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In the Writing
Here at Untangled Mind℠, you'll discover my deep passion and ongoing pursuit of rigorous, evidence-based mental health care. Through this blog, I share thoughtful insights, practical strategies, and reflections drawn from the Untangled Mind Pathway℠, my structured, measurement-based framework designed to move beyond subjectivity toward real, trackable progress. I love exploring ideas that elevate standards in therapy and empower both clients and clinicians. Most posts have a companion episode on the podcast, so be sure to check out both.
Welcome, let's untangle the mind together!
How To Know You Identify as Broken
She walks into the room already braced. Shoulders slightly forward. Chin lowered just enough to signal expectation. Not fear exactly. More like resignation. When someone asks how she’s doing, the answer comes quickly. “I’m a mess.”“I’m just wired wrong.”“I don’t function like other people.” It sounds honest. Self-aware, even. She has language for her anxiety and for her trauma, for the ways her past shaped her present. At first, people lean in. They listen. They care. Then, o
Piper Harris, LPC
6 days ago4 min read
Rolling in Bees and the Smell of Sunshine: What Dreams Actually Mean
A few nights ago, I had a dream that felt like a mash-up written by an overcaffeinated novelist: I was rolling in a pile of bees (I’m allergic, so that’s not ideal). There was a conveyor belt of robot-humans. And somewhere in it all, I could smell sunshine. Warm. Clean. Almost nostalgic. On the surface, I can see the obvious influence. I’ve been reading a time-travel novel. The robot assembly line makes sense. My brain borrowed imagery from what I fed it. But bees? And the sm
Piper Harris, LPC
Feb 233 min read
Courage: The Skill Therapy Forgot
Courage is one of the least discussed and most misused concepts in modern therapy. Culturally, the word has been softened, manipulated, and stretched until it no longer means much. Courage is often framed as self-expression, emotional vulnerability, or simply “honoring your feelings.” While those may have value, they are not courage. Courage is action. Historically and clinically, courage has always involved movement toward what is feared, avoided, or resisted. It is not comf
Piper Harris, LPC
Feb 163 min read
After Symptom Resolution: A Developmental Phase Some Clients Enter and Why Clinicians Must Be Trained to Recognize It
In outcome-oriented psychotherapy, symptom resolution is a meaningful and necessary milestone. Clients stabilize, measures improve, and functioning returns. Within structured, data-driven models such as the Untangled Mind Pathway, this phase represents successful completion of core treatment objectives for many individuals. For a large portion of clients, this is where therapy appropriately concludes. However, clinical practice reveals a quieter reality: not every client land
Piper Harris, LPC
Feb 96 min read
Predictions, Presumptions, Assumptions
I woke up from a nap recently with three words running through my mind: Predictions. Presumptions. Assumptions. No narrative attached. No storyline. Just the words, insistent, almost procedural. What struck me later was that they form a progression, not a diagnosis, but a process. Step One: Predictions This is where we start when we’re trying to be careful. We predict reactions. We predict outcomes. We predict harm. “If I say this, it will destabilize.”“If I name this, it wi
Piper Harris, LPC
Feb 22 min read
The Argument the Field Isn't Making
Advocacy didn’t begin for me at the Capitol. It began in the therapy room. Over the last several years, I’ve sat with clients who were burdened by trauma, anxiety, chronic stress, and the quiet forms of despair that rarely trend online. Their stories shared a pattern: before finding relief, many had cycled through seven, eight, even nine therapists. They were offered empathy, affirmation, and encouragement, but not formation, not strategy, and not outcomes. They weren’t lacki
Piper Harris, LPC
Jan 224 min read
Bearing Reality: Thinking About Thinking Part III
What I Missed In the last post, I looked at what my highlights said about how I think. But what I didn't highlight tells just as much of the story. The things I skipped, skimmed, or didn't mark. Those silences carry meaning too. To really understand how our minds work, we have to look at both what we notice and what we pass over. What grabs our attention shows what we value. What we ignore shows what we prioritize. Sometimes we skip things because we're avoiding them. Sometim
Piper Harris, LPC
Jan 186 min read
Therapy for the Burdened and the Bored
Something subtle has shifted in the mental health field, though few inside the profession seem willing to say it plainly. Therapy, once understood as a clinical intervention for real suffering, now increasingly resembles a consumable, another lifestyle accessory among many, curated to match preference and identity rather than employed to transform a life. The shift did not happen all at once. It has been slow, incremental, and mostly unspoken. But it has changed what therapy
Piper Harris, LPC
Jan 1410 min read
Bearing Reality: Thinking About Thinking Part II
Patterns of Attention In the first entry of this series, I shared the raw material from several weeks of reading, highlighted passages without interpretation. If you haven't read the first installment, read it here. In this entry, I want to turn toward the patterns those highlights reveal. Reading is never passive. What we underline and return to exposes something about our internal orientation long before we consciously articulate it. My aim here isn’t to analyze myself in
Piper Harris, LPC
Jan 124 min read
Bearing Reality: Thinking About Thinking
Part I — The Material I didn’t go into this with an agenda. In fact, I didn’t go into it at all. I was trying to take a vacation. I wanted to see whether I could actually step away, and reading has always been the one place where my nervous system settles rather than accelerates. So I read. For hours each day. I highlighted. I wondered. And at some point, I noticed that I wasn’t just engaging with the material, I was watching myself engage with it. I’ve often asked clients to
Piper Harris, LPC
Jan 27 min read
Jólabókaflóð: My Gift to You
It's pretty common that I end up talking about books with my clients. They often borrow from me and bring their own to add to the "library" in the office, which I then lend out to others. Often, they stride into the office, finding me cross-legged and engrossed in something new or old that I can't get enough of. Today was no different, and I shared that this past weekend, I learned about an Icelandic tradition called Jólabókaflóð , the Christmas Book Flood. On Christmas Ev
Piper Harris, LPC
Dec 17, 20255 min read
Year-End Reflection Is Not the Same as New Year’s Resolutions
Every December, there’s pressure to decide who you’re going to become next year. New goals. New habits and new promises to finally get it right. But before asking what’s next , there’s a far more important question most people skip: What actually happened this year, and how did I respond to it? I’ve spent years practicing year-end reflection, and I look forward to it precisely because it isn’t always comfortable. This is not a glossy review of wins or a curated highlight reel
Piper Harris, LPC
Dec 15, 20253 min read
Full Circle
Today, I officially became fully licensed as a Professional Counselor in the state of Georgia. It’s strange how clean that sentence sounds compared to the road behind it. This journey truly restarted in August of 2020, after I lost my business. I didn’t know it then, but I needed that loss. I had stepped away from psychology back in 2005, yet counseling never really left me. Every business I built, every leadership role I held, my clinical brain kept showing up. I could try t
Piper Harris, LPC
Dec 8, 20251 min read
The Undeniable Weight of Anxiety
A personal reflection from a clinician who lives what she teaches There’s a particular weight anxiety carries; one that isn’t metaphorical but physiological. It lives behind the ribs, in the jaw, between the shoulder blades. It sharpens thoughts into fragments, pushes the heart into a faster rhythm, and steals the ability to focus long enough to finish a sentence. It narrows the world until all that exists is the next fear, next what-if, next imagined catastrophe. If you’re w
Piper Harris, LPC
Dec 5, 20255 min read
I'm So Annoying: Why I Turn People Away From Counseling
I’ll admit something that most therapists won’t say out loud: I annoy myself. I annoy myself because I turn people away from counseling far more often than the average clinician and usually for the same reason. They don’t actually need counseling. They’re not experiencing clinical levels of distress. They’re not impaired. They’re not drowning in symptoms. They want someone to “talk things through” with, to process, to mull, to have a sounding board. But here’s my problem: tha
Piper Harris, LPC
Dec 1, 20258 min read
The Federal Loan Shake-Up Isn’t an Attack on Counselors, It’s a Mirror the Field Doesn’t Want to Face
The National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) recently released an alarmed announcement: the U.S. Department of Education may no longer classify counseling degrees as “professional degrees” under proposed federal loan regulations. Predictably, the reaction across the counseling world was swift: fear, outrage, and warnings that our profession is under attack. But the regulation itself is far less dramatic than the panic makes it out to be. This isn’t a judgment on our co
Piper Harris, LPC
Nov 25, 20254 min read
Thanksgiving at the Table: A Therapist’s Guide to the Personalities You’re About to Sit With
The holidays have a way of revealing people. Put enough family members, decades-old dynamics, and a table full of expectations together, and the truth always comes out, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, and sometimes wrapped in a casserole dish. Thanksgiving is often portrayed as warm, grateful, and uncomplicated. But for many, it’s a pressure cooker of emotional labor, unspoken resentments, and the annual performance of “let’s just get through the day.” I want to prepare
Piper Harris, LPC
Nov 24, 20255 min read
Thirty-Nine Days Until Christmas: Why We Count Down to Everything Except Our Own Healing
Every year around this time, the numbers begin to appear. Thirty-nine days until Christmas. Then thirty-eight. Then thirty-seven. Children start circling toy catalogs. Adults begin listing gifts, travel, gatherings, or, depending on their story, the emotional minefields that lie beneath the surface of the season. For some, the countdown builds anticipation. For others, it builds dread. But the question has been sitting with me all day: Why do we count down to a holiday with s
Piper Harris, LPC
Nov 17, 20253 min read
Eatin’ Soup with Chopsticks: The Cost of Old Habits
Shel Silverstein once wrote: Eatin’ soup with chopsticks—I should be finished soon. Eatin’ soup with chopsticks While whistlin’ a tune. Eatin’ soup with chopsticks Because I have no spoon. Eatin’ soup with chopstick Can take all afternoon. At first glance, Silverstein’s poem reads like playful nonsense, typical of his childlike humor. But beneath the whimsy lies something deeply human. How often do we, too, find ourselves eatin’ soup with chopsticks , using the wrong tools,
Piper Harris, LPC
Nov 2, 20254 min read
🎃 The 5 Scariest Things I’ve Heard this Year (Halloween Edition)
When Therapy Turns into a Horror Story Not all monsters hide under beds. Some hide behind cardigans and overstuffed chairs. Every October, I’m reminded that the scariest things I’ve ever encountered didn’t happen in a dark alley; they happened in the counseling room. I’m not talking about clients’ trauma (that’s sacred work). I’m talking about what I’ve heard from clients after working with other therapists. These are real statements, each one a little horror story of its ow
Piper Harris, LPC
Oct 31, 20253 min read
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