Our Relationship With Grief Is Complicated During the height of the pandemic, my supervisor at the large substance abuse/mental health agency I was working for at the time, invited the entire outpatient clinical staff to attend a virtual grief summit. I was overwhelmed with my large virtual caseload; but was mildly excited by the prospect.  […]

Without gratitude, it is all too easy to fall under the spell of anxiety and depression. If we do not take the time to appreciate the world around us, we put ourselves on a path to curse the world and all that it might offer. If we can be grateful for the calm darkness of […]

A gentle chill is striking the air. The last leaves have almost fallen. Thanksgiving, and its looming threat of a reunion with our family, is almost upon us. Autumn is drawing to a close, and it can be tempting to close the book on your own therapeutic growth along with it. Even when your home […]

It’s not always obvious when we’re avoiding intimacy. It might go under our radar for years before we become cognizant of it, and even longer before we start to take action. Often we avoid intimacy through lack of physical contact, but it can run so much deeper than just the physical. The intimacy avoidant will […]

Forgiveness is a tricky but unavoidable aspect of human entanglement. Although we are social creatures, we are also independent and self-serving actors without the benefit of a stage. We wind up hurting one another and being hurt by one another as a perpetual theme in our story. If we expect to be successful at this […]

Therapy can have a prominent role in our lives. It helps us navigate deep-seated issues, which can take up a lot of mental space. This can be positive when it leads to valuable insights outside of sessions. On the flip side, it might also bring up anxiety or fear about the therapy process itself. Maybe […]

Without the ability to self-soothe, our emotional trajectory will inevitably trend downwards. In an ideal world, we’d always feel great and we’d have no need to cultivate the skill of self-soothing. The reality is that there will always be events in our lives that upset, deter, trigger, or unravel us, and it’s our responsibility to […]

How are we supposed to focus on art therapy when there is so much going on? The veil is thin. Summer is over. Hurricane season is in full swing.  Halloween is creeping up around the corner and into the specialty sections of our supermarkets. Welcome to October.  Whether the moon is bright and beautiful or […]

Even with all the talk therapy in the world, the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can be debilitating, pervasive, and difficult to treat. Flashbacks can interrupt your joy and send you on a roller coaster ride through some of your most traumatic memories. Oftentimes the treatment can be just as bitter as the symptoms, and […]

Bardo is a Tibetan Buddhist term meaning between two places. It often refers to the liminal period between death and rebirth but can represent any transitional phase between two states of consciousness. It’s a period of transition during which old patterns dissolve and new ones emerge.  According to Tibetan Buddhism, there are six primary bardos, […]