Category: Blog Posts

There are times in life when we all need good advice. Although you may take pride in your independence and individualism, most of us can agree that the right advice at the right time can save us a lot of heartache. Whether we seek it from a parent, mentor, therapist, or religious leader, we appreciate their insight. Even if the advice seems irrelevant, it might trigger your own thinking to evolve in a constructive direction.What if you run a family business? Who do you go to for advice?

Maybe it is just you and your spouse, starting your own entrepreneurial venture as a couple. Or perhaps you have a more established family enterprise that has already been passed down for a couple of generations. Who do you turn to when there are communication problems, underlying tension, conflict over success planning, etc.?

After decades consulting with family businesses, I find many business owners are puzzled when their attorney or CPA suggests meeting with me before making important business decisions. What does a psychologist have to do with business? “We don’t need a shrink,” they say.

What are the benefits of a psychologist’s expertise when it comes to developing goals and resolving problems in a family business?

For entrepreneurial couples, it is important to remember that you are a married couple first, and business partners second. Your business partnership is an expression of the personality and values of you as the founders. If you want to run a successful business, you must prioritize and tend to the personal, emotional, and psychological aspects of your life and relationship before you can make good business decisions. Thus, one of your primary consultants needs to be a psychologist – preferably one familiar with entrepreneurial couples and their specific challenges.

When more members of the family are involved in the business, it is even more important to get sound advice. Many family businesses have been around for two or more generations and the children have grown up identifying themselves with the family business. What this means for many family firms is that the business is as much a part of the family as each family member is a part of the business.

Family businesses are really families with a business identity. As a psychologist, I have been able to get beneath the surface of some business problems to identify and rectify the emotional snags that are holding things up. There is nothing more frustrating or expensive than taking months to develop a new business strategy, only to have it sit there, going nowhere, because of a family dispute. Without help to work on the underlying issues, family tensions will affect the business.

One specific problem that many family firms deal with is a lack of open communication. Many family firms want to have open communication and resolve longstanding disputes. Why is it so hard? Even with the best of intentions, many families in business simply do not have the skills to address and resolve these problems. They need support and guidance by an objective psychologist who is trained in resolving problems within a family business. These are skills that can be learned! Look at it as a vital course in your continuing education program.

Do not let the “shrink” stigma hold you back. Rather, think of your psychologist as an integral part of your team of advisors. I have helped many entrepreneurial couples and families in business work together and thrive. If you live near Portland OR/Vancouver, WA, please contact my office to schedule an appointment.

Ironically, while we now have the ability to connect digitally with millions of people around the globe, the problem of social isolation is growing. More and more people are feeling loneliness. Not only is this emotionally devastating but it creates serious health issues such as:

• disrupted sleep patterns,
• altered immune systems,
• inflammation,
• obesity,
• higher levels of stress hormone,
• increased risk of heart disease by 29 percent,
• increased risk for stroke by 32 percent,
• accelerated cognitive decline,
• and premature death.

A recent NY Times article shares some disturbing statistics on social isolation:

40 percent of American adults say they’re lonely, which has doubled since the 1980’s.

One-third of Americans, older than 65, live alone.

Socially isolated individuals have a 30 percent higher risk of dying in the next seven years, mainly among those who are middle age.

Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors.

The article includes this interesting observation:

“New research suggests that loneliness is not necessarily the result of poor social skills or lack of social support, but can be caused in part by unusual sensitivity to social cues. Lonely people are more likely to perceive ambiguous social cues negatively, and enter a self-preservation mind-set — worsening the problem. In this way, loneliness can be contagious: When one person becomes lonely, he withdraws from his social circle and causes others to do the same.”

How well do you recognize social cues, such as facial expressions? Do you tend to jump to negative conclusions? Negative thinking is not incurable. There’s much you can do to improve your life. It’s never too late to develop a warm social network. Depression, anxiety, and stress are all issues that you can overcome with the aid of a professional. Contact my office if you live in the Portland, Oregon/Vancouver, Washington area to make an appointment.

Click here to read the entire NY Times article and see how some people are trying to solve the problem of social isolation.

When is a person mature? When is he or she old enough to vote? To date? To get married? To give informed consent? To drink responsibly? Many legal questions depend on a cut and dried answer, but the answer isn’t so easy. Why? Because scientists have found that the brain reshapes itself for years after adolescence, which raises questions about when an adult really is mature in the legal sense.A recent NY Times article reports one study conducted by Harvard neuroscientist, Leah H. Somerville and another study by Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University. Here are some highlights:

“The human brain reaches its adult volume by age 10, but the neurons continue to change for years after that.

In a child’s brain, neighboring regions tend to work together.

As adolescents age, the connections between neighboring neurons get pruned back, as new links emerge between more widely separated areas of the brain.

By adulthood, distant regions start acting in concert. Neuroscientists speculate that this long-distance harmony lets the adult brain work more efficiently and process more information.

Eventually this reshaping slows, a sign that the brain is maturing.

The reshaping happens at different rates in different parts of the brain.

The pruning in the occipital lobe, at the back of the brain, tapers off by age 20.

In the frontal lobe of the brain, new links are still forming at age 30, and beyond.

Adolescents do about as well as adults on cognition tests, but strong emotions cause their cognitive scores to plummet.”

The maturing of the brain is a complex process. The better we understand it, the better our legislative policies, psychotherapy treatments and even our inter-personal and family relationships will be. Ongoing education is the key to this greater understanding.

I’m committed to providing the highest quality education for professionals who serve families with ASD. Does that describe you? If so, please join my new meetup – Asperger Syndrome: Continuing Education for Psychotherapists. It will prove to be an invaluable resource for you!

What do many highly successful entrepreneurs have in common? Many of them keep a journal. Now you may be thinking, I’m extremely busy juggling a million other things, how can I possibly find time to journal?Once you see the benefits of journaling you just might be motivated to make the time. It’s a tool that will empower your life in unexpected ways and fuel your professional and personal success.

Here are seven reasons why even the busiest entrepreneur should consider making time to journal:

1. It is well known that visualization is a key to a successful business, or any success for that matter. How does journaling help you visualize? When you write something on paper you clarify and prioritize what you want. This process makes your ideas and visions more concrete, which helps you to achieve them.

2. By putting “pen to paper” so to speak, you engage your creative process. Creativity is a must for entrepreneurs if they want to stay one step ahead of the competition. Journaling can help you create new ideas, especially if you write down any thought that crosses your mind, without editing yourself along the way.

3. Journaling engages your whole brain. When writing, your brain is using the left side for the analytical aspects of writing, which frees up the right side of your brain for creative thinking. Journaling is a process that engages your whole brain, and many times new ideas are the result.

4. Journaling can help you with your self-confidence. When you write about a positive experience your brain re-lives the experience. We often tend to ruminate more on negative experiences. So write about a huge win in your business! Whenever you reread your entry you will be releasing endorphins and dopamine back into your brain giving your self-esteem a boost, maybe when you will need it most.

5. Journaling helps you to track your progress. Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of their business. You’re constantly learning, adjusting and fine-tuning as you go along. You may not realize how far you’ve come! Being able to write down what you have learned and are learning can be a big motivator as you go through rough spots in your business.

6. Journaling can strengthen your self-discipline. It can be a struggle to sit down every day and write in your journal, and doing so requires self-discipline. But just like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. Forming good habits in one area of your life have a tendency to spread to other areas. You will find that your daily practice of writing will domino into the creation of other healthy habits.

7. Writing is a well-known stress reliever. Journaling can help you not only to express your feelings, but also to interpret and learn to work through them. Anyone who has tried to start a business knows that it can be stressful, but journaling could be your secret weapon to managing stress and improving your health.

So keeping a journal has many benefits, some obvious and some not so obvious. Just remember that patience is the key to being successful when keeping a journal, but if you make the effort you are sure to be rewarded. If you would like to learn other strategies that will help you achieve success in your personal and professional life contact my Portland OR/ Vancouver WA office for an appointment.

It comes as no surprise that men and women are different. At the best of times, relationships can be challenging just because of the differences in upbringing and background. That’s why there are endless numbers of books written on the subject of relationships and how to figure out the opposite sex. But when you throw Asperger’s or ASD into the mix, it gets really confusing! And even more challenging, are the relationships where the NT (neuro-typical) mate doesn’t even realize that their spouse is on the Spectrum!

Does gender really make that much difference in a NT/AS relationship? Does a wife with Asperger’s cause a NT husband more heartache than an AS husband causes for his NT wife? And will a NT husband be stronger and more able to deal with the emotional neglect than a NT wife?

Truthfully, when it comes right down to it, an Aspie, whether male or female, will make you feel lonely, confused and quite possibly even depressed. It’s how we learn to handle our Aspies that makes a difference in the quality of our lives. This is where we see individual differences.

That’s why I’ve created the ”ASPERGER SYNDROME & RELATIONSHIPS: Life with an Adult on the Autism Spectrum” membership website to be a safe place for men and women to meet and freely discuss their lives with the Aspies. (If you’re a NT with an AS family member, please feel free to join our Meetup group too).

If you need some 1-on-1 with me to discuss your situation privately, please feel free to contact my office and we’ll schedule an appointment to discuss ways to improve your situation.

While some women have juggled career and family successfully, other women have pursued careers and, because they are so busy, they haven’t pursued opportunities for romantic partnerships. Does this put them at a psychological disadvantage? Common wisdom says, “yes”. But that’s not true according to a recent study by Matthew Wright and Susan Brown of Bowling Green University,According to an article in Psychology Today, they found that the perception that “married people are given the most benefits and are valued and respected the most” is true. In the hierarchy of the way we value romantic relationships, cohabiters come in second place, followed by dating, single people. Single people without romantic partners, however, are stigmatized.

The authors began their research thinking that, “the psychological well-being would follow the same hierarchy, with married people enjoying the most and single people the least.” But that’s not what they found. Romantic partnership status made no difference whatsoever for the women and not much for the men.

Men and women can forge many supportive social connections aside from romantic ones. Close friends, church acquaintances, support groups and relatives can supply the social ties that we all need. And that’s what seems to matter the most when it comes to feeling less depression, stress, and loneliness.

Isn’t it good to have this added reassurance that singleness doesn’t doom us to psychological harm? But what if you are ready to explore romance but you’re too afraid to get started? Or you have started dating but have been unsuccessful thus far? If you’re ready to explore this area of your life and you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment so we can create a plan for you.

Read more on my website: Advice for Singles.