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    Distractions

    Distractions

    By Tom Moon, MFT “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That saying, which Plato attributed to Socrates, succinctly expresses the basic value underlying psychotherapy and most other forms of…

    What Now?

    What Now?

    I wrote what follows a week ago, when I assumed that Donald Trump would not win this election, and the point of the column was to talk about taking a…

    Fearing Hope

    Fearing Hope

    Tyler has been talking with me for over a year about how much he hates his job. He’s underpaid and underappreciated and his friends and colleagues continually assure him that…

    The World’s Greatest Authority on Your Experience

    The World’s Greatest Authority on Your Experience

    From a reader: “When I was thirteen I started having sex in a cruisey park. When I was fourteen I met an ‘older man’ (26) there who was hot as…

    Younger Gay Men Trending Toward Monogamy

    Younger Gay Men Trending Toward Monogamy

    Blake Spears and Lanz Lowen have been together in an open relationship for over 40 years, and in past columns I’ve reported on their in-depth research on the viability of…

    Understanding Sex Addiction

    Understanding Sex Addiction

    “I’ve always had a lot of casual and anonymous sex. Does that make me a sex addict?” “Isn’t the whole concept of sex addiction just another way of shaming gay…

    Bad Attitudes

    Bad Attitudes

    One of the great secrets of life, and a central insight of cognitive therapy, was summed up in a simple way two thousand years ago by the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus:…

    How Your Brain Lies to You: It Leaves You Wanting

    How Your Brain Lies to You: It Leaves You Wanting

    In the last issue I talked about the brain’s ‘negativity bias,’ the innate tendency of our primitive threat systems to focus on problems and dangers, both imagined and real. Our…

    How Your Brain Lies to You: Negativity Bias

    How Your Brain Lies to You: Negativity Bias

    The human brain didn’t evolve for dispassionately finding truth, but for ensuring our survival. It has built-in biases in the way it processes information, and neuroscience has identified specific ways…

    Pride Matters

    Pride Matters

    Maybe we’d become too complacent. I think I had. We have all known what it feels like to be unsafe in the world, and we have known how much it…