A couple of weeks ago, I posed the question: Does therapy need a makeover? Many people wrote back saying that while therapy is (or at least can be) great, people without first-hand experience tend to feel negatively towards it. Since then, I have been working on ideas...
I’m on a mission to convey to people everywhere that working on your emotional life is a positive and useful endeavor that yields good results. I may have my work cut out for me. I have a deep concern that most people have negative associations with words like therapy...
There is a grocery item that I buy on a regular basis. It's in a glass jar and it's on the top shelf. Now if it were a box of cereal, I could easily give it a little poke and it would likely sway and bounce off the shelf and into my hands. I'm less than eager to try...
One of the things I love about summer is that the pace of life slows down. There are more opportunities for recreation and leisure. It just feels right to sit on the porch in the evening, as if that counts as an activity. There is a little more room to breathe. I...
I've learned, mostly the hard way, that I don't know what the best outcome is for another person. That probably sounds weird for a therapist to say. There is a general sense that you go to therapy for someone to tell or "guide" you to a particular outcome. But that's...
I know the saying about the cat, but really I'm interested in who killed curiosity. I could probably blame standardized testing or the ability to know all instantly with the internet. Regardless of the suspect(s), I would like to advocate for regaining some respect...
In a memorable moment in graduate school, my professor said, "A good social worker needs to walk the walk, not just talk the talk." I knew instantly that it was true. It is helpful and necessary in my job to say things, make suggestions, offer observations, provide...
As a therapist, I find that the cause of many mental health issues is not the emotion one naturally feels about an event or situation, it is the reaction to this initial or primary emotion. Often for people experiencing panic, it is the fear or embarrassment of having...
In elementary school, our art teacher would coax us into making some unintended dribble or scribble into a "happy mistake." I was not receptive. I would rather have started over so that I might have some pristine piece of art when I was done. A quarter of a century...