Navigating the C’s of Resilience

February 20, 2023By DrCortmanUncategorized No Comments

Article written for the Venice Gondolier’s Well Being in Paradise Magazine | November/December 2022 Brianna was not supposed to live. The fallout from the car accident included a severed aortic valve, a collapsed lung, four broken ribs and several crushed vertebrae. Three surgeries and two months of inpatient hospitalization was only the beginning of her … Read More

Baseball Is Life

September 10, 2022By DrCortmanUncategorized No Comments

Article written for the Venice Gondolier’s Well Being in Paradise Magazine | September/October 2022 Unless you are a big fan of 11 and under baseball, you don’t know Tony Lujan. Allow me to introduce you. Back in the day, Tony was a starter on the Sarasota High School national championship team (1989). A son of … Read More

Psychotherapy, Psychiatry Can Work Together

July 10, 2022By DrCortmanUncategorized No Comments

Article written for the Venice Gondolier’s Well Being in Paradise Magazine | July/August 2022 Having been licensed as a psychologist for 36+ years now (since I was five), it’s easy to reflect back on a wonderful career of maintaining interesting and sometimes naughty secrets for the good people of Venice. My current tally is somewhere … Read More

The Power of the Mind Part 3

July 10, 2022By DrCortmanUncategorized No Comments

Article written for the Venice Gondolier’s Well Being in Paradise Magazine | May/June 2022 If you’ve read the first two parts of this article – you share a select group of three, with this author and his mother – you may remember that we create our emotions by how we perceive the world. Likewise, you … Read More

Rational Thoughts About Irrational Thinking

March 10, 2022By DrCortmanUncategorized No Comments

Article written for the Venice Gondolier’s Well Being in Paradise Magazine | March/April 2022 In part one of this article, we celebrated the life of Dr. Aaron Beck, who passed away several months ago, shortly after turning 100. As a pioneer of cognitive/behavioral therapy (CBT), Dr. Beck contributed greatly to what is now considered a … Read More

The Power of the Mind

January 17, 2022By DrCortmanUncategorized 1 Comment

Article written for the Venice Gondolier’s Well Being in Paradise Magazine | January/February 2022 Unless you are a mental health professional, you probably have never heard of Aaron Beck. Dr. Beck died last month at the ripe old age of 100, or as we like to say in Venice, “middle-age“. Far be it for a … Read More

Teaching Resilience

November 13, 2021By DrCortmanUncategorized No Comments

Article written for the Venice Gondolier’s Well Being in Paradise Magazine | November/December 2021 A child’s father leaves home and takes up with another woman and her family, leaving the child to feel abandoned, replaced, hardened. A man is encouraged to resign from his job after 26 years of service. His lack of technical skills … Read More

The Top 10 Habits of Chronically Unhappy People

September 22, 2021By DrCortmanUncategorized No Comments

By: Dr. Christopher Cortman What creates unhappiness? Your attitude, beliefs—the way you explain the world to yourself—and your behavioral choices. Unhappiness is toxic. In truth, even the world’s happiest person would soon plummet like a rock in water were they to think and behave like those who are chronically unhappy. Let’s explore the characteristics, attitudes … Read More

A Handful of ACEs Part Deux

July 14, 2021By DrCortmanUncategorized 2 Comments

Article written for the Venice Gondolier’s Well Being in Paradise Magazine | July/August 2021 In part one of this article, I painted a frightening picture of Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) and how detrimental they can be to the individual in the short term and even much later in life. Admittedly, it was a rather depressing … Read More