#but she took my physical health seriously. when it was thought nuts were harmful to Crohn's patients she altered all the family recipes stat

[arctic-hands]

[Image Description: 2 message alerts on a phone from Grandma. The first is from one minute before the screenshot and says "Why are you posting on Facebook about not having nut in November?" The second was sent the moment the screenshot was taken and says "If you developed a nut allergy I need to modify my recipes. Call me back." End I.D]

Found on the Book of Faces

[mbti-notes]

Hi there! (30/F) ENTP looking for advice. I recently dated this (29/F) INFJ. Then first two dates were incredibly passionate and we ended up having (really great) sex on the third - however I told her beforehand that I have a history of catching feelings for people I sleep with and that I'm looking for a relationship, not just a hookup. She said that that's what she wanted too... but then a couple days afterwards she told me she wasn't ready for a relationship b/c of mental health issues and that while she really likes me, she wanted to just be friends while she "figured things out". I declined the friendship for my own mental health (I learned the hard way over many years that being friends with someone who I have romantic feelings for just opens the way for them to treat me like a doormat) but said that I am here if she wants to pursue a romantic relationship. She understood completely and thanked me for being a safe place for her to be vulnerable (I was the first woman she slept with - something she never thought she would do because she has physical trauma associated with women) and for giving her a "safe place to come back to when she is ready". We parted amicably.

My thoughts/feelings have been all over since then (this was two weeks ago for the record). Did I get lied to and used for sex? I have a terrible habit of letting flattery get the better of me. It hurt me deeply that she couldn't have decided she wasn't ready for a relationship BEFORE we had sex. It feels illogical to do that to somebody... like changing the rules when they've been agreed upon (I know that people are 100% allowed to change their minds, but my brain can't help but see it this way).

...but on the other hand I worry that I'm an asshole for not wanting to be friends and that I blew my best shot at being with her by not befriending her for the time being (even though history has shown me that it would have made me miserable).

I'm at such a loss for what to do. Move on? Wait? Be friends? Not be friends? I'm so torn between protecting my ego, or being a patient and supportive friend but leaving myself vulnerable. Is this my Ti-Fe going nuts? Was this a classic case of INFJ manipulation getting the better of a romantically gullible ENTP? Or am I hardcore Ne-Fe paranoia looping because my feelings were hurt?

Any insight/clarity would be amazing. If nothing else, I'd be curious to see what functions could be at play here.

- A heartbroken ENTP who feels like she is going crazy

Breakups aren’t very pleasant situations to deal with, so it’s natural to feel sad or upset about it. Relationships are complicated, because human beings are complicated, illogical, and full of baggage - they don’t conform to rules. You may do everything right and still end up apart. IMO, both parties did everything right in this situation, so there is nothing to regret and no reason to point fingers. An amicable breakup is a mature breakup.

You did the right thing by being upfront about your expectations. Unfortunately, you encountered someone who isn’t clear about their own needs and desires. Immature INFJs have poorly developed judging functions, which means that they are often indecisive and not very in touch with themselves, especially if they have a history of abuse, trauma, or problems with emotional suppression. Dominant Ni has a tendency to get trapped in imagination, which means that it is sometimes necessary for the INFJ to get real-world experience in order to know how they REALLY feel about something. Not to mention that they tend to move slowly in situations where they fear being overwhelmed by feelings. Expecting someone to know how they really feel BEFORE doing something, on your demand, when they simply aren’t capable of it, isn’t reasonable. She did the right thing by listening to her heart. Some INFJs would’ve felt pressured to take the relationship further only to realize their mistake much later on. She actually spared you both deeper heartache by applying the brakes as soon as possible.

Is there a possibility that she lied and used you? I suppose it is possible, but not very plausible. NFs find it very difficult to live without moral conscience. Unless something has seriously stunted their moral development, INFJs are not typically manipulative people. In fact, they often suffer from being too morally strict with themselves. An INFJ would have to be totally lacking in self-awareness via serious Se grip problems to act so selfishly as to knowingly harm someone. This doesn’t seem to be the case with her. Everything you’ve described about her is quite consistent with INFJ in recovery and self-discovery mode. She took responsibility for her feelings, even though it led to breakup. Unfortunately, you got caught up in her baggage for a moment, but it wasn’t personal, so you shouldn’t take it personally. 

It is common for TPs to dislike feeling emotionally vulnerable, and it is common for ENTPs to project their own manipulative tendencies onto others when they feel hurt. IMO, it is mainly your hurt that is fueling paranoid thoughts about having been taken advantage of. It’s up to you to avoid the mistake of allowing your hurt feelings to turn into something ugly, especially when the situation ended amicably. You know what you need, she knows what she needs, but this takes you in opposite directions - no one is to blame for it. This situation should be chalked up to bad timing, which means that it just wasn’t meant to be. Of course, you feel bad when the stars don’t align for you, but there’s no reason for anger. Accept the sadness and let it run its course, then move forward by looking for new and better opportunities -> re-engage Ne to get out of Si grip regrets. 

[saventhhaven]

Midnight Snack

Pairing: none

Tags: cheesecake, humor, tired!reader, tired!Sam, tired!Dean

Word Count: 1,309

A/N: As promised, here it is! Sorry I’m a bit late with it this time :)

(Gif not mine)

Gasping for air, you jolted awake, reaching down to your chest to put pressure on a wound that wasn't there. It took you a moment before you finally realized that you were in your room at the bunker and not in whatever hell your nightmare had you. You closed your eyes as your heart rate finally began to slow, your breathing following suit. Fantastic. What a great way to wake up. You reached for your phone to check the time and had to bite back a groan. And in the middle of the night, nonetheless. Nightmares certainly weren't a new thing, but it had been a while since one had rattled you so much. Maybe it was a good thing that you couldn't remember what it was. Your hand shook slightly as you reached over to turn on the lamp on your nightstand. Instantly, the light chased away the darkness in your room, alleviating some of the pressure on your chest. The intense physical reaction your body was having told you two things about the dream: one, that it was a bad one, and two, there was no way you were getting back to sleep any time soon. 

Still feeling a bit unnerved, you reached for the gun under your pillow, although you knew you didn't really need it. Something about having the weight of a weapon in your hands made you feel immensely better. Whether or not that was because you were a hunter, you weren't sure, but you had a sneaking suspicion that holding a gun probably didn't give many others such comfort. You shook your head. Now that the bout of adrenaline had passed, you knew it would be pointless to even try lying down again. There was no relaxing anymore. Well, at least one good thing was going to come out of it: there was a cheesecake in the freezer calling your name. As soon as the word "cheesecake" popped into your thoughts, your mind was made up, and you were out in the bunker's halls, headed in the direction of the kitchen.

Instead of buying Dean's usual apple pie, you had snuck a turtle cheesecake in the cart at the store when he hadn't been looking. It was his fault for not paying closer attention to you, anyway. As you neared the kitchen, you frowned and fought the urge to roll your eyes. The light was already on. Dean had been the last one awake the night before, and you had asked him to turn it off before he went to bed. Almost every time you asked him to do something, he forgot. Typical.

When you turned into the room, you froze in the doorway, surprised. Sam sat at the table, nursing a cup of coffee in his hand, and staring blankly at the wall.

"Sam?" you called out softly. He turned to you with a start before his features relaxed into a weak smile. He looked tired. You weren't sure what had him awake at this hour, but you could guess. Being a hunter meant being plagued with horrific images that were impossible to unsee.

"Hey, Y/N. What are you doing up?" You shrugged and stepped into the kitchen.

"Could ask you the same thing. And with coffee, no less?" you pointed to the freshly-brewed pot. "It's three in the morning."

"Couldn't sleep," he answered shortly. Reaching for a mug to pour yourself a cup, you let out a sigh. It was obvious that the thoughts going through his head weren't exactly pleasant.

"Yeah, I hear that."

"Besides," Sam continued, "I'd be getting up in three hours anyway." As you set down your coffee mug at the table across from him, you made a face.

"Or, here's a crazy idea." You made your way back over to the freezer to search for your cheesecake. "You could actually sleep in for once." Sam frowned slightly at your suggestion but didn't say anything. Probably for the best. He would say something about his circadian rhythm, you would call bullshit, and it would somehow turn into a philosophical debate. And you highly doubted that either of you had the mental capacity for one of those right now.

"What's that?" he asked when you pulled the white box out of the freezer. You kicked the door shut with your heel, smiling triumphantly as you returned to the table with two plates and forks.

"Cheesecake." Sam eyed the box.

"What kind?"

"Turtle." The way he squinted at the dessert made you chuckle. Sam Winchester was all about being a health nut, but everyone deserved a break every once in a while. "Oh, come on," you encouraged. "I brought two plates for a reason. Have a piece, what's the harm?" He let out a loud breath.

"You're a bad influence." You laughed again.

"You know it. I didn't think anyone else was awake," you started as you cut two sizable pieces of cheesecake. "I saw the kitchen light on, and I just assumed your brother forgot to turn it off again." Sam snorted into his mug.

"Oh, no, he did. It was on when I came in." The fork clattered against the plate as you handed it over to him, nostrils flaring.

"Okay, seriously, I'm gonna kick his ass." Sam grinned. "Does energy conservation mean nothing to him?"

"I didn't realize it did to you," he pointed out. You had to pause at that.

"It doesn't, really," you finally admitted. "I just wish he'd do something when I ask him."

"Oh, good luck with that," Sam said.

"Well, hell." You and the youngest Winchester turned your attention to the doorframe, where a bleary-eyed Dean stood looking at you. You fought the urge to cringe. He was wearing what you and Sam referred to as his "dead guy robe." But despite both of your protests, he refused to stop wearing it simply because it was comfortable. "Looks like a party in here." He went straight for the coffee as you waved a hand in his direction, suppressing a smile.

"Sorry, insomniacs only." He snickered and came to sit next to you.

"Oh, good. I fit right in. What're we having?"

"Turtle cheesecake," Sam answered around a mouthful of the stuff. Dean crinkled his nose, eyeing your plates warily.

"Where's the pie?"

"Sorry," you said, although you didn't really mean it. "No pie this time." You poked your fork down at your plate, gesturing to your midnight snack. "I got cheesecake instead."

"No pie?" Dean repeated incredulously. He huffed. "Seriously, Y/N? I give you one job at the grocery store, and you get cheesecake instead of pie? What kind of anarchy is that?" You and Sam exchanged a roll of your eyes.

"Don't be such a drama queen," Sam chastised.

"Yeah!" you agreed. "And speaking of having one job: you didn't turn off the light when you went to bed!" Dean snatched your fork from your hand, taking a bite of your cheesecake. "Hey!"

"I did too," he disagreed, "and I don't appreciate you just pointing fingers, princess." Your eyes narrowed at him as you reached for your fork, which he held out of your reach.

"Dean Winchester, I happen to know for a fact that you left the light on last night!" He snorted.

"Oh, yeah? How?" You pointed at Sam, who looked anywhere but the two of you.

"Because I asked your brother." The room was quiet for a moment before the younger Winchester finally sighed.

"She did," he admitted sheepishly. You watched Dean grind his teeth together with a triumphant look on your face.

"So, don't act all high and mighty, you hear me?" Grabbing your plate and fork back from him, you dug in. "Maybe we'll have pie next time if you remember to turn off the light."

"...Damn it, Sam."

"Wait, how is this my fault?"

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed!

As always, links to my masterlist, taglist, and inbox (requests are open!) are in my bio!

I love when you guys give me feedback. I don’t bite :)

My Everythings:

@cole-winchester​ @alexwinchester23​ @1-am-made-of-stardust​ @thorukindig​ @fiftyshadesoffandom6783​ @hobby27​ @supernaturalenchanted​ @organicpurplepants​ @odysseyofasiren​ @defenderrosetyler​ @crystal-lilac​ @youshrimpdickfucknugget​

[bountyofbeads]

What It Took for a Fox News Psychiatrist to Finally Lose His License https://nyti.ms/2MbUGZu

What It Took for a Fox News Psychiatrist to Finally Lose His License

Keith Ablow was a popular fixture on the cable channel until 2017, and a high-profile therapist. He left a trail of vulnerable female patients who claim he abused them.

By Ginia Bellafante | Published Dec. 20, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 21, 2019 |

Late in 2009, a 28-year-old woman not long out of graduate school found herself in a stressful job at a Bronx hospital and decided it would be useful to talk to someone. Searching online, she came across the name of a psychiatrist, Keith Ablow.

Dr. Ablow was familiar to her from his writing, both his journalism and the best-selling thrillers he turned out — “Denial,’’ “Projection,” “Compulsion,’’ “Murder Suicide.’’ She had read all of those, as well as “Psychopath,’’ a book about a psychiatrist who prods the interior lives of strangers only to kill them, baroquely obscuring the distinction between patient and victim.

The woman — who has asked to be identified only by her confirmation name, Monique — found Dr. Ablow just as his media star was rising. That year, Roger Ailes had hired him as a regular contributor on Fox News, where he would remain until 2017, speculating about the mental states of political figures and presiding over viewer segments like “Normal or Nuts?”

Dr. Ablow offered counseling in the conventional sense, but he also conducted life-coaching via email. Monique engaged with him this way at first, but after she answered various questions about her past, mentioning adolescent bouts of depression, she agreed to see Dr. Ablow in person. His busy schedule meant that she would have to go to his primary office, in Newburyport, Mass. He was impressive to her, and so Monique made the five-hour trip for her first visit.

Over the next year and a half, Monique saw Dr. Ablow two or three times a week, at the reduced rate of $350 an hour. During this time she found herself coming unwound.

Her anxiety about work did not recede. On the contrary, she felt increasingly addled and insecure, and problems that had been latent for a long time resurfaced. She began cutting herself, something she hadn’t done in years.

Monique came to believe that Dr. Ablow had not only failed to help her; he left her more damaged than she already was. For his part, Dr. Ablow would maintain that whatever boundaries she thought he violated — the frequent texts and emails, the intimate revelations about his own life — were in the service of her treatment, well within the standard of sound psychiatric care.

As Monique would discover, it would take years — and several other patients coming forward with their own stories of manipulation — for Dr. Ablow’s transgressions to be taken seriously.

The case represents a core challenge of psychological treatment. At a cultural moment in which all kinds of relationships are policed for abuses of power imbalance, psychotherapy takes place in seclusion: two people, alone in a room, with one holding extraordinary influence over the other, just as it has been since Freud. It remains a world with murky oversight, and if you are harmed, it is not obvious what can be done.

By the time Monique left his care, her new marriage had fallen apart and she had developed a dependency on Valium, Xanax and Adderall. She also said she had drained her savings of $30,000 to pay for the treatment.

Most alarming, she had become obsessively, insidiously reliant on Dr. Ablow’s affirmation, a circumstance she and her lawyer would later suspect he engineered.

On an unusually hot late-summer morning, in a coffee shop just north of the city, Monique recounted how she had come under Dr. Ablow’s thrall. When she finally disentangled, she filed a complaint with the disciplinary board in New York that oversees psychiatrists — a body that works secretly and can take years to respond to charges. In this case, when it finally completed its initial review of Dr. Ablow, it found no reason to sanction him.

As we spoke over several hours, Monique’s caution gave way to a fluid and emotional narrative. It was easy to imagine her on the other side of conversations that played out this way hundreds of times. She was, in fact, a therapist herself.

That she had this training compounded the embarrassment anyone in her situation would surely feel. Monique was reflexively skeptical about human motivation. As a child she had resisted authority. How had she landed here?

From the beginning, Dr. Ablow presented himself as an idealized caretaker more than a guide. “As if he said, ‘Let down your guard, let go of everything and completely fall on me, because I will give you everything you ever needed. And you need nothing but to trust me,’” she reflected.

This was intoxicating to Monique. Her childhood had been marked by her father’s volatility, her mother’s emotional absence, a difficult relationship with her brother. With Dr. Ablow, she found herself in the strange state of feeling both further weakened by her past and protected from it.

If therapy is the project of overcoming, Monique belatedly came to believe that Dr. Ablow urged her neither toward strength nor self-reliance. “He did make me feel beautiful and precious and special,’’ she said. “But very broken.’’

On May 15, Dr. Ablow’s license was suspended in Massachusetts after an investigation determined that his continued practice was a threat to the “health, safety and welfare” of the public. He is appealing the ruling.

This article is based on interviews with Monique and others, including her current therapist as well as legal and medical documents obtained by The Times. Dr. Ablow did not respond to attempts to speak with him directly, but his lawyer, Paul Cirel, issued a statement on his behalf, writing in an email that his client would not “breach the ethical/confidentiality standards of his profession” and comment further.

Earlier this year, Dr. Ablow referred to the claims Monique made in her legal complaint to the health department in New York as “groundless.” He has categorically denied all allegations of sexual misconduct against him that have come up in subsequent cases. And he has said, as he did with Monique, that to whatever extent he revealed personal information with patients, he did so in the effort to help them work through issues of psychological importance.

On Feb. 5 next year, a hearing will take place in Massachusetts that will ultimately determine the future status of Dr. Ablow’s medical license.

From the outset, Monique had inklings of doubt about Dr. Ablow, but she easily suppressed them. Her first meeting with him ended with a prescription for an antidepressant. Although she found it curious that he would administer drugs so quickly, she deferred to his approach.

The boundary between patient and doctor was permeable from the start. Dr. Ablow took Monique to a taping at Fox; he connected her with a literary agent when she wanted to write. On one occasion, she mentioned she was near his office with her dog. This was in Newburyport, where she still went for treatment on occasion, running up bills in local inns, in addition to seeing him in New York. She knew Dr. Ablow had expressed an interest in meeting her dog, and he briefly left a session with another patient to come outside and play with him, she said.

Their sessions had an improvisational, transgressive tone. According to her official complaint, Dr. Ablow twice wondered, for no apparent therapeutic purpose, whether Monique had genital piercings. At one point, when she was describing a conflict with her father, Dr. Ablow responded: “Why don’t you tell your father to come stick a gun in my face and see what happens.”

Money was an ongoing problem for Monique, and she eventually questioned why so much of her costly time in therapy was spent listening to Dr. Ablow talk about issues he confronted in his own life — that his sister was drawn to broken men, that his son did a lot of pacing.

These confidences nonetheless made Monique feel as though she held outsize status with Dr. Ablow. Which made it all the more painful for Monique when she felt dismissed by him — when he would arrive late for their sessions, she said, or text and email during them.

Any of these incidents might have given her pause, but it took what she regarded as an explicit act of cruelty to compel her to leave. Early on, Monique had told Dr. Ablow that she feared, above all, being physically trapped — imprisoned, taken somewhere and locked up.

Many months later, during a disagreement about something relatively minor, she said, Dr. Ablow suggested that he might have to hospitalize her. Hospitalizing a distraught psychiatric patient is not an unreasonable course in certain circumstances, but Monique was certain he was preying on her vulnerabilities.

“I couldn’t trust him after that,” Monique said.

When Keith Ablow was in medical school at Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s, after graduating from Brown, he hoped to become an ophthalmologist. It was a mentor at Hopkins who suggested psychiatry, recognizing someone profoundly curious about other people’s lives.

His ambition was evident early on. He wrote the first of his 16 books, “Medical School: Getting In, Staying In, Staying Human,’’ while he was still a student. A paperback edition featured a blurb from The New England Journal of Medicine.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Ablow was interviewed for a book, “In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists.’’ The author, Deborah Lott, had met him at a gathering of clinicians and found him to be insightful on the subject of boundaries and transference. Ms. Lott thought of him “as one of the good guys,’’ she said recently, “an advocate for women.”

Before his emergence at Fox, Dr. Ablow was a familiar presence on daytime talk shows, where he delivered advice with a brash compassion. Ms. Lott had lost track of him until his television appearances. As a Fox commentator, she said, his persona was radically different from the one she remembered. (A spokeswoman for Fox confirmed that Dr. Ablow’s contract was not renewed in 2017 and had no further comment.)

On TV, Dr. Ablow’s habit of diagnosing political leaders, particularly President Obama, who he believed suffered from abandonment issues that made him a weak leader, sparked criticism from a profession that maintains a fierce distaste for this sort of conjecture.

In 2014, Jeffrey Lieberman, chair of the psychiatry department at Columbia University, publicly denounced Dr. Ablow, who in turn responded with a clever press statement: “I am apparently joined by my nemesis Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman in rejecting the position that psychiatrists ought not comment on public figures. Lieberman condemned me as a ‘narcissistic self-promoter’ — yet he has never interviewed me.”

In November of that same year, Ms. Lott received a circumspect email from a young woman who had read her book and had questions about Dr. Ablow’s involvement. It was Monique. She was wondering what Dr. Ablow was doing in a book about boundaries. “She had no ax to grind,” Ms. Lott recalled, “other than trying to make sense out of what had happened.’’

Two years earlier, in 2012, Monique had outlined all of her allegations against Dr. Ablow in a lengthy complaint she made with New York State’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct, the agency empowered to suspend and revoke psychiatric licenses.

In these documents, she claimed that Dr. Ablow had crossed multiple boundaries, overwhelming her with details about himself — that he had been attracted to his children’s babysitters, for instance, and that his marriage was unfulfilling.

He asked her to coffee frequently. He encouraged her to move in with a female friend of his in Manhattan when Monique separated from her husband, only to later tell her that the roommate he recommended was “nuts.” He mentioned to Monique that he wanted to send a former all-star running back for the New York Giants to her as a patient. He also suggested that she date him.

At one point, while she was still seeing Dr. Ablow for regular therapy, he offered her a job with his life-coaching business. She took it, counseling people remotely. For a few months, she was both his patient and his employee.

In the course of her efforts to establish her own practice, Dr. Ablow encouraged Monique to move to Newburyport, which would be cheaper than New York.

She almost went through with it.

Monique had recently married a man after a four-year engagement, yet her ambivalence about him persisted. Dr. Ablow knew all about this. In fact, when she emailed him on the eve of her wedding, he gave her confounding advice. In his reply, he implicitly encouraged her to go through with it, at the same time remarking that marriage itself was “absurd.”

On the day she planned to move and leave her husband behind, in January 2011, a tremendous storm hit the Northeast. She decided to stay in New York, where she continued to see Dr. Ablow for another six months.

Once she made the decision to leave Dr. Ablow, Monique met with a Manhattan lawyer, Audrey Bedolis, who has concentrated in psychotherapeutic malpractice since the early 1990s.

Ms. Bedolis knew that cases without accusations of sexual misconduct, clear physical abuse or some other singular, dramatic incident are typically hard to litigate; she and her client eventually abandoned plans for a lawsuit. But Ms. Bedolis believed that the sheer volume of Dr. Ablow’s boundary trespasses would surely result in disciplinary action from state authorities.

In the dynamic between Monique and Dr. Ablow, Ms. Bedolis saw something all too familiar. Though she knew only Monique’s side of the story, it seemed to her a clear case of exploitation that, while it did not involve sex, was just as devastating. “First he medicated her when she never thought she should be medicated,’’ Ms. Bedolis said. “Then he lured her in as the only person who could help her.”

For several years, Monique waited to hear something from the conduct office in New York. In October 2017, the office finally wrote to say that it had found “insufficient evidence’’ to bring any charges of misconduct against Dr. Ablow.

One week after the New York board wrote to Monique saying that it would not sanction him, it sent a separate letter to Dr. Ablow, stating that in her case, he had failed to render proper care and treatment and that he prescribed medications inappropriately. He was told to refrain from boundary violations.

But there was no punishment for this; his license to practice psychiatry in New York remained in good standing.

This spring, however, based on Monique’s claims and the testimonies of four other female patients, as well as several former employees of Dr. Ablow’s, the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine ruled that Dr. Ablow practiced “in violation of law, regulations, and/or good and accepted medical practice.” As a result of that suspension, he consented to cease practice in New York, where a renewed investigation by the conduct office is underway.

Three of the women — like Monique, all young — told an investigator for the Massachusetts board that Dr. Ablow had become sexually involved with them during the course of their treatment. One of them said that he introduced her to sadomasochism and hit her with a belt during their encounters, exclaiming, “I own you.”

In a formal written response to the board, Dr. Ablow denied this, as well as the charges that he had been physically intimate with the other patients involved in the case.

In a statement issued in August, Dr. Ablow’s lawyer, Mr. Cirel, addressed the charges in a series of malpractice lawsuits brought against Dr. Ablow, which were settled out of court this year, as well as the allegations in the complaint to the state, writing: “We are pleased that the civil matters have been amicably resolved. Dr. Ablow can now focus his attention and resources on overturning the Board of Medicine’s order of temporary suspension, so that he can restore his medical license and resume helping patients into the future, as he has countless times in the past.”

Last winter, before the suits were settled, Dr. Ablow appeared on a Boston-area news show, where he addressed them and claimed to be a target of cancel culture. “A male, a public person and a Trump supporter,” Dr. Ablow said in the interview. “So am I surprised? Yeah. But shocked? No.”

In his rebuttal to the Massachusetts board, Dr. Ablow said that one of his accusers had a history of falsely accusing men of sexual misbehavior and that she had essentially confused what happened between them with the actions of a recurring character in his novels.

The documents filed in conjunction with Dr. Ablow’s suspension reveal something else as well — that in three separate instances in which his medical license came up for renewal in Massachusetts, between 2013 and 2017, he failed to notify the state that he was under investigation in New York. During the renewal process, an applicant is asked specifically if he or she is under investigation in a different state. Dr. Ablow said that he wasn’t.

After her time with Dr. Ablow, Monique was apprehensive about trusting a new therapist. Eventually she returned to the psychoanalyst she saw during her first year of graduate school, Robert Katz. Recently, she gave permission to Dr. Katz to speak about her experience with Dr. Ablow.

Monique entered treatment with him shaken by what had happened to her under Dr. Ablow’s care, he said. Dr. Katz viewed the boundary violations she described as a means of grooming her for a sexual relationship.

Of everything she brought up, Dr. Katz added, one detail stuck out most in his mind: that Dr. Ablow had suggested to Monique that she become an escort to earn the extra money she needed. (Dr. Ablow has denied ever saying this, and denied it again when another patient made the same claim.)

In recent years Monique has settled into a successful private practice (this is why she insisted on anonymity in exchange for participating in this article).

Still, even now, after all she has come to understand, she finds herself occasionally missing the connection she had with Dr. Ablow, longing again to experience how much she imagined she meant to him.

When a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker is barred from practicing, it does not necessarily mean that they are prevented from dispensing advice, in an office, for profit. Life-coaching is a career open to almost anyone; requiring no credentials, it is largely unregulated.

After the suspension of his license, Dr. Ablow repositioned himself. The Ablow Center for Mind and Soul in Newburyport identifies Dr. Ablow on its website as someone who “practiced psychiatry for over 25 years before developing his own life-coaching, mentoring and spiritual counseling system.” Over the summer, he took courses in pastoral counseling at Liberty University, the evangelical Christian college in Lynchburg, Va.

The Ablow Center is expanding its services, including free therapy for veterans once a month. It also announced an essay contest for high-school and college students considering a career in counseling.

Beyond that, visitors to the center’s website can find regular blog posts from Dr. Ablow, like a recent entry with the headline, “Why a Depression and Anxiety Consultant Could Be the Key to Recovering.”

For anyone “still’’ feeling anxious or low, Dr. Ablow had some wisdom: “It may have nothing to do with you,” he wrote, “and everything to do with the treatments being offered to you.”

______

Ginia Bellafante has served as a reporter, critic and, since 2011, as the Big City columnist. She began her career at The Times as a fashion critic, and has also been a television critic. She previously worked at Time magazine. @GiniaNYT

[poignantennui]

Are there cons to becoming vegan?

Hello there, fellow humans.

I am seriously considering the idea of becoming vegan, and I have some questions, so I would greatly appreciate it, if you could give me some advice or clarify some things.

Mostly my questions are about physical consequences of this lifestyle, and ingredients (animal by-products).

Why am I doing this? Well, I love chicken. Love it. My only default order at any new food place I go is whatever chicken option they have.

Even so, my first reason to go vegan is a conscious decision not to harm animals. I dont want any (more) chicken or pigs or goats to suffer and die because of my choices.

Confession: I used to think that veganism is very extreme, not eating eggs and milk, and though that vegetarian diet must be the most rational... Until (like, this week) I learned about the milk industry, that they dont let the calves drink their own moms' milk! How sick is that! Although, I foresee I will struggle with it, as I am a huge coffee with cream drinker, and I used to drink it with almond or coconut milk, untill I tried cream again, and well, I like it much better. Possible consequences for health are a major concern. One of my colleagues used not to eat meat ( along time ago, I learned about it post-factum) and she had problems with anemia, very low levels of iron, doctor ordered her to start eating meat, and it took her months and months to recover. And, you know, throwaway jokes on TV and movies like "I ate a burger last week and now i am not cold all the time anymore" (this was in the last season of Community) - is there truth in this? Second - I heard that there are benefits like skin improves and clears, also weight loss. My skin is not horrible, I manage it with skincare and regular visits to cosmetologist. Weightless would also be wonderful, as I am really overweight and so tired of it. When I only started hearing people's experiences after going vegan, it was all so positive, like the skin cleared in a matter of a week, and it helped with rapid weight loss. Although those are not my primary goals, but they would be nice. But, quite recently I started hearing about opposite of this - that somebody's skin didnt improve, but became worse, or that somebody, despite of being relatively thin before, gained weight... And I hear a lot about bloating. I am bloated a lot as it is, and it is not something that I want to joke about. Is this true, does this diet cause bloating?

Buying cruelty-free makeup is pretty self-explanatory, I think. I dont want any rabbit or a mouse or monkey to suffer shampoo in their eyes. NO. I will continue to use the stuff that I already bought, until I use it up, then I will do my best to find cruelty-free replacements to everything. Which I know will be hard. I live in Russia, cruelty free movement here is very small, practically unheard of (not to mistake with being vegan. There are vegans. But cruelty free is pretty new). If you ask a sales lady at a makeup counter if they have cruelty free stuff - you will get a blank stare. (Seriously I was once browsing some online store, while at work (which is ok) and my colleagues asked me what I was looking for? I said - i was looking for cruelty free brands, and he then was like "Are you nuts!?" like it was something wrong T_T.)

So, my questions are as follows:

1 - Does vegan diet actually cause bloating? And farts? I would love to hear genuine personal experience.

2 - Cruelty free makeup - am I supposed to look at brands as a whole, or is it allowed to look and individual ingredients of every product? I was just happy to find out that my deodorant (I dreaded the thought of having to find a cruelty free deo) turned out to be cruelty free, so I looked at the company's website, and in their FAQ it says that they dont test, but some of their stuff contain traces of milk protein and black caviar. Can I buy the stuff that just doesnt contain those, or not? Should I ban this brand from my shopping list?

3 - Again about cruelty free. I see there are parents companies and daughter companies, and sometimes there is Company A, a totally cruelty-free company, but then they sell out to a Company B that tests of animals. I think it's a grey area. On one hand, if you continue to but stuff from Company A, your money still goes to Company B. Nut on the other hand - if you buy only from Company A, and not from the Company B itself or any other Company c, J, H or whatever that tests on animals too - doesnt that send a message? 4 - I have relatives who live outside the city on their own land. It’s not really a farm, they just grow their own vegetables, and this year they happened to have their own chickens (they were sort of gifted) - can I eat their eggs? Would that be ethical?

Please, if you have something to say -  share your personal experience (especially if you have been vegan for a long time) and thoughts. If you have links to useful info about this - I would greatly appreciate it.

[rilenerocks]

Sometimes things just have to blow, out of nowhere, for no reason in particular. Internal seismic shifts. The other day started out innocently enough. In fact, it was a welcome relief from the previous one which was incredibly stressful. The events of that day began  with a morning email from my mortgage company, telling me I’d filed legally incorrect documents. As I’d completed them myself with no lawyer, I got seriously worried. The bank’s underwriters turned out to be wrong, but still. Not the most relaxing way to start the morning. Then I got a truly disturbing phone call from a friend who’s suffering from intractable depression which has thus far been unresponsive to pharmaceutical intervention. Behaving way beyond my pay grade, I managed to find at least some temporary intervention for him by using my powers of persuasion on his primary doctor. But I know my limits and I was edging past them. I was seriously afraid and uncomfortable. Next up was having some truly beloved people stop by my house, people who were visiting from a coronavirus hotspot in this country. And they have been only sporadically wearing masks. What a dilemma. Contact or no contact? Did I get exposed? No one we love and who love us wants to deliberately harm us. But we can’t possibly know who’s quietly carrying the virus, nor whether we’ll be the ones who wind up with the life-threatening aspects of this disease. When will this pressure end? Not for a long time, apparently, when the public’s responses to the threat are so disparate. Then the guests used the toilet where the seat, unbeknownst to them had been hanging by a thread. When they left, I went in to the bathroom to sanitize and found the seat hopelessly broken. Groan. I ordered a new one that I could pick up without going into a store. I picked it up, went home and took everything apart.  The new one was the wrong size. The day just kept going. I got a huge painful splinter in the bottom of my foot and I couldn’t get part of it out. Later, another friend wrote me from the ER where her teenaged son was in some inexplicable digestive agony. He was released without having a Covid19 test which made me nuts. My youngest grandson swallowed Legos. I couldn’t wait for bedtime. Just one of those wake ups you’d rather forget.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!

1:40 PM · Jul 6, 2020

444.3K

158.7K people are

In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!

The next day started with Trump’s  unhinged comments on opening U.S. schools in the fall, including the threat of cutting federal funding to them if they choose to put their students’ health ahead of his re-election objectives. This infuriating drivel in the midst of the accelerated rate of Covid19 infection in this country wasn’t what I needed after the previous day’s irritations. So I made my way out to my backyard and my tiny pool which is my current substitute for the swimming I so desperately miss right now. 

I slipped my headphones on, put my feet in the water and focused on relaxing. After a short time, I felt the familiar deep rumbling of that seismic shift I was talking about, the one associated with the deep grief I still feel over Michael’s death and the inconsolable sense of loneliness connected only with him. So the wailing burst from me in a series of mini-convulsions that are shocking in their physicality. I’ve learned that there’s nothing to do but let them complete their cycle until I’m left at the end, exhausted, with not much left inside. These don’t happen that frequently any more but I expect they’ll be my companions intermittently for the rest of my life. Big consuming love comes with the expense of its absence. I wouldn’t trade away any of it. My approach was always and remains, full speed ahead, embracing the euphoric and wonderful along with the gaping hole and the despair. Yes. Full speed ahead.

I was pretty spent but took a stroll around the garden where there’s always something to lighten the mood. I decided to try staying away from the news which is never an easy choice for me. One day off won’t hurt anything. I was going to focus on finding some laughter and lightness. Maybe the stars were aligned for me because when I went inside to seek a television line-up, often a wasteland for me, there were  some serendipitous options for a change. I mean, really, does Gladiator have to be playing every single night for seven straight days? Or Kevin Costner’s pathetic excuse for a Robin Hood film when everyone knows the Errol Flynn one from the 1930’s is the best?

I was lucky enough to find Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’ve always found that movie really funny. This scene, filmed in my hometown of Chicago, never fails to make me smile.

That was followed by the fabulous screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Good acting and great writing hold up over decades and I’m so glad I know how to yank myself out of a dark space using old reliable films.

I finished my mental rehab with the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera. Sometimes slapstick works and sometimes it doesn’t, but ridiculous zingers and mad physical antics worked like a tonic for me. All in all, fairly easy ways to revive myself after a big slump. For the rest of the night, I cut myself some slack and just let my mind wander. I started thinking about the different television shows I watched when I was growing up.

There was Lassie, Fury, My Friend Flicka and Annie Oakley. I was always partial to animals and Westerns. I often have conversations with my daughter about how much tv time is too much time for kids these days. Maybe the level of sophisticated technology and the dynamic relationship between the person and the device is really different from how sitting in front of the tube was back in the day. But I certainly watched a lot of shows. And I didn’t get lazy or stupid. I read a lot of books, too. But I suspect there were people in my generation for whom that sedentary part of their lives had adverse effects.  Maybe the difference between now and then really isn’t that dramatic. Or maybe I just feel like being optimistic and naive for awhile. Truthfully, it’s a welcome relief to being grounded in today’s dystopian reality.

I realized that I’ve been so intent on the pandemic, its effect on the foreseeable future and the constraints I’m wrestling with, that I hadn’t gone out in several days to look up. The clouds and skies are always so interesting and soothing for me. So I got back with the program. I was glad I did. Later, when I discussed what I’d felt like on the lousy day with my daughter, I told her that fundamentally, I thought I’d been doing pretty well under the circumstances. Ever the nihilist, she told me she agreed that for a person who was living alone, in a seemingly endless lockdown, with perhaps this current Groundhog Day life being the way my old age  would end, I was doing fantastic. I have to say, her comment made me roar with laughter. I’ve risen from the depths again. As I said, full speed ahead. Maybe to nowhere, but whatever.

  Full Steam Ahead Sometimes things just have to blow, out of nowhere, for no reason in particular. Internal seismic shifts.

[rilenerocks]

Sometimes things just have to blow, out of nowhere, for no reason in particular. Internal seismic shifts. The other day started out innocently enough. In fact, it was a welcome relief from the previous one which was incredibly stressful. The events of that day began  with a morning email from my mortgage company, telling me I’d filed legally incorrect documents. As I’d completed them myself with no lawyer, I got seriously worried. The bank’s underwriters turned out to be wrong, but still. Not the most relaxing way to start the morning. Then I got a truly disturbing phone call from a friend who’s suffering from intractable depression which has thus far been unresponsive to pharmaceutical intervention. Behaving way beyond my pay grade, I managed to find at least some temporary intervention for him by using my powers of persuasion on his primary doctor. But I know my limits and I was edging past them. I was seriously afraid and uncomfortable. Next up was having some truly beloved people stop by my house, people who were visiting from a coronavirus hotspot in this country. And they have been only sporadically wearing masks. What a dilemma. Contact or no contact? Did I get exposed? No one we love and who love us wants to deliberately harm us. But we can’t possibly know who’s quietly carrying the virus, nor whether we’ll be the ones who wind up with the life-threatening aspects of this disease. When will this pressure end? Not for a long time, apparently, when the public’s responses to the threat are so disparate. Then the guests used the toilet where the seat, unbeknownst to them had been hanging by a thread. When they left, I went in to the bathroom to sanitize and found the seat hopelessly broken. Groan. I ordered a new one that I could pick up without going into a store. I picked it up, went home and took everything apart.  The new one was the wrong size. The day just kept going. I got a huge painful splinter in the bottom of my foot and I couldn’t get part of it out. Later, another friend wrote me from the ER where her teenaged son was in some inexplicable digestive agony. He was released without having a Covid19 test which made me nuts. My youngest grandson swallowed Legos. I couldn’t wait for bedtime. Just one of those wake ups you’d rather forget.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!

1:40 PM · Jul 6, 2020

444.3K

158.7K people are

In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!

The next day started with Trump’s  unhinged comments on opening U.S. schools in the fall, including the threat of cutting federal funding to them if they choose to put their students’ health ahead of his re-election objectives. This infuriating drivel in the midst of the accelerated rate of Covid19 infection in this country wasn’t what I needed after the previous day’s irritations. So I made my way out to my backyard and my tiny pool which is my current substitute for the swimming I so desperately miss right now. 

I slipped my headphones on, put my feet in the water and focused on relaxing. After a short time, I felt the familiar deep rumbling of that seismic shift I was talking about, the one associated with the deep grief I still feel over Michael’s death and the inconsolable sense of loneliness connected only with him. So the wailing burst from me in a series of mini-convulsions that are shocking in their physicality. I’ve learned that there’s nothing to do but let them complete their cycle until I’m left at the end, exhausted, with not much left inside. These don’t happen that frequently any more but I expect they’ll be my companions intermittently for the rest of my life. Big consuming love comes with the expense of its absence. I wouldn’t trade away any of it. My approach was always and remains, full speed ahead, embracing the euphoric and wonderful along with the gaping hole and the despair. Yes. Full speed ahead.

I was pretty spent but took a stroll around the garden where there’s always something to lighten the mood. I decided to try staying away from the news which is never an easy choice for me. One day off won’t hurt anything. I was going to focus on finding some laughter and lightness. Maybe the stars were aligned for me because when I went inside to seek a television line-up, often a wasteland for me, there were  some serendipitous options for a change. I mean, really, does Gladiator have to be playing every single night for seven straight days? Or Kevin Costner’s pathetic excuse for a Robin Hood film when everyone knows the Errol Flynn one from the 1930’s is the best?

I was lucky enough to find Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’ve always found that movie really funny. This scene, filmed in my hometown of Chicago, never fails to make me smile. That was followed by the fabulous screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Good acting and great writing hold up over decades and I’m so glad I know how to yank myself out of a dark space using old reliable films. I finished my mental rehab with the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera. Sometimes slapstick works and sometimes it doesn’t, but ridiculous zingers and mad physical antics worked like a tonic for me. All in all, fairly easy ways to revive myself after a big slump. For the rest of the night, I cut myself some slack and just let my mind wander. I started thinking about the different television shows I watched when I was growing up.

There was Lassie, Fury, My Friend Flicka and Annie Oakley. I was always partial to animals and Westerns. I often have conversations with my daughter about how much tv time is too much time for kids these days. Maybe the level of sophisticated technology and the dynamic relationship between the person and the device is really different from how sitting in front of the tube was back in the day. But I certainly watched a lot of shows. And I didn’t get lazy or stupid. I read a lot of books, too. But I suspect there were people in my generation for whom that sedentary part of their lives had adverse effects.  Maybe the difference between now and then really isn’t that dramatic. Or maybe I just feel like being optimistic and naive for awhile. Truthfully, it’s a welcome relief to being grounded in today’s dystopian reality.

I realized that I’ve been so intent on the pandemic, its effect on the foreseeable future and the constraints I’m wrestling with, that I hadn’t gone out in several days to look up. The clouds and skies are always so interesting and soothing for me. So I got back with the program. I was glad I did. Later, when I discussed what I’d felt like on the lousy day with my daughter, I told her that fundamentally, I thought I’d been doing pretty well under the circumstances. Ever the nihilist, she told me she agreed that for a person who was living alone, in a seemingly endless lockdown, with perhaps this current Groundhog Day life being the way my old age  would end, I was doing fantastic. I have to say, her comment made me roar with laughter. I’ve risen from the depths again. As I said, full speed ahead. Maybe to nowhere, but whatever.

  Full Steam Ahead Sometimes things just have to blow, out of nowhere, for no reason in particular. Internal seismic shifts.