The Dr. Judy Show

Happiness may be an inalienable right, but there are 565 MILLION web pages, and 175,000 products on Amazon helping people find it, giving a not-so-subtle impression that something is missing. Our increasing problems with depression and substance abuse reinforce that impression. Gretchen Martens is a woman of many talents – anthropologist, coach, educator and even improve comedy performer, as well as entrepreneur and business developer - who is taking a new approach to this whole problem – at...

Have your ever done something you feel guilty about – maybe something that eats at you long term or even causes serious problems in your life? You are NOT alone, although you may often feel that you are. Today’s guest, Ronald Chapman, and I have both been down those paths, survived them and turned to careers that give us the privilege of helping others find their way past those slippery and sometimes even treacherous slopes. Chapman is an author, speaker, former commentator on WUNM radio,...

Shirley is a longtime business writer, travel writer, and newspaper columnist who traveled the world interviewing everyone from busboys to heads of international organizations before launching a career in public relations in Washington, D.C. With Banged-Up Heart, she now takes her writing in a new direction, delving deeply into her own personal story of finding love late, losing it early, and discovering the strength to choose to love again. It is a fascinating odyssey, a journey both...

Rebecca was is a highly successful woman in the business world, someone who worked in the civil rights movement, then in urban planning, followed by getting an MBA and working in healthcare. Yet something was tripping her up in her relationships and after her second divorce she got into therapy. As she got further into therapy she uncovered the problem – her childhood sexual abuse, which she had totally blocked from her awareness . Her book, Wave Rider, is an account through her prose and...

As a woman who pushed to achieve what most women didn’t do - going to medical school at a time when they took ‘token females’ - it distresses me no end that in today’s world, even though over half the medical students are female, and increasing numbers of women crack the ‘glass ceiling’ in other areas, too many women still feel stressed, unappreciated and downtrodden in the professional arena and in the personal one as well. It is a world where women still don’t get equal pay, even though...

Medical and psychiatric diagnoses can sometimes be made difficult by the many symptoms that can overlap for many diseases. All the media publicity and advertising that occurs tends to worsen that problem because they get you focused on their area of interest and it may distract you from other issues that are going on with you that may be even more important. Then there are things like Alzheimers, which has become the catch all term for almost anything that interferes with memory, focus,...

It has been known for a very long time that emotional issues can affect our physical health, and physical issues, can affect our emotions, and yet it seems to be an issue that is considered all too seldom by both the people who are suffering and the doctors who are evaluating them. Doctors are often uncomfortable asking, and patients are often embarrassed, to discuss emotional issues. While pain is a common physical issue, and stress is a common emotional issue, there are very many more...

Sex as well as Sexual (Gender) identity throughout my lifetime has been a topic inadequately understood and inadequately explained in too many quarters. Thus we hear totally uneducated and ignorant pronouncements about people’s sexual “choices”. That was more understandable back in the 70’s when we had less factual information, but it is not as acceptable in an age when we have learned so much! We also hear about things like a woman’s rights, or lack of them, related to her own body, with...

We all experience things that cause us grief, although that may be different things for different people or at different times in our lives. It often doesn’t get the attention it deserves because it involves emotions. The first thing that jumps into most people’s minds is grief over the loss of a loved one, but there are many other grief provoking issues each of which may need in it’s own way to be honored and dealt with so we can grow and strengthen from it. There are actually some books...

Learn some secrets the psychopharmaceutical industry would prefer you didn't know about! Do you ever wonder why we are having more and more unhappiness, unrest, depression and drug abuse in the world when there are so many good things going on in life? Are you or someone you know even one of those unhappy people? Today Dr. Judy will discuss what some of the issues are that lead to our being unhappy with people and things in our lives, where some of this came from, and most important of all,...

Substance Abuse not only affects celebrities, it affects our children and teenagers directly and indirectly, is also inceasing in other age groups and is a tremendous cost to society as a whole. I have watched it increase quite rapidly in recent years, with entirely too much of it happening in our children and teenagers. Many things have been done to have stricter control of drugs of abuse, break up some of the supply sources of these drugs, and make people aware of te problems, yet the...

A great deal has been learned in the last 30 years or so about the impact of various traumas and types of injuries to the brain. Depending on the type and location, a head trauma can change how you think, how you feel, how you act, how your body works and other issues. While this is finally getting some much needed publicity, it is currently all focused on athletic injuries, particularly football related concussions. While the attention is a good thing, it is really important for you to kow...

Our emotions are every bit as important a part of sensing what is going on in our world as our eyes, and ears and sense of touch, and yet we treat them as something to be ashamed of - something that means we are somehow defective if all that isn't working perfectly. When we 'stuff' our emotions or hide them or lie about them, we are dishonoring the very core of our humanness and our ability to connect to self and to others. When we don't express our emotions it impairs our ability to really...

There are many things written about various 'fears' that humans have which get int he way of enjoying life and/or moving forward - fear of success, fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of going broke, fear of change and so on. What doesn't really get described is the 'fear of almost anything different' that is an issue for many people - which also often ties to a fear of being 'wrong'. While differences can sometimes legitimately indicate that a person, creature or situation might be...

If Men were from Mars and Women were fomr Venus as John Gray discusses in his famous book, they would probably in many ways have much less problem communicating than peole who grow up inthe same country speaking the same language - especially English! Even 2 humans speaking different languages can learn, through some persistence and determination, to develop some clear understandings of the other persons meaning because they don't start with the assumption they both mean the same thing. At...

Dr Judy Cook, a psychiatrist with many years of experience, passes on to you some of the tools she has taught to thousands of her patients to help them in their journey to a happier and healthier life. Despite all the pills and other treatments available to improve peoples mental mindsets, there are more and more serious adverse events happening related to peoples emotional sense of well-being. More needs to be done to help people recognize when they are having issues and prevent them from...