> JUMP TO DOWNLOAD < The Emotion-Sensation Feeling Wheel WHAT IS IT: It’s an adaptation of the “feelings wheel” that many therapists and educators use to help people learn to better recognize and name their emotions, adapted to include common body-based expressions of emotions. HOW THE EMOTION-SENSATION WHEEL IS DIFFERENT: The two…
Culturally we are doing a really good job of normalizing the use of therapy and medication, but I wonder sometimes if we underemphasize that therapy takes time and effort to work. It’s not unusual for people entering therapy for the first time to expect rapid results or that they can use therapy to recover…
Writing long-hand about my own experience in therapy helps me continue to develop self-awareness and integrate my emotional/sensory experience with my thinking-brain. Recently I’ve been thinking about how I could help others access the benefits of journalling about therapy if they aren’t the sort of person who enjoys long-format journalling. This article features tips on…
A flowchart for getting to sleep. We all know how elusive sleep can be, but quality sleep is essential for physical and mental health. When sleep feels hard to come by, “sleep hygiene” the go-to remedy. While some sleep and insomnia related issues need specific treatments including medication or longer-term psychotherapy, psychoeducation about sleep hygiene…
Therapy is hard work. It’s ok if a therapy session leaves you sad, shaken up, or exhausted. If, however, you find therapy sessions pushing you into a dark place where you feel like you need to use harmful things to cope, it’s time to re-evaluate. Let your therapist know how your counseling sessions impact you.…
Schizophrenia is among the most debilitating mental health disorders- so much so that there is still a lot of stigma around the diagnosis. The problem is stigma is especially harmful when it comes to this diagnosis. Here’s why: about 75% of people with schizophrenia have months or years of subtle symptoms (called a predromal…
For a while now, the terminology of both “victim” and “survivor” has sat uneasily with me. Both terms center the traumatic experience as part of a person’s identity. Although (and please hear me on this) we can do real harm by minimizing someone’s trauma, one way we can support people in maintaining or building an…
There are lots of voices shaping our idea of a “Good Life,” but freedom comes when we take ownership of that narrative and choose- with mindfulness, integrity, and the wisdom of voices that have *earned* our trust- what the life we actually want to live looks like. Listening to our deep desires can be terrifying…
Intuitive Eating is an approach to eating that can help heal the relationship between food and our bodies and end the diet/weight-cycling cycle. When our brains know food is available and our bodies (re)learn how to feel and respond to the hunger, fullness, and appetite cues we all once knew as infants, we are actually…
Research shows that 15-20% of teens self harm. In the past- and still today- self harm has had a reputation of being an “attention-seeking behavior,” but brain science is now showing that for many teens, self-harm is an early warning sign of physical changes occurring in the brain. Kids and teens who self harm…
First, know that we therapists get it. Starting therapy is hard for everyone and if you have specific therapy-related anxieties it’s super hard. If meeting new people is hard for you, it’s normal to feel extra anxiety about meeting someone who you’ll- hopefully- feel safe confiding secrets in. Some of my suggestions for working with…
When the answer to “what am I feeling?” is “I don’t know,” change the question to “what do I notice about my body right now?” Lots of us learned to numb or muffle emotion- and some of us got so good at it that knowing what we feel can be really, really hard. Although our…
