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. This is a distortion that diminishes the possible joys of work, and...
A criticism leveraged against using psychedelics for therapeutic work, efforts towards enlightenment, spiritual connection, and meditative practices, is that it is a shortcut. The implication is that shortcuts are bad, that we only deserve good things if we spend decades of herculean effort to achieve them. Some people get to...
People try to pity me, as if it is hard to have the name Karen when it has become synonymous with a certain kind of white, female, entitlement. I don’t need pity. It is funny. I don’t take it personally. And I also think the name is well chosen. Most...
A teen at my son’s high school committed suicide this week. It is not the first time he and I have discussed the topic, but the first time since he was a teenager. This tender age with new truths inspired a new exploration of this crucial conversation. Unlike prior incarnations,...
Maybe you have been thinking about it for years, maybe you went for a bit years ago and it wasn’t great, or maybe people have suggested it to you over the years but it seemed silly. If you have never done a serious and successful stint of real psychotherapy, if...
In the current psychedelic renaissance, I hears lots of excitement about the not yet-legal-for-use psilocybin, the psychedelic component of mushrooms. Currently under FDA trials, mushrooms will likely be legal for use by specially trained psychotherapists as early as 2025. While this is fabulously exciting, there is already another psychedelic legal...
The psychedelic Ketamine is currently available for use in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy as an off-label use prescribed by medical practitioners. Yes, Ketamine, which people associate as a known horse tranquilizer, which it is, or Special K, a street drug, which it is, or what TV’s serial-killer Dexter used to incapacitate...
Psychotherapy costs a lot. If paying full fee out of pocket 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. I...
Ask anyone with a young adult in their life, the age Britney was when she was put into a conservatorship. Tons of young people make such stupid, stupid choices. They quit jobs, leave college, spend all their money, do drugs, have babies, self-mutilate, get into relationships with the worst people,...
Wholesale rejection of Freudian theory is a commonly accepted stance for many American psychotherapists. Folks in and outside the field comfortably mock elements of theory they ascribe to Freud. Often their understanding of the theory is sketchy at best. Other times they are accurate about the theory, but it is...
The confusion evidenced by this question is the view of psychotherapy itself. The assumption is that therapy is for crazy people, or at a minimum people who are not well. This fits well with the medical model of therapy that has been dictated by insurance companies. Medical Model Applied To...
When a *Karen cries that she felt threatened and intruded upon by a black man, and then she proceeds to threaten and intrude upon him by calling the police, it isn’t irony…it is projection. *Karen When a cop goes on a rant about how the world views police as “animals...
The reason effective therapists have tons of education is that it is really hard to change. While some people during a painful or difficult time in their lives might benefit from simply having a supportive, thoughtful listener, when people are stuck, that just isn’t enough. Everyone who has ever mocked...
Wholesale rejection of Freudian theory is a commonly accepted stance for Americans, even among psychotherapists. People comfortably mock elements of theory they ascribe to Freud. Often their understanding of the theory is sketchy at best. Other times they are accurate about the theory, but it is reflective of something Freud...
For those of us in 12 step recovery, we know all about writing gratitude lists. When I was in my first year of recover 34 years ago, my sponsor encouraged (read insisted) that I keep a journal that included a gratitude list every morning. Since I was feeling nothing like...
One of my friends who is single, like myself, has created a plan should she become significantly compromised with illness by the corona virus. Many of us are likely to get the corona virus, and some of us might get quite ill. Making a plan now will allow folks to...
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. As a therapist I am often in the business of being a barometer for clients’...
Most psychotherapists work with individuals. Some work with a range of populations. Some focus on certain age groups, and some on particular disorders or life issues. Many work with groups as well. But few clinicians venture into the world of treating couples and family therapy. As a devoted couples therapist,...
I recently participated in a verbal tussle on an online listserve of clinical social workers. Mostly everyone in the dialogue was well intentioned. We mostly shared common values of a commitment to wide-spread communal well-being of our citizenry and a socially just world. We all had surely entered the field...
There are many reasons clients request attending sessions every other week or once a month. The reasons are built on misconceptions about what therapy is and how it works. Therapists might very well agree to this frequency of sessions, but most likely with reservations. I will lay out here some...
In a world committed to quick fixes, self-help books and scams, when I suggest to folks that psychotherapy is best suited to a multi-year process, they are shocked, dubious, and assume I have designed my practice to hook people so I can make as much money off of them as...
“Don’t eat so fast.” “Stop trying to distract him when he is upset. You need to talk about his feelings.” (about a shared child) “Remember to not interrupt people.” (when entering a party) “Why are you watching that tv show? It is so vile.” “It hurts my feelings when you...
Movies provide opportunities to explore landscapes of human emotion and relationships. Animated children’s movies are no exception. Like classic fairy-tales, the stories that last do so because they resonate for the child at an unconscious level, offering universal truths about life. Frozen 2 provides its audience with lessons about following...
This question actually leads many folks to terminate therapy, reduce the frequency of psychotherapy, or never begin in the first place. People worry that they won’t know what to talk about in sessions, or that they won’t have enough material for weekly psychotherapy. What they don’t know is that a...
Current beauty aesthetic is just that: Current. In order to understand the willingness of so many women and young girls to engage in eating disordered behaviors to resemble a beauty ideal, we must first attempt to understand what that beauty ideal represents. Beauty ideals reflect the cultures that support them,...
Couples Corner Rules of Engagement: Strike When the Iron is Cold Thinking about Divorce or Suicide? Stop it! At Least for 6 Months 5 Reasons to Treat Dating Like and Internship 8 Things You Have to Remember When you Fight with a Partner Love is Lovely but Hate Gives Love...
Most of us to the left of center are clear that our moods and dispositions have been off since the election results of 2016. In the first days, leading into weeks, many of us and those in our communities where tearful, agitated, anxious, worried, enraged, grief-stricken, crest-fallen, rage-filled, shocked, angst-filled,...
Narcissism gets a bad rap. We hurl the word narcissist as insult at people we perceive as too selfish, self-indulgent or self-focused. We call behaviors we see as self-centered narcissistic. It would seem by our language use that narcissism is inherently bad. This poses quite a problem since sufficient narcissism...
The perennial flogger many clients use to beat themselves in therapy is the “But my life is too good to be this distraught about it.” This is also a criticism thrown against psychotherapy in general, basically judging that “it could be worse so what are you complaining about”. As a...
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 a failure. See what comes up when you google ”Perfectionism is the enemy of…”? Perfectionism has a lot...
Feeling depressed is a common occurrence. Depression less so. Perhaps the most salient reason many people fail to treat those struggling with Depression with appropriate levels of compassion and concern is because they conflate feeling depressed with having a Depressive Disorder. They are worlds apart. The confusion is understandable, given...
People compare many things to therapy: hikes in nature, talks with a good friend, meditation, and even confessions to a priest. All those things are great and can be important tools for a good life. But they are not therapy. Let us help you find a therapist. Therapy is a uniquely potent...
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. When a need is an issue, we are usually discussing inpatient residential therapy for a serious crisis or treatment for a person with a...
Finally, diagnostic Anxiety qualifies for medical marijuana use. Why finally? Because it should have been one of the first and most obvious of cannabis’ medical uses. Anxiety is as common in our society as Depression, and significantly less successfully treated. Current Medications for Anxiety Suck Unlike Depression, for which we have...
I never imagined myself a perfectionist. But in the psychoanalytic lexicon, we are more apt to use the term Ideal, or Idealization. We can get a glimpse of our own brand of idealization right underneath statements like “Life should be fair”, “life should be easy”, “parenting shouldn’t be this hard”...
Trump is making lots of us feel crazy. But if you grew up in a messed up family, with a crazy person anywhere near the helm, Trump’s daily lunacy is particularly disturbing. Falling Apart My friends and I have been falling apart left and right the last couple years. I...
You can’t all be bad. Or at a minimum you cant be only bad. We walk in the same streets with you. You are in our families. You have been our friends. You have families you love, jobs you care about, communities and churches you invest time and energy in....
Even as adults, we can worry if our parents are disappointed in us. We all seek basic parental approval which can be tough to get if our parents had a very specific image of who they hoped we would be. Sometimes the things we are most proud of in ourselves...
Some folks fear they are going to be asked to hate their parents by their therapist. In a world where we agree it is good to move on, let go of the past, and live in the present, it can seem contradictory that therapists as interested in our childhood. But...
Therapist client relationship begins best with a good match. A skilled clinician can find ways to connect to all of their clients. But a therapist client match based on personality and style can greatly improve both the early work of therapy and the depth achieved. This video has several...
Philadelphia psychotherapy practice Full Living specializes in making thoughtful matches between clients and skilled experienced therapists in the Greater Philadelphia Area. Finding a therapist is a daunting task. Besides identifying a therapist with the right credentials, education, and training you need a way to find our if they are any good. Sometimes...
Finding a therapist can be daunting. Unless you are a therapist yourself it is hard to know what to look for in a therapist, in terms of their training, education and approach. Even if you know the kind of therapy you are interested in, how would you know if they...
Therapist credentials, education, training and approach to the work of psychotherapy vary widely in the field. Full Living director Karen L Smith offers information about her background and approach to therapy. Her work is analytically oriented psychotherapy, often referred to as psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Smith is an analytically oriented...
Long term psychotherapy gets a bad rap in the age of managed care and evidenced based concrete treatments. But long term therapy offers transformation, of the way we see ourselves, our relationships and our world. In the video, eating disorders are used an example to compare approaches. Smith is...
Up-selling is a term borrowed from the business world. While the concept seems counter-intuitive to a therapist salary, many of us are additionally small business owners. The fact that we are in a helping profession, doesn’t mean our psychotherapist salary doesn’t matter to us. We use our work in the...
It is a reasonable question. “Does my therapist like me”? In the bizarre, boundaried, prescribed therapist/client relationship, where clients can come to have such potent feelings about their therapists, it is fair for the client to wonder where they stand. Such a Prescribed Relationship For some of our clients, having...
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. In the original interview where he revealed this, he made clear that he understood this was...
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? Some harder questions: Do you ever feel guilty, or under-appreciated based on...
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. Even worse, she implied she had confidential information on her side, which made...
While there are lots of ways to describe and define emotional, mental, and psychological health, there is one consistent theme; Integration. Integration of body, mind and soul. Integration of left and right brain hemisphere. Integration of all the many parts of our psychological and emotional selves. We are not one...
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. But he has another true self. Kavanaugh’s alter ego is a...
Boys will be boys. Rough-housing. What happens in (fill in the boys club activity) stays in (the boys club), and locker-room talk. This is some of the language used to defend behaviors in boys, and men, to describe otherwise reprehensible behavior. But now, in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement,...
I know I know…the motto is “strike when the iron is hot”. There are quite a few situations in life where I believe that is sound advice. But between couples, with difficult issues between them, your best bet for fair fighting is addressing issues when no one is mobilized is...
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. Besides having to somehow try to metabolize the insanity of policy and tweets coming from the white house, congress and house, there is...
When I woke to the reports of Anthony Bourdain’s death by suicide Friday morning, I was visibly upset. My 10 year old asked me what was up. I told him Bourdain had killed himself. He asked what we all ask when someone takes their own life. “Why”, “he is rich, and famous,...
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. Many of us are reading horrifying stories daily about perversity, and the ways people in power have put others...
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. Even for those who feel very aware of both systemic and...
Making this one change prepares the foundation for all kinds of growth and change. It is something you already do, all day long, that you just have to learn how to do differently. And you really must, because it is highly likely that how you are doing it now is...
We judge each other as dispositioned towards negativity or positivity, scarcity or abundance, as if it is a chosen disposition. We imagine the concept of a glass half full or half empty as a perspective that people choose. We access people as being negative or being positive. We go so far...
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). Whatever brings folks to therapy, eventually, patterns from childhood become a centrally relevant part of the therapy....
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. In the world of psychoanalytic theory, where it is quite normative to consider all the ways the body eliminates and evacuates its contents, zit and...
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. From thoughts in divorce about how we would afford moving out, what...
When your Client is Racist (or Homophobic, or Anti-Muslim/Semitic, Sexist, or otherwise hating/afraid of an entire segment of the population. 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...
A blog about therapy;and how you should run, not walk, to begin your therapy journey. Folks compare a lot of things to psychotherapy, like hikes in nature, talks with a good friend, meditation, and even confessions to a priest. All those things are great, and can be great tools for...
It is both hard to turn away and unbearable to watch. Trump has garnered more blind love and searing hate than any political figure in memory. For those who love him, watching him speak, and gesticulate, is cathartically satisfying like a good vent, or cry, or scream, with a feeling...
As during most weeks of this past year, social media has been rife with commentary related to issues of race, justice and protest. Many folks reacted with rage at the form some of the protest took, in particular Colin Kaepernick’s decision to remain seated during the National Anthem. Beyoncé engaged in an...
Current national political debate is so divided and contentious that most of us aren’t listening to one another’s points, or concerns. We listen to each other only enough to mock or debunk. We hear the worst possible version, or implication, of what someone is saying, and give no thought to the...
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. Regardless of our clinical orientation, we can find ourselves in near and/or actualized re-enactments with our clients paralleling key dynamics in their...
Psychoanalytic theory pays plentiful attention to the role mothers play in early childhood development. The first weeks of life are dominated by the mother-infant relationship, often referred to in the analytic world as the nursing couple*. (To be clear; the nursing couple might be a father and child, and/or might include a bottle...
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. Even after accepting his son had sexually assaulted an unconscious woman, he still believed it could be true that...
I am a large woman, who worked for a decade on size-activism. My work included helping women both love their bodies more, regardless of size or appearance, but also on reducing the importance they place on their appearance. More controversial, I also suggest that people needn’t bow down to the...
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”? Or “Doesn’t it get irritating listen to people complain about their problems all day”? Most therapists would agree that our work is hardly irritating or boring. It is more...
As parents, a lot of us have our fingers crossed. We hope our kids won’t have sex until they are grown. And that they will land on the easiest and least controversial path possible. It is a reasonable wish, but can’t be turned into a parenting goal without shutting down...
Sometimes clients express their wish that we could be friends. Sometimes the feeling is even mutual. There may be practical reasons, such as aspects of our personalities that align in such a way that we imagine a friendship would be viable. But this is not why our client, or we,...
It is true that no analyst or analytically oriented psychotherapist worth seeing is interested in anything else as attentively as our moms*. But really, who can deny it: moms are centrally key in all our lives. *Moms are sometimes Dads, or Aunts, or Guardians. Sometimes an infant has more than...
Internships rock. They are a great way to test out a type of work without the commitment of a job. That is what dating should be…a great way to check out a person and a relationship, to see if it is a good fit, without the commitment of partnership. The...
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. Whether their thoughts are deemed by them to be relevant and consequential or completely tangential and random, that the analyst needed access...
“What is wrong with me”? “Why do I do this to myself”? “Why do I keep making the same mistakes”? These are common questions clients have when talking with a psychotherapist. Or a friend about an incident we are upset about. Or to our journals or the universe. It is...
Most folks make New Years resolutions about their most core issues. With or without our own awareness of the links, the issues that plague us year after year are entrenched because they deeply rooted in themes from childhood. We love to think that if we just leverage some sound, rational...
If you want a future for you kids that reflects a fantasized “good ole days”, filled with white, heterosexual, legally married couples, with 2.3 kids, living behind picket fences in suburbia, with a bunch of people just like you, this post isn’t going to help you. If you want your...
Parenting is hard. I know parents are supposed to be consistent. Once we say “no,” we aren’t supposed to let them convince us otherwise. We are supposed to mean what we say and say what we mean. Really, I know, I’ve read all the discipline and parenting books. I even...
When folks struggle with ongoing depression, anxiety or bi-polar symptoms, serious action is required. Mood disorders are no joke and can suck the joy out of a well-built life. While psychotropic medication is hardly the first order of business, depression meds and anxiety meds are key tools in our arsenal,...
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”. I am going to “blame” it on angry young feminists. Okay, I don’t really mean I am going to blame it on them, but I...
Couples fight. And when we do, partners expose our most vulnerable, panicky, hateful selves. Nothing else can open an abyss of confusion and madness like a stalemate half an hour into a fight with our partner. We can find ourselves treating our partner, even when we’re not still in the...
Hate gets a bad rap. Yet real love doesn’t exist without it. Hate and love always live next to each other. Lots of folks don’t like to think about the moments in their lives when they hate their children, their partners, their parents, much less to talk about it. But people...
It is not just Jews and school-bound kids that are gearing up for the new year. It is in the air. Or ingrained in our bones from our school years. Summer is over. The fun, or the chaos, of the season is over, and it is time to get back to...
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. It didn’t stop me from walking right up to her and introducing myself. I then furiously texted back and forth with all my friends,...
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. While hardly a cure for diagnostic depression or anxiety, it is a comfort to the soul. I read it routinely to...
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. Note the sadness descending into violent rage. This is jack you better be come to the feeld trip Keran smith!!!???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Clearly, the...
The tv show Hannibal is the most internally consistent psychological drama on TV. Sure, its characters are quite fantastical, but they are crafted intelligently, with sophisticated comprehension of the disturbed psyche. Shows with criminal profilers allow psychologists to be relatively smart, but still, they offer the most simplistic of analyses, aren’t...
I have a client who sometimes starts a session saying “I don’t want to talk about Rwanda”. What he means is he wants to be able to talk about his pain and suffering, and the unfairness of life, without having to think about people who have it worse. The extremes...
As an analytically oriented psychotherapist, I am always thrown a bit by “attachment theory” and “attachment parenting”. What about the other side of the coin, separation? Both attachment and separation are capacities that must be achieved. They are accomplishments that need to be nurtured in our children, because both entail losses. Let...
When couples fight, the need to be right can easily distracts us from the damage that insistence does to our relationship. Unfortunately we really have to chose who is going to win, you or your relationship. Most folks come upon it honestly. In childhood we need to build up a...
When I first entered 12 Step recovery in my early 20’s I was faced with the daunting task of identifying a “Higher Power”. I came to the program anti-religious, not particularly spiritual, and very committed to rational thought. I was also un-trusting enough to make relying on my sponsor or...
I am a large, body-positive, feminist, who worked with in the Eating Disorder field as both a clinician and educator. And still, this time of year I always find myself hyper aware of my size. And while I think societally we are continually inundated with propaganda about weight loss resolutions,...
New Year’s Resolve Most of us start thinking about New Year Resolutions the morning after Christmas. It is a natural response to weeks of over indulgence, gluttony and greed…all good motivators. The problem with New Year’s Resolutions though is that making change is hard, and it requires a fair amount...
What could possibly compare to the expectations for Christmas? Certainly not Christmas. The buildup is so massive, that it typically serves to diminish the day itself. One of my favorite X-files episodes starred Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as Maurice and Lyda, married ghosts who had killed each other on...
Communication skills are key to turning couples fighting into vehicles for relationship growth and change or just increasing injury and disconnection. You are radically more likely to get your basic needs meet when you communicate needs clearly to your partner/friend/boss/parent. Examples: “I could use for you to hear me out before...
The short answer to if you should go to psychotherapy is Yes! To start, the question shouldn’t be if you need therapy, but would it benefit you. Very few people need therapy, and only in a few circumstances. When need is the issue, we are usually discussing inpatient residential therapy for a serious crises or...
Most clients know that some of their best sessions happen when they don’t know what their therapy topic is going to be. In the absence of an external event to report, the unconscious manages to insert itself into what feels like random meanderings of thoughts in the first few minutes...
Our unconscious minds are filed with truths about our history, hopes, fears, struggles and triumphs. Freudian slips, dreams, songs that get stuck in your head: they are all efforts by your unconscious to direct you to issues burdening your mind that part of you is resistant to addressing. Smith is...
“On Kissing, Tickiling and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life” by Adam Phillips. Here is a new feature of my blog…book recommendations. I wanted to start with one of my favorite analytic books of all time. It is a great read for clinicians and non-clinicians alike, offering an...
I want to be thankful on Thanksgiving; I really do. It is just that the build up is so big, the expectations so high, the demand for joy, and gratitude so relentless. We have designed the holiday as essentially antithetical. Gratitude is characterized by that moment when you taste the...
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. A burden that has been eating him alive for over 30 years has been lifted. After having spent 20 years of his adult...
S: “I have been thinking about maybe going away for a three day weekend” L: “Me too! Where should we go”? S: “Remember when we stayed at the cabin? That is still one of my favorite vacations we have taken. It was so relaxing”. L: “But it took so long to get...
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. Don’t let fear and misinformation keep you from finding a therapist and a therapy that can help you change your life. Smith...
I don’t mean arguing right before we go to sleep. While it sucks when that happens, sometimes it happens and makes most sense to have the fight then. But sit up! Get out of bed!Bed is for a lot of things, but not for fighting. It is important to keep it...
Many folks, including some clinicians, use the terms counseling and therapy as if they are interchangeable. Many clinicians engage almost exclusively in the use of counseling techniques and mistakenly call what they do as psychotherapy. This is a serious pet peeve of mine. Okay, not really a pet peeve as much as...
A blog about psychotherapy Folks compare a lot of things to psychotherapy, like hikes in nature, talks with a good friend, meditation, and even confessions to a priest. All those things are great, and can be great tools for a good life. But they are not therapy. Therapy is a...