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

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

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

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

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

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,

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

In studying moral injury, I became increasingly aware that trauma is not only psychological but profoundly ethical—a fracture in one’s sense of goodness, trust, and belonging. Through this work and continued research, the term Post-Impact Survivor  emerged as a way to describe those living in the aftermath of such invisible ruptures. My thinking was shaped in part by Robert W. McChesney’s The Soul Also Keeps the Score , which explores how guilt, shame, and moral dissonance al

By the time she sat across from me, the uniform didn’t fit anymore. Her badge still shone, but it no longer meant what it once did. She had spent twenty years as a police officer, running toward what others ran from, believing that courage could redeem the chaos she’d been born into. Her childhood was marked by neglect and violence, the kind of wounds that teach a child to survive by control. She learned early that love was unreliable, that safety had to be earned, that worth