Michael Mantell

Dr. Michael Mantell

Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. is a retired psychologist, best-selling author, international speaker, and a highly sought after cognitive behavioral coach whose actionable, valuable and practical work has been featured on Fox News, ABC-TV, NBC-TV, CBS-TV, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post. He has been teaching how Torah’s wisdom can lead to optimal living for many decades. You can follow him on Facebook and in other social media, where he has posted the #MantellDaily5 everyday for years.

His books, available on Amazon, include:

Remember ‘Work-life balance?’

COVID-19 has tossed into the deep blue sea many of the concerns and values, not that long ago that we once held dear. For example, remember that catchy “work-life balance” concept that management consultants made small fortunes from rushing on to stages to teach everyone how to attain? Then remember when that wasn’t selling so much, so they changed it to “work-life integration”? Be careful what you teach…we are now way past “integration” and many are inundated with “work-life intermingling.” [Michael R. Mantell, PhD]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell

If It’s Not One Pandemic, It’s Another

Whether you call it “mysophobia,” “germophobia,” “bacillophobia,” or “bacteriophobia,” pandemic fever has got lots of people just plain scared of contact with dirt, germs, other people, and even their own hands. These particular pathological fears are commonly associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, today in 2020 or at any time, including 2009 when I first began writing about pandemics. It seems if anxiety or depression run in families, people are more likely to experience these unhealthy fears. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell

Why manage what you can prevent?

Debilitating fatigue, jackhammer headaches, hypertension, weight gain, a weakened immune system, gastrointestinal symptoms, vice-like muscle tension, boiling anger, frozen anxiety, “I give up” depression and yes, even impaired sex drive—these are some of the stress-related costs to your wellbeing. Why manage what you can prevent during this time, or any time? [Michael Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell

Especially during pandemic, we must avoid lashon hara

Once again, with open eyes, we can see the weekly parasha coming with contemporary lessons to help us live better. Parashat Tazria – Metzorah focuses on our physical wellbeing and a specific disfiguring infectious disease, tzara’at, or what has come to be seen as leprosy. The first parasha deals with the infliction while the second deals with the purification process. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Mantell

Why your life hangs on this ‘essential business’

Don’t you just love the current pandemic gobbledygook? Reading too much of it can be harmful to you. Phrases like “social distancing,” “flattening the curve,” “frontline warriors,” and “quarantine,” just spin up frightful emotions. One that’s caught my attention is “essential business.” Today, it’s all about opening these “essential businesses” as quickly as possible. In this, my 31st daily emotional education piece, I will focus on an unusual essential business, yet one that’s always been quintessential and indispensable for living well. I believe our lives hang on this essential business. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell

How to cultivate rational living

Abert Ellis, Ph.D. believed that when we cultivate our ability to live by “rational principles,” we will likely experience positive emotions and satisfaction of our life’s goals.
We have a choice. If we choose to live with irrational thinking governing our lives, with high negative emotionality, dogmatic, rigid beliefs, we are in a very real sense, electing to suffer. We irrationally think about adversities by expressing our preferences and desires, our hopes and wishes, as demands, shoulds, commands, and musts. “Because I want to be able to socialize freely and get back to work and return to my gym, I MUST be able to!” [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell

Succeed or Recede. You CAN’T?

Perhaps you’re exasperated with many of the behavior and habit change schemes aimed at helping you overcome these types of demoralizing thoughts. Diets, exercise programs, meditation practices, gratitude journals, medication, the latest “therapy” procedures, vacations and even drugs and/or alcohol. Nothing helps, right? Perhaps you’ve got a bit too much “nah” going on. “Never accepting hope.” OK, OK, had to get at least one acronym in this article. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell

CRAFT SEEDS for well-being

Can you think of anything that you disturb and harm yourself with more than your persistent negativity? Negativity eradicates whatever energy you’ve got left while sheltering-at-home. It diverts indispensable attention that you need to even hope to achieve goals that you have (you DO have goals, right?). And, of course, it weakens your overall morale.  Oh, and your gray sky, cloudy outlook that kills any rainbow? Well, that similarly pollutes those close to you as well. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell

Helping children’s emotions through COVID19

In this installment of my emotional education series aimed at helping readers live healthier through COVID19, I’m going to focus on younger children, a group that is often left out of our focus. This one finding alone from Roberto Olivardia, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, is why paying attention to youngsters now is especially important. He reported that as many as 1% of children may suffer from “maskaphobia,” a fear that continues for longer than six months. While usually thought of in relation to costumes and superheroes, in today’s mask-filled streets it is linked to COVID19. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell, Science, Medicine, & Education

The silence of Aaron from a pandemic perspective

We are living through the most emotionally taxing time of our lives. Filled with loss, economic instability, fear and isolation, we are asked to live up to the test with faith, strength, emunah and bitachon. This week’s parasha, Shemini, follows a Passover holiday that surely gave new meaning to the question, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” It presents us with the abrupt, heart-rending, seemingly inexplicable loss, the passing of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Mantell