Major Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist who allegedly murdered 13 people and wounded 29 more at Fort Hood, apparently had been trying to contact al Qaeda and had attended the same mosque as the radical imam Anwar al Aulaqi. He reportedly was torn between being a Muslim and serving his country in a war against Muslims. He seems to have written on the Internet that he felt suicide bombers could be heroes, sacrificing their lives for the greater good.

All of this may mean Dr. Hasan was a terrorist, but it also might mean he was insane. I have never met Hasan, but I know as a forensic psychiatrist that a surprisingly large number of delusions—fixed and false, sometimes very bizarre beliefs—that psychiatric patients sometimes exhibit are religious in nature. Hyperreligiousity can be one of the symptoms of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (among other conditions). This is why the cliché of a delusional person, as depicted by Hollywood, is frequently someone who believes he or she is God or the devil or a prophet.

Mental illness can hijack our core and strongly held beliefs and behaviors and turn them into grotesque symptoms. This isn’t just the case for our spiritual beliefs, but also for our sexual behaviors, which can also be sent into hyperspace by conditions like those I have named. People vulnerable to mental illness can end up selling sex, buying sex, gambling away their homes and, yes, committing horrible acts of violence in a pathological perversion of the religious belief system that had previously sustained their humanity and sense of connectedness to their fellow man.

Again, I don’t know whether Major Nidal Hasan was simply a terrorist or a mentally ill person, but my point is that much more needs to be uncovered before anyone knows.

After all, it doesn’t make much sense that a terrorist would give as many hints as Hasan to fellow soldiers about his seeming antipathy for America. He may have been “disinhibited,” one of the signs of a mood disorder.

Some radical Islamic terrorists frequent strip clubs, I suppose, but the fact that Hasan reportedly did—staying for several hours at a time— may be further evidence of that sort of disinhibition.

Ultimately, the question of when extreme religious beliefs (especially those connected with murderous intent) constitute mental illness may be one that needs to be answered in this case.

What we need are facts. Did Major Hasan show signs of a mental disorder before the Fort Hood massacre? Does his family have a history of mental illness that would suggest he is more vulnerable to it? When he needed additional supervision while training as a psychiatrist, was that because he was asserting his political/ religious views to patients or because he was unable to refrain from doing so, because he was sick then, too? Was he on psychiatric medicines then or at Fort Hood? Did he prescribe them to himself? If he did take medicines, were they the right ones or the wrong ones? Some can cause severe behavioral abnormalities.

Clearly, it seems to be the case that more should have been done to look seriously at Dr. Hasan’s behavior and his thoughts before he picked up a gun and started shooting. But whether the lens should have been one focused on him as a terrorist-in-army-clothing or one focused on him as a man slipping out of rational thought, into psychosis, remains to be seen.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement including www.livingthetruth.com. Dr. Ablow can be emailed at info@keithablow.com.

One of the fortunate—and sometimes unfortunate—aspects of human biology is that we contain within us the physiology for extraordinary pleasures.  When we are psychologically in balance, our capacity to derive enjoyment from our senses and our bodies, whether through eating or exercise or sex, enriches our lives immeasurably.  But when we face underlying turmoil or pain or unhappiness, we can use our inborn capacities for pleasure as shields against thinking and feeling our emotions—literally harnessing our brain chemical messengers and neurotransmitters like infusions of drugs.
 
Sexual addiction is one of the dark roads men and women travel in order to avoid their feelings and the complexities of their life stories.  They turn to sex to “drug” themselves and relieve deeper feelings of anxiety or depression or boredom or loneliness.  In doing so they not only deprive themselves of journeying toward a true understanding of the roots of their negative feelings, they cause a lot of collateral damage.  That damage can include shattered families, a loss of respect in the community, legal problems, financial problems and health problems.
 
Sexual addiction is also unique in that it can now be “fed” 24/7 through the Internet, which provides countless graphic images and videos that are the equivalent of a constant infusion of alcohol or heroin.  Gambling addicts at least have the rate-limiting step of their own finances as a potential brake on their dependency.  Drug addicts have to procure their substances.  But sex addicts can mainline their drug through magazines, the Web, escort services and relationships built only around physical satisfaction.
 
For these reasons, it can take a long time for sex addicts to come to terms with the fact that their addiction is harming them or others.  Most sex addicts aren’t arrested with prostitutes in hotel rooms; they’re wasting good years in one emotionally anonymous relationship after another, or wasting hours and hours on the Internet, or wasting the potential for true closeness with their children because they are driven to divorce by their needs or distracted by recruiting their next lover.  What are the signs and symptoms of sexual addiction?  Here are some to consider:

– Underlying anxiety or depression when the activity related to sex is resisted.

– A need for exposure to sexually stimulating material or relationships that overshadows the need for real emotional, interpersonal connections. A need for exposure to sexually stimulating material or relationships that overshadows the need for real emotional, interpersonal connections.

– A preoccupation with sexual fulfillment or fantasies that interferes with daily life, one’s employment or one’s marriage.

If you or someone you love has any of these symptoms, a psychiatrist or psychologist is a good place to turn for help. Remember, the fact that we have the anatomy and physiology for pleasure of many kinds means that we are, as human beings, also at risk for redirecting those healthy pleasures into pathology.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement including www.livingthetruth.com. Dr. Ablow can be emailed at info@keithablow.com.

The two pilots who overshot Minneapolis by 150 miles, remaining out of communication with air traffic controllers for over an hour, have blamed their silent detour on being distracted by their laptops. Captain Timothy Cheney and First Officer Richard Cole have denied falling asleep, instead explaining that they were reviewing their schedules on their computers.

Whether or not Cheney and Cole were sleepy, this “lost in cyberspace” story is a wake-up call for all of us. The amazing undertow of new technology is indeed powerful enough not only to distract many of us, but to pull us completely off-course in our lives.

The same moving cursor, clicking keys and bright light emanating from Cheney and Cole’s laptops can be hypnotic to millions of Americans, who are disoriented by the lure of their computers and the false comfort of navigation systems. How many traffic accidents on roads, after all, are being caused by people texting while following the voice prompts and LED arrows of their navigation systems.

Not only are we at risk to forget where we are going on the road or in the sky, but we can lose sight of who we are, what our real goals are and what our real emotions are. As Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” The technologies we are deploying in a wholesale way across the nation and across the globe will have dramatic psychological effects we can’t predict.

We’re already seeing people who I believe are more violent online than they would be if they weren’t “projecting” themselves into cyberspace. Cyberbullies gang up mercilessly on school kids they haven’t even met. Young women on YouTube broadcast themselves beating other young women.

I have evaluated more than one client in my own practice who was charged with possession of child pornography who I doubt would ever have accessed inappropriate images were he not removed from his sense of self and his core identity by the infinitely depersonalizing distance of a computer keyboard and computer screen. Think about it: If two highly trained pilots can veer 150 miles off course because their laptops suck them into a black hole of inattentiveness, isn’t it possible that computers can lure otherwise good and decent people to very indecent acts?

I believe they can.

I have also counseled couples in which either the wife or the husband engaged in racy, inappropriate behavior online (including e-mails) that I doubt would have ever occurred without the seductive draw of being relatively anonymous, nearly disembodied and technologically “over-powered” by the use of computers and the Internet.

When we consider that much of the world’s military planning and actual weaponry involves the use of depersonalizing technology and computer simulations, we should begin to wonder whether unthinkable acts could be possible (especially by rogue regimes) as people drift off course in more than one way.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement including www.livingthetruth.com. Dr. Ablow can be emailed at info@keithablow.com.

With the change in seasons now fully upon us, days are getting shorter, and the risk of seasonal affective disorder is turning into very real suffering for literally millions of Americans.  Most of this suffering can be prevented, if people recognize the cause of their symptoms and get help.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) most often visits patients during the fall or early winter.  It has also been called “winter depression” or “winter blues,” but its symptoms mimic major depression of any other kind—the distinguishing characteristic in this case being its connection to less sunlight.   Those symptoms can include sadness, tearfulness, decreased concentration, decreased self-esteem, low energy, alterations in sleep patterns and appetite, loss of interest in hobbies and work and, in severe cases, thoughts of suicide.

If you have struggled with repeated bouts of depression in the past, it’s very important to figure out if you can identify this kind of seasonal pattern.  But SAD doesn’t necessarily manifest itself with serious symptoms every year, so all of us need to be alert this year to whether we’re burdened by it.

SAD costs the economy dearly in lost productivity from employees, employers and entrepreneurs fighting its symptoms.  But it will also inflict an additional and very substantial financial burden on the millions of families directly affected, at a time when so many families are struggling already.  That’s one reason why SAD may be a bigger threat this year than the H1N1 flu, even though SAD gets a lot less attention.

SAD responds to the same treatments used to fight non-seasonal depression.  Psychotherapy is tremendously helpful, as is exercise and, when indicated, medication.  Another promising and safe treatment is transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which involves repeatedly stimulating a particular area of the brain using magnetic waves. 

I have seen many, many of my patients also benefit tremendously from the use of bright light therapy, which involves sitting for a short time each day in front of specially designed portable lights (which are relatively inexpensive and widely available) that replicate sunlight (without exposing the user to any damaging “tanning” light).   One of these devices is called the goLite, but just Googling “bright light therapy for depression” will bring up lots of choices.  If fall and winter and “down” times for you, then get one of these lights and use it.  It could change your life—for about $150.

It’s time we took SAD very seriously, given the fact that it causes so much damage to so many lives and is so responsive to treatment.  It’s the psychiatric epidemic that comes every year—and one we already know how to defeat.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement including www.livingthetruth.com. Dr. Ablow can be emailed at info@keithablow.com.

Part of my residency training in psychiatry was spent working on the locked unit at the Shattuck State Hospital in Massachusetts.  It was there that I learned strategies to keep people safe when voices or visions or delusions made them threaten others with harm—whether verbally or physically.  The strategies were very important, because some of the folks on the unit had never been violent, while others had been court-ordered to the Shattuck after committing very violent crimes, including murder.  We needed to protect not only the staff, but patients, too.
 
The lessons I learned at the Shattuck are ones that the Administration should keep in mind in dealing with Iran.  After all, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears either to be a pathological liar with extremely violent intentions and a willingness to distort history or to actually be delusional.  In either case, he qualifies as an inpatient on a locked psychiatric unit.
 
Here are lessons from the Shattuck:
 
1. It is highly desirable to listen to every patient, even those with delusions, because their truth may be audible, despite the content of their speech being insane.  Someone with grandiose delusions, who believes he is the savior of the planet, may actually be expressing deep feelings of low self-esteem.  Similarly, the desire to obtain nuclear weapons and destroy one’s neighbors may relate to internal feelings of having been annihilated.  So it may be with Iranians, whose self-esteem and willingness to be led by a madman (notice the contracted words mad and man), may reflect their internal feelings of vulnerability.

2. When a delusional or violently ill patient seeks to arm himself, he is to be watched extremely closely and repeatedly searched.  There can be no negotiation on this account, as the violent or delusional man cannot be trusted.

3. When the delusional or violently ill patient is found to have secreted away a weapon, it must be presumed that he fully intended to use it and that he will be very angry that he cannot.  Therefore, he must be rapidly disarmed and then placed in quarantine, lest he either rearm himself or attempt to show his strength using his fists or a discarded needle.  On a psychiatric unit, that means a room search, confiscating any weapon and placing the patient in the locked quiet room.  In Iran, it means destroying Iranian nuclear facilities, then isolating the country, then searching for any other threats.

4. Psychiatric patients at the brink of violence are not comforted by, nor dissuaded from that violence, by quiet speech or bargaining.  They are comforted by a show of force that convinces them that they are better off in the good hands of a healer than left to  the chaos of their own intentions.  Even four-point restraints can be a comfort to a man out of control whose mind knows not the limits of rational thought and action.

5. Time is of the essence.  When a psychiatrist on a locked unit feels a patient is about to become violent, the thought processes inside that patient often have been brewing for a very long time.  At that point, making the unit safe has to precede more elegant attempts at healing.

6. The other patients are watching.  This means that the psychiatrist’s response to a violent patient will either quiet the unit (for which you may read the Middle East) or inflame it.  Permissiveness is always perceived by the unstable as a call to chaos.

7. Always read the clinical history of every patient for any past episodes of severe violence.  The past is a good indicator of the future, even when great progress would seem to have been made.  Witness the recent embracing of terrorists by Muammar el-Qaddafi.

8. Keeping the unit safe is not about hating anyone.  Even the violent patient is a worthy human being at the core.  But that does not mean that the patient is not a grave risk to himself or to others.  There can be no fear of taking action, nor any joy in doing so.

As it was at the Shattuck, so it is in Iran.  I hope Dr. Obama is listening.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement including www.livingthetruth.com. Dr. Ablow can be emailed at info@keithablow.com.

Actress MacKenzie Phillips has accused her deceased father John Phillips, famous as the lead singer of The Mamas and the Papas, of having a “consensual” sexual relationship with her.  She says it began when he raped her while she was semi-conscious and drugged at age 19 and continued for 10 years.  She also says she hopes her revelations will help other survivors of incest.
 
I applaud incest survivors and rape victims who come forward to share their stories because I believe that human empathy is the most powerful force in the universe.  The more that people disclose what they have suffered, the more chance there is that others will be relieved of the terrible psychological toll it is to keep their secrets underground, where they cause pathological guilt and depression and anxiety.
 
I’ve got several problems with MacKenzie Phillips’ allegations, however.  
 
First, I think it does no service to rape victims or victims of incest to suggest that father-daughter sex that begins at age 19 is “consensual.”  If Ms. Phillips is telling the truth (more about this later), then I would venture that the psychological gears behind her sexual relationship with her father began turning much earlier in her life, very likely when she was a young girl.  After all, Ms. Phillips also alleges that her father humiliated her in front of his famous friends by commenting on the way her body was changing during puberty.  No doubt, that was the tip of the iceberg.
 
Many of my patients who suffer greatly from sexual boundary violations by their parents, in fact, never slept with their fathers or mothers.  They were aware, however, that the potential for sexual contact was very real, as evidenced by inappropriate touching, joking or gazing.
 
My second problem with Ms. Phillips accusing her father of raping her and then having sex with her for a decade is that her father is dead.  He can’t refute the charges.  That seems awfully convenient.
 
My third problem with Ms. Phillips labeling her father a sexual predator is that she offers no corroborating evidence.  None.  There are no psychiatry records noted to support her claim.  She doesn’t come armed with three polygraphs that, flawed as they are, suggest she is telling the truth.  There are no ER records showing vaginal trauma from her “rape.”  There’s no one else on the face of the planet yet to come forward and confirm that John Phillips was a monster.
 
My fourth problem with Ms. Phillips is that she has lied to the media before—to get on television and become more famous.  Years ago, she told Geraldo Rivera she had quit drugs so she could tout her sobriety to the nation.  She was still using.  
 
My fifth problem with Ms. Phillips is that she was hooked on heroin and cocaine and other drugs, to begin with.  While I understand that drug abuse and dependence is an illness, I also know from treating over a thousand patients with the disorder that those with a predisposition to drug dependence are also predisposed to make up stories for their own benefit—in this case money and fame.  They aren’t reliable witnesses in court cases and they shouldn’t be seen as reliable reporters of fact in any venue.
 
That brings up my sixth problem with Ms. Phillips.  Her claims are neatly timed to sell books.  She found herself on Oprah making her allegations, not in an auditorium talking to survivors of sexual assault.  Millions of dollars may flow her way because she says she slept with her father for a decade.

So, we’ve got a drug addict who has lied to the media before, who now says that she’s telling an incredibly gripping tale, who also stands to make a fortune from it.  You add up the numbers.
 
Bottom line: When people paint their parents as monsters, they ought to have the strength of character to do it when their parents are on the planet to respond.  

I wouldn’t suggest anyone with real and genuine trauma spend a lot of time pondering MacKenzie Phillips’ packaged, media-friendly, mass market, convenient, dramatic, televised, titillating version.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement including www.livingthetruth.com. Dr. Ablow can be emailed at info@keithablow.com.

The recent murder cases of Annie Le at Yale, possibly by 24-year-old Yale lab technician Raymond Clark, and of Trisha Leffler by accused Craigslist killer Philip Markoff obviously took the lives of two young women and shattered the lives of their families.  I have treated parents of murdered children, as well as their siblings, and know that the surface scars may fade over time, but that the internal emotional bleeding—the complicated grief—never seems to end. 
 
Less attention is paid to the other victims of such horrific crimes—the families, girlfriends and friends of the killers.  Both Raymond Clark and Philip Markoff were not only the sons of mothers and fathers, but both men were engaged to be married.  In both cases, if convictions are obtained, their fiancés are left to pick up the pieces of their psyches, battered by the knowledge that they had loved and committed themselves to men who were pathologically violent.
 
When one’s son or daughter, husband or wife, or fiancé turns out to be a stranger full of darkness, it is a reckoning with reality like few others.  I have counseled such individuals and seen the tears in their eyes and the stress in their faces as they tried to make sense of how someone seemingly so close to them could have been, in fact, infinitely far removed. If people who profess their love can keep their darkest truths under wraps, who and what can be trusted in the world?
 
Many, many people know something about the challenges that face the “survivors” of intimate connections with murderers.  After all, my practice has long been populated by those who were injured by assailants who played the role of parents, teachers and mentors. Their ability to trust is often long in being reborn, relying not a little bit on how trustworthy and reliable I can be as a clinician.  Such is the miracle of human empathy:  the example of a decent, caring relationship can mend some of the damage done by a harmful one, even a predatory one.
 
Yet to have lived with or loved a killer is a special case.  The journey back from that kind of terror and self-doubt has several ingredients.  First, it has to be said that there are among us men (and women) who can indeed wear what the great psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley called a mask of sanity.  Having buried their destructiveness and rage deep inside them (until it explodes) they become people imitating people, doing those things that seem kind and respectful, without feeling kind or respectful.  They are playacting, and they can be better at it than the best actor in any movie.  Scott Peterson, who killed his wife Laci and their unborn son Conner, was such a man—likeable, with good manners, able to win women over with one-liners harvested from movies and chilled champagne tucked in a backpack for a romantic hike.
 
So those who share their lives with killers can take some solace in the fact that many pass themselves off as normal, even to law enforcement officials and psychiatrists. That’s the easy part.
 
The harder part is understanding that there can be a reason why those who turn out to have loved killers find themselves in that rare psychological territory.  And often that relates to their own willingness to distance themselves from core feelings of anger and anxiety and accept the surface of things. Very often the lovers and best friends and even parents of killers have had traumatic life experiences that paved the way for them turning a blind eye to their emotions and instincts, making them the ideal partners for predators. 
 
Predators can sense when they are in the presence of others who will take them at their word. 
 
Like most of our emotional challenges in life, the biggest hurdle to healing for those with a killer in the family is looking inside themselves, at the very things they have tried to avoid seeing.
 
Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement including www.livingthetruth.com. Dr. Ablow can be emailed at info@keithablow.com.

With hip New Yorkers focused on Fashion Week, including the designers setting trends and the models bringing them to life, many experts are warning that the skinny women walking runways are not only at risk for eating disorders themselves, but could cause eating disorders in the young women who admire them in magazines and on television.
 
I disagree—at least with the latter concern.  Certainly, women (and men) who make their livings by marketing their physical presence—and being acutely aware of how others are reacting to them—may be more prone than others to psychological disorders connected with self-esteem and unresolved emotional turmoil deep beneath the surface. This not only includes anorexia and bulimia, but conditions like depression, panic disorder and substance abuse. The same could be said, however, of those who gravitate toward the acting profession or any other career in which success is partly determined by the way the person looks in front of a camera.
 
I do not believe, however, that young women who see thin models in magazines or on television become eating disordered based on those images.  In order for anorexia or bulimia to take root, a woman has to have a pre-existing vulnerability of brain chemistry or a life history of emotional turmoil or both.  Seeing thin models in Vera Wang or Calvin Klein won’t distort the body image of those whose self-perception has not been made fragile, whether by complex psychological dynamics or complexities of neurochemistry.
 
For me, part of the evidence that thin models don’t spread eating disorders is that fashion designers use these women to market to all consumers, not just the ones who are razor thin.  The marketplace is still a pretty smart barometer of the American psyche and that means that, like it or not, women who are size 12 are just as likely as size 2 women to be motivated to buy clothes worn by today’s “Twiggy.”  And America is getting fatter despite our collective ideals of beauty, not slimmer. 
 
If size zero fashion models cause anorexia, why have decades of exposure to them resulted in an epidemic of obesity among young people.
 
I maintain the same position about violence in movies.  No amount of watching violent films can make otherwise healthy people turn into thugs or killers—any more than watching films about heists turns moviegoers into thieves.
 
I believe the same can even be said for advertising of alcohol and cigarettes.  The advertising itself doesn’t create addicts.  The desire to be repeatedly intoxicated by alcohol or nicotine resides in the brain chemistry or life circumstances of the users, not within the text or photographs of what is used to promote their drugs of choice. 
 
There are many powerful and toxic influences that fuel the millions and millions of cases of eating disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders in the United States.  The most significant of those influences, however, are to be found not in the magazines we read or the television programs we watch, but in the disintegrating and traumatic relationships that unfold right in our homes.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement including www.livingthetruth.com. Dr. Ablow can be emailed at info@keithablow.com.

Elizabeth Bernstein, writing in the Wall Street Journal, astutely observes that the promise of Facebook and Twitter—to bring people closer by putting their lives online, with up-to-the-minute updates—can have the opposite effect.  Many people, she writes, use “friending” and “tweeting” as a surface and synthetic way to talk about the fun outings they’re planning or the fact that they just closed another sale at work. 
 
“I’m tired of loved ones—you know who you are—who claim they are too busy to pick up the phone, or event write a decent email,” Bernstein writes, “yet spend hours on social-media sites, uploading photos of their children or parties, forwarding inane quizzes . . . or tweeting about their latest whereabouts.”
 
That’s just the beginning from a psychological point of view.  Facebook and other social-media “destinations” not only provide cover from more genuine and intimate human interactions, they can encourage people to present themselves as actors in their own semi-made-up life stories.  They can remove people from reality, heightening their narcissism (which we all have, to a lesser or greater extent), making them not only self-obsessed, but intent on projecting a multi-media fictional representation of how happy and successful and social they are. 
 
As Marshall McLuhan wrote, the medium is the message.  There is no avoiding the fact that social-media sites call upon members to use a keyboard, hard drive and computer screen, together with photos, video and words to create evolving autobiographies for “broadcast” on the Web.  This very process creates a kind of dual existence, consisting of one’s real life and one’s life on-line.  The online version can pull people away from their deepest thoughts and emotions and relationships—from what constitutes their real selves—into the abbreviated or evasive or attention-grabbing kind that can be packaged for mass consumption. 
 
This is more than an academic concern.  It’s a human and clinical concern.  The distance between a person’s contrived self and real self is the growing place for anxiety and depression.  Today’s social-media sites can expand that distance until, distracted too long from the noble and, ultimately, healing battle to understand oneself and others for real, swells of genuine emotion feel like tidal waves. 
 
Indeed, I have already worked with several clients for whom using social media sites has, in and of itself, coaxed them away from the truth about their lives, toward a kind of technologically intoxicated vacation from it.  Together, we struggle to take the journey back.
 
Anatole Broyard, the late and great NY Times book critic, once wrote, “Inside every patient, there’s a poet trying to get out.”  We could now add that behind every Facebook profile, there’s a real life story just waiting to be told.  
 

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s Web site at livingthetruth.com.