According to the National Family Caregivers Association, more than 50 million people care for an aged family member or friend during any given year. A lot of them write to me about feeling exhausted, helpless, worried and guilty – particularly guilty (about feeling exhausted and helpless). Few stories capture these emotions better than one told […]
On Healing 6/11/2007: Learning to trust and love again
Dear Dr. Dan: I read with great interest your May 14 column on healing after betrayal, but you didn’t say anything about couples who break up. My husband was the “offending spouse” and we recently divorced after 20 years of marriage. I still feel all the emotions you mentioned: shock, anger, sense of loss, and […]
On Healing 4/16/2007: Fear can remain long after its cause
Dear Dr. Dan: My husband wants a child, and I am ambivalent. I am not sure I would be unhappy with a child; I might accept him and bond with him, but I might also resent my husband if it becomes difficult to deal with or if I end up doing the majority of child […]
On Healing 3/5/2007: If you’re depressed, this is what you should do
Dear Dr. Dan: My adult daughter is in desperate need of psychological counseling. She has been unhappy for a long, long time but rarely talked about her feelings and, for the most part, has been putting on a brave front that has broken down due to a recent personal rejection. She has been home since […]
On Healing 1/8/2007: A seriously ill son, and an agonizing father
Dear Dr. Gottlieb, I am writing to you because I am in so much pain. I was a student in Philadelphia in 1998, and now I am living back in my native Egypt with my wife and two wonderful boys, Sileem and Mostafa. Sileem is 14 and Mostafa is 9. Five months ago, Mostafa became […]
On Healing 10/2/2006: Wives feeling disappointed, men inadequate
Dear Dr. Dan: It seems to me there is one psychological challenge in family life that is crying out to be “named and framed” so those affected can get help: the challenge of living with the incompetent. By incompetence, I mean the inability to understand one’s inadequacies and to grasp the adaptations needed to live […]
On Healing 8/21/2006: A mother cannot, should not, protect a grown daughter
Dear Dr. Dan: My 22-year-old daughter is a senior at a nearby university. She is beautiful, smart and well-rounded. But she seems to be taking one step forward and two steps back. The people she befriends have had a negative effect on her. I am most concerned with her “boyfriends.” She gets into very short-lived […]
On Healing 8/7/2006: Shy bladder caused decades of shame
Dear Dr. Dan: Thanks for the opportunity to contact you in this anonymous medium, because it would be intolerable for me to face anyone with my curse. I have suffered from a misery with the technical name of parauresis, or shy bladder syndrome, since I was a child. I was traumatized as a little boy […]
On Healing 4/17/2006: How about therapy for a very sick world?
Dear Dr. Gottlieb: I have been hearing a lot about new therapies, but none seems to address the bigger picture, which is the insane world we’re living in. If a person really sees what’s happening, who wouldn’t be depressed or anxious? A brief list includes military violence and torture, our growing police state to protect […]
On Healing 1/23/2006: Paralyzed by one’s fear of rejection
Dear Dr. Gottlieb: Your last column about desire was interesting. But what happens when there is a conflict between desire and fear of taking a risk? I think a lot of people live with unfulfilled desires, perhaps unnecessarily, simply because they are afraid. For instance, fear of rejection might prevent someone from asking for a […]
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