Anxiety is not merely a feeling that arrives from outside. It is heavily shaped by where attention rests, how the body is regulated, and which patterns of thought and behavior are practiced repeatedly. Every thought carries a chemical signature. Persistent focus on threat, uncertainty, or “what if” trains the nervous system toward vigilance. Shifting focus toward what is workable, present, and evidence-aligned changes both the subjective experience and the underlying physiolo

Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences. It is not a fixed personality trait that some people simply possess. Psychological research, including work summarized by the American Psychological Association, shows that the skills and resources linked to better adaptation can be practiced and strengthened over time. People commonly demonstrate resilience. The capacity develops through repeated choices in how we thi

“Before you try to heal someone, ask them if they are willing to give up the thing that is making them sick.” That line, often attributed to Hippocrates, has stayed with me across decades of public health work and clinical practice. It is not a threat. It is a reality check. Healing requires willingness. Without it, the best interventions become temporary detours around a problem the person still wants to keep. It may look as though I am picking on alcohol. In one sense, I ha

By Dr. Galen Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC Why, as a trauma-informed therapist, I sometimes begin couples work by meeting with each partner on their own. Early in my practice, I dreaded sessions with clients who showed symptoms of posttraumatic stress. My tools were mostly top-down: talk about the thoughts, challenge the beliefs, assign homework. In my experience, starting there too often stirred up the very distress we were trying to settle, and some clients left more activated than w

By Galen Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC @ www.galencole.com Marriage and long-term relationships encounter real difficulty. Financial pressure, illness, parenting stress, personality differences, grief, and ordinary disagreements are part of shared life. Decades of observational research on couples show that conflict itself is not the primary threat. What predicts lasting damage is the quality of the interaction around conflict—whether both partners retain the capacity for mutual respec

By Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC, ABCP What you repeatedly notice, practice, and return to shapes both how you feel and how well you function. In other words, you feel what you focus on. That simple observation sits at the center of more than two decades of positive psychology research. It is also why the field remains useful for anyone doing cognitive work: the same attention that can reinforce unhelpful patterns can, with practice, be directed toward what actually supports w

By Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC When I talk with clients about motivation, I often use the image of a donkey with a carrot in front and a whip behind. Most of our reasons for doing anything come down to moving toward a reward or away from a cost. Approach and avoidance aren’t abstractions. They drive most of what people do. That donkey has one clear direction. The donkey I want to talk about here has two. In a well-known philosophical puzzle called Buridan’s Ass, a donkey tha

We live in a culture that endlessly promotes “positive thinking.” From self-help books to social media affirmations, the message is clear: just focus on the good and the bad will fade. Yet decades of psychological research—and clinical experience—tell a more precise story. For most people struggling with distress, anxiety, depression, or the weight of automatic negative thoughts (ANTs), the higher-leverage move is not adding more positivity. It is systematically reducing the

By Galen Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC There is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes said it, and clinical practice keeps confirming it. Clients and colleagues still ask, “Have you ever heard of such-and-such approach?” as if a new name equals a new mechanism. Most of the time the principles are older than the trademark. Someone has simply reorganized, rebranded, or re-sequenced what already works so it can be owned, marketed, and sold as the next essential thing. That linguistic pr

By Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC You know the pattern. Someone goes quiet, and your brain starts drafting apologies before you even know what you did. You say yes to things you don't want to do, then resent the person for asking. Anxious attachment and people-pleasing aren't the same thing — but they feed each other so well that most people can't tell where one ends and the other begins. That's the problem. And it's fixable. What Anxious Attachment Actually Looks Like Anxious

By Galen Cole @ www.galencole.com A growing number of young adults are not arguing with their parents. They are leaving. Cutoff, low contact, and “no contact” have moved from a private last resort to a public script. On TikTok, videos about cutting off or going low-contact with parents jumped more than tenfold between August 2020 and the month before a 2026 Wall Street Journal report. Karl Pillemer’s research, reported in Fault Lines, puts the standing rate at about one in te

What a practiced grievance costs, and how to take the next hour back. By Galen Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC Some people are not angry about one thing. They are angry as a way of moving through the day. The inbox, the driver, the relative, the headline — each one arrives already guilty. That is not only a mood. It is a search the mind has gotten good at. You feel what you focus on. A day spent scanning for disrespect will find it, including in ordinary tones and ordinary faces. The bod

People are not leaving because they stopped wanting God. Many are leaving a religion that stopped teaching correct principles — and the research on the “nones” already said so. By Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC A reel from @innertune.affirmations, posted around October 2, 2026, says the quiet part out loud: Gravity doesn’t care how much faith you have. And neither do the laws behind your results. God isn’t randomly choosing winners and losers. Whatever a man sows, that he shall

Couples tell me therapy is hard. Trust me. Try being the therapist. I have sat across from a lot of people who pay me more than $400 for 90 minutes to do, in a comfortable office, the exact thing they already do in the kitchen. They fight. They yell. They prosecute. They defend. Then they look at me as if an hour and a half should have fixed a pattern they have been rehearsing for years. Before we start, I do everything I can to make the deal clear. If you do the same things

Emotional responsibility is real. Emotional abandonment is not. A claim is moving through relationship talk right now: you cannot make another person happy, and you are not responsible for their feelings. The claim is pointing at something important. It also gets used as permission to stop paying attention. The useful version is narrower. You own your emotional life. Your partner owns theirs. Influence is still real. Comfort is still part of love. A request is not the same th

By Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC @ www.galencole.com If you think being a psychotherapist is easy, sit across from a couple in distress for 90 minutes. Then we’ll talk. Two people who still care about each other can fill a room with contempt, silence, old injuries, and a case each of them has been building for years. Nobody is neutral. Everybody is sure. My job is not to pick a winner. My job is to get the real problem on the table and help them build something they are both w

You feel what you focus on. That is not a slogan. It is how the nervous system works. A painful event can wound you. Grief, betrayal, failure, illness, and trauma are real. They leave a mark. What often keeps the wound open is not the original blow. It is the hours spent turning the blow over in the mind—why it happened, what it means about you, how unfair it was, how it will ruin what comes next. That loop has a name in the research: rumination. In plain language, it is obse

Negative thinking builds what it practices. Getting unstuck takes work, and the work can be learned. Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC @ www.galencole.com You are not "just thinking." You are building. Your brain keeps the blueprint you hand it most often. That blueprint might be a private insult, a wound you keep replaying, or another hour on a feed that was never designed to calm you. Negative thinking is not weather. It is work. It uses up attention, trains circuits, and quietl

By Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC @ www.galencole.com I’m not here to change your vote. I have sat with conservatives, liberals, and people who would rather not be either. I have sat with people who treat politics like a sacrament and people who treat it like a migraine. I have sat with couples who can love each other and still hear the same headline as two different emergencies. That work has required political neutrality. Not because convictions do not matter. Because the roo

An evidence-based look at early liver recovery, hormones, blood work, and why a short pause is not a miracle—and not nothing. By Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC · Published for galencole.com/blog · September 19, 2026 An evidence-based look at one month of abstinence: liver fat, enzymes, blood pressure, insulin resistance, sleep, hormones—and what a month still cannot do. By Galen E. Cole, PhD, MPH, LPC @ www.galencole.com The liver has a well-documented capacity to recover when