Longing for Home: Navigating grief, change, & heartache during the Holidays
The holiday season can bring a mix of emotion for each of us, from joy and excitement to a sense of sadness and nostalgia. So much can change in our lives and it is during holidays that these changes can become most apparent to us - we notice the absence of a family member who has died or moved away, we are reminded of better-times and past holidays, or we are overjoyed to celebrate with new partners, friends, and family members.
We so badly want the holidays to be a time of rest where he can hit pause on the ever changing landscape of life. And sometimes the holidays can be just that, providing us with a meaningful sense of celebration and community. But other times the holidays can feel painful, isolating, and dull.
Why Words Matter: How verbal expression can help us reconnect to ourselves
We’ve all been there. Hours have gone by and we’ve barely noticed as we sit on our couch, endlessly doom scrolling through post after post on social media. Our mind feels numb, we feel disoriented, and we’re not sure how time passed so quickly.
In today’s society, we’re surrounded and flooded with information. The ease of access to information at our fingertips is astounding. But it can also be harmful for our mental health because it can distract us and disconnect us from ourselves.
In this blog post, I will be exploring the importance of words and how verbal expression is a critical component of reconnecting to ourselves, our emotional experience, and our relationships.
Dealing with Pet Grief: Healing After the Loss of Your Animal Companion
When we think of grief and loss, we often associate it with the loss of a person, but grief can also manifest in other forms, specifically after the loss of a pet.
It is unfortunate, however, that in our society we give little credence to the impact and weight that can accompany the death of a cherished pet.
As a therapist, I’ve spent many sessions helping clients navigate the complexity of emotion and pain that arise with the passing of an animal. And in recent months, my family experienced the loss of a pet - an adventurous and faithful dog named Oliver - eliciting my own feelings of sadness, loss, and grief.
How to Better Understand and Support the Men in our Lives: Men’s Mental Health Month
June is Men’s Mental Health Month, which seeks to bring awareness to the issues men experience and reduce stigma around men seeking help. As a therapist that works primarily with men, I acknowledge the importance of advocating for men’s mental health.
As such, I want to utilize this blog post to broadly summarize the issues men encounter and what we can do to support the men in our lives.
The Impact of Trauma on Our Pursuit of Meaning & purpose: How therapy can help
Trauma is inherently disruptive - it disrupts our lives, our relationships, and our sense of self, safety, and wholeness. For this post, I want to focus on the ways trauma impacts our lives and how therapy can help get us back on track.
Trauma occurs when one is exposed to overwhelming danger and personal threat, which creates a strong emotional and physiological reaction. Yet, with trauma, these strong reactions continue to linger in the mind and body, leading to prolonged difficulties across many domains of experience - in our body, mind, and relationships.
The Acorn & The Oak: Unlocking our human Potential through therapy
To think that a towering 60-foot oak tree began its life as a tiny seed that fits in the palm of your hand is truly remarkable. The acorn becoming the oak is an apt metaphor for many things, because it highlights the ability for living organisms to change and transform into something more.
It also poses a larger question about potential:
If there is potential in an acorn to become an oak tree, might there also be hidden potential in us as humans to become something more?
Reframing our Pursuit of Meaning and Purpose: A New Year’s Reflection
There is immense societal pressure, especially in America, to set resolutions in the New Year to improve our lives with new habits and lifestyle changes. But for most of us, if we’re lucky, our resolutions will only last a few months before our motivation peters out and we find ourselves back at square one.
However annoying this cycle of started and failed resolutions may be, I believe that this annual burst of motivation to better ourselves reveals our longing, as humans, to live a fulfilling and meaningful life