So much came to mind when I started to think about hope. Hope seems loaded right now and possibly in short supply, but when I retreat to my psychoanalytic frame of thought, I understand that opposing poles hold each other down. Kind of like on a camping tent. You cannot have a move toward the positive without an opposing move toward the negative, and when things seem at their worst, is exactly when the potential for great hope is more open and available than ever. We simply wouldn’t be able to see hope existing on the horizon, without acknowledging despair. Analytic greats like Winnicott and later Stephen Mitchell regarded hope as being essential to the analytic relationship and in an...
WHY GOOD FRIENDS BRING A SHOVEL. PSYCHOLOGY + THE HOLE. I'm going to tell you a story. The first time I heard this story was on an episode of the WEST WING. For those of you who followed the show, it is the Noel episode or Season 2 Episode 10. It is an exchange between the characters Josh and Leo and the story goes like this: A guy is walking down the street and falls into a hole. He watches from below as people pass by on the street. Some looking in the hole, most not seeing him, only trying to avoid falling in themselves. As he looks up at the people passing by, he sees his priest. He calls...
We cannot live without fear. Seriously. We wouldn’t last long without our bodies having a major physiological reaction to Michael Myers, Freddie Kruger, and of course Pennywise. The fight or flight reaction pathway that begins in the brain and quickly moves to the body when we experience fear supplies us with the energy and skills to fight for our lives or get the hell out of dodge. The amygdala, the temporal lobe region of the brain most connected to fear, sets forth a set of reactions in response to the emotional salience of our surrounding stimuli, or what stands out to us about our immediate surroundings. The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex interpret the perceived threat as real or not. If...
Why the Autumn wind is a Raider Psychology + the False Start You won't believe this, but I used to love football. I haven't watched a game since September of 2016 when taking a knee in peaceful protest suddenly cost one of the best players in the league his job. Hindsight is 2020, or at least it should be in this case. We love you Kaep. And THANK YOU. But before that, in the early 2000's at the then height of the former Oakland Raiders, I was a season ticket holder. Yes, you heard right. Jersey, hat, tailgate, coming home hoarse from screaming obscenities at the opposing team. All the things you are imagining right now about an Oakland Raiders...
For this exciting THESE THREE THINGS SEGMENT discussion, I am delighted to host Senior Marketing and Publicity Director at Chronicle Books and founder of Tweet Sweet Jewelry, CHRISTINA LOFF! Join us while we discuss crisis versus staying cool, story versus belief, and of course, RuPaul. Listen here. It's PR not ER - one of my favorite former bosses used to say this all the time and I've never forgotten it. It's what I say now to my own team and it's how I try to approach what may seem like a crisis at work. Basically she'd remind us that we weren't saving lives, and while our jobs mattered there was nothing we could do that could have catastrophic repercussions. It's...
