The title of this blog sounds like an oxymoron: peace and fear in the same sentence?  And, who wants to make peace with fear anyway? Don’t we just want to rid ourselves of it? Or, better yet, let’s not have it in the first place. Well, yes, the idea of not having it is a good one but, unfortunately, it’s not at all practical.     If you’re alive and breathing, you’ve likely felt it’s pull on your heart several times during your life thus far, despite your many creative attemp

Over the years working as a psychotherapist, I’ve observed that many of my clients struggle with the need to be (or, more accurately, the fear of not being) perfect in whatever ways that they deem important. This phenomenon has, of course, a far wider reach than just those clients I, or my colleagues, see in our offices; it’s unquestionably a cultural phenomenon.    As a result, we’ve learned to apply perfectionistic standards to almost every possible aspect of our lives incl

Over the years, I’ve discovered there are few among us who embrace change. I’m not one of them. Just ask my husband. For perhaps the first ten years of our lives together, when we vacationed overseas (before the aid of the Internet to illustrate the sort of place we were headed to), I’d arrive exhausted, hungry, not yet adjusted to the time change (another one), and would typically find myself utterly disappointed with our choice of accommodation and/or locale. While busy dro

From the moment we’re born until the day we die we are continually absorbing messages that tell us who we are, what we’re worth as human beings, what we should be doing at any given time, how we should look (and especially how we shouldn’t look), what we should eat, what we should buy, what activities or careers we should or should not engage in, and so on. Opinions come from near, they come from afar, but for sure, they come, and they never stop. So, it’s no surprise that by

Never making the decision you  know  you need to make has been called ‘analysis paralysis’; ‘sitting on the fence’; ‘considering your options’; ‘waiting for the  right  time’ (when there is  no  right  time); ‘not wanting to rush into anything’; and, in new age lingo ‘being kind to myself by NOT making a decision’. OMG, really? However, deep inside ourselves, if we’re willing to be honest, we know it by another name, and it’s not ‘procrastination’.   It’s called “F.E.A.R.”.  

Sometimes I feel like complaining. About whatever. And it feels good – that is, when I’m not in the company of the kind of person we all know who see it as their job to drag us over to the “positive perspective” corner of the room.  “Leave me alone. I want to feel miserable for now,”  I want to scream. But it’s hard to communicate that message without sounding like a whiny, malcontented child.   Regardless, the desire I originally had to complain at that moment has now been t