken conceptions of parenting that are endemic to our culture: There’s a lot of talk today about parents who hover, these helicopter parents.  And there’s just one line that I like to say and that is:  When you do something for someone else, let’s… Read more »

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Steps To Healthy Lifestyle Changes

Lifestyle changes begin with setting Intention. If you don’t have an intention, it easy to lose commitment to action. Intention is not a goal but an overarching frame for the “why” of doing something. For example, someone might have a goal of losing weight, but an overarching intention of feeling well, with more vitality for… Read more »

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The Beginning of the End of Mass Imprisonment and the Misuse of Prisons as Our De Facto Mental Health Care System

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Plata on May 23 ordering the state of California to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 (from more than 140,000 to 110,000 inmates) over the next two years has received headlines, editorials and letters to the editor in newspapers around the country, as it should have…. Read more »

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A Parent’s Shorthand Guide to the College Transition

High school graduation is a culmination of emotions, a push-and-pull of opposing feelings on the human psyche. There’s a mixture of anxiety and excitement, happiness and sadness, regret and expectation, and relief and concern. And this doesn’t just apply to the grad either; parents are equally if not oftentimes more immersed in this emotional tug-of-war…. Read more »

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