The betrayal of addiction in relationships First published in P.S. I Love You, a Medium.com publication on December 23rd, 2019. Thank you for reaching out and letting me know you are doing well. I appreciate your apology. When I read your message, pain erupted through me. What happened between us in the past was […]
A look at Narcissistic Personality Disorder Follow my blog with Bloglovin Character structure is not easy to see. We generally feel it in a person before we see it. We feel it because that person can be difficult to relate to and seems to be locked into rigid responses that do not serve relating. We […]
Families. They can be a problematic maze which we don’t know how to navigate through. I’m part of a family that is stuck and fractured. The flatlands of black and white vision blinds us to what is below the surface, the depths. Yet, there is hope. We can learn to look more deeply. When I […]
I remember years ago in graduate school; our class did an exercise on visualizing a safe place. Not everyone could. For some, a sense of safety simply did not exist. For others, they found their safety alone, often in nature. Others could find it in relation to someone specific, for example, a pet or grandparent. Given that […]
Holidays can be a difficult time. Many of us have unresolved issues with our families. We may feel that we are not fully seen or understood. We may feel blamed or treated unfairly. Let’s look at this family situation. Julie has unresolved issues with her father, Bob and her mother, Grace. Julie has at times […]
You are getting so intense – he said. No shit, I think to myself- every cell of my body is screaming. Well if you stop ABC then I will stop XYZ he says, trying to fix the issue we were caught in. What!!!! He missed the whole point – that I worry about him, that […]
I tend to reveal a lot about myself in my writing. Even though as a therapist, showing oneself is tricky, I made a conscious choice to do this because I knew that is how we remove stigma and heal shame. If I reveal an experience that someone else identifies with and has shame around, they […]
Post updated June 6th, 2020 What is the definition of gratitude? Gratitude is the emotion of being thankful. If we are thankful, we appreciate and are in connection with the thing we are grateful for. This can be something outside ourselves, like the amazing redwoods in the picture above. Or it can be for an […]
I remember years ago how my father and the four of us children would go walking up the hill into the woods to look for a Christmas tree. It was a somewhat magical time – one of those special times when we had fun with our father. The trees would be beautiful, brown branches, dark […]
I have a good friend who I deeply admire. She is kind, thoughtful, considerate and sensitive. She cares about the world and is involved in her community. She is the kind of person any of us would want for a parent, a friend or a partner. She had one of the few long-term marriages that […]
A friend once told me that she was not creative. I remember the moment clearly, because I did a double take and started to try to convince her of her error in perception immediately. How could she believe that about herself? And recently, with a client, I had some ‘soul collage cards’ that I had […]
Recently I have had both clients and friends asking the question: “How do you know when it is time to leave a relationship?” It’s a great question, but one that is hard to answer. It is one that I have struggled to answer at various points in my own life for both friends and myself. […]
I had a hard few days, which in this case for me means that I was in workaholic mode, feeling frustrated and somewhat overwhelmed and being unrealistic about what I could and could not get done. I was pushing myself around ‘doing’ and not accepting the ‘being’ aspect of life. Luckily, a friend stopped over […]
Emotional Release is an important part of our lives. I can think of a couple where one member has decided that emotions are bad. He has stuffed his down deep into himself and, instead, blames his wife for her feelings. Her feelings are valid. She wants more closeness and connection. This leaves her no place […]
This past week, some very specific events brought up a lot of pain and grief for me. The first event was when I read an article about a 17-month old boy who was beaten to death. The perpetrator stated “I didn’t hit him that hard.” Later in the week, I saw the Time magazine cover […]
Sometimes we stand at the foot of a task and get stuck because we are telling ourselves that we shouldn’t have to do this thing. The task is there. There is no way around it. We have a choice. Our choice is to sit there, stuck, or to tackle the task. This is a choice […]
The other day, I heard enlightenment defined as a radical change in perspective. What is enlightenment? Why would we want it? Is it not to gain deep revelation or insight into the meaning and purpose of things, to be removed from our everyday perspectives that cause us so much angst and pain? I not only […]
I wrote this article because this is an area where I can get scared. When I am in the state of needing to talk about something, and the other person gets triggered, I can feel myself tense up. My own history of not feeling heard emerges. I had to learn how to not keep trying […]
Updated June 23, 2020 Looking Inward – Making Sense of Ourselves Pain can cause us to seek psychological health I witness a lot of pain in my work. People don’t come to see me because everything in their lives is working. They come to see me because something isn’t working because they are in pain. […]
Updated June 24, 2020 Surrender into Support Learning to go with the flow is essential in times of great change. As Choquosh, a Native American storyteller states, “The elders have sent me to you today to tell you that NOW is like a great rushing river. And this great rushing river will be experienced in many […]