Are nice people always good? Are good people always nice?  It’s common to confuse these two concepts.

One piece of advice I sometimes give to my Atlanta psychotherapy and counseling clients may seem too simple to have lasting impact. However, just because something is simple doesn't mean that it's easy, and what I'm about to say can go a long way in helping you to overcome virtually any personal issue that is negatively impacting your life.

I've previously discussed the concept that "progress works backwards", meaning that growth toward a desired goal generally happens in incrementally improving stages. I find a lot of hope in the idea that what initially seems like "failure" is more productively viewed as useful feedback on the path to ultimate success. A related philosophy is the idea that "better is often better than best". This may initially seem to be a confusing and contradictory statement, but the idea is actually both simple and comforting.

We all at times feel sad, anxious, or angry. Although these are normal human emotions, they can cause difficulties for people who have a hard time regulating or managing them. (Regulating an emotion is the ability to modulate its intensity, much like adjusting a volume control, while managing an emotion is the ability to respond appropriately to its different intensities, much like a surfer who is able to ride many types of waves.)

What's the most important play in all of sports? The touchdown? The home run? The hole in one? Any sport or game has certain moves or plays that are crucial for a victory, but under all circumstances the most important play of all is......

People who come to see me for help with personal problems soon learn that I am fond of metaphors and analogies.  It's both the way I think, and I've learned over the years that the human brain works best not just when using words but also when it has images that it can utilize to take a leap forward in understanding a concept.

This is why I've developed an extensive collection of what I call "therapeutic metaphors".  These are generally images, stories, parables or even jokes that highlight a point that can be useful in helping a person deal with some vexing problem.

For almost three decades I have provided couples counseling to people in Atlanta. I've worked with many men and women to help improve communication, resolve conflicts, rebuild trust, strengthen intimacy, clarify boundaries and heal emotional wounds, to name some of the more common topics that people often need help addressing. However, I'm now scrubbing my website to make sure that the phrase "couples counseling" is now "couples and other relationship counseling". I'm doing this because not all relationships are limited to two people.

It's common to think that intimacy means two people feeling emotionally close to one another, or sharing private time together, or being sexual with each other. But the truest possible act of intimacy is to invite another person to look into your heart and mind. The act of revealing your truest and deepest feelings -- the hopes, doubts, fears, joys, sorrows and all the other rich details of your inner life -- is what constitutes the basis of all real intimacy.

One of my Atlanta counseling and psychotherapy specialities is to help people who have a problem with chronic infidelity and sexual deception.  This kind of behavior happens for many different conscious and unconscious causes.  Even though there is no single reason for this kind of behavior, if I had only one piece of advice and 10 seconds to give it, it would be this:

Stop lying.  Forever.  About anything.    

As much as they hurt, sometimes there is reason to be thankful for painful consequences.

Every action (and even inaction) has an effect. This seems pretty straight-forward, right? Yet all too often we want to avoid experiencing negative consequences for what we did or didn't do. The result of this avoidance is that we are much less likely to learn from our mistakes.