It’s not enough to work hard.  Hard work will put money in your bank account and heavy wear on the cartilage in your knees, but it will not put food in your belly, warmth in your bed, nor sleep behind your eyes. You are a delicate animal with many needs that are difficult to manage. […]

When the mind experiences something, the body responds. Sometimes without the mind’s input or consent. When a doctor taps our knee with a reflex hammer, our leg kicks involuntarily. We don’t have to decide to move. Our nervous system receives information, processes it, and creates a physical response. Stress works in much the same way. […]

Maybe you’re still in school. Maybe you just graduated. Maybe you’re just trying to learn absolutely anything before the neurons in your brain start firing wrong. We are all beginners somewhere. But sometimes the experience of being a beginner can be so discouraging, frightening, and unpredictable that we avoid learning for all its joy and […]

Grief. It is the great infectious sickness that accompanies death in all its forms. We can run as much as we’d like, but it always catches up with us. As we process our losses, it can feel like something that we need to escape with the urgency we’d attend to a hot brand on our […]

We want to make a sandcastle, but we don’t want to see it washed away by the tide. As fun as it can be to build something that can withstand the indignity of time, the process can drive you mad.  We don’t want to rebuild. We want to make something that will last. But time […]

Nobody wants to dust the kitchen cabinet, and even fewer people want to dust their cabinet of thoughts. Cleaning is a part of life, both figuratively and literally. It’s something that is unavoidable and often difficult to enjoy, but necessary to find wholeness and balance in our lives.  How can we use what we learn […]

Some things just don’t go our way. And sometimes they just continue to not go our way for such a long time that it may start to feel like things have never gone our way before and never will again. It’s our responsibility to maintain hope in the presence of fate’s uncertainty. So when fortune […]

Change can look like a shiny new job, an exciting new relationship, or a fascinating new diagnosis that explains many of the symptoms you’ve been worried about for the past few months. The point is, whether it’s good or bad, navigating change can be an intense psychological experience.  That’s why coping with change is so […]

When we’re laying awake at night, we are quick to find something to blame. It can be all too easy (and fun!) to pin our sleep issues on something external, but in reality, there’s a lot we can do for ourselves.  We need not be resigned to the fate of insomnia or (sometimes just as […]

When we live with untreated anxiety, it can feel like there is danger and disaster around every corner. Our bodies are ill-equipped to handle unmanaged anxiety for long periods of time, and on a long enough timeframe, anxiety can start to feel like a physical illness rather than a mental one. Anxiety disorders can raise […]