Jayson Blair

The “Perfect” Coach For Your Boy* Maggie Avedisian, Ph.D. Clinical Child Psychologist This is the first post in a series of guest contributions on coaching children by Dr. Maggie Avedisian sees adults, couples, children and adolescents as a psychologist in private practice at Ashburn Psychological Services . With doctorate and post-doctorate specializations in both clinical and developmental ps ychology, Dr. Avedisian is also the proud mom of two athletic superstars. She can be reached at (703) 723-2999 or by email . As each Fall athletic season begins and boys are recruited into (or placed onto) various school and county leagues, my voicemail and e-mail Inbox receive an inevitab le bombardment of concerns fr om pare nts about the “best coach.” Parents often have the same concern season-upon-season: “My sons’ coach is mean and I don’t think he can succeed with someone mean;” “His self-esteem is being harmed ;” and of course, “What should we do?” I rarely hear fro...

My friend and colleague, Dr. Maggie Avedisian, a clinical psychologist, recently asked for some thoughts on what makes a good athletic coach. Since I work with a number of teenagers, I gave Dr. Avedisian this advice for a blog article she's writing for parents on identifying good coaches and for athletic coaches on how to improve their work with their students: A good coach should recognize that winning is not everything and that the process of trying is where young people develop, build their self-confidence, recognize their talents and learn to cope with their weaknesses. Coaching is a process of teaching skills, helping people develop intuition and self-awareness and building character. Coaches should seek to understand and motivate their players. In a one-on-one setting this is easier to do, but in a group setting coaches can teach people to lead and should help their players coach each other. The best coach teaches life skills along with sports skills. Motivating b...

Quotations are the last refuge of the intellectually lazy -- but they beat trying to think of something pithy of your own -- and this one is one of those classic quotes that I share with my high school and college students who are struggling with becoming more mature. Clichés have resonance because they reflect underlying truth, and when it comes to the fulfilling, fraught, fun-filled, fertile, formative and fluctuating, world of growing up you can't say it much better. "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and B acon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books." Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote this in an essay I have on my shelf at home, where he eviscerates those who would become bookworms, instead of using and abusing books, as they learn and in life, and as an ode to the power of creation and its link to action. In the last thre...

In advance, the moral of this story is not that there is nothing that some helping hands and a little Ativan can't cure. Although, its a good combination. The experiences of a client with bipolar disorder responded me of the importance of having people in your life -- peer support -- who understand through firsthand experience what it has been like to walk in your shoes. This -- the notion that having help from someone who understands from their own experience can make a difference -- is a common mantra in the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance of Northern Virginia groups and has become a tool in the vast arsenal at Ashburn Psychological Services . Bipolar disorder usually presents itself in one of three forms: full-blown mania, hypomania and depression. In the depressed and manic states, some experience psychotic symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations. Two less common presentations of bipolar are rapid cycling, where an individual shifts from mania to depression in ...

In my own therapy, three years ago, my therapist handed me a passage from a book after I had been struck by a series of losses. I turned to the same passage today after a week that was filled with several punishing and piercing losses for someone close to me that shook the moors of my faith that I truly believe that which is so logical, a notion that I intellectually conceded decades ago, but that my mental and physical reaction this week told me that I truly have not let go of in my heart -- that I cannot protect, even those I love the most, from harm. From Judith Viorst 's Necessary Losses : When we think of loss we think of the loss, through death, of people we love. But loss is a far more encompassing theme in our life. For we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of roman...

Just finished reading "The Gift of Therapy" by the noted psychiatrist and therapist, Irvin Yalom, MD . I had read Dr. Yalom's writings on group psychotherapy and his hilarious and poignant case studies in the book "Love's Executioner." "The Gift of Therapy" is a well-written look at case studies that form an open letter to today's therapists. As soon as I finished the book, I passed it on to a gifted client who is in graduate school, preparing to become a therapist. There is no more interesting writer in the field of psychotherapy than Dr. Yalom. He is a gifted storyteller with a wonderful mind that can easily analyze an individual client and the broader issues in the industry. What strikes me about Dr. Yalom is both how he truly belongs to no school of therapy -- cognitive behavioral or insight-oriented or psychodynamic , for example -- but instead has an amazing ability to pick and choose different elements of each school to create a uniq...

I don't write much these days about my own past unless it has some relevance to the work I'm doing to help people now as a life coach and through the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance-Northern Virginia . But, for those of you have e-mailed with questions about the role that bipolar disorder played in my previous life, I should say that it did not cause my problems, mania and depression just added fuel to a fire that was already burning bright. You can read more in my book "Burning Down My Masters' House: A Personal Descent into Madness that Shook The New York Times" or you can read the free, cliff-notes version at The New York Times Company's About.com website article called "Jayson Blair has Bipolar Disorder."