As I was writing about my reflections from the therapy room in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found that another article was already brewing in my mind about more practical suggestions and tangible resources that could be helpful. So here it is. …there was always a way to get through a difficulty. If […]
If you were a fly on the wall of my therapy office over the last week or so, you would have heard a lot of talk about the COVID-19 pandemic. What I started noticing quickly was that there are a lot of similarities in how people are experiencing the crisis and what we’re all saying […]
In life, there are rarely very many true quick fixes. But occasionally it is my experience that I come across ideas/truths/concepts that can provide significant value for the vast majority of us at certain points in our lives (think Brené Brown’s material, for example). One of these popped up for me recently while listening to […]
I am bigger than this. This is one of my favorite mantras. Mantras are tricky, of course, because what resonates with one person doesn’t with another. What means one thing to one person means something totally different to another person. I, personally, like this one because I certainly have a proclivity toward over-identifying with some […]
People are important. On our better days, I think we all know that. But we all probably have those days where we lose sight of that. Those days when everyone is getting on our nerves or when people close to us disappoint us in one way or another. Those days when we seriously consider moving […]
In talking about kids and parenting in therapy, there are a couple topics I find that my counseling clients and I come back to often. At the top of this list is what to make of and how to respond to children’s behavior. Parenting is complex. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be countless books written […]
This is one piece of insight that can be a bit tough to swallow for some of us at first, especially those of us who over-identify with our thoughts (a topic for another time) and/or overestimate the objectivity of our perspective. How many times have you been sure you judged a situation correctly and later […]
“Who is the only person in your life who is available 24/7 to provide you with care and kindness? You.” Kristen Neff, Self-Compassion In the last article in this series, I focused on negative self-talk. Initially, that piece was meant to cover self-talk as a whole. However, as I wrote, it became clear that this topic couldn’t be […]
In part one of this series, I started us out with some basics about thoughts by focusing on the power of words. For this second part, I want to shine a light on negative self-talk. As a therapist, there are a few different themes that I come back to often due to their relevance to a […]
Thoughts. The ever-present voice in our head that we often only pay much attention to when there’s a problem. Even then, we often hand the bulk of the blame to our emotions and don’t give much thought to our thoughts- the litany of words constantly running through our minds. In this series of articles, I […]