Some of our most difficult patterns can begin with our best qualities. Caring for others, being flexible, and wanting to help are strengths. However, when these qualities become driven by fear or determine our sense of worth, kindness can gradually turn into people-pleasing. Think about Luisa from Encanto. Her strength and dependability are genuine qualities. She cares deeply about her family and takes pride in helping them. However, being helpful gradually becomes an expecta

When someone is experiencing depression, burnout, grief, or prolonged stress, even ordinary activities can feel overwhelming. Getting out of bed, answering a text, preparing a meal, or taking a shower may require more energy than others realize. People may know that an activity could help them feel better, yet still feel unable to begin. This is where behavioral activation can help. Behavioral activation is an evidence-based therapeutic approach that focuses on helping people

One of the most painful parts of grief is not always the loss itself. Sometimes, it is the quiet belief that we are doing it all wrong. Many people grow up unconsciously expecting grief to look linear or similar: shock, sadness, tears, healing, closure. We hear phrases like “time heals,” “stay strong,” or “you need to move on,” and over time, many of us internalize the idea that mourning should follow a predictable path. But grief is rarely that organized. After recently losi

Destigmatizing Suicide and Suicidal Ideation If you or someone you know is dealing with thoughts of suicide, you can call or text 988. As a therapist-in-training, the thing that most scared me about starting to provide counseling to clients was having to discern whether or not a client is suicidal. I was taught how to ask questions and provided with checklists, but getting better at crisis response (in any context) requires real-world practice. I felt nervous every time I w

Some young men grow up without the guidance they deserve. No one showed them how to carry pain without becoming hardened by it. No one taught them how to trust themselves, how to feel safe being vulnerable, or how to love without fear. Instead, they were left alone to interpret the world while still trying to survive it. When a young man has to raise himself emotionally, he often learns to hide confusion behind silence, anger, humor, distance, or self-reliance. He may begin t

For as long as I have been seeing single clients looking for dates and/or relationships, I’ve noticed the struggle for those who exist in two spaces: “traditional” dating apps and casual hookup apps. While I believe we can meet anyone in any space and that does dictate the nature of the relationship, there is typically more immediacy on hookup apps like Grindr, Scruff, or Sniffies (the newest kid on the block). For simplicity in this blog, I’m going to refer to the aforementi

There's a chair in my supervisor's office that I can't sit in while I'm doing my sessions. It's a comfortable chair, the kind that gently sends your body backward the moment you settle into it. My supervisor sits in it during his own sessions. But every time I have a session there, I find myself moving the other chair into place, the one without the deep recline. I noticed something else along the way. In my own sessions, my default posture is forward. Not anxious or perched,

Burnout has become almost normalized in society today. People joke about being exhausted, overwhelmed, emotionally drained – running on caffeine and survival mode like it’s just part of modern life. We praise productivity, overworking, and being “booked and busy,” even when people are quietly unraveling underneath it all. Here’s the truth: burnout is more than just being tired. Burnout usually doesn’t show up all at once. It creeps in slowly. You stop feeling excited about th

There are burdens that don’t show up on medical charts, resumes, or even in the way a person smiles at a gathering. They exist quietly, often invisibly, shaping how someone thinks, feels, and survives each day. I call this the invisible load, the psychological, cultural, and emotional weight carried by people whose struggles are not always named, and therefore not always seen. For many immigrants, refugees, and individuals navigating life between cultures, this load is not ju

What Is Complex Trauma? When most people think about trauma, they picture an event, like a car accident or a natural disaster, something dramatic. Trauma, in the popular imagination, has a shape, a timestamp, a name, something you can point to and say, that's where it happened. Clinicians sometimes call these "Big T" traumas. They are real and serious, and they cause a great deal of suffering, but they are not the only kind of trauma there is. In my clinical work, I encounter

Hello, my dear, I don’t know your name, and you don’t know mine—but I know something about the moment you’re in right now. The ground has probably shifted beneath you. Everything may feel loud and quiet at the same time. You might be overwhelmed with information, or completely numb. However you’re feeling—scared, angry, confused, even oddly calm—it’s all valid. There is no “right” way to receive this kind of news. I remember thinking that life had just split into a “before” a

Grieving the loss of a loved one is incredibly difficult and hard to understand or put into words. Grieving while living hours away from the home you once shared with this person makes it even more complex. This is an experience I recently went through, and thankfully, while my grandma was sick, I was able to be home many times to spend time with her. What I did not expect was the journey of grief that I have gone on since her death, while being away from the home where I sha

Back in the early days of psychology, Freud described a specific “oceanic” ego condition that he regarded as the root of all religious experience (Freud, 1930/1961). Inherent in this oceanic state is a fusion between the inner and outer world. This state can be found in any creative activity and is, in fact, fundamentally necessary for successful symbol formation. The central feature of the oceanic state is a lack of differentiation, a dissolution of hardened cliches. In this

There is a reason why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most widely used approaches in therapy. It is structured. It has clear rules and protocols. It is considered the “gold standard,” the “safest,” and the “most trustworthy” because it is associated with strong empirical support and measurable outcomes (Hofmann et al., 2012). But is that always the case? We have to ask ourselves whether CBT is always the most useful approach, or whether both clinicians and cl

Recently, I’ve noticed so many of us have been feeling nostalgic - a pull backward, a longing for a simpler time. We hear it in conversations, see it on social media, and notice it reflected more and more in TV and film. There’s a collective desire to go back in time, to remember who we used to be… before constant notifications, before algorithms, before our attention became something to be captured and consumed. Before, life felt like it was happening through a screen. Whi

Mental health therapists are often seen as the people who “have it all together.” They are expected to be calm, grounded, emotionally intelligent, and endlessly patient, not just in the therapy room, but in their personal lives as well. There is a quiet, unrealistic assumption that therapists don’t struggle the same way others do, that they are somehow immune to stress, conflict, or emotional overwhelm. In reality, therapists are just as human as the clients they support, and

The immutability of sexual orientation has long been a topic of debate in political, academic, and legal spheres. Advocates of gay rights have often centered their positions on the “born that way” and “not a choice” arguments. The basic claim of these arguments roughly follows the same form: “If same-sex sexual attractions were inborn or unchangeable, then it would be wrong to discriminate against lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LBG people), it would be wrong to criminalize

Understanding Trauma and Vicarious Trauma Trauma is a very common reason people seek therapy, but it’s also a complex topic that can be oversimplified on social media. There are common trauma responses, but trauma also affects people uniquely based on a number of factors. Even defining the word trauma can be difficult. Most people could name examples of traumatic things, but how do we decide that one thing is traumatic and another is not? One of the most essential things to u

Lately, many women I speak with are not just tired, they’re outraged, disgusted, and fed up. There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from watching women’s accomplishments minimized, while men with less merit are elevated and celebrated. From seeing accountability stall. From witnessing misogynistic rhetoric that diminishes women and then gets laughed off as harmless. From seeing predators protected while women are forced to answer and suffer the consequences. It’

Substance use within LGBTQ+ communities cannot be understood in isolation from the broader social and psychological realities that shape lived experience. Research consistently shows that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals experience higher rates of alcohol and substance use compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers. But these disparities are not rooted in identity itself, they are rooted in stress, stigma, and displacement. To approach this t