Last week, I wrote about the importance of self-care, and promised to follow it up with specific strategies for integrating it into your life. In other words, I gave you the “why.” Following is the “how.” What is self-care? Before [...]
Self-care, often associated with selfishness, gets a bad reputation. Many people think it implies weakness if they opt out of something or take a break. However, it can be extremely detrimental to overlook the importance of this, and can take [...]
As a therapist, I have the privilege of sitting with people and helping them manage their insecurities and fears. Something that I've found to be profound and humbling is that as I go through my day, I hear the same [...]
It was clear that the client sitting in front of me was in pain. I listened to her story, I acknowledged and validated her hardships, and I nodded as she told me she sometimes wrestled with the decision of whether [...]
Emotions are important. A lot of people are taught to squash their feelings and push them aside, or to express them as minimally as possible, and I think the rationale behind this is that they’re pesky things that get in [...]
“Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent [...]
A client once came into session, told me she had started selling Avon products, and asked if I’d be interested in purchasing anything. Another told me that even though she was ending therapy, she’d love to go to lunch sometime. [...]
I was recently contacted by a middle school student in Kansas who was doing a research study about the impact of gender roles. Her questions were thought-provoking, especially given her young age (I thought she was a university student when [...]
Today a friend told me about a quote that is widely attributed to Michelangelo in response to a question about how he made the famous sculpture David: “It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like [...]
One day, I had a conversation with an acquaintance. Out of nowhere, the tone of the conversation went from amicable to mean-spirited. One minute, we were friendly, and the next minute, he was lashing out at me for seemingly no [...]