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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!
17 Costs for Freedom
Judith Herman, in her groundbreaking book Trauma and Recovery, writes: “Without freedom, there can be no safety and no recovery, but freedom is often achieved at a great cost. In order to gain their freedom, survivors may have to give up almost everything else… Rarely are the dimensions of this sacrifice fully recognized.” We talk a lot about the freedom that comes when we finally choose to stop living out of trauma, fear, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, or survival mode. Th
Piper Harris, LPC
6 days ago4 min read
The Tension Between Our Values and Our Actions (And Why It Matters)
One of the most powerful and uncomfortable truths in therapy is this: real growth almost always lives in the tension between what we value and what we actually do. We see it every day in sessions. A client values connection but pulls away when vulnerability feels risky. Another values courage but stays in a job that slowly drains their spirit. They feel the gap. They feel like a fraud sometimes. And that very discomfort? It’s often the doorway to meaningful change. Psychology
Piper Harris, LPC
Apr 273 min read
How to Apologize Effectively and Why Some People Don’t
We have all been on both sides of a bad apology. You are the one who messed up. Maybe you snapped at a partner, ghosted a friend, or dropped the ball at work. The words tumble out wrong. Or worse, someone hurts you deeply and offers a half-hearted “sorry you feel that way” before changing the subject. A genuine apology is not just polite etiquette. It is one of the most powerful tools we have for repairing trust, reducing resentment, and strengthening relationships. But it is
Piper Harris, LPC
Apr 195 min read
What Trauma Really Is (and Isn’t)
If you’ve ever felt like your body is still on high alert even when life feels calm, or wondered why certain triggers hit harder than they “should,” you’re not alone, and you’re not broken. Trauma touches far more lives than most people realize. According to the latest CDC data, about two-thirds of U.S. adults have experienced at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE), with roughly one in six reporting four or more. Among high school students, the numbers are even highe
Piper Harris, LPC
Apr 133 min read
Creating Your Legacy: How to Move from "Life Happens to Me" to "I Choose What This Means"
One simple question in the first session can change how you see your entire story, and the one you're writing for those who come after you. Life has a way of happening to us. Challenges arrive uninvited: family patterns we never asked for, losses that reshape everything, or quiet struggles that leave us wondering if anything will ever feel different. For many people, these experiences pile up until they start to feel like the whole story. But what if your story isn't finishe
Piper Harris, LPC
Apr 64 min read
Offended: The Greatest Tool You Can Use
I used to think getting offended was a sign of weakness. Now I see it as one of the most powerful tools we have; if we’re willing to pick it up and use it right. A few weeks ago, I finished a training for a group of counselors. The overall feedback was strong: people felt seen, equipped, and energized. But one response stood out. The participant said my delivery occasionally made them feel inadequate. They even added a note of self-awareness: “I recognize my own insecurities
Piper Harris, LPC
Mar 304 min read
The Sticky Filter: Why Old Negative Beliefs Linger Long After Therapy and How the Brain Keeps Them Alive
You’ve done the work. You’ve sat in the chair week after week, unpacked childhood wounds, named the automatic thoughts, practiced boundary-setting, and watched your life shift in meaningful ways. You’ve felt the relief of insight, the quiet power of new choices, the moments when you actually believed “I am enough.” Yet, in a quiet social gathering, a work meeting, or even a loving conversation, that old whisper returns: They’re just being polite. You don’t really belong here.
Piper Harris, LPC
Mar 235 min read
Orderly Life, Radical Healing
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” — Gustave Flaubert I wake at 5:00 a.m. sharp. Brew the first pot of coffee while the house is still dark and quiet. Spend forty-five minutes in prayer, then open Scripture and let whatever rises in my journal find its way onto the page. Get the family moving; breakfasts, lunches, goodbyes. Gym. Shower. Another cup of coffee on the way to the office. Once there, I light my three-wick c
Piper Harris, LPC
Mar 164 min read
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
Mar 24 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
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