Ketamine Is The Shortcut We All Deserve
Framing inspiration as an indulgent shortcut is a cynical, cruel, and primitive understanding of what it take to self-actualize.
Feb 26th, 2023
Reasons You Should Definitely Go To Therapy
Maybe you have been thinking about it for years, or went a few years ago and it wasn’t great, or people have suggested it to you but it seemed silly. If you have never done a serious and successful stint of real psychotherapy, if not now, when.
Dec 14th, 2022
Ketamine is Safe, Legal, and the Best Psychedelic for Self-Improvement Work
No need to wait for psilocybin (mushrooms) or MDMA (ecstasy) to finish up their FDA trials in the coming years. Ketamine has multiple qualities that make it uniquely suited to psychotherapy.
Nov 27th, 2022
Ketamine for Psychotherapy? Absolutely!
Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy has made a come back. Psychedelics are uniquely potent and novel tools for helping us in therapy with our deeply stuck places. Ketamine is currently legal and available for use by specifically trained psychotherapists.
Jul 31st, 2022
Why Does Therapy Cost So Much? And Is It Worth It?
Psychotherapy costs a lot. If paying full fee for for weekly outpatient therapy, it is usually one of our most significant monthly bills. It begs the question of what makes it worth it, and why therapists deserve to get paid such a high hourly rate.
Feb 20th, 2022
Do Therapists Go To Therapy, And If So Are They Crazy?
The confusion evidenced by this question is the view of psychotherapy itself. It assumes therapy is for crazy people, or at a minimum people who are not well. Psychotherapy is a tool for crafting the person we want to be and the life we want to live.
Jul 30th, 2020
How Does Psychotherapy Work? More Complexly Than You Imagine
Therapists aren't just really good listeners, or solid shoulders to cry on. We aren't sages with wise advise when you are gathering opinions from folks around you. What we bring to our work is expertise in how the unconscious communicates.
May 30th, 2020
Your Negative Opinion about Freud is Likely Ill-informed and Even Silly
It is Freud's Birthday and most Americans, even psychotherapists, see him as a joke. These same therapists routinely rely on his concepts like denial, repression, displacement, unconscious, super-ego and the like. Face it: we are ill informed.
May 7th, 2020
Real Psychotherapy Has to Happen at Least Once a Week
Psychotherapy exists in the realm of the symbolic. The target of change is not the drama of the week. Therapists are not sounding boards or shoulders to cry on. We offer those things, but we have significantly more sophisticated tools to offer clients.
Feb 21st, 2020
What to Talk About in Therapy
Psychotherapy is not meant to be limited to addressing external, concrete dilemmas of the week. The realm of psychotherapy is the resolution of central, ongoing, internal conflicts.
Dec 4th, 2019
Categories: Find Articles by Topic Here
Categories include Couples Corner, For Therapists, Thoughts on Therapy, Children/Parents/Parenting, Anxiety and Depression, The Trump Effect, Creating Change, Analytic takes of Stories on the News, Isms, Video Blogs, and Misc including Zits & Perfectionism
Nov 23rd, 2019
What is Wrong with Me? My Life isn't THAT Bad.
Sometimes we experience our upset as disproportionately large compared to how much we think we should be suffering. This may be in part because we are living with a memory of a time when we were much younger and much smaller with a very big load to carry.
Sep 24th, 2019
#DoINeedTherapy?
To start, the question shouldn’t be if you need therapy, but if it would benefit you. Few people need therapy, and only in a few circumstances.
Jul 13th, 2019
Life Isn’t Easy, or Fair: #Idealization Tortures Us Thinking It Should Be
I never imagined myself a perfectionist.
Jul 2nd, 2019
In Defense of #LongTermPsychotherapy
Long term psychotherapy gets a bad rap in the age of managed care and evidenced based concrete treatments.
Mar 11th, 2019
Does My Therapist Care About Me? Is That What I Pay Them For?
It is a reasonable question. “Does my therapist like me”?
Mar 5th, 2019
Confessions of a #Popaholic: #Zits are an #EroticFetish
Ok. So you may not be used to hearing the words erotic or fetish in a sentence with zits and popping, but that is surprising.
Mar 21st, 2017
5 Reasons Suffering People Don’t Want to Try Medication
When folks struggle with ongoing depression, anxiety or bi-polar symptoms, serious action is required.
Oct 3rd, 2015
#FairFighting: 8 Things You Have to Remember When You Fight With a Partner
Couples fight. And when we do, partners expose our most vulnerable, panicky, hateful selves.
Sep 25th, 2015
What Should I Talk about inTherapy Today?
Most clients know that some of their best sessions happen when they don’t know what their therapy topic is going to be.
Dec 5th, 2014
#Anxiety, #AnxietyMedication and Lost Decades
Both my client and I sat with such a strange mixture of feelings tonight. In the past 2 weeks his life has radically changed for the better.
Nov 24th, 2014
#MythsaboutPsychotherapy
Psychotherapy myths about therapists, clients, why people go to therapy, and the therapy itself prevent some folks from using this uniquely potent tool for crafting a better life.
Nov 18th, 2014
#Counseling Isn’t #Psychotherapy
Many folks, including some clinicians, use the terms counseling and therapy as if they are interchangeable.
Nov 16th, 2014
The “Work/Life Balance” Concept Assumes Work Isn’t Life
Certainly our national conversation about the importance of a healthy work/life balance was meant to reduce workaholism and improve the quality of our lives. It is however a built on a bizarre fallacy that somehow work isn’t life.
Mar 19th, 2023
My Name is Karen, and I am Okay with the "Karen" Caricature
It is funny. I don’t take it personally. And I also think the name is well chosen.
Jan 22nd, 2023
Ask Your Teen About When They Wish They Were Dead: The Suicidality Talk
Be brave. Be very very brave. As scary and disregulating as this conversation is, we can help our teens develop a frame for understanding how to handle hard emotions and difficult chapters in their lives. And it may well save their lives.
Dec 28th, 2022
Who Doesn’t Want Control Over Reckless People Like Britney?
In the debate about Britney's conservatorship, many are trying to argue that she wasn't or isn't competent enough to make her own decisions. How many of us have make such stellar life choices that we should get to run some else life too? Jamie Spears?
Jul 7th, 2021
Dont Throw Out The Oedipal Baby With the Sexist/Gendered Bath Water
Dont Throw Out The Oedipal Baby With the Misogynistic, Hetero-Assumptive, Euro-centric, Overly-Gendered Bathwater. Freud's theories are a treasure trove of rich theory that is unparalleled.
Oct 25th, 2020
It Isn’t Irony, It is Projection: Threatened Karens and Victimized Cops
Projection is primitive psychological mechanism used when someone feels a feeling or has a thought that is incongruent with how they want to see themselves. When the dissonant unattractive feeling or thought surfaces, they must assign it to someone.
Jul 17th, 2020
Practicing Gratitude in the Time of Corona: From a Recovering Addict
Selective perception is everything right now. If you find yourself too frequently overwhelmed, frightened, anxious, and negative, you may be consuming too much of the dark. There is light to be seen right now too...but you must activity turn towards it.
Apr 21st, 2020
A Single Person’s Pandemic Pal Template Plan
We all need a plan we coordinate with others about how to take care of ourselves and protect others if we become compromised by the virus. This template is to help you build a plan to keep everyone safe should you become too ill to make the plan later.
Mar 28th, 2020
Honor Your Fears: A Hypochondriacs Guide to the Corona Virus
Are you over-reacting? Are you under-reacting? Taking this all seriously enough, or maybe taking it way too far? The thing is, there isn’t really any way for us to know how far is too far. But there are ways to keep grounded, which we must do.
Mar 20th, 2020
Tools of the Trade for Treating Couples: See and Point
Therapists often avoid couples work, in part because couples bring so much rage and fear to sessions. But also because the work is simply so different than individual therapy. As a devoted couples therapist, here is one of the tools I rely on in sessions.
Mar 7th, 2020
I am Not a Mushy, Kind, Loving, Do-Gooder Social Worker
Psychotherapy isn't an act of loving kindness. Love can compromise the more meaningful work therapist can offer. If a loving good listener is all takes to get better, you don't need an extensively educated rigorously trained, expensive clinician.
Feb 29th, 2020
How Long Should I Go to Therapy, and At What Frequency?
In a world of quick fixes and self-help books, it is daunting to commit to long-term relational psychotherapy. The problem is that if it was easy to understand why you were so stuck, you would understand it. If there were easy answers to the issues t
Feb 10th, 2020
Relationships Require Us to Change, But Not To Become One
Successful couples offer up many compromises to increase their connection, but they must be allowed to remain separate entities.
Dec 30th, 2019
Frozen 2 Anna’s Song: A Master Class in Managing Adulting, Grief, Hopelessness, and Depression
“The Next Right Thing” teaches a key life lesson, one many have not sufficiently learned. Depression, Anxiety, hopelessness, overwhelmed-ness, grief and loss, can all leave the sufferer immobilized and unable to perform the tasks needed to resurface.
Dec 9th, 2019
From Rubenesque to Twiggy: The Meaning Behind the Waif Aesthetic
Eating Disorders no longer appear in the media as a dominant narrative, but the statistics are the same, with Anorexia and Bulimia still the most likely reason young girls enter a mental health institution. Eating Disorders are culturally constructed.
Dec 2nd, 2019
How Can Therapy Help When The World Is The Problem?
Some would question how therapy could help if the political climate is a primary source of distress, since individual psychotherapy certainly cannot change our political climate. I have two answers to that question.
Oct 31st, 2019
Are You a Narcissist, or Just Have Good Self-Esteem?
Narcissism is often treated as if it is inherently a bad thing, but it is actually just another word for self-love. Getting through the hardships and blows of life requires a fairly solid amount of positive self-regard and healthy narcissism is the key.
Oct 24th, 2019
Perfectionism Ruins the Good: For You and Everyone Around You
As if life isn't hard enough; who needs perfection to ruin the decent? There is a cruelty to perfectionism. It takes something that could be enjoyed, even celebrated, and turns it into failure.
Sep 16th, 2019
Feeling Depressed isn't Depression, and Other Reasons your Advice is Stupid
Because so many people have felt depressed before, they imagine what worked for them can also help the clinically depressed person. They are wrong and their advice is more likely to hurt the person suffering from real Depression.
Sep 9th, 2019
Psychotherapy is a Great Tool
People compare many things to therapy: hikes in nature, talks with a good friend, meditation, and even confessions to a priest.
Jul 14th, 2019
Anxiety Qualifies for #MedicalMarijuana Now
Finally, diagnostic Anxiety qualifies for medical marijuana use.
Jul 11th, 2019
Calling Republicans of Conscience to Speak Up Now, If You Exist
You can’t all be bad. Or at a minimum you cant be only bad. We walk in the same streets with you.
Jun 22nd, 2019
Are My Parents Disappointed in Me?
Even as adults, we can worry if our parents are disappointed in us.
Apr 8th, 2019
Do I Need to Hate My Parents to Get Better?
Some folks fear they are going to be asked to hate their parents by their therapist.
Apr 6th, 2019
Therapists Share Why a Good Client/Therapist Match Matters
Full Living Psychotherapists share thoughts on why a good match matters.
Mar 24th, 2019
#PhiladelphiaPsychotherapy Practice Will Match You with a Therapist
Philadelphia psychotherapy practice Full Living specializes in making thoughtful matches between clients and skilled experienced therapists in the Greater Philadelphia Area.
Mar 13th, 2019
Therapist Credentials, Education, Training and Approach
Therapist credentials, education, training.
Mar 12th, 2019
Up-selling Psychotherapy: Are Therapists Even Allowed To Do That?
Up-selling is a term borrowed from the business world.
Mar 6th, 2019
#LiamNeeson’s Comments and #RacistImpulses is all of Us
Liam Neeson recently revealed that some 40 years ago, after a friend was raped, he found himself entering predominantly black neighborhoods, seeking out black men, hoping for an altercation in order to channel his rage.
Feb 6th, 2019
CEU Education: Fees, Slides and Cancellation Ethics
Some basic policy questions: How do you or your agency determine service fees? Do you or your organization offer a sliding scale? If, so, to whom, under what circumstances? What is your or your agency’s late cancellation policy?
Dec 25th, 2018
Defending #LenaDunham, Kind Of: Being Messed Up
Lena Dunham didn’t get it just a little wrong. She got it massively wrong. She did a truly horrible thing. She protected a man accused of sexual harassment because she didn’t want to believe he did it.
Dec 9th, 2018
The Epitome of Psychological Health: Sabrina the Teenage Witch
While there are lots of ways to describe and define emotional, mental, and psychological health, there is one consistent theme; Integration.
Nov 9th, 2018
#Kavanaugh Believes Himself. He Has Disavowed His Shadow Twin
Kavanaugh’s tears were real. He was devastated that his good boy, church-going, sports and beer loving, devoted son, persona was being brought down. It is part of his true self. A part of himself he is very proud of.
Sep 27th, 2018
Rules of (couples) Engagement: Strike When the Iron is Cold
I know I know…the motto is “strike when the iron is hot”.
Aug 17th, 2018
Surviving Trump’s America as it Turns Toward Hate: Chop Wood, Carry Water, and Laugh with Friends
It isn’t sustainable. The ongoing shock, panic, horror and emotional devastation resulting from the daily barrage of thoroughly unbelievable atrocities and absurdities promulgated by Trump and his administration.
Aug 11th, 2018
#AnthonyBourdain, and Why I Talk to My 10 Year Old about #Suicide
When I woke to the reports of Anthony Bourdain’s death by suicide Friday morning, I was visibly upset.
Jun 10th, 2018
#Perversity and Power in Sex Isn’t a Problem, in Fantasy or With Consent
We are currently involved in a national dialogue about sexual harassment, abuse, rape, and molestation, of young people, employees, job applicants, and others who are vulnerable to the abuses of power.
Nov 26th, 2017
Treating Nazis: #Analytic Considerations on Racism
The events and dialogue surrounding this month’s march by white supremacists, KKK, skin heads and neo Nazi’s in Charlottesville have left many of us shocked by the display of such blind hatred and aggression towards whole populations of people.
Aug 27th, 2017
An Impactful Change You Can Successfully Make
Making this one change prepares the foundation for all kinds of growth and change.
Aug 10th, 2017
It’s Not the Glass That’s Half Full/Empty; It’s the Breast
We judge each other as dispositioned towards negativity or positivity, scarcity or abundance, as if it is a chosen disposition.
Apr 24th, 2017
#Psychotherapist as a Dance Archeologist
An element of a good psychotherapy, the one which requires the most skill and psychological strength from the therapist, is our work at uncovering early childhood dynamics (archeology) impacting our daily patterns (dances).
Apr 2nd, 2017
Thinking About #Divorce or #Suicide? Stop it! For 6 Months
When we are considering giving up, on our relationship, or on life itself, our thoughts become narrowed to whether or not we are going to give up, and how we would leave if we decide we are done.
Mar 13th, 2017
When your Client is Racist; In 3 Not So Easy Steps
Of all the many bridges we cross in our work to join our clients, isms can not only significantly compromise our ability to empathize, sympathize, and understand where are clients are coming from, but they can literally reduce our interest or capacity.
Feb 21st, 2017
Run, Don’t Walk into Therapy
and how you should run, not walk, to begin your therapy journey.
Nov 5th, 2016
Eye Rolls, Shrugs, and Why Trump Is So Provocative
It is both hard to turn away and unbearable to watch.
Oct 2nd, 2016
#ColinKaepernick, #Beyoncé, #Chappelle and the Protest of #BlackLivesMatter
As during most weeks of this past year, social media has been rife with commentary related to issues of race, justice and protest.
Sep 3rd, 2016
What “Make America Great Again aka #MAGA” Means
Current national political debate is so divided and contentious that most of us aren’t listening to one another’s points, or concerns.
Aug 26th, 2016
Clinical Study and Supervision Group (16 CE’s) Learning from our Mistakes
For both seasoned clinicians and beginners alike, getting unknowingly sucked into enactments with clients is par for the course of long-term work traversing the world of the unconscious.
Aug 9th, 2016
Three Key Fathers Parenting Jobs, #AnalyticallySpeaking
Psychoanalytic theory pays plentiful attention to the role mothers play in early childhood development.
Jun 21st, 2016
Let’s Profile #BrockTurner, More Accurately Than His Father
In a letter penned in defense of a light sentencing for his son, Brock Turner’s father described him as “happy go lucky” prior to the events one night in January 2015.
Jun 9th, 2016
A Snarky Size Activist and 3 Benefits of My Stupid #Fitbit
I am a large woman, who worked for a decade on size-activism.
May 24th, 2016
Client Irritating You? Boring You? It is Useful #CounterTransference
When we tell someone at a party that we are a psychotherapist, they inevitable ask “Don’t you get bored hearing about everyone’s problems”?
May 20th, 2016
6 Openings for Talking to Kids About Sex and Gender
As parents, a lot of us have our fingers crossed.
May 18th, 2016
Your Client Wishes You Were Friends; Its #Oedipal
Sometimes clients express their wish that we could be friends.
May 12th, 2016
Why are Psychotherapists Obsessed with Moms?: 3 Theories for Mother's Day
It is true that no analyst or analytically oriented psychotherapist worth seeing is interested in anything else as attentively as our moms*.
May 6th, 2016
5 Reasons to Treat Dating Like an Internship
Internships rock. They are a great way to test out a type of work without the commitment of a job.
May 5th, 2016
Attending to the #Unconscious in a #Psychotherapy Session
Sigmund Freud postulated that for psychoanalysis to be effective, the client must share with the analyst all that crosses their mind during the course of the clinical hour.
Apr 30th, 2016
“Why Would I Do Something So Stupid?!” 3 Tools for Answers
“What is wrong with me”? “Why do I do this to myself”? “Why do I keep making the same mistakes”?
Apr 16th, 2016
Made Your #NewYearResolution? Read This
Most folks make New Years resolutions about their most core issues.
Jan 2nd, 2016
Want to Raise a Diversity-Savvy Kid? 3 Traps, 2 Solutions
If you want a future for you kids that reflects a fantasized “good ole days".
Nov 5th, 2015
Sometimes I Give in to my Kid, and I Am OK With That
Parenting is hard. I know parents are supposed to be consistent.
Oct 11th, 2015
Why Are Young Feminists So Angry?
Here is my current contribution to the perennial debate about why some folks hate feminists, the concept of feminism, and consistently see them as “angry feminists”.
Sep 28th, 2015
Love is Lovely, but Hate Gives Love its Teeth
Hate gets a bad rap. Yet real love doesn’t exist without it. Hate and love always live next to each other.
Sep 24th, 2015
Catch the New (School) Year Wave and Get Back to Work
It is not just Jews and school-bound kids that are gearing up for the new year.
Sep 7th, 2015
#MidLifeSuccess: Turning 50 Alison Bechdel’s Success and Mine
My big celesbian sighting (that is a celebrity lesbian-sighting), was in a hotel lobby in upstate New York, and Alison Bechdel was in her sweatpants version of pajamas.
Sep 4th, 2015
Book Recommendation: Blue? Lost? Uncertain? Read this book as a pick-you-up.
Often given as a graduation gift, Dr. Seuss’s Oh’ The Places You’ll Go is a masterpiece reminding us of the natural ups and downs of life and the dangers life entails.
Jul 23rd, 2015
Anger Matters
This is a text I received from my 7 year old son one morning upon realizing I wasn’t going to the zoo with his class that day.
Jul 13th, 2015
Why I absolutely adore the gruesome TV show Hannibal
The TV show Hannibal is the most internally consistent psychological drama on TV.
Jun 4th, 2015
Suffering is and isn't Relative
I have a client who sometimes starts a session saying “I don’t want to talk about Rwanda”.
Mar 14th, 2015
Coupledom is great; But Singlehood ain’t too shabby either
As an analytically oriented psychotherapist, I am always thrown a bit by “attachment theory” and “attachment parenting”.
Feb 21st, 2015
#CouplesFighting: Who is going to Win; You, or your Relationship?
When couples fight, the need to be right can easily distracts us from the damage that insistence does to our relationship.
Feb 8th, 2015
Time is my #HigherPower
When I first entered 12 Step recovery in my early 20’s I was faced with the daunting task of identifying a “Higher Power”.
Jan 12th, 2015
ADD – Don’t Subtract Foods for your #WeightLossResolutions for the New Year
I am a large, body-positive, feminist, who worked with in the Eating Disorder field as both a clinician and educator.
Jan 3rd, 2015
Building Resolve for New Years
Most of us start thinking about New Year Resolutions the morning after Christmas.
Dec 25th, 2014