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Ways to Manage Grief and Loss and How Therapy Can Help
Some situations in life do not have a step-by-step manual on how to get through. We know that loss is a natural part of life, yet we don’t talk...
Four Elements of “Doing the Work” on Yourself in Therapy
You will often hear people say things like, “I’ve done a lot of work on myself” or “You have to do the work”. What does it actually mean? Self...
What Can a First Timer to Online Therapy Expect?
If you don’t have any experience with therapy or mental health treatment in general, it can be pretty daunting to schedule to see a therapist. In fact, I think...
A California Online Therapist’s Favorite Meditation Tips
Meditation is a practical skill that can be used by anyone, nearly any time. It can be a spiritual exercise for seekers of any path, a straightforward way to...
How to Improve Communication with Others
How Can I Communicate Better? Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is an amazing approach that helps you connect more deeply with yourself and others. It was developed by Marshall Rosenberg as...
Two Questions to Ask Yourself When Feeling Stuck
I believe there are two major questions that we all need to ask ourselves when we feel stuck. These questions help us to gain clarity and understand what can...
Stages of Therapy: A DBT Perspective
Every therapeutic approach has a way of conceptualizing where a client is at in treatment. While of course not all approaches fit every person or problem, I find that...
Confirmation Bias: How We Perpetuate Our Own Suffering
The phenomenon of confirmation bias can be discussed as it relates to a myriad of themes – religion, politics, science, etc. Knowing that we tend to seek out information...
Why Meditation Is a Powerful Component in Allowing the Mind to Heal
Meditation and mindfulness are buzzwords nowadays. Part of me believes this is wonderful because anything that becomes popular naturally becomes more accessible. It means that more people know about...
All About Our Inner Working Models (And How We Work With Them in Online Therapy)
When clients come to therapy with symptoms of distressing anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or energy-depleting depression, there are usually present-day circumstances causing stress. But to find the root of their...
Six Things an Online Therapist Does to Reduce Anxiety
This may come as a shock to some of you, but even therapists have experienced difficult emotions such as anxiety, depression, shame, despair, grief, and fear. They have had...
How to Maximize Your Therapy Hour Throughout the Week
The therapy hour is wonderful. We can dive deep, reflect, and have new emotional experiences, all while feeling the support, encouragement, and kindness of our therapist. But this is...
Does my Childhood Impact my Health as an Adult?
It’s not uncommon to think of our childhood as a distant series of events that bears no weight on our present-day experience. Why would things that occurred while we...
How do I Communicate Better in My Daily Life?
How Can I Communicate Better? Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is an amazing approach that helps you connect more deeply with yourself and others. It was developed by Marshall Rosenberg as...
Current Events Stressing you Out? Six Ways to Stay Centered During Times of Uncertainty
We are living in a time of high stress worldwide, with access to headlines and news coverage available 24 hours a day. While information is valuable and the internet...
Five Ways Emotions are Wisdom, NOT Weakness
If you have ever found yourself thinking that feeling a certain way was the equivalent to being weak, dependent, desperate, frail, or broken, here are a list of 5...
Depression and Learned Helplessness
There was a series of terribly unethical animal experiments that occurred in the 1960’s. While they are horrifying to read about, they really give wonderful insight into the behavioral...
Why Are We So Negative?
Why is it that when someone gives you a critique, it seems stained in your memory for all of time, but when someone gives you a compliment, you may...
When Different Parts of the Brain Conflict with Each Other
Recently I read the book Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte-Taylor. In it, she discusses the “four characters,” or personified aspects of our left and right brain functioning that...
Reactivity and How to Slow it Down
There are times when we feel perfectly in control of our emotional and behavioral responses. We might be standing in a long, long line at a grocery store, for...
What are Repressed and Suppressed Emotions and How Can Therapy Help?
Although we may colloquially use the terms “repressed” and “suppressed” interchangeably, when it comes to emotions they have two separate meanings, thanks to Freud. So what’s the difference? The...
You Can’t Think Your Way Through Therapy
There are many things in life that you can do by thinking. You can do math equations, project future scenarios, imagine past events, and calculate how many pounds of...
Three Things Therapy is NOT
Therapy is not a way to get rid of painful emotions. One of the things that we do in therapy is learn how to sit and be with difficult...
Why Do We Care So Much What Other People Think? Four Questions to Explore
It is a common and relatable experience to care what other people think about us. It’s also totally normal. As humans, we are social creatures that depend upon others...
Validation: We All Need It; What Is It?
In therapy, you may hear your therapist talk about the importance of “validating” your experience. When we validate, we “recognize the value of a person or their feelings and...
Is Therapy Making Change? Eleven Ways to Observe Your Progress
One of the worst experiences is investing time, money, and energy into something in order to make a change, but instead of change, we come out at the other...
Why Avoidance Doesn’t Work with Emotions
As humans, we tend to avoid what is uncomfortable and painful. And as a general rule, this makes sense. Why would I purposely stub my toe if I could...
How to Apologize Effectively: Eight Tips
Tips on Apologizing Effectively Apologies are important; they can provide a bridge in the midst of a ruptured connection. They can offer relief, understanding, and help to repair relational...
Trauma: Everyone’s Talking About It. What Exactly Does It Mean?
What is Trauma? The word “trauma” can be defined both as a distressing event as well as the emotional effects that the distressing event has on us. A traumatic...
Five Tips for Managing Mental Health in Covid Times
Experts are saying that the next pandemic coming in is the mental health one, related to all of the stress we have been experiencing over the last two years....
Intimidated by the Idea of Therapy?
Going to therapy can be intimidating. You might fear that it will be uncomfortable, embarrassing, or simply unhelpful. You may be afraid that your therapist is just going to...
