Conclusion of Wednesday's column.

Dr .Phil.: “If you want confidence, you have to take on a confident posture. This can be as simple as putting more confidence in your walk and in your demeanor.”

Dr.Hurd.: Confidence comes from something much deeper than changing your walking style. You can’t fake confidence. Confidence comes from a sense that your mind is effective and capable; and that you deserve to experience good things by using your mind effectively and capably, and from living a rational, self-responsible existence. If you haven’t been feeling, thinking and acting this way, then walking straight and proud isn’t going to do it.

D.P.: “You teach people how to treat you.” 

Readers of The Daily Dose of Reason and Life’s a Beach have repeatedly asked for Dr. Hurd’s opinions of celebrity psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw, popularly known as “Dr. Phil.” Here, Dr. Hurd replies to some of Dr. Phil’s comments as they appear in the famed psychologist’s own words, based on his website and interviews over the years.

Dr. Phil.: “You will not solve your relationship problems by becoming more alike in your thinking. Men and women are wired differently. Attempting to blur your fundamentally different viewpoints is unnatural and even dangerous.”

Dear Dr. Hurd: I have been unemployed for four years as a result of a combination of abnormal circumstance (a health problem in conjunction with the depressed economy). As the length of time that I've been unemployed increases, my odds of finding a job seem to decrease, trapping me in a death spiral of chronic unemployment. A relative who is a small business owner has offered to compose a fake resume and provide a fake reference stating that I've been working for her during all the years that I've been unemployed. I do not believe that I can accept this offer since I would be lying to prospective employers to trick them into giving me a job that they would not give me otherwise. Do you agree? Is there any circumstance under which I can justify taking such an offer?

Dr. Hurd's reply: Let's walk through what would happen, if you took such an offer.

You lie on your resume. And then you're hired, based on those lies. Immediately, you have a double burden in the new job. One, you have to prove yourself in the new job, as would be the case in any new job. Two, you have to maintain the lie. You have to remember that there are, in a sense, "two realities." One is the truth, and the other is the truth as you presented it. You must never slip up and forget both of these. In addition to doing the job well, you have to do a good job of preserving the fraud. 

A reader writes: How can I overcome my fear of flying? When I’m on an airplane, every little bit of turbulence makes me jump. It’s not so much that I’m afraid of terrorism as I am of the possibility of incompetent mechanics on the ground who maintain the aircraft, or cost-cutting CEOs of the airline who would send an older airplane with maintenance problems up into the sky rather than spend money on a newer one. I realize that without flying I will never get to go anywhere very interesting, so I’d like to hear your advice.

Dr. Hurd replies:

Everything has a price. A candy bar costs fifty cents. A car costs twenty or thirty thousand dollars. A house costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just as objects have financial costs, choices we make have emotional or psychological costs. Marriage, for example, means having less control over your independent living in exchange, hopefully, for the presence of a wonderful level of intimacy and compatibility in your life.