When envy gets the upper hand, it spoils gratitude. Whether with a friend or family, envy cycles cause misery and confusion. Envy destroys and devalues, leads to feeling bad and ungrateful, and breeds more envy. Here I share reflections on the envy-gratitude link as you prepare for Thanksgiving.

Parents wonder how to encourage their child’s artistic expression without adding pressure that inhibits joy and creativity. Drawing on my experience as a child psychotherapist, I give advice about how to keep it simple, emphasize the process of making art, and comfortably talk with your child about the art. Most important is to remember that we’re hard-wired for aesthetic pleasure and for human connection.

Haidt’s bestseller, The Anxious Generation, shows how Smartphone and other screen addictions are crippling our kids.  Cyber-technology weakens our capacity for tension tolerance.  It blots out the need to be with ourselves, to negotiate with the real world, and to navigate real relationships.  Parents unwittingly pass this tension-hatred on to their kids.  Here’s how we can all use Haidt’s wake-up call to limit cellphone use and strengthen frustration tolerance.

"Back to School" brings the paradox of mixed feelings. As a parent, you're relieved to have your own schedule back and you regret that summer has ended. Both parents and children grapple with mixed feelings about growth and change. Here, I offer suggestions for helping kids with their mixed feelings while encouraging confidence in the next step. I also suggest ways to encourage kids to take growing-up steps at home, like make their own lunch, and the mixed feelings this evokes in parents.

This year Earth Overshoot Day falls on August 1.  That’s when humans have used up the resources that Earth can generate for the year.  The rest of the year—five whole months in 2024—we’re running on a deficit.  We’re depleting resources and piling up pollution, including the carbon dioxide that’s ruined our climate.  Overshoot causes most ecological problems, from climate derangement to species extinction. But we don’t want to see it. Instead, we disavow the painful reality of limits and cling to the myth of human exceptionalism. Human exceptionalism is a form of omnipotence, a cultural armor that defends against the sadness of limits and loss. I end with suggestions for celebrating Earth Overshoot Day. Spend time with the best of human creativity and be grateful for benign human brilliance. Then talk with someone about Earth Overshoot Day and see what you learn. To see, to reflect, to feel, to repair—this is the best of being human.

How do parents and young adults handle their mixed feelings about graduation? The culture, which flees tensions, including the tensions of endings, encourages parents and young adults to cling, never letting ago. But everyone does better to engage the complex feelings around growth and change, to accept that childhood has ended, and to commence with their own lives. When things get stuck, psychotherapy can help.

Why did millions travel to witness the eclipse? We are, it seems starved for the real, in a culture that increasingly gives us the virtual. And isn’t the real that we crave real contact with another person, intimacy? Psychotherapy offers a path to intimacy. It’s the steady, dedicated, disciplined understanding of one’s deepest self, along with the methods of self-protection and self-deception. That’s true life change.

Congratulations on recognizing your perplexity. It’s a sign of your intelligence and sensitivity. Anyone who’s aware of their inner lives and the outer world will be perplexed. We’re perplexed by inner conflict, by relationship troubles, and by contradictions in the culture. Here, I outline the psychoanalytic view that I’ll bring to addressing these confusions. There’s value in uncertainty, strength in admitting bewilderment, as the beginning of wisdom.. Your and my perplexities are gifts.