A lot of what I write is due to a question. Yesterday someone asked me, “What have you written that explains how you respond to the addictive process?” I realized that I didn’t have anything that provided a simple overview of how we approach addiction. Every person has a core driver. There is that something that they care about very deeply. There are secondary passions. Life events shape and reshape those inner drivers. For the addict, something at a deep level has gone

“Jesus won’t love you if you do that.” Just about everything with that statement is wrong. To write it down makes my blood boil. But I write it because it is a great example of shame being used to manipulate a person’s behavior—usually someone very young. That is sick. Jesus never condemns. He never shames. Many religious people use shame. In today’s political debate, many non-religious people use shame. It is a manipulative persuasion tactic. Both condemnation and sh

In a media age, charisma sells. It is not so much what you say, but how you say it. Video is powerful. Sadly, anger and cynicism also sell. On the negative side, the more grotesque it is, the more attention it catches. We are definitely seeing highly charged, profanity laced rants just about everywhere as a means of persuasion. Because we are glued to screens, both the “beautiful people” and the angry people have a great deal of impact on our world today. If you don’t k