I never really liked kids—in particular, babies. Maybe it was because I was the youngest in my extended family and had no access to small children, which made them seem foreign and abstract. Maybe it was because I didn’t particularly enjoy being a child myself. Whatever the reason, no one would have or could have […]
Category: Blog
How to Turn Down the Volume on your Inner Body Critic & Empower Yourself (For Real).
How to Turn Down the Volume on your Inner Body Critic & Empower Yourself (For Real). I’ve always wanted to be perfect. Even when it was sagely pointed out to me that perfection is an illusion, I have persisted. Maybe, I believed, if I could at least get within spitting distance of perfect, the voice […]
How to Avoid the Sociopath Next Door.
How to Avoid the Sociopath Next Door. My sociopath latched onto me when I was young, mesmerizing me with the characteristic charm of his people. If you have ever been on the receiving end of this kind of seduction, you know it is a deeply compelling, dare I say, spiritual experience. One feels as if […]
How to Make the Most Out of Virtual Therapy
How to Make the Most Out of Virtual Therapy When I started working as a psychotherapist, virtual therapy wasn’t even a thing. I met with people in my office where we sat together in a safe and private space to talk about all things human. It’s a flawed system, but it was, and still is, […]
Why I Tried Ketamine & What Happened When I Did.
Why I Tried Ketamine & What Happened When I Did. From the outside, my life looks great. I have a solid marriage, healthy kids, a job I love. Yes, I’ve had significant trauma. There’s been grief, deep grief. But I’ve had wonderful opportunities to work on healing, and I’ve taken advantage of them. I also […]
The Practical Way Anyone Can Make a Major Life Change
Page by Page: The Practical Way Anyone Can Make a Major Life Change Some of the best advice I ever got came from the wonderful book Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott. She was discussing the business of writing novels, and how daunting a task it is to anyone with a shred of humility. Her […]
How to Align our own Stars—& Fill our Lives with Meaning & Purpose in 2022
How to Align our own Stars—& Fill our Lives with Meaning & Purpose in 2022 As a psychotherapist, I have noticed that the one factor which most accurately predicts increased feelings of satisfaction in my client’s lives is a sense of purpose, and that the lack of it equally accurately predicts the opposite—depression, hopelessness, and anxiety. […]
How To Handle Your Own & Other People’s Emotions Better
Can’t Fight This Feeling: How to Handle Your Own & Other People’s Emotions Better. Emotions—they are the primal goop in which we live our lives, running like a sticky undercurrent beneath all the other parts of us, the physical, the relational, the behavioral. It is from this muck that we view ourselves and our worlds, […]
Summertime Parenting: Steps You Can Take Now to Prepare for What’s Next
Summertime Parenting: Steps You Can Take Now to Prepare for What’s Next Ah, summer! Time for sunburns and bike rides, fireflies and driving around with the windows down. We live for summer’s easy routine and break from the grind, and even if we’re still working (because of course we are, if we have children, we’re […]
Listening is a Superpower: How to be a Better Partner, Parent & Friend.
Listening is a Superpower: How to be a Better Partner, Parent & Friend. Years ago when I decided I wanted to become a therapist, I applied with great anticipation to the esteemed Northwestern University master’s program. I figured I was a shoe in—or maybe I was just filled with false bravado. Nevertheless, I walked into […]
Kick Depression & Anxiety in the Butt: Find your Purpose-Driven Life Task
Dedicated to M.L. Since my son took his life in 2004, I have been on a quest to understand suicide. One of the things that stood out to me right away—even in the middle of the spirit-crushing pain I was experiencing—was that there was something about this event that seemed distinctly “first world.” It turns […]
Why We Fall In Love With Terrible People (And How To Avoid It.)
What percentage of romantic partnerships would you consider happy? Really happy—not in a “Notebook” kind of way—but in a, “Yeah, we bickered over the setting on the toaster, but I still love how you remember every dog’s name who lives on our block. I’m psyched to see you at the end of a sh*tty day, […]
2 Words that can Cure our Self-Doubt & Help us Write a Bigger, Better Story
The human brain goes to extraordinary lengths to protect us from pain, but it also tends to be a short-term strategist. It wants to feel better right now, and if that messes up things in the future, so be it. One of its common tactics is to write self-serving stories. It takes a look at […]
No Such Thing as Lazy: what it Really Means when we don’t Feel like Doing Anything.
Do you consider yourself lazy? Do you wonder why you are so “unmotivated” and allow yourself to just lay around when there are beds that need making, friends to have lunch with, meetings to be scheduled, and yoga classes calling your name? Are you mystified by how everyone else seems to have the energy to […]
The Art of Letting Go: On Grief & Gratitude
“The key to being able to let go of all the stuff you’re holding on to is knowing that you’ll be okay if you don’t have it. And that’s the truth. You can survive with very little. And though the passing of people and things can be painful, you will survive.” ~ John C. Parkin, […]
How the Act of Writing Heals: The Story of Write Club
When I was 30 years old I found myself on the surviving end of a five year long, intensely abusive relationship that featured such highlights as drug abuse, homelessness, and a bunch of other stuff I now simply call my “dark resume.” As I tried to turn myself back into a normal person who could […]
Neutralize the Lizard Brain
Have you ever been in a conversation that seems to spiral out of control no matter how hard you try to keep yourself and others calm? When whatever you say seems to make everything worse? Of course you have! Everyone has experienced this particular demoralizing part of being human. Some of us try to avoid […]
4 Steps To Getting Great Therapy
It’s such a common feeling these days; we’re struggling, we know we need help, and we suspect therapy would work wonders, but we have no idea how to proceed. And once we do find a therapist, usually by word of mouth, or by endlessly scrolling through mental health care registries that leave us feeling more […]
How To Free Yourself From Codependency
If you’re an empath, you may experience them almost as intensely—or sometimes more intensely—than your own. You may get lost in other people’s emotional energy and be unable to separate it from yours, and you may feel a need to make sure everyone else’s emotions are “managed” so that you don’t drown in their anger, […]
How To Make The Right Choice
“Life is a series of choices.” So goes the old adage, which, like all old adages, has staying power because of its essential truth. But what happens when we can’t seem to make a decision? When we feel trapped by the enormity of what our decision implies? When we are paralyzed by self-doubt, fear, or […]
8 Things Your Therapist Wants You To Know
There are a lot of weird jobs in the world; podiatrist, phlebotomist, priest, butcher—but the weirdest one of all might be psychotherapist. We are like an emotional filtration system, helping to clean out the gunk from people’s hearts and minds. The ways in which we do this are hard to articulate, but often involve long […]
2 Words to Cure Self Doubt
The human brain goes to extraordinary lengths to protect us from pain, but it also tends to be a short-term strategist. It wants to feel better right now, and if that messes up things in the future, so be it. One of its common tactics is to write self-serving stories. It takes a look at […]
How To Stop Playing the Blame Game
Sometimes it seems like there are two kinds of people in the world: those who blame themselves for everything, and those who blame everything on everybody else. The healthier among us vacillate between these two states of being, but the healthiest of us all realize that oftentimes assigning blame—whether to ourselves or to someone else—is […]
Total Wellness Quiz
People talk a lot about being healthy, and they’re usually referring to food or fitness or occasionally mental or emotional health, but rarely are all the things that comprise true health discussed in one place—a simple place that one might use as a kind of health map. It’s not surprising. Complete wellness is complicated and […]
3 Reasons You Should Definitely Not Go To Counseling
*Note: the below is tongue in cheek. Remember, Elephant is not your doctor or hospital. Our lawyers would say “this website is not designed to, and should not be construed to provide medical advice, professional diagnosis, opinion, or treatment to you or any other individual, and is not intended as a substitute for medical or […]