Rites of Passage

“Will it be a tree or a new garden?” my partner asked me two weeks ago. For the past 15 years, we have been planting as a way to acknowledge and memorialize people and animals in our lives we have loved and lost. The question we ask now is not “what do we do to...

Safety and Safe Spaces: Are They Possible?

News reports, radio, and the internet have been highlighting a recent letter sent to incoming undergraduates from the administration at The University of Chicago (U of C). Among other things, the letter states that the University does “not condone the creation of...

Life Has No Trigger Warnings

More and more I hear people asking for trigger warnings when there is a chance something someone may say or do will evoke emotional pain. This is happening on college campuses where students are asking faculty to provide warnings about difficult classroom material, as...

Peace Is This Moment*

I met Mike almost 15 years ago. He came to me after hearing about the groups I was facilitating for gay male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. He’d been in therapy before, but told me he didn’t believe he’d ever really looked at how the abuse he experienced was...

Two Heads Are Better Than One

Even after 35 years of working in mental health, I still get a little nervous when I am calling a provider I don’t know or have never worked with to coordinate services.  It’s not that I don’t value sharing information, I just find not everyone has the same philosophy...

I Can’t Keep Going Like This

One of the premises underlying the work we do is our desire to help.  Implicit in the idea of helping is improving concrete life conditions or increasing the experience of happiness or peace in someone’s internal landscape.  Helping means feeling better.  If that is...

Healing Spirals

Endings and beginnings serve a purpose.  They punctuate change.  They allow us to put a hard stop on a process that has been painful.  They invite us to start anew with a fresh perspective.  They allow us to celebrate accomplishments.  They enable us to set goals for...

Don’t Be Sad…Or At Least Don’t Talk About It!

“I’d like to see a male therapist.” “I’d like to see a therapist who is older.” “I’d like to see a therapist who takes BCBS insurance.” “I’d like to see a therapist who is lesbian.” “I’d like to see an African American therapist.” “I’d like to see a therapist who has...

Clashing Values

In the 30 plus years I have been in practice, I can’t count the number of times I have worked with someone who has a value system that is different than mine.  A number of weeks ago I wrote about how our differences still offer opportunities to foster deeper...