Good Therapy
The welcoming presence of a good therapist can make or break a therapeutic relationship. I have had both. When I returned to therapy in my early twenties, I was apprehensive. My previous experience had been less than stellar, and I knew I wanted to give it another go but I was nervous. I utilized referrals […]
Green Eyes Baby
“You have the most beautiful green eyes!” The makeup artist she exclaimed before I even had the chance to get comfortable in the leather chair. Facing the mirror and lights, we were set up in a high-end hotel room at the break of dawn for a local advertisement photo shoot. Before I had the chance to correct […]
On Learning to Like Me
Redemption We have had quite a start, haven’t we? Mental Health awareness is so much more than understanding that mental illness exists. It’s understanding that there is a person behind the illness and that every heart has a story. Behind the story is the person who lived it, and at the end of the day […]
Big T, Little T, Trauma Starts With T
We live in a hard world. There is so much hurt and heartache and yet there is no way that I could sit with my clients day after day, week after week, year after year without holding out tremendous hope. My elevator speech has always included the phrase, “helping individuals courageously battle through the hurts […]
Mean Girls
Last summer was my 20th High School reunion. Reunions are interesting in this social media day and age because in some ways we reunite anytime we log on to the internet. I suppose the reunion is game day for all the pre-gaming we do on our social media accounts. Regardless nothing beats seeing people face […]
The Other Side of the Couch
The first time I sat with a client I was petrified. I was barely 25, at the end of my graduate school experience in my practicum and I was slated to do six sessions of pre-marital counseling with a newly engaged couple. There was a workbook we were going to use so I was […]
The First Appointment
The first time I sat in a therapist’s office I was 15. I can’t remember if I requested to be there, but I do remember being excited for the appointment. I knew enough to know that I loved talking about myself (what 15-year-old doesn’t?!) and if I got to talk about myself for an hour […]
Overflowing Oatmeal and Gracious Grief
This morning my oatmeal exploded in the microwave. An unfortunate start to the day but I like my oatmeal, had already hit capacity and needed to cool down and clean up. It was only 7:30AM. On Tuesday night the San Diego Unified School System decided that officially e-learning wouldn’t even BEGIN until April 27th and […]
Weighing In
Yesterday, Hoda and Jenna of the famed morning show, The Today Show, weighed themselves on live TV in a segment intended to highlight the benefits of intermittent fasting. The idea being that if the intermittent fasting works, they will drop weight…” along with other health benefits…” “We aren’t doing it for the weight loss, Jenna […]
Under Pressure
Let’s talk about coping mechanisms: what they are, how they got there and why we actually needed them for a season. When we truly start to understand coping mechanisms, we begin to understand that they are simply the tip of the iceberg when it comes to someone’s personality. They are simply behaviors created over years […]