Anxiety runs in my family like a river and its tributaries, but until I met my own daughter, I had not fully believed that anxiety could be caused entirely by wiring rather than experience. Her father and I were intimately familiar with the heart-racing, dizzying awfulness of panic, yet we wondered: How could a much-loved baby suffer anxiety? She had…
Clinical psychologist Francine Shapiro was taking a stroll in 1987 when she noticed a curious phenomenon: the movement of her eyes seemed to reduce negative feelings associated with traumatic memories in her past. Her subsequent investigation revealed that other people had similar responses based on their eye movements. Dr. Shapiro’s curiosity didn’t stop there. She went on to develop an…
I recently attended a lecture on “Unleashing Your Voice,” about recognizing who we are. It brought me back to the first time I met my Buddhist teacher, Dr. Joe Loizzo. He and I discussed the way people think they know who they are and what they want in life. Who are we, really? Do we robotically follow the standards that…
Our good friend and Rewire Me contributing author, Dr. Jeffrey B. Rubin, will lead a workshop this summer on the art of flourishing, a central theme of his meditative psychotherapy practice. “Flourishing, the most fulfilling way to live, involves realizing the best within ourselves while enriching the lives of others,” Rubin says. “These pursuits might seem opposed—giving to others can…
I grew up in a house where Friday nights consisted of Dad drunk on the floor shouting, “I love you, Diane!” My mother’s name is Gail. His consistent abuse of me, both verbally and physically, left me in a state of depression. As a child, I was filled with despair and hopelessness. At school, my mind kept wandering off into…
Just over a year ago, my 82-year-old mother was rushed to a hospital where they discovered that she had metastatic cancer. I flew from Moscow to Los Angeles and stayed with her until the end of her life, driving around the San Fernando Valley in my rental car, a midnight blue Hyundai Elantra. It is ironic that as an L.A.…
Ever since I was young, I’ve been interested in memory. As a child, I remember reading in Ripley’s Believe It or Not about children who had memorized the Bible at age eight and other astounding feats, and I wondered whether I could match such accomplishments of memory. At Boston Latin School, one of the arcane requirements was “recitation”: we had…
