Articles, Columnists, In Person
Learning new ways to connect
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
With the gift of time that retirement brings and the opportunity to continue doing some clinical work, I am noticing a change in the way I talk with people in and out of the...
What we miss along the way
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
On a recent trip to Colorado to visit our daughter, I found myself obsessed by the desire to see the Rockies covered with snow. I had a particular view in mind, probably an...
Constructing the world together
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
The first time I realized that none of us sees the world in quite the same way I was just a kid riding in the back of the car with my aunt driving and my mother sitting in the...
A night with my invisible friend
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
When my friend had to bow out of an educational event we had planned to attend together, I thought I would be on my own. I never expected to be sitting with a guy who snuck...
Smartphone summer
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
This was the summer of my first smartphone. I wasn’t the last holdout among my friends and family, but I was close.
My wife is going for the record of having the...
Re-thinking what useful means
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
Sometimes, the obvious distortions in the thinking of a person with mental illness can lead us to examine our own assumptions about the way we live our lives. One of the most...
Taking the next step
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
I find it hard to believe that it has been a full year since I wrote about “The Retirement Readiness Test,” a three-day weekend rehearsal of a retired psychologist’s...
Why place matters
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
The man had just explained how his violent behavior was the norm in the poor urban neighborhood where he was raised and I responded with a simple acknowledgement of how...
Extra people
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
Flannery O’Connor has a powerful short story entitled, “The Displaced Person,” where she describes the impact of the arrival of a refugee family on a small Southern farm....
When laughter shows the way
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
In all the years I had known him, through hundreds of therapy hours that sometimes left me feeling as hopeless as he did; he had never stopped talking about killing himself. He...