August 26th, 2012

Parents sacrifice for their children - giving up their time, money and sometimes their own dreams - in order for their children to have the best life possible. Children, too, sacrifice for their parents. Consider this: A child grows up in a family with parental conflict or divorce, or with mental illness, or with a sibling off the derech, or with a parent who yells and hits. Children absorb the tensions in the family, taking on the role of protec …
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August 26th, 2012

Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADS) is a clinical term that means depression and/or anxieties that women might experience during pregnancy or postpartum. These feelings often conflict with assumptions and fantasies of how a woman should feel. A pregnant woman and her husband can be at a loss as to how to understand what is happening and how to cope. PMADS is triggered by dynamic and profound hormonal and physiological changes that begin …
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August 26th, 2012

Mark Banschick   Stress is unavoidable in life. As good parents we want to shield our children, but we also know that we can only do so much. Stressful situations come in many shapes and sizes and affect our teenagers, whether we like it or not. Moving from one city to another or one yeshiva to another; the illness of a parent or a sibling; a parental psychiatric disorder like depression or anxiety; a difficult divorce; a parent losing a j …
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August 25th, 2012

By Aviva Biberfeld "Ma, I'm hungry." "Don't be silly, you can't be hungry, we just ate lunch." "I don't like that shirt. It has too much black in it." "What do you mean you don't like the shirt, of course you do." "Boy, I am really hot" "You are not hot. You can't be hot, it's a perfect temperature in here". Do any of these lines sound familiar? Or do they just sound ridiculous? I am willing to bet that at some point in our lives we have done th …
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August 25th, 2012

Dr. Miriam Adahan As a teenager, I suffered from occasional panic attacks, social anxiety, and more than the usual amount of teenage angst. In today's drug-obsessed society, I would certainly have been given psych meds; thankfully, back then, it was expected that maturity would bring greater resilience and awareness. And so it was. Over the years, I developed numerous skills to help calm myself. I also learned that all normal people have ups an …
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August 25th, 2012

By Avigdor Bonchek, Ph.D. The topic of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) has received much media coverage over the past decade. This is because we have recently seen remarkable progress in the treatment of this serious, debilitating, psychological problem, which for centuries had defied attempts at treatment. The progress in treating OCD can be attributed both to medical advances (treatment with anti-depressants) and to cognitive behavioral t …
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August 25th, 2012

Dr. Judith Guedalia — 2012 After more than 30 years in the psychology "business," I have learned a lot about the mind-body interaction in medicine, specifically the role of resilience and self-help. I've learned this not only from my university training and work experience with trauma patients, but primarily from my own experience as a patient, having had four births by Caesarian section, thyroid cancer, and now endometrial/uterine ca …
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August 25th, 2012

Michael J. Salamon, Ph.D.Many parents whose children have graduated from high school are busy preparing them for a year or possibly two or more years in Israel, where they will be studying full time in a seminary or yeshiva. This event has, in many circles, come to be seen as both a developmental requirement and a defining event for teens in their transition to adulthood. This progression from high school to a higher level of Jewish learning in …
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August 25th, 2012

Robin B. Zeiger, Ph.D. In my practice s a clinical psychologist, fears often enter my office. It may be the child who is convinced something is under the bed; it may be the teen who is anxious about taking a test, or it may the father who worries whether his ADHD son will succeed in life. To adults, fears often appear unfounded and frustrating. For example, we may become frustrated trying to convince our children there are no monsters under the …
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August 25th, 2012

Leah Abramowitz The very words put fear into the hearts of everyone who hears them: dementia, Alzheimer's disease, cognitive decline, organic mental illness. We live in a generation when the number of people affected by dementia has ballooned beyond imagination. Everyone knows someone who suffers from a progressive deterioration of the mind: memory decline, inability to learn, impaired judgment, distorted orientation to time and place or behavio …
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August 25th, 2012

Howard Forman, M.D. Recently a young patient began her first session with me, "Everyone tells me all the time what a great girl I am and how they cannot figure out why I am still single and about to turn thirty." As I got to know Devorah* a little more, I learned that she is well-educated, professionally successful, has a wide-network of friends and involves herself greatly in chesed. I was able to observe at that first session that she was smar …
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Author: Jenny Sassoon, L.M.S.W. Last summer, I read one of the best novels I have read in a long time:  "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett.  I was inspired by this novel in many ways, and there is one piece in the novel that particularly spoke to me as it relates to building healthy self-esteem in children and young adults. One of the main characters in the novel is a maid named Aibileen.  Aibileen is responsible for cleaning and watch …
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By David Schatzkamer           Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a condition that can make it hard for a child to sit still, control behavior and pay attention. These difficulties can begin before the child is seven years old. Teachers are usually the first to recognize ADHD symptoms because the child is in school for long periods of time. If you are a parent of a child with ADHD …
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Menchlichkeit,Good Middos,Patience and Wisdom   These are the accolades I heard over and over again by stepchildren and stepparents describing the attributes of a good stepparent.   There were those who became stepchildren due to the death of a parent. There were those whose divorced parents married a single person. Other parents had both been divorced. Some came with children of their own and blended their families together. But, wheth …
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By Dvorah Levy, LCSW The initial image that came to mind was of a heart surgeon losing his patient on the operating table. That is what I was thinking when Sara called me saying she had decided to divorce Avi. They had begun therapy ten weeks prior. It was to be a last attempt at saving the marriage, but I knew at the time that my work was cut out for me. At a certain point in a relationship, when there has been a history of discord, feelings of …
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By Candida Abrahamson, PhD.   Have a teenager? Finding the experience not, perhaps, unending simplicity and joy? You're not alone. Adolescence is a complicated time in which a teen accomplishes her progression to adulthood by separating from her parents, and attaching, in turn, to her friends. Teens go from needing parents to rejecting them. In a healthy family, this ambivalence ultimately leads to a deeper acceptance of parents as caring …
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            The Transcending Trauma Project, based at the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia, is an ongoing qualitative research project investigating three generations of Holocaust survivor families. The goal of the project is to understand how survivors coped with the horror and losses of the war and to understand the impact of their experiences on the second and third generations. …
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     These days, every teacher in every classroom is not only an educator but also a part-time psychologist, a part-time nurse and a part-time referee. As the demands of the curriculum and the competition to succeed seem to grow exponentially each year, so too does the pressure on teachers. Given this pressure and the goals of everyone involved (students, teachers, administrators), it may be helpful to look at the classroom i …
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By Dvorah Levy Much research is being conducted on the mysteries of attraction, which is often the starting point of relationships. Many singles in the Orthodox community are engaged in the often frustrating - and at times despairing and painful - search for a partner. To find someone with similar values and feel mutual attraction is very challenging. I am seeing through my work with singles that there is unconscious coding in our brains that fa …
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I am a clinical psychologist who has tremendous difficulty remembering the different parts of the brain and what they are responsible for in our lives. I have learnt it many times and forgotten many times. So when I was asked to write an article on children's brain development I had two simultaneous reactions. The first was 'who me, I have trouble remembering the different roles of the right brain and left brain'. My other reaction was, 'great, …
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I hear the faint sounds of machines beeping and people whispering in the background. My mother is crying and my father looks scared. My sisters and brothers are watching in horror as I lay in bed covered with a blanket because I am cold, with a tube in my nose as it's the only way to get anything of substance into my body. I am Dina. I am 22 years old and I can barely speak as my mouth is dry and my body aches with every move.  I try to smi …
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By Sharon Shapiro- Lacks Why does frailty and differences in other people often scare us.  They scare us because we see a reflection of what we fear in ourselves or because we just don't know how to respond. Since we can't live with this discomfort for too long, we make assumptions about and apply labels to those we fear. Now that we have come to a fabricated understanding about, labeled, and summarily discounted them from the inner circles …
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by Batya Jacobs HaRav Tauber says that husband and wife are like two rough diamonds. A rough diamond can become a priceless, pure jewel, but only if another diamond is used to remove the impurities. So HaKadosh Boruch Hu puts together two perfectly matched rough diamonds. He makes sure that they have their little differences. The friction from these differences scrapes away at their impurities so they gradually become multifaceted, pure, shinin …
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What if the controlling behavior went away, the anger was gone, there was no more fear? And the person you married turned out to be a truly beautiful human being after all? What if you could heal completely from the pain you have experienced in your marriage and get a fresh start?   I've been lucky. I went to graduate school to learn exactly how to accomplish all of the above, just like all the other therapists, but unlike them, I've had th …
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As societal norms continue to creep into Orthodox Jewish society, the plague of internet addiction to pornography has now begun surfacing in the Torah world as well.  Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, Dean of the prestigious Ramat Gan Yeshiva, estimates that 80 to 97% of Internet users in the modern Orthodox community have fallen victim to the porn epidemic and will occasionally seek out pornographic sites. He maintains that the temptation is so …
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In Zmiros Friday night we say that Menucha V'simcha Ohr Layhudim, calm and happiness are a light for the Jew. How appropriate this is in our times, how much we long for Menucha from our anxieties and Vsimcha from our depressions. True that we are in a world that moves faster and the responsibilities and pressures are more than ever before. The flip side is that Hashem always creates the solution before he sends the problem. The solutions are amo …
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In the hope of bridging the gap between psychological science and the Jewish community, the newly-established Center for Anxiety in New York City will host a conference on April 29, 2012, on Judaism and Mental Health Research.Dr. David Pelcovitz of Yeshiva University will be keynote speaker for the conference, which will bring researchers, clinicians, students, and members of the community together to learn about the connection between mental he …
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Dr. Candida Abrahamson PhD Ask yourself what causes the three biggest fights in marriage? Don't peek below before you try to answer. My guess is that you're right: children, in-laws--and money. And money struggles precede children, and most likely outlast in-laws. Joining Forces Financially Joining forces financially means that "your" money becomes "our" money.  You may have lived together for five years, but it's not until the fancy dinne …
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by Rabbi ShlomoSlatkin, MS, LCPC   In dealing with couples, I often find one or both parties questioning whether they married the right person. While you might expect this question to be reserved for newlyweds, there are, unfortunately, couples who are grandparents still asking it. In reality, this is one of the most destructive questions you can ask about your marriage. I understand that livingwith an unhappy marriage is an extremely pain …
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By Micky Lavin Pell   Just as physical exercise has been shown to have many benefits for disease prevention and overall health, so too does psychotherapy play a role in preventing a variety of mental illnesses and maintaining mental health.  While psychotherapy has largely been used in treating and healing emotional wounds, therapists are now suggesting that there is greater potential for also using therapy to help people create bette …
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By Chaya Tauber, LCSW Hollering, flinging objects, slamming doors, hitting, threatening…. Have you ever seen an adult tantrum and wondered why it was happening? This type of adult has inadequate words for verbal expression and lacks problem-solving skills, and therefore has difficulty relating to and being understood by others. The adult is typically described as short-tempered, impulsive, and in need of “Anger Management Classes.&r …
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By Mark Staum             The life of a typical adolescent is often filled with difficulties and complexities. Adolescents often have to deal with peer pressure, academic stress and family difficulties. Friendships and relationships often serve as outlets for adolescents during times of difficulty and turmoil. Their relationships also affect their feelings of identity and self worth. This ar …
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By: Michael Migraum   To be a child of a Holocaust survivor is to live in a world of contradictions.  It means trying to ignore a horrid past while feeling, in one’s chest and stomach, that the aguish of the past is always present.  It means feeling too close to the parent survivor and needing some emotional distance, while at the same time feeling that one does not really know his parent.  It means wanting to ask ques …
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Rabbi Jonathan Schwartz, PsyD   Chaya hates going to simachos. Even when she “has to go,” she shakes violently and cannot talk because she's afraid that everyone is watching her. She knows it isn’t true, but she can’t shake the feeling. She's sure she's making a fool of herself. Her self-consciousness and anxiety rise as she silently prays for her husband to agree to go home...       &nb …
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By Toby Vogel MHC   Raising empathic kids can be a real challenge.  Oftentimes emotions get shuffled between carpools, bedtime and everyone having something to say at the dinner table.  Yet, a very simple but powerful neural mechanism in our brain was installed by Hashem to insure that we develop the capacity for empathy.   Why do we wince in pain when we watch someone else stub their toe?  What gives us the ability …
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Susan Vorhand Did you know that in many languages there is no word for art? There is, however, the concept of an artful life. Given the rich texture of life that these cultures have and art’s obvious importance in the cultural milieu, we are surprised that their language does not contain an equivalent word for art. The answer is both simple and complex. The Western world has traditionally looked upon art as a category of spiritual expressi …
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            I am feeling very well today.  I have been able to focus well and concentrate for a little over four hours by now.  I never thought that I would be able to pass elementary school, or get a GED.  However, not only was I able to accomplish that, I am now working on my dissertation, in the final stage of earning a PhD.          …
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Lisa G. Twerski, LCSW   Women who are victims of domestic abuse usually want to know one thing: How do I keep my marriage but end the abuse? Change is a complex process, and in the case of domestic abuse it relies heavily on including outsiders in your process. .  For someone who has become isolated, the prospect may seem daunting. Here are some things to keep in mind: 1) Hoping for change is not the same as making a plan for change. 2 …
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             Surie entered the therapist’s office with cautious optimism. Several people had recommended this particular counselor which gave her hope that her anxiety and depression might be lessened. She had seen one or two other professionals for similar symptoms in the past and had experienced some relief. What she really hoped for was that the antidepressant medication that a …
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