Everybody thinks communication is the key to healthy relationships. But I’m not so sure…

Obviously, communication is important in any relationship. But here’s the thing many people don’t realize:

Poor communication is often a result of relationship problems, but rarely the cause.

Over the years working as a psychologist and seeing just about every shape and size of relationships problem, there’s something much more fundamental that causes relationships to fall apart: Unhealthy boundaries

Unhealthy boundaries mean there’s an imbalance in the mixture of intimacy and independence in a given relationship.

For example:

• Start oversharing your personal life with your employees…

Most people use one of two strategies to cope with painful emotions:

1. Fix it. The minute you start feeling anxious, for example, your negative and judgmental self-talk kicks in and you start arguing with yourself about why you shouldn’t feel anxious. And how if you were a little tougher you wouldn’t be stressed out all the time. As if berating yourself for feeling bad would help you feel better…
2. Run away. Of course, it’s natural to want to avoid things that hurt. So we try things like distracting ourselves or numbing the pain with alcohol or food. …

Everybody wants to know what they can do to be happier…

• More life-hacks
• More mindset tips
• More coping skills
• More frameworks
• More pills
• More coaches and therapists
• More wellness apps

And while all these things have their place, no doubt, what if this quest for more to make us happy is the wrong direction?

What if happiness is about what you should do less of, not more of?

The longer I work as a psychologist, the more I realize the key to finding happiness is often less, not more. …

Do you often feel inadequate, like you’re not good enough or unworthy?

• Maybe you never seem to measure up with all your creative and ambitious coworkers?
• Or maybe you tend to feel bad about yourself because your spouse is so patient with the kids and you lose your temper so easily.

Whatever inadequacy looks like for you, it’s a painful thing to live with.

But here’s what most people don’t realize about inadequacy:

Whatever caused your inadequacy initially, it’s usually your habits that are maintaining it.

Anything from early life trauma to unhelpful comparisons can cause you to feel inadequate…

A common misconception about confidence is that it’s this general personality trait that makes someone bold and unafraid in any situation.

Not true.

Confidence is actually very situation-specific.

Someone who is socially confident might look bold and fearless at a cocktail party schmoozing with new people; but put them in front of an Excel spreadsheet and they turn into an insecure bundle of nerves and second-guessing. Confidence, in other words, can take many different forms.

One of the most important forms of confidence that people rarely talk about is emotional confidence, the ability to acknowledge and accept your emotions without…

I’ve been reading a lot of Winnie-the-Pooh with my daughters lately. So I must have been primed to take notice when I saw someone tweet about a book called The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff.

Here’s how the author describes his intention for the book:

To write a book that explained the principles of Taoism through Winnie-the-Pooh, and explained Winnie-the-Pooh through principles of Taoism.

In addition to introducing me to some of the core tenets of Taoism, this book really made me think about how much of my own approach to mental health and well-being as a therapist aligns…

A lot of people think discipline is about what you do:

• Stay focused
• Tough it out
• Boost your willpower
• Be strong

I’d like to suggest an alternative:

The best way to be more disciplined is to do less, not more.

If you’re doing something hard, trying to apply even more effort is likely to fail because you’re already tired and spent. What if you took a totally different approach…

What if you looked for things that were interfering with your ability to be more disciplined and focused on removing those?

If you’ve struggled for a long time to be more…

It’s hard to think of a more universal cause of anxiety, frustration, and stress than overthinking.

Whether it’s worry about the future, rumination about the past, or hypercriticism of other people, our ability to think critically is a double-edged sword we’d all do well to be more careful with.

But before you start trying to stop overthinking so much, it can be useful to understand why you tend to overthink in the first place.

Over the years working as a psychologist, I see the following seven reasons show up over and over again among people who struggle with overthinking.

1. Childhood Learning

Most…