How to Help Someone Going Through a Difficult Time

As we enter month 7 of the global pandemic, it seems that suffering and hardship has only been enhanced. We are now seeing wildfires burn through the west coast, businesses closing, people struggling to pay bills, put food on the table, or even avoid the doctor because they are afraid of medical debt. The deep […]

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Patience, Patience, Patience

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.  It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.” Carl Jung This pandemic with all its restrictions, limitations, and constraints is challenging my […]

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Breaking Through Projection and Reactivity in Relationship

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” ― Hermann Hesse I must have heard the above, or something like it, at least 20 times before I got it. I remember my epiphany: I was telling a group of friends […]

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10 Ways for People of Color to Deal with Racial Stress

“You have experienced a critical incident and have gone through a lot! Please take care of yourself.” This is something I often say when I travel to regions of the world as a responder to critical incidents. Here are some resilience-building strategies you can employ. Unfortunately, today I cannot say to African Americans “take care […]

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How to stay together when you’re never apart: Surviving couplehood during the coronavirus

In the past eight weeks of quarantine, my husband and I have regularly commented that we are not sure how we would have survived a lockdown if our now-grown four children had been toddlers or elementary school kids or even high schoolers, desperately negotiating to be with their friends…We have deep respect and appreciation for […]

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A New Year, a New Decade, A New Me

5 Steps to guide you in leaving the past behind and moving toward your future We all say goodbye many times throughout our lives. We say goodbye to friends, family, homes, jobs, businesses, lovers, and relationships. We also say goodbye to periods of our lives. On the precipice of saying goodbye to the 2010’s and […]

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Men and Grief

The Well of Grief Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins […]

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Trauma Shapes Our Relationships

Trauma 101 Peter Levine, Ph.D., a pioneer in body-oriented psychotherapy, describes an epiphany he had while treating a woman who suffered from excruciating agoraphobia (an extreme or irrational fear of entering open or crowded places) and a host of other symptoms:  …her body learned that in that time of overwhelming threat (a childhood trauma in […]

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Can We Talk About Sex?

Is there a pattern here? “When was the last time you two had sex and was it satisfying?” Couples coming to me for the first time will be asked this question. I usually tell them that some therapists say that “if you fix the sex, the rest will follow,” and others say: “if you fix […]

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Toxic Femininity

Many of my clients come to me because they are experiencing anxiety and depression due to a toxic work environment. What has always been most surprising to me in my practice is the majority of the time, women are reporting being bullied by other women or female bosses. In recent years, conversations around what it […]

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