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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are few experiences more powerful, or more painful, than the experience of being seen. To be truly seen by another human being can feel like standing in the light after a long season in shadow. It’s disorienting, intimate, sometimes terrifying. And yet, it is the very thing that allows transformation to begin. The Ache of Being Unseen I recently experienced this myself. To be within a group, yet unseen. Surrounded by people, yet unseen. What I felt was a tumult of emoti

Let’s just say it; most people don’t walk into therapy hoping to feel like a student again. You’re likely overwhelmed, stressed, or...

When I speak directly about problems in our field, as I did in a recent LinkedIn exchange , the reactions are telling. Many colleagues...

Flight anxiety is one of the most common fears I encounter in my practice. For some, it shows up as mild worry at the thought of...