“Ask Dr Neuman” Advice Column
Six principles Health anxiety is, simply, a condition in which certain individuals (“health worriers”) worry too much about their health. They include patients who cross a number of theoretical and diagnostic categories, including generalized anxiety disorder,...
The concept of physical illness is readily understood: the body becomes infected or inflamed, or grows abnormally, or is affected in any number of ways, all of which can be studied conventionally with laboratory tests or under a microscope. But a mental illness is...
Books—and hoarding Owning valuable things –in fact, owning anything–exacts a price. When I was growing up, in a world without television– not to mention video games and cell phones– books were very important to me. There was radio too, of course; and I spent dinner...
The treatment of an idea. In order to recover from agoraphobia and panic disorder, only two things need to be learned: No one is ever trapped, truly, in any of the settings phobics dread, obviously not in restaurants or on a line at a bank, or standing about at a...
I always feel amused (when I don’t feel annoyed) by therapists of one sort or another telling people to “trust their instincts.” The truth is, people should not trust their instincts– if instincts refer to their immediate perceptions and/or their judgment. The reason...
Small changes make big differencesPsychotherapy is sometimes portrayed grandly as an attempt to change personality– personality being no less than the sum of an individual’s feelings, thoughts and behavior, which together have grown up, in turn, out of the sum of that...
Heading off a murderThere was a time when I worked as the chief of a forensic unit in a psychiatric hospital. Most of the time I was simply required to make a determination of whether someone charged with a crime was able to stand trial. This was less complicated than...
The wish to behave ethically taken to an extreme.Evolution seems to push pack animals (including human beings) in opposite directions. Individuals are rewarded for behaving aggressively and selfishly with a heightened likelihood of success, namely, a greater chance of...
The benefits of asking“Ask, and ye shall receive.”If only it were that simple. I guess it is the natural condition to want things. Inevitably, wanting leads to disappointment, and, as the story goes, to unhappiness . The Buddha claimed that all the pain of life came...
Arguments are not undesirable. All the way up and down the animal kingdom, animals argue. They bark, bellow, growl and spit at each other. They are attempting to influence the other animal, who is often of the same species. “Stay away,” they are saying, or “Stop doing...
Predicting marital success or failure.The people described below have been disguised.It has often been said that love is a necessary, but not sufficient, reason to get married. However, it is not necessary, and it is certainly not sufficient. Arranged marriages are...
The purpose of psychotherapy, speaking broadly, is to help patients get to where they want to go in life. Since everyone is different, with different strengths and weaknesses, not to mention symptoms, getting from point A to point B is sometimes a subtle process. The...