Over the weekend I took my kids to the pool. Even though my kids have both been proficient swimmers for several years, they have to retest with the pool’s lifeguards every summer to ensure that they are capable of swimming independently. My daughter was pumped for the test. “I’m going to swim really fast and finish this and then go off the diving board and then go down the slide and then use my goggles and go underwater a lot!”…
There’s an analogy I read recently about how our issues “spill” out of us when we get “bumped into”. The analogy tells the story of a person walking around with a cup of coffee and someone bumps into them, resulting in their coffee spilling everywhere. That person subsequently blames the other who ran into them saying, “You bumped into me and that’s why my coffee spilled!” The idea is that whatever is in your cup will spill out and therefore…
I just got back from the most wonderful retreat. I was with 22 women, each of whom brought their beautiful hearts, vulnerability, and precious life stories. Every person there showed up with intentionality and a desire to heal alongside other women. I was, and continue to be, deeply impacted and moved by the experience. Early in the retreat we made altars in which we contributed meaningful items, pictures, and symbols from different parts of ourselves and stages of our lives….
I’ve been working a lot lately with themes related to loss, grief, and letting go. Grief can be about so many things – grief related to the loss of a relationship, grief over a major life change, grief related to global politics and policies, and so on. There can be so many ways we experience grief. And really every time we let go of something, there is grief. But sometimes we don’t want to let things go, even when the…
One of the things I love most about being a therapist is being able to look at people, situations, families, and societal systems as being complex and nuanced. As I’ve said in a previous post, we generally want to stay away from extremes or viewing things as a binary; good or bad. That said, I heard a statement recently said by a very wise therapist and it really stuck with me and I think it further illustrates how we can…
When relationships end, whether it be a romantic relationship, friendship, professional relationship, or various other types of relationships we engage in throughout our lives, “Who ended it?” seems to be a common question that gets asked. I’ve noticed recently though that the more common question, often not said aloud but fixated on internally is, “Whose fault was it?” What I believe we’re asking here is who was right and who was wrong, who is good and who is bad. We…
A couple of months ago I started attending a local yoga studio that’s near my work and many things I do. I had been working myself up to attending a class there for awhile since it’s been years since I’ve done public yoga classes with any sort of regularity. This has been in part because of physical ailments I deal with and in part because of Covid, which interrupted my in person yoga teacher training a few years ago. I…
Have you been scrolling on your phone a lot lately? Biting your nails? Shaking your leg fervently while you’re sitting down? Drinking and extra glass of wine at the end of the day? Watching a cute animal video, or 2, or 50….no, just me? Something I have noticed in discussions with friends, clients, and within my own experience lately, is that we often say we want and need more alone time and space, but then when we actually have those…
As a therapist I am always looking for the right balance of how to communicate my support and care for my clients while also not wanting to be overly reassuring. I have come to learn that it is in fact not really kind, and it is certainly not effective, to do people’s work for them. When we are too quick to give someone solutions and reassurance, we can inadvertently deprive them of the real work and healing that needs to…
Yesterday I was meeting with a therapist with whom I do clinical consultation. As we were talking, one of the topics that arose involved questions – the importance of asking questions, the content of the questions, the meaning of the questions…so many questions! This therapist is very wise and she said something that really struck me. She said, “Competence is not in the answer, it is in the question. Knowing the question to ask determines the process we engage in.” …