Lessons from Cultivating Forgiveness in Faith-Based…
In 2004, I was approached by an administrator at John Brown University, a Christian school in Arkansas. He invited me to campus to help create an event to encourage students to practice forgiveness more often, and he was open to using the experience as a research study. For Christians, forgiveness and love are the two […]
IFS Research: Group Therapy for PTSD and Substance Use
This post was co-authored by Martha Sweezy, Dilara Ally, Laure Tobiasz Veltz, Alexandra Comeau, Clare Bumpus, Tori Blot, Fiona Kate Rice, Brian Orr, Hanna Soumerai Rea, and Zev Schuman-Olivier. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) co-occurs with substance use disorder (SUD) at high rates of between 30 and 60 percent. Present-centered treatments for PTSD-SUD are generally group-based, […]
When AI Offers More Wisdom Than Humans
I’ve spent over 20 years as a therapist listening to people’s most intimate struggles, and lately, something keeps me up at night. The conversations people are having with AI are often gentler, more thoughtful, and more compassionate than the ones they’re having with other humans. Let’s Look in the Mirror Right now, humans seem to […]
When Autism and ADHD Travel Together
What if ADHD captures the restless, scattered edges of your experience, yet quieter, more unyielding traits remain unexplained? Or what if autism deeply resonates with your sensory world and relational patterns, but other parts of your inner life—impulsive, understimulated, chaotically adaptive—feel confusing and unnamed? For a growing number of adults, that almost-but-not-quite feeling is leading […]
Why Queer Clients Need Queer Therapists
As a therapist who is both queer herself and works almost exclusively with queer and trans folks, I have both firsthand experiences and have heard from hundreds of clients that past therapists didn’t understand them, and in fact, pathologized them, for the ways their lives fall outside the straight norm. For me, this showed up […]
Therapy for Dating Can Help You Avoid an Emotional Breakdown
Dating in the 21st century is hard. Singles are both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the number of apps and an infinite sea of prospective partners/dating app users. Underwhelmed by the quality of their matches, interactions, and dating experiences. Many of my clients have expressed discontent with the current dating environment and culture. Common words […]
What I Ask Myself Now Instead of “What’s Wrong with Me?”
Does everything feel like too much these days? Get When Life Sucks: 21 Days of Laughs and Light for free when you join the Tiny Buddha list. “With Self-compassion, we give ourselves the same kindness and care we’d give to a good friend.” ~Kristin Neff For a long time, I carried a question with me […]
Why Letting Myself Fall Apart Set Me Free
Does everything feel like too much these days? Get When Life Sucks: 21 Days of Laughs and Light for free when you join the Tiny Buddha list. “Ironically enough, when you make peace with the fact that the purpose of life is not happiness but rather experience and growth, happiness comes as a natural byproduct. […]
Can Psychedelic Experiences Really Improve Your…
Mystics once spent years meditating in caves in search of transcendence. Today, a growing number of people believe something similar can be reached in a single afternoon with the help of a psychedelic drug. Swallow a capsule of psilocybin or take a carefully supervised dose of LSD and you may encounter what many describe as […]
From River to Stream: How Vulnerability Becomes Illness
Source: Photo by Zhivko Minkov on Unsplash When I see patients with serious Mental health issues, they often speak of their genetic burden: “My father had bipolar disorder”, “my grandmother was schizophrenic”, “my aunt has severe depression”. My patients feel their psychiatric destiny weighing them down, as though there is no hope for recovery or […]