In the last two months, I have entered into two new relationships; one being with an Android smartphone, the other being with a dual core, dual monitor computer system.

I have had a mobile phone for my business since Sprint introduced the bag phones that plugged into the car lighter socket allowing me to talk while on in the vehicle. That was before cell phones, the size of a small brick, were considered portable.

Six weeks ago, I divorced my Blackberry Storm after a 20 month relationship that can be truly characterized as “stormy”. Imagine, a relationship with someone named ‘Storm”! What was I thinking? We never got along. I never learned to work with her.

Then, in February, a Droid X came into my life. My hands were all over her for this first month, exploring all the quirks, nuances and capabilities she had. Although it has taken a month to understand her ways, we are now partners. Not since Seven of Nine of Star Trek fame have I been taken by such a piece technology.

How is it that one approaches issues of spirituality in marriage counseling sessions? Are these questions not best handled by a minister, priest, or religious elder? Perhaps. Perhaps, when the topic is a theological or doctrinal question.

But my focus develops a communication process for a couple that not only brings clarity, but also a communication style that reflects their stated religious or spiritual beliefs. This is only a first step in a process that the couple will return to periodically during their partnership.

First, I want each individual to share what he/she remembers about their spiritual training as a youngster. What do you remember about what your church, your parents, or your grandparents taught you about religion, or spirituality in your growing up.? What was it that you were taught as a child?

What was your church or synagogue, or temple experience?

How have you modified some of those original beliefs as you have grown and have had new experiences? What part of your original teachings do you still carry or that bring you comfort in difficult times? What experiences and relationships have helped you rethink and reshape your own beliefs? Are there events, specific events that have had a major impact upon shifting your notions of spirituality?

Do you currently have any spiritual or religious practices, either weekly, or daily? How much are your religious or spiritual teachings of part of your daily thought life, or a part of your daily decision-making.?

How easy is it for you to express to your partner what your spiritual or religious views are? What is most central and most important to you?

How well do you believe that you understand your partner views and what is most central to them? What is your understanding as to the differences and the areas of agreement the two of you have on your views of religion or spirituality?

At this early point in the process, I am not stressing agreement or compromises; just a clarity of understanding.

Secondly, I want to know how much the couple’s views overlap, and how much is separate. How much emotion is attached to these differences? How much does each of them desire to find that common ground? Can the each focus on what is the common ground? Or are they fixated on the differences?

Does their approach to this discussion, how each of them conducts themselves, reflect their stated spiritual beliefs? How compassionate can they each be when it comes to tolerating differences?

And, most importantly, how much is the quality of compassion a part of their daily thought life?

Developing this dialogue process, helping each of the partners to describe the nature of their internal beliefs gives the couple a way of connecting during critical crisis moments in the years to come as they face unexpected events or experiences.

That is what makes this issue important part of marriage counseling sessions.

Increasingly, couples, not only young couples, but also couples who are facing a second or third marriage, ask for counseling with issues of differing religious beliefs as one of the primary places of disagreement. Here are some brief thoughts on this matter.

Couples who grew up in differing faiths or even different Christian denominations cannot long ignore the issues that will inevitably arise when the subject of children comes along.

For those who have never thought through the differences between religion and spirituality, these dialogues evoke feelings of frustration, misunderstanding or tension.

As ‘religion and politics’ are those two topics we have been told to avoid for social gatherings lest conflicts arise, in relationships, religion is the one of these two that needs clarity and understanding if the couple is to proceed.

The quote from the New Testament, John 14:6 and “I am the way...” is often interpreted by church denominations as ‘our way is the true way.” (See Jesus-is-Lord.com “Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to God”)

Dictionary.com gives the following definition:
Religion as “a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects” i.e., the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion."
Spiritual as “standing in a relationship based on communication between the souls or minds of the persons involved: i.e. a spiritual father." (Emphasis added)

Hmm. Rules or Relationship? Differing approaches entirely, involving different parts of the brain. A “masculine” and a “feminine” perspective.

How do I incorporate discussions of religious beliefs and spirituality into my psychotherapy practice? In my next post, I will review some of the more common issues and my approaches to them.

How to make the best use of your therapy sessions.

For those of you who want to make the most effective use of your therapy sesssions, here are a few suggestions that have been helpful for some clients.

1.  Arrive early to settle into a calm, thoughtful mood.

2.  Consider using a small spiral bound notebook to:
     - write an aganda for your session.
     - record some thoughts, feelings, or questions.
     - track events of the week.
     - record the suggestions made in sessions.

3. Consider writing your thoughts to the following questions:
     "What do I want to have happen as a result of therapy?"
     "How might my life be different after therapy?"

4. Ask questions of your therapist.

5. Between sessions, review what was discussed and recommended in your last meeting.

6.  Try out some of the suggestions made by your therapst.

By taking a more active approach, and viewing it as a joint venture, your therapy can become not only a problem solving session, but a transformative experience leading you to a better quality of life.  

A recent period of enforced solitude brought me back to thoughts of centering, introspection, sleep, dreams and the link to creativity.

Completing numerous year-end business tasks, and developing plans for the new year, left little time for quiet, introspective solitude during the past six weeks. My writing and Zentangle practice had been ignored. Finally, the universe forced solitude upon me in the form of flu symptoms that require horizontal quietness, sleep and dreams. During lucid moments, reading was an option.

In some of those half-asleep/half awake lucid dream moments, my mind pondered the connection between solitude and creativity.

During these moments, I often return to books I've already read, finding previously underlined passages in familiar chapters my favorite authors.

SOLITUDE, A Return to the Self, by Anthony Storr gives memorable quotes which I'd underlined during a previous episode of enforced solitude. I would like to share some of them.

"The capacity to be alone thus becomes linked with self-discovery and self realization; with becoming aware of one's deepest needs feelings and impulses."
"No man ever will unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude."--De Quincey
"The act of drawing sharpens the perceptions of the Draughtsman; an idea passionately advanced by Ruskin If naming things is the first creative act, as Bazin alleges, perhaps drawing is the second."
"This is not healing through insight, nor through making a new and better relationship with another person, nor even to solving particular problems, but healing by means of an interchange of attitudes."

"… Maslow realizes that the creative attitude and the ability to have peak experiences depends upon being free of other people;  free, especially, from the neurotic involvements, from historical hangovers from childhood, but also free of obligations, duties, fears and hopes."


Wordsworth. "The Prelude"

“When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is solitude."

Friday at 4 PM is one year too late!


"Do you do marriage counseling?" a male voice asks; the desperation and fear evident in his delivery.


"Yes, I do." I respond.


“My wife just told me she wants a divorce. I think we need some marriage counseling right away. Can you see us this weekend?”


Perhaps once a month I get such a telephone call on a Friday afternoon between 3 and 6 PM.


What I want to say is the following: “Sir, you may be a year or two too late in making this telephone call. She has been thinking of this for at least a year. It’s that she is just now telling you. “


“No, she started having an affair a month ago. That is why she is leaving me.” The husband continues.


What I want him to know is what I have learned over the years:   Wives do not get up some morning and say to themselves, “Today, I think I will have sex with someone new and different.”


Instead, I say to them, “ If you did no maintenance on your vehicle, but ran it as long an no red lights come on the dash, what do you suppose it would mean for your vehicle when the red lights finally all come on at the same time?”


After a pregnant pause, the caller responds, “I guess it means I have let it go too long and now something really bad has gone wrong.”


“ Yes,” I reply, “ it may have been more than a year or more since that this has relationship has been drifting. “


“But she has not been complaining. We have not been fighting this past year. “


“That tells me when it was a year ago when she gave up on the relationship.”
“Should I make an appointment, even if she does not want to come?”


“Yes,” I suggest, “It is important that you learn some things in the process of this divorce. Otherwise, you will need to learn them in your next divorce.”


Men confuse a lack of conflict with having a peaceful relationship. Teaching men the process of doing maintenance on their relationships, just as they do on their vehicles or with their weekly business meetings is part of the divorce counseling process.

Why yoga classes? If I recommend some activity for my clients, I want to have had some direct experience of that activity. Otherwise, it seems phony to not have “walked my talk.” Having heard many clients complain about their yoga instructors, I wanted to see how class with this instructor would feel to one of my clients.

Julie is a yoga instructor I met at a psychiatrist’s open house held to market the practice as an ‘integrative approach’ to the whole person. As I unrolled my yoga mat at the first class, I noted that I was the oldest, and the only male in the class.

Julie greeted us, dressed in a yoga ‘uniform’, conservative, all black, form fitting attire worn by instructors in the yoga videos I had already watched and tried to imitate in the privacy of my TV room. Unlike the DVD presentations, her background music from an iPod docking station, created a soft, gentle atmosphere.

Sitting on a mat, on a hardwood floor, with bare feet, felt harder than the soft carpeting of the TV room, but afforded a secure footing for standing poses. The stretching was tedious at times, trying to pretzel my body into a pose that began to resemble what the instructor was showing and describing in her soft voice.
Near the end of the first class, I felt myself drifting off to lucid dream sleep; my mind wanting to go to dreamland, not the reality of the world around me.

Each succeeding class went better, as I learned from Julie to only take the stretches as far as my body would comfortably move. That was helpful.

Each succeeding class left me with a better frame of mind, more relaxed and feeling refreshed, but gave me a difficulty in making the mental shift to task orientation as I returned to my office for the remaining two hours left in the workday. 

By the fourth class, I found myself in such an altered state upon leaving the class. Seeing the world with visual clarity, heightened sensory awareness, and feeling like walking was a gliding process….a ‘high’ of sorts.

By the fifth class, which included ‘chair work’, I had become accustomed to that endpoint in the stretch that I could hold with just the right amount of tension that could be sustained for the two minutes of a pose.

The classes ended, with Julie taking a break for the holidays.

Now, I know the how the experience of yoga, much like meditation classes, when done on a regular basis, following an instructors lead, leads to that altered, intuitive state, one more pathway to that state in which one makes better choices with less fear and anxiety.

A state in which one feels more connected to others, and lives with a sense of awe, gratitude and wonder at what the universe brings to us in our ordinary daily experienced day.