Denial can be one of the worst obstacles to overcome when it comes to achieving your personal happiness and ability to live a full honest life.

When you are not honest with yourself, you are living in a state of denial.

Here is one simple example to evaluate your level of denial:

YOUR MAILBOX – BILLS

There can be a lot of reasons why we don’t want to check our mail.   Whether you’re late on paying your bills, or are expecting a letter to see if you were admitted to your select graduate school, avoiding your mail is one form of denial. Here are three levels to consider.

Our recent political debates focused heavily on the economy aka jobs.  There are some jobs that are out there, but some of us aren’t that great at finding them, or applying for them.

Perhaps we should be asking ourselves not where to find a job but how to find a job. Here are some tactics to consider in your efforts to solidify employment:

TLC’s reality show, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” features a reality star with a refreshing look into weight gain and body image.  And it comes from a child named Honey Boo Boo.  

Honey Boo Boo is one of the only females in modern day society that is actually embracing her fat, full throttle, at the ripe young age of a seven-years-old.

If you haven’t heard already, Honey Boo Boo is a reality star that got her fame from participating in beauty pageants.  She is a pioneer of loving herself despite her fat. One episode Ms. Boo Boo actually pulls out her stomach fat and says straight into the camera:

“The judges don’t know a good thing when they see it!”

An average of ten million viewers tune into Grey’s Anatomy a week, and in a recent episode we saw a glimpse into what the producers and writers of this acclaimed series think about inpatient psych treatment.

Grey’s Anatomy Season 9 Episode 2:

“I said no more damn restraints.” 

“She doesn’t even belong on this floor.  She’s violent, uncommunicative.”

“She just hasn’t talked yet.”

“There is nothing physically wrong with her.  She belongs up in psych.”

“Ok, ok.  It’s time. It’s time to get up.  They are gonna take you upstairs.  They are gonna pump you with antipsychotics and you’re gonna go slap jawed and cookoo’s nest.  And you’ll never be you again.  Christina, please.  I am begging you please.  You have to say something Christina, please.  Do you hear me?  Say something please.”

Yes, this is a TV show but having worked close with treatment teams of two Los Angeles County hospitals, I can say from real life experience that fiction has its hands in truth when it comes to inpatient psych wards. 

I went to the CAL/UCLA football game over the weekend.  I sat in the stands in the end zone by a bunch of other Bruin fans and witnessed what is unfortunately all too common in our age.

Teenage brats fueled by a hollow sense of intelligence from knowing the bare essentials of technology, which causes entitlement behaviors that parleys into them thinking they have all the answers.  They are at the forefront of technology and how to use it so, does that give them a right to disrespect their elders?

You never know what goes on behind closed doors of a relationship.  I always keep that in mind when I see a friend or family member in a relationship that doesn’t seem right; a couple that doesn’t seem to be a good fit.  When I catch myself judging a relationship from the outside I remind myself that there is a relationship between a couple on the inside that I know nothing about.  Whenever I used to bring up problems I witnessed in a relationship with someone I cared about, often times it was always met with a negative response.  It turned into a bad idea and I learned the hard why when to keep my mouth shut.

Sharing your opinions on relationships with a friend may result in anger, hurt and unnecessary pain which can result in your friend slowly becoming withdrawn, isolated, and alone in their relationship.

Conservator: A protector of interests of an incompetent person: a person or institution responsible for protecting the interests of a legal incompetent.

That’s one way to put it.  But we all know there are a lot of ways to define a conservatorship and some of them are not ones we want to hear. Sometimes patients in psych wards are told another tune and can be lead to believe one thing when really a conservatorship is something entirely different.

It seemed like a ridiculous question during my first psych assessment with a psychiatrist.  I was a Columbia University graduate with a BA in English, “Yes, of course I can read.”  But, when I stopped to think about it, the question wasn’t can I read but how do I read.