I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, “The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.”
One definition of insanity, and I’d throw in suffering, is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting different results.
It’s so easy to see this pattern in others: “David, scotch tape isn’t going to fix the hole in your lacrosse stick”; or “Jane, waltzing around the pool this summer in a Brazilian-cut bathing suit is not going to transform your jerk of a boyfriend into a decent fella.” But I can be so blind to my own attempts at disguising self-destructive behavior in a web of lies and rationalizations.
That’s why, when I’m in enough pain, I write everything down–so I can read for myself exactly how I felt after I had coffee with the person who was more interested in my publishing contacts than in my health, or after a phone call with the relative who enjoys pressing my bitchy buttons, or after two weeks on a Hershey-Starbucks diet.
Maybe it’s the journalist in me, but the case for breaking a certain addiction, or stopping a behavior contributing to depression, is much stronger once you can read the evidence provided from the past.

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