Finding Meaning

The Spiritual Power of Depression By Elizabeth O’Brien, LPC-S “Depression Hurts.” This clever tagline was used for years by a pharmaceutical company hawking a particular anti-depressant, or SSRI, and the medication in question allegedly ameliorated not only the despair and fatigue of depression but also the actual physical aches and pains that often accompany it. Many patients swore by it, still do. In fact, there are a host of such SSRI and other anti-depressant drugs on the

By Elizabeth O’Brien, LPC-S A year ago, my right hip had become so painful that I was reduced to walking with a cane. This was after months of limping, hoping the condition would resolve. I am an avid dog-walker, and log 2-4 miles in my neighborhood daily. I was desperate to avoid surgery, but determined to keep walking. I had been hearing about a speciality gym in downtown Austin called Central Athlete, where several people I knew—many with injuries—worked out, extolling the

Armadillo By Elizabeth O’Brien, LPC-S I was already feeling fragile, having slept fitfully, rattled by disturbing dreams. Some part of me couldn’t shake a feeling of dread. I forced myself into my morning ritual, firing up my IPad, New York Times app, coffee by my side. The top story hit me in the face: a German airline crash, in which 150 innocent people had died when the plane slammed into a mountain. A young German co-pilot, it seemed, had deliberately downed the plane. T

By Elizabeth O’Brien, M.A., LPC I waited 20 years to get a dog again. After growing up with dogs in my home town of Memphis, taking on such a commitment after I left home was too much for my chaotic, itinerant life: college in Knoxville, TN, first jobs in Miami, all-consuming career and cramped apartments in New York City. I knew, from my mother’s example, what having a dog entailed. So I waited. Finally, in 1995, when my family was comfortably ensconced in Austin and my youn

Buffett Leigh O'Brien Dogs of Our Dreams I have always loved dogs. In almost every snapshot of me as a child, I am clutching a squirming puppy in my chubby arms or trailing after one of my black, flop-eared Cocker Spaniels. Teddy and Tim, father and son, were the definitive dogs of my early life. They accompanied me everywhere I ventured in my midtown Memphis neighborhood—to friends’ backyards, to the patch of woods behind David Brown’s house, to the playground attached to ou