Blog
What Is This Thing Called Love?
Psychotherapy Networker Magazine – What Is This Thing Called Love? A Whole New Way of Looking at It - By Barbara Fredrickson - January-February 2014 Issue It’s Valentine’s weekend. The “L” word is strutting around out in the open. But what does it mean? Most people...
Romance at Arm’s Length
The New York Times – Sunday Review – By DANIEL JONES – Published: February. 6, 2014 In Romance at Arm’s Length, columnist Daniel Jones, who has been tracking and commenting on love longings and various forms of connection for the NYT for the last ten years, teases out...
Psychodynamic Therapy 101
Psychology Today - Psychologically Minded - Dare to go deep Psychodynamic Therapy 101 - An interview with Dr. Jonathan Shedler - Published on November 22, 2013 In this interview with Dr. Daniel Carlat (DC) for the The Carlat Psychiatry Report, which is a newsletter...
Sleep Therapy Seen as an Aid for Depression
The New York Times – Health - By BENEDICT CAREY - Published: November 18, 2013 Gosh, how rare is it that a solution turns out to be so much more simple than it appears to be? Early research on the impact of poor sleep patters on depression is hopeful, makes sense, but...
Protecting Children From Toxic Stress
The New York Times - The Opinion Pages - By DAVID BORNSTEIN - Published: October 30, 2013 In “Schools That Separate the Child From the Trauma” David Bornstein brings into focus the concept of how adverse, or stressful, early childhood experiences (ACE) impact behavior...
The Not-So-Hidden Cause Behind the A.D.H.D. Epidemic
The New York Times – Magazine – By MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER – Published: October 15, 2013 Human brains and bodies have not evolved exactly in sync with the low-movement pace of desk jobs and screen time. The delay is subtle but grating, like tracking a Skype session....
Brains flush toxic waste in sleep
The Washington Post - Health & Science - By Meeri Kim - Published: October 19 - In case you need any more science-supported reason to let yourself linger in bed longer, or, you are an overachieving A-type person, you need to be arm-twisted into considering that...
Psychotherapy’s Image Problem
The New York Times - The Opinion Pages - By BRANDON A. GAUDIANO - Published: September 29, 2013 - Psychotherapy’s Image Problem Although the appearance of Brandon Gaudino's article is a little bit of good news for therapy, I can't help pointing out another revealing...
TED – Why 30 is not the new 20
TED - Psychologist Meg Jay, in this TED Talk, speaks about her concerns about 20-Somethings’ approach to that vital decade and how a shift in approach will improve prospects thereafter. Her chief recommendations are: Ø Grow identity capital Ø Use your weak ties: the...
What are your hang-ups about getting old?
Attitudes are critical to how successfully we age... Aging baby boomers are generating a whirlwind of interest in the world of folks interested in what’s going on with those in the latter years of life. We’re living an average 30-40 years longer than we were 100 years...
The Truth Behind ADD And Success
ELITE DAILY - The Voice of Generation-Y - By PRESTON WATERS - Published: July 8, 2013 - The Truth Behind ADD And Success Here’s a sweetly sad perspective of one twenty something’s effort to register objection to the current mainstream approach to understanding ADD....
Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game, Too
The New York Times – Fashion & Style - By KATE TAYLOR - Published: July 12, 2013 - Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game, Too It’s a brave new world on our college campuses. In the juice bar blender goes feminism, lust for independence, strident competition, urgency...
The Theater of the Mind
TED - "Charles Bonnet said he wondered how ‘the theater of the mind’ could be generated by the machinery of the brain. Now, two hundred and fifty years later, I think we’re beginning to glimpse how this is done." ~ Oliver Sacks, from “What Hallucination Reveals about...
Mindfulness Meditation – why it works
The Atlantic - by LIZ KULZE - June 27, 2013 - How Meditation Works - Mindfulness meditation is having a moment in the West, and with it some compelling reasons to understand and try it. See...I tolja' it worked! Even the Atlantic Monthly says so. See "How It Works" to...
The Misnomer of ‘Motherless’ Parenting
The New York Times – By FRANK LIGTVOET – June 22, 2013 - OPINION - The Misnomer of ‘Motherless’ Parenting For adopted kids of gay dads, “Where’s your mom?” can be an awkward question. And, vice versa for kids of lesbian moms. That’s OK. Not harmful to anyone. Ditto...
I’ll Have What She’s Having
The New York Times – By ELAINE BLAIR – June 13, 2013 - BOOK REVIEW - ‘What Do Women Want?’ by Daniel Bergner It seems Bergner, like Esther Perel, seeks scientific clarity on female desire. Bergner paints a portrait of female lust: the triggers, the fantasies, the...
“It’s not about the nail…”
The YouTube skit
Treating Mental Illness
The New York Times – Letters – Sunday Dialogue: Treating Mental Illness - LARRY S. SANDBERG – Published: May 25, 2013 Dr. Larry Sandberg is a psychoanalyst, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and the co-author of...
TED – The secret to desire in a long-term relationship
TED – Ideas Worth Spreading - The secret to desire in a long-term relationship – Esther Perel’s ideas about what it means to be in love and have a fulfilling sex life, how to sustain desire while maintaining intimate familiarity and functioning logistically as a...
The Lethality of Loneliness – We now know how it can ravage our body and brain
May 13, 2013 - Judith Shulevitz’s cover story in the New Republic, The Lethality of Loneliness, is a marvelous exposition of why psychotherapy/analysis -- not the biomedical approach -- can heal: it's not the physiological disruptions/anomalies that cause the...
Mirror, Mirror… OFF the Wall.
The bodies we inhabit and the lives those bodies carry on need not be perfect to suit us perfectly. And yet, so many people struggle against their own bodies, cruelly judging merit and, sadly, cruelly treating (withholding, carving, over-challenging or neglecting)...
Remembering the “self” in treating Bipolar Disorders
“The Problem With How We Treat Bipolar Disorder” - By: Linda Logan - Published: April 26, 2013 - New York Times Linda Logan beautifully describes her journey with Bipolar II disorder, weaving in her profound experience with the medical profession’s negligence in...
The Obama Plan — Spending Mental Health Money in All the Wrong Places
The Obama Plan -- Spending Mental Health Money in All the Wrong Places - Allen Frances, M.D, Professor Emeritus, Duke University - Huffington Post - April 4, 2013. Yet another Huffington Post article that juxtapositions political gun control issues with mental health....
What is So Good About Growing Old
What is So Good About Growing Old - Forget about senior moments. The great news is that researchers are discovering some surprising advantages of aging - By Helen Fields, Smithsonian Magazine, July-August 2012 I'm sure you have had moments of clarity that linger in...
“You’re Addicted to What?” – Challenging the Myth of Sex Addiction
“You’re Addicted to What?” - Challenging the Myth of Sex Addiction - By: Marty Klein - Published July/August 2012 – The Humanist In his Humanist article, sex therapist Marty Klein challenges the utility of the concept of “sex addiction,” making an argument that the...
Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction, Attention Deficit Disorder and the Destruction of American Childhood
A spike in diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other mental disorders has fueled an unprecedented reliance on pharmaceutical medications to treat children, with long-term effects that remain unknown. In a Democracy Now! video Canadian...
How do you find meaning in difficulty?
How do you find meaning in difficulty? This video trailer for the book, "Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity" by Andrew Solomon, shows some poignant vignettes of interviews with parents and children who were born "different." Solomon...
How Effective Are Tactics Used on TV Shows to Treat Troubled Teens?
Time - Health & Family - How Effective Are Tactics Used on TV Shows to Treat Troubled Teens? - By Maia Szalavitz - Published January 25, 2013. The issue of the media’s depiction of what goes on, or should go on, in therapy is ever fascinating. The drama of...
Best Practices for Raising Kids? Look to Hunter-Gatherers
The Daily Beast - Newsweek - Best Practices for Raising Kids? Look to Hunter-Gatherers - From The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond Hold them, share them, let them run free. Why the traditional way of raising kids is better than ours. Author Jared Diamond lays...
Guns and the Decline of the Young Man
The New York Times – By CHRISTY WAMPOLE – Published: December 17, 2012 - Guns and the Decline of the Young Man Wampole, in her thoughtful Opinionator article, Guns and the Decline of the Young Man, proposes that, as Americans stab out in an effort to makes sense of...
Karenna Armington, LICSW
Call me for your complimentary 15 minute phone consultation at (202) 510-1141 or email me at Karenna@ArmingtonTherapy.com. My office is conveniently located next to the Woodley Park-Zoo-Adams Morgan Metro station.