It’s hard to look in a mirror when you know you will your lost self in depression. Quite a while back, there was a TV series about a group of nurses in the Vietnam War called China Beach. In one episode of this powerful drama, a soldier who had lost a leg from the knee […]

Strange as it may seem, I find myself fighting therapeutic approaches based on self-compassion. The reasons run deep and reveal a lot about the difficulty of trying to get depression completely out of my life. In a recent post, I summarized Kristin Neff’s idea of self-compassion as a way of relating to ourselves that is […]

As one who has had a lot of problems with self-esteem and self-worth as a result of depression, I’ve been interested to find out about the work of Kristin Neff. She is a psychologist who has presented self-compassion as an alternate way of thinking about the self. The idea of self-esteem has been pretty basic […]

  There is a healing garden at my house, thanks to my partner in life. She is an artist who works in many media. She fills the space around us, inside and outside our home, with beautiful things. Her gardens crowd with daily works-in-progress as she adds one more spot of life to a year-round […]

I have learned a lot about recovering from depression by studying methods for dealing with chronic pain. Now I have had a chance to turn this around. How can my skills in dealing with depression help me manage post-operative pain? Unfortunately, I have had more time than I had hoped to find out. As planned, […]

I want to thank the many of you who kindly offered support and sympathy in response to the recent newsletter about my problem with chronic pain. My case of lumbar spinal stenosis sometimes gives me an aching back but more commonly either weakens or sends a lot of sharp pain down my right leg. This […]