Category: Practice

Do you think it’s possible to walk away from an event, situation, relationship, or opportunity and not ask the question why? I’m not sure what the “right” answer is, but I think it’s incredibly difficult for us humans not to ask the question why. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing. When we talk about meaning in psychology, we are often referring to an explanation of why something has happened or why something is important. 

As we consider this question of why and create meaning from our experiences, what would you consider to be most meaningful to you? Is it people, events, experiences, hardships, or all of the above? Take a moment and take a look at the pictures in your phone. What is in the pictures, why makes them meaningful? How do I feel about them? What do they make me think of? This may seem like a trivial exercise or question to ponder but if we sit with it long enough, we may be surprised at how we create meaning from our experienc ...

Recent decades have seen an increasing interest in the healing and therapeutic potential of nature and the perspective of various nature-based interventions for the benefit of mental health. The field of nature-based therapies is expanding in line with this interest. During the formative years of modern psychotherapy, several psychotherapists had a close, loving relationship with nature and who had contributed in some ways to the formation of nature therapy. One of them was Carl Jung, a renowned Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who was one of the first people in the field of mental health to voice concerns about the separation of men and nature. C. Jung believed that a modern man was in danger of losing all contact with the world of instinct, increased by his living an urban existence and separation from nature. Jung wrote in his diaries that the loss of instinct is largely responsible for the pathological condition of contem ...

There are very few roles in the world with the expectation to be and do it all, quite like the role of a mother. There are also many contradicting messages about what exactly all of the IT we are meant to be doing is. So often, instead of challenging this ridiculous expectation, mothers succumb to the overwhelm of it all and just end up feeling like failures. The reality is, when you are expected to be and do it all, and you push yourself to achieve it, you are never really going to be doing any of it particularly well. How could you? This sets moms up for burnout in the one job you can not give up.

I recognize this phenomenon in every mom that sits across from me in therapy and I look upon their faces with so much empathy because years ago, that was me! What changed the game for my motherhood a few years ago, is that I came across the podcast, The Lazy Genius, and felt like this woman was throwing me a lifeline! She encouraged her listen ...