Tag: agoraphobia

June 23, 2026-
Everyone periodically can fall into a shopaholic spending spree. For clarification, we are not talking about the person who has a Compulsive Shopping Disorder(CSD) to the level they are in severe financial distress with resulting anxiety and depression because of their compulsion. No, we are talking about the person who spends too much money on shopping and desires to control the spending urges. A person with a severe compulsion to buy who cannot stop on their own very likely needs to find a therapist experienced in compulsive behavior and potentially a group to sort out the problem. The problem we are discussing here is when being a shopaholic leads to you spending beyond your means or simply wasting money spending on things you do not need but feel you want in the moment. When you decide to quit being a shopaholic, a simple plan to start besides cutting up the credit card and waiting a week before buying something you want, is to designate a period of time to only get what you need and when you need it. This is much easier said than done. During this period, on a daily basis, determine what motivates you to buy as urges come forward to buy things and you control what you spend. Typical reasons would be Internet ads, deals from retailers you commonly buy, shopping trips with friends or family, peer pressure to buy, surfing sites like Amazon, a bargain you cannot resist, or a desire to own something regardless of your need. If you want to effectively stop being a shopaholic, you need to distinguish between need and want. Many people have a problem with this distinction. You need to do it to control your shopaholic spending habits whether you are 15 or 80 years old. Minimizing shopping trips with friends or family can help. Most people can remember coming home from shopping or the shopping trip with many things they really do not need and not even sure they want after they have them. Being willing to return things that one determines they do not need or they do not use is part of the process of stopping being a shopaholic. The more you do this the more you will realize how many things you buy that you do not need. It is a wise thing to look at how many clothes or books or whatever you have bought and see if you ever used them. While hopefully on a much smaller scale, you may find you have become “Emelda Marcos” in the present. You might remember that during her period as the First Lady of the Philippines, she had at least 1060 pairs of shoes. You do not want to fall into the pattern of going shopping and talking about how much you saved while ignoring or not wanting to admit how much you spent. It is difficult to stop being a shopaholic, but now is a good time to start.

June 6, 2026- Too many people live a life where everything is competitive. They see every event and situation
as a win-lose or zero-sum situation with a winner and a loser. Having a clear winner may be
reasonable in sporting events and even fair competition for a specific job where skills and
talents are evaluated in the decision process. If we exclude those kinds of situations, most
situations we encounter in life are best dealt with from a win-win perspective. This means the
goal of negotiating or bargaining is that each person gains some of what they desire to the level
of being satisfied. There is not a winner and a loser, but two winners. This requires maturity and
a desire to negotiate fairly with a goal of everyone being satisfied. In such a situation, both
persons are willing to give up something to get something in return. The end result is both have
a level of satisfaction and future negotiating will be much easier to occur. A positive mental
health outcome is that persons who want to live in a world of win-win interactions with people
are usually better liked by others and are comfortable with themselves. For clarification, we are
not talking about people who just give in and often have anger and resulting anxiety and
depression because they do not get what they desire in life. No, we are talking about well
balanced persons who try to be team players in interactions with others. Examples of win-win
situations would be equally sharing duties in a household, further education for employees that
gives them incentive to stay with the company in spite of a risk of them leaving and makes them
more valuable employees, dividing a business territory where each will offer services and not
attempt to knock out the other one, fairly sharing expenses in all endeavors, determining not to
dominate conversations and use active listening for fair and better communication, sharing work
fairly in the workplace with fellow employees, and dividing up responsibilities fairly between
owners of a company…General outcomes of win-win interactions would be that everyone has
some success and is a winner, no one feels overwhelmed or treated unfairly by someone,
relationships are much better, success is shared, opportunities for further advancement for all
often occurs through the outcomes of win-win interactions, and better mental health for persons
who do not have the desire to dominate and control others with a zero-sum outlook on life. With
this said, we also must accept and be aware that persons with the best intentions can
sometimes not come up with a win-win situation and need to indicate this and move forward
from their disagreement. This is hopefully done in good faith with a willingness to meet again if
there becomes a possibility of obtaining a win-win situation for each person.

June 2, 2026- In a nation where half of those who get married or remarried have a strong chance of divorcing, it certainly makes a lot of sense to make sure you are ready when you get married. A further negative outcome of ill advised marriages that end in divorce that is often not considered is the impact of divorce on children. It is not talked about enough, but the well documented negative results of divorce on children that include educational attainment, educational achievement, parental estrangement, economic home strength, anger and psychological issues, identity confusion, socialization issues and low self-esteem need to be taken into account when divorce is considered. From someone who has worked with married couples and individuals getting divorced over the years, a common reason divorced persons or unhappily married persons have given me when asked why they married said they were not thinking clearly about the decision. This is actually shocking when one considers how important marriage is, and how often people will spend weeks debating what type of a car or appliance to buy before they buy it, but will get married and quite possibly have children, when clearly the odds of the marriage failing are far greater.
They people do all the appropriate planning and thinking prior to getting married. Common reasons persons give for having gotten married that they now know were not good reasons would include believing they were too invested in the relationship to not marry even when loaded with doubts, too young and immature, under extreme pressure from outside persons and family to marry, educational differences, life goals, spending priorities, child rearing, spiritual differences, deciding to go contrary to what friends and family who advised them not to get married, feeling short term intense shallow love that seemed unbreakable, physical attraction that was extreme, no real knowledge of each other, rebounding from a divorce or horrible breakup, unrealistic expectations, fears of being alone, choosing to be married when not being married seems worse, and financial need and support. A simple point here is that prior to getting married, couples need to get to know each other very well and determine what the expectations for the marriage and their future include. To not do this is to greatly increase the possibility of unhappiness and divorce.

May 26, 2026
I personally have worked with and evaluated many persons with ADHD over the decades where the characteristics they exhibit in the workplace negatively impact their ability to effectively fulfill their job requirements. This is true with many persons who are working in areas they personally love and went through extensive training to be able to do. It is not a lack of ability or desire. Before I identify characteristics that persons exhibit that have ADHD, it is important we not include in this group persons who by choice do not work to their ability and do not try to function to their highest level and as a result, find themselves having problems in the workplace. No, we are talking about persons who have ADHD and are having problems in the workplace because of it, but have not been diagnosed. As a result, they have received no medical or mental health suggestions for overcoming it. Persons with ADHD have some combination of the characteristics of lack of focus, inattention, impulsivity, hyperactivity, and procrastination. When undiagnosed and untreated, the impact can be devastating in the workplace. Characteristics of ADHD that negatively impact the person in the workplace would include poor focus on required activities, time blindness/losing track of time, inability to focus on tasks, high error rate due to lack of focus and inattention, joblessness over time due to poor work performance, a poor team member on projects that require team effort to complete them, poor productivity, stress related work absences, stigma of having the ADHD label, mind travel from one thought to another when paying attention is critical, procrastination, problems with organizing activities, problems with prioritizing activities, distractibility, impulsivity, and poor memory. It is important to remember that no one has all of these characteristics, but even a few of them can cause you problems in doing effective work in the workplace. If you feel you have any of these characteristics and they are
negatively impacting you in your job performance, then I would suggest you seek out an ADHD evaluation by a psychologist and receive appropriate medication and mental health recommendations consistent with your specific needs. A trained therapist in ADHD and the resulting potential negative impact in the workplace could be helpful. The first step is to
determine if you do have ADHD, and if so, what can be done to best help you overcome the characteristics if they are negatively impacting you in the workplace.

05-19-2026
Too many adults are very unhappy and sometimes functioning very poorly as adults because of growing up with toxic parents in dysfunctional homes that had various degrees of instability, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and just emotionally unhealthy conditions. At a minimum, it was bad modeling and children coming from these homes as adults often find it very
hard to know what is appropriate behavior in relationships with people ranging from short term interactions to close friends and family members in a stable manner. This instability can lead to poor relationships, poor academic achievement, lacking trust in others, anger, poor employment behavior, eating disorders, inappropriate sexual behaviors, anxiety, PTSD, depression and poor self-esteem. In order to overcome these problems as adults, it is important that the person let go emotionally and physically from parents and family members who are toxic and cause them emotional distress. Emotional healing is done by accepting what happened and see the poor behavior of their parents for what it really was. Do not try to sugarcoat it and not allow these previous bad parental behaviors to control who you are as a person now. You need to learn to trust others based on how they are treating you. When you determine who you can trust, you can then be honest with them to gain some insight into your behaviors and how you look at life. As appropriate, seek out a trained therapist with experience with adults who grew up in dysfunctional and psychologically devastating homes to learn the right path to personal satisfaction and not allowing the past to destroy the present and future. The combination of counseling and the person learning to make good decisions in relationships with others can lead to a successful and happy life in the present, which means there will be a good future with the emotional and physical destruction from the past put in its appropriate dumpster and not being allowed to be destructive as you lead hopefully a happy and successful life. It is critical adults who grew up in dysfunctional toxic homes not allow their parents who mistreated them to negatively impact their ability to lead successful lives with others and themselves in the present.

May 12, 2026- While it is true that women often will not commit to a relationship, our topic today is why men will not commit to a relationship. This is frustrating and can be devastating to a woman who is looking forward to a relationship with a man who just will not commit. At times these men may seem close and they may profess love and do all the things one would expect as steps leading to the final lifetime commitment. That these steps do not lead to a final commitment shows it is a problem not only for the person who will not get the commitment, but often for the person not giving it. I have known many men over the years who could not make a commitment and ended up making a commitment to someone else they loved, but they feel they could have loved someone more if they had only made the commitment when the time was right. Typical reasons a man will not commit would include fear of responsibilities, fearing a loss of freedom, not willing to give up the single life, has had previous disastrous relationships, fear of committing again and being rejected, difficult growing up home experiences that make him fearful to enter a lifelong relationship with someone, fear of arguing constantly in a home and not having peace, unfulfilled career educational goals, fears of abandonment, feeling unworthy of being loved, poor timing in relation to where they are in life and desire to be, cannot make a person number one but always number two or lower, happy with the relationship the way it is, may only want sex, may want many women and not only one, desires to be more stable financially, not comfortable if the partner is making more income than he is, and many other reasons that can exist. While this may seem like a large list of reasons that persons are fearful of entering into a lifelong commitment, there are things to do to counter these potential problem areas and make sure you are not drawn into a never-ending relationship with no commitment to you. They would include determining what you want and need as a relationship develops, indicate to your partner openly and do not hide them and then develop great anger and frustration, become friends first and sexual partners second, keep things very basic and simple as far as your goals and desires, be patient but have a clear ending time so you can maintain self-respect and an opportunity to find someone who wants to be committed to you for a lifetime. It also can be helpful when in such a situation to seek the advice of loving family and friends as well as a trained therapist experienced in such situations.