Author: Dr. Kayta Gajdos

I grew up in a New Jersey mill town that was literally a stone’s throw across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. It may have been South Jersey, but it was not the south, yet when I was young, my mother told me stories about the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses on lawns when she was young. Their bigotry extended beyond hatred of blacks and Jews to…

Anybody remember “Dragnet,” a TV program from the 1950s? Okay, you’d have to be pretty old to remember Sgt. Joe Friday, portrayed by actor Jack Webb, saying dryly to a witness or victim of crime, “All we want are the facts, ma’am.” Facts often take a backseat to ingrained mindsets or belief systems. However, with a change of perspective, a new understanding can be achieved.…

I was probably a first-grader standing in line waiting to be dismissed from school at the end of the day when I muttered to myself, “I could hit that sister in the head for giving us so much homework.” The tattletale in front of me ran up to the teacher and blurted out, “Sister, Sister, Kathy wants to cut your head off!” With that, Sister…

Do you lie? Have you ever lied? You lie if you say you never have. Everyone, even a toddler, has lied sometime, somewhere. Our ability to lie goes hand in hand with our wanting to trust others. “Our capacity for dishonesty is as fundamental to us as our need to trust others, which ironically makes us terrible at detecting lies,” says Yudhijit Bhattacharjee (“Why We…

The West has suffered vast forest fires and now the East Coast is being pummeled with hurricanes bringing massive flooding. Meanwhile, not so far from Boston, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and neighboring towns, a domino effect of gas explosions rippled through. The result of this catastrophe has been one death, numerous injuries, houses burnt down and thousands yet unable to return to their homes. From one…

Labor Day weekend has passed. The journey into Fall has begun: school starts; vacations end; pools close: the pumpkins lay in fields like so many orange basketballs and apples ripen for the harvest. Eschewing the beach, I spent the long weekend at a meditation retreat in the Hudson River Valley. The leader of this event was Jack Kornfield, not only a Buddhist master but also…

ACE here is not the winning card. Adverse Childhood Experiences “are any stressful or traumatic events that occurred in childhood.” The experiences include sexual and physical abuse and neglect, but also household and family dysfunction, such as witnessing domestic violence or substance abuse. Adverse events also include parental separation, divorce, or parental incarcerations. Emotional abuse or neglect, including separation, appear to be a significant as…

Many years ago, early in my career in Pittsburgh, a handsome and charming man came to my office to begin the process of a custody evaluation. He was a high-profile professional in a large corporation. Despite his appearance and his impeccable credentials, his demeanor and words worried me. Whatever it was he said as he walked out the door got me to thinking, “This man…

Did you know that people who reside in neighborhoods that are racially diverse are “more likely to help friends, neighbors, and strangers?” According to a study reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people in racially diverse urban areas tweet more about pro-social ideas, such as helpfulness and charity. It was also found that those who live in racially diverse neighborhoods are more able…

Family systems psychiatrist Murray Bowen noted years ago the phenomenon of change back/push back in a family system when an individual in the system starts to shake up the status quo. This shift is in the service of higher integration and greater awareness. However, our tribal primal inclinations of the family want to keep the individual in check and not be so “different.” In my first…