The success of a relationship may very well be based on how you tend to form attachments; a style that became hard-wired into the brain at a very early time of life. If your parents used a particular style of attaching with you in infancy and early childhood, that will contribute to the infrastructure for … Continue reading
Author Archives: docellie
How to Raise a Confident Child
Confidence is the ability to trust or have faith in someone or something, including oneself. Parents hope to raise a confident child who will launch into becoming an independently functioning adult. Less confident children have higher rates of failure-to-launch. In early stages of life, it is the responsibility of the parents to take a very directive approach to help shape the child’s understanding … Continue reading
Addiction and the False Idol
If you think about it, addiction is like the worship of a false idol. We create altars to whatever our addiction is represented by: alcohol, shopping, gambling, drugging, cults, gangs, food, dogma, etc. Name your poison; we create rites and rituals around our respective addictive patterns. We sacrifice our health, well-being, energy, time and money … Continue reading
Signs of Addiction Can Be Subtle Among Professional Helpers
An interesting article appeared online about the more subtle signs of addiction. The author, Ms. Melanie Haiken claims that knowing whether someone you love has a problem with drugs or alcohol is not always as obvious as you might think. People tend to stereotype the typical alcoholic as someone staggering around with a bottle in a … Continue reading
Six Degrees of Shame
Shame is a very unpleasant feeling and probably the most unpleasant of them all. Shame is a feeling experience where we berate ourselves and question the goodness of our essence. Arrogance or hostility can be someone’s cover for shame. Interesting, huh? The feeling of shame spreads across a spectrum: embarrassment, vulnerability, resentment, reactive, threatened, and … Continue reading
Navigating Through Our Intense Negative Emotions
Each individual is a sentient being. Sentient is Latin for “feeling”. All humans have wavelike feeling experiences. It is powerful to be conscious of our passionate, intense, negative emotions; because when we navigate correctly through these stormy, rough waters, we have the power to be agents of positive change and growth. If we don’t seize the … Continue reading
The Love of an Aunt: Call me “Ellie”
My Beautiful Aunt Gilda died on her birthday, yesterday at 2:00 PM. She passed with amazing grace, and my personal loss is deep. You see, my Aunt was a caring mother to me in every way. I was blessed to have her as a role model, a mentor, a confidante and a source of unconditional … Continue reading
Mental Illness: A Communicable Disease?
There has been an enormous amount of press and publicity about the Ebola virus and the lives this terrible communicable disease has recently claimed. The current statistic reports that presently the Ebola death toll nears 1,000 people worldwide. Thank goodness, steps are being taken to overcome this horrible killer. Lots of discussion, awareness, worry, work, research and … Continue reading
JFK and I
I was ten years old when a teacher whose name I do not remember barged into my fifth grade classroom and cried out, “The President has been shot. They think he is dead!” I can still feel that electric bolt of shock shoot through my body, I can still smell the severe scent of dread. … Continue reading
Divorce and Defeating Anxiety
I just returned from LA where, with my training team, I presented a three-day training in Collaborative Divorce. One initial observation I made from this training: many divorce lawyers who practice non-collaboratively are highly anxious and strung out about their work. Throughout the training, time and again, I saw and heard professionals express levels of … Continue reading
Doc Ellie🙏🏼 