There’s no doubt that Lindsay Lohan has dealt with many issues during her life so far — difficult parents, alcohol and drug problems, questioning her sexual preference. This week, we’ve started to see the makings of a downward spiral: a ridiculous lawsuit against E-Trade over the name “Lindsay” in a commercial, partying in Paris and the news that she’s on hiatus from her publicist. Can she turn her life around? We asked therapist Dr. Gilda Carle to weigh in.

From what we’ve seen in the press recently, what is the biggest issue that Lindsay is dealing with right now?

She believes that all things revolve around her. This is absolutely ridiculous. Like no one else is allowed to be named Lindsay.

Do you think she is making these decisions on her own, or is she being egged on by those around her?

She’s being urged on by allt hese characters around her that may not have her best interests in mind. Someone has to let her know that this is ridiculous.

What would you advise Lindsay to do at this point?

I would tell her to ask herself: What is the most important thing in your life right now? What goals do you have? What do you look forward to when you wake up in the morning? Based upon what she is saying — whether she believes everyone should cow-tow to her or not — then I could tell her what to do next. I think she needs to get some career goals and make them her priority. Her life as it is now is not sustainable.

Can she refocus her life at this point?

She has to decide what she really wants to refocus on. She can’t be partying at night and looking for jobs during the day and maintain a good reputation. She needs to start getting serious about something professionally.

Lindsay’s parents haven’t been very good role models for her. What can she do about that now?

A lot of people haven’t had those role models, and they need to reestablish those role models for themselves as they get older. She’s going to have to find different role models that can work for her in other ways in her life.

Lindsay has also tried dating both women and men. Do you think she’ll ever be able to decide which she prefers?

It’s not uncommon for people like Lindsay to try dating both sexes. She’s so confused, she doesn’t even have her gender preferences straight. It’s not unusual for someone who is hurt by one sex to want to hook up with the other sex, but she has to make a decision about which she wants to be with eventually.

Can Lindsay be helped?

She needs to spend a lot of time in a therapeutic environment with people who care about her and want to help her in way she can understand. She needs help from a third party therapist, who can give an impartial opinion, someone who is not involved in that family. This life is not working for her at all.

Learn more about Dr. Gilda at drgilda.com.

(Photo by WENN.com)

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As Oscar night approached, it was a widely held belief that Christoph Waltz would take the Best Supporting Actor statuette for Inglourious Basterds. The belief was so widely held, in fact, that Supporting Actor nominees Matt Damon and Stanley Tucci had an email bet going about who could pull the best face during the post-envelope-reading reaction shots of the losers.

“I was glad to be nominated, but I knew I wasn’t going to win,” Matt told Parade while promoting his new movie, Green Zone. “There’s no pressure because you know you’re not going to have to make a speech. But you don’t want to look upset when you don’t get the award. I e-mailed my fellow nominee Stanley Tucci and suggested we have a contest to see who could look more magnanimous when Christoph Waltz won. I liked my close-up.”

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It’s heartening watching Nicole Richie on last night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. We’ve known for a while now that Nicole’s back on the straight and narrow, but her confidence really comes across in interviews. It’s easy to see how different her life is now — and not just by looking at how healthy and happy she looks. When Nicole told Jimmy she was taking flying lessons, Jimmy joked about how she’s had trouble with driving in the past (that notorious 2006 DUI). Nicole laughed and joked about it herself — clearly she’s at a new stage in her life now, and can look back at her past behavior as a more mature adult. Compare and contrast Nicole with Britney Spears, on the other hand — now there are two former party girls whose lives took very different turns. What’s the difference? Why is Britney still struggling to gain control of her life, while Nicole is clearly succeeding?

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It was Labor Day Weekend on Real Housewives last night, and there was no time for relaxation — just drama stirred up women who do nothing all day but plan charity galas, inject Botox and talk smack.

Basically, the episode was painfully glorious and had us on the edge of our discount tomato-red loveseat.

The Housewives were divided into two Labor Day camps: Those that chose to dine at Ramona and Mario’s Hamptons manse (Alex and Simon, Bethenny and Jason) and those that opted to hang out with the single and lonely Countess at her country home (Jill, Kelly and Jill’s husband Bobby). The claws were out and the talk was vicious. Jill hates former BFF Bethenny for saying she needed a hobby; Bethenny wonders why Jill can’t just be happy for her now that she’s in love with her new man. This is why Jill chickened out on going to Ramona’s for Labor Day (which was awkward enough as is). Jill used Countess’ beef with Ramona’s husband Mario as an excuse, and so she and Countess formed a Survivor-esque alliance against Ramona and Bethenny, dragging Kelly into their bitchy fold. Then again, Kelly can never resist a Bethenny hatefest (“She invented that margarita. She has issues.”)

Meanwhile, Alex and wannabe Housewife Simon were caught in the middle. Ramona freaked out because Alex/Simon wanted to party-hop over to Countess’ house, thereby indirectly sabotaging her soiree (and giving Countess that satisfaction). “Simon hasn’t seen Jill all weekend,” Alex argued. Not one to spark drama, Alex cowed to Jill’s diva demands and stayed at her party.

Countess and Jill were furious. IT’S WAR.

As Mario said over dinner, “They’ve drawn a line in the sand.”

And as Bethenny snarked, “The Countess, like, lost her husband and grew a penis.”

Here’s our favorite scenes, as reenacted by Crushable’s panel of Barbie Housewives.

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Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart rocked the premiere of their new movie, The Runaways, in Hollywood last night. In addition to the two leading ladies, Kristen’s Twilight buddy Taylor Lautner (no Robert Pattinson in sight), writer/director Floria Sigismondi, costar Scout Taylor Compton, and original Runaways Joan Jett and Cherie Curie (whom Kristen and Dakota play, respectively) all walked the red carpet.

(Photos: WENN.com)

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Earlier this week, we published a post about whether or not to tell the guy you’re sleeping with that you have HPV. Our columnist, Kat Rosenfield, decided that it was okay not to reveal it. Then our colleague, Lilit Marcus, wrote a response to Kat on her blog, TheGloss. Today we’ve seen a lot of chatter on our post, so you should check in to see what readers — and Kat — are saying about this hot topic.

Relationship Ninja: Should I Reveal My HPV?

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Ever wonder what guys are really thinking? So do we. So, we asked them. Last week we discussed dating, but today’s Crushable Man Panel focuses on what guys do when we’re not around. We asked three New York guys — Matt, Spike and Max — what they like to do with friends and alone, whether they talk about women and if they’ve ever “kissed and told.”

What do you like to do with your guy friends?

Spike: Hang out, see a movie, go and get a beer, take a bike ride.

Matt: I’ll just drink beers with my friends, watch sports and movies. Hang out. We’ll roam the city together. Have adventures.

Max: I guess it’s a lot of watching really dumb movies, or going out drinking, and basically talking about women. There’s a lot of that. When we’re not talking about women and dating we try to talk about erudite things like politics and books, too, but a lot of the conversation with my fellow males tends to drift back to dating and other things.

Do you ever talk about girls?

Spike: It’s more like I went out with this chick and who’s she and what’s going on there. It’s casual.

Matt: We talk about women all the time. We talk about the women that we want, we talk about the women we have, whether they’re better than us, whether they’re good enough, whether we’re good enough. How we can get more women or whether we should stay with the women we have. All the things you think we’re talking about, we’re talking about. And some sports. We talk about sports when we’re not talking about women. And movies. We talk about movies, sports and girls.

Max: Clearly we do, quite a bit. I guess it depends on your level of friendship with a person what the boundaries about what you talk about are. We talk about girls quite a bit, we talk about relationships and all sorts of other things. There was an age with most guys when they were much more interested in details than they are as you get older. And I guess in that sense, the older you get, the more high minded the conversation goes.

Have you ever “kissed and told”?

Spike: Depends on what you mean by that. It’s not like middle school like ‘I got to third base with her.’ I don’t go into details. Usually it’s like, ‘Yeah, I slept over.’ And you can pretty much infer from that. But I’m a fairly private person. It’s just not something I would talk about in detail.

Max: Are you kidding? It happens a lot less now than it did when I was in high school or college, but believe me, if I kissed someone in high school, everybody would know.

Matt: Doesn’t everybody? Isn’t that sort of half the fun? I think if it’s just a girl that you’re hooking up with, I don’t think there’s any sort of confidentiality agreement that you’re supposed to be held to. But if you like a girl, I think it’s a little bit taboo to start -– I get a little weirded out when guys tell me a little too much about a girl they like. We don’t want to know these details about your potential future wife…My advice to guys would be, if you like a girl just take it easy, we don’t need to know all the gory details.

What do you like to do by yourself?

Spike: I like to read, and take pictures and ride my bike and wander through the city and find different things or just sit and read or people watch.

Max: I’m a bit of an odd ball, so I actually spend a lot of my time reading. I’m a reader, I watch movies, I, like many others, waste my life on the Internet. I try to find the high-minded things on the Internet, too. It’s not all Facebook poker. But I have played Facebook poker, and I have wasted many, many hours doing that.

Why do men always take a magazine into the bathroom?

Spike: Well sometimes you’re in there for a long time, you need something to do. Sometimes it just takes a while. There’s few places where no one can bother you. Most of the time, no one is going to bother you in the bathroom, you’re just hanging out. If you’re reading a magazine, why not? It’s like a sanctuary.

Matt: My biggest pet peeve with women is that they’re not relaxed enough. The reason that guys are so relaxed is that we spend a half hour in the bathroom. Our mind at ease, reading whatever it is we read. I think women can learn from that. That’s our private time. You’re not watching TV, there’s no Internet, there’s no technology, and you’re just alone and you have a clear head and you just shut down. That’s our bathroom time.

Max: We like to get comfy. I don’t know. We’ve got some time to kill and we’re going to not be bothered. It’s like a zen thing.

If you could ask a woman any question and know you were going to get an honest answer, what would you ask?

Matt: Here is what I would just say to women. I think one big thing that guys screw up all the time — and I think it’s just because we’re guys — we say stupid things when we’re on dates. Guys say a lot of stupid things, I hear it from a lot of girls, I have a sister. But if a guy says one stupid thing, he’s out. Guys, when we talk to each other, we say the stupidest things to each other. Through the course of one conversation we’ll say 100 stupid things. So for us to go through one date and say only one stupid thing, that’s a victory.

(Photo via Comstock)

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Adam Lambert is in talks to release a line of makeup for men. Obviously guyliner should be the first priority, but apparently it will be a full range of cosmetics, including foundation, concealer, shadow, mascara, lip gloss, and nail polish. Interesting. Do you think men will buy the makeup? Will it only be for men, or will ladies be able to partake too? [Allie Is Wired]

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There are plenty of worthy places to donate cash, but for those of us who could use our own donations in that category, easy do-gooding options can be tough to come by. That’s why I just have to share the gem of a volunteering opportunity I found last summer at College Summit.

College Summit is an organization focused on giving low-income students the tools they need to get into college, partnering with schools around the country to promote a college-going environment in their communities. Over the summers, College Summit holds four-day workshops for partnership school students at multiple college campuses. The workshops serve the students in a variety of ways, creating camaraderie with other college-bound students, giving them their first taste of college campus life, as well as functioning as a sort of college prep boot camp with college counseling, financial aid 101s, and personal statement writing help.

The writing help is conducted via small writing groups lead by a volunteer writing coach, which is the position I volunteered for last summer. I came into the workshop with minimal teaching experience and no personal statement experience beside my own college application. College Summit more than prepares the writing coaches with a short, but thorough training session on their method of personal statement writing and the support of an expert writing coach coordinator.

Over the course of the workshop, the writing coaches meet with their student groups several times. Each student leaves the workshop with a well-crafted application essay and, I know I’m about to sound super cheesy here, but each writing coach leaves with something special too. There’s a very real reward in getting to know your writing students, working with them to shape their personal statements, and being a small part of their path toward a significant accomplishment.

If you’re looking for a meaningful volunteer opportunity and have four days to spare this summer, I’d definitely recommend signing up as a writing coach for College Summit. Register at their volunteer page to find a weekend workshop close to you. You’ll love it and at this time next year, you’ll be the pushy one encouraging all of your friends and even Internet strangers to get involved.

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Jessica Simpson defended Gabourey Sidibe against the comments Howard Stern made earlier this week: “It’s unfortunate because she walked the red carpet at the Oscars and she owned it. She was beautiful. There was no denying that she did not think she was the most beautiful person on that red carpet. She was just owning that moment for herself. She had such confidence and I absolutely 100 percent think she could get anything in the world that she wants.” [E! Online]

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