Stress, busyness and commitments of all sorts (those involving work or play) have become badges of honor in our society. Rarely are people praised for carving out time for rest or putting boundaries around what they will and will not commit to.

“I like to conceptualize triggers as landmines; we didn’t put them there and neither did the immediate circumstance that put you into this triggered state,” says Harlich. “When one gets stepped on, often nobody sees it coming, nor may anyone even know what landmine was stepped on.” [Rachel Harlich is a psychotherapist specializing in LGBTQ […]

As a therapist, what is more concerning to me than burnout itself is that it has been normalized. Along with realizing that a lot of the people I talk with think that burnout is “normal,” neurodivergent clients experience burnout at a more intense and frequent rate than others. My 20-something neurodivergent friend recently told me […]

NAMI is the national alliance on mental illness. They are the nation’s largest grass roots mental health organization. Taylor Bennet from NAMI wrote an article about how to support and listen and potentially help a friend who expresses feelings of wanting to die. Suicide is heavy. It is not easy to think about and it […]

If “burnout” was not something you heard about prior to the pandemic, 2020 sealed the deal in ensuring we all knew what burnout looked and felt like. I can still remember images of nurses and doctors with deep indents on their faces from wearing masks for endless hours while trying to save those battling COVID. […]

Let’s take a look at the internal monologue, also known as your inner voice, internal dialogue or the voice inside your head. This is when you hear yourself talking in your head without actually speaking or forming sounds. A little bit like carrying on a conversation with yourself. Hearing or so in your own head […]

Last month we began exploring the treatment modality of Internal Family Systems (IFS). As stated last month, IFS is an approach to therapy that aims to help the individual become aware of their inner voices to begin the path to healing and wholeness. IFS recognizes that each person has a true Self, but that the […]

Attention deficit disorder and autism co-occur at high rates. They are both forms of innate neurodivergence. This means that they are genetic and can be present in childhood. They are similar. The overlap between them is poorly understood since the diagnosis manual we use as clinicians was released in 2013 when a clinician could not […]

Internal Family Systems (IFS) was created by psychologist Richard Schwartz.  Schwartz worked as a family therapist and noticed that people described their thoughts and feelings as different parts. Furthermore, he discovered that people’s parts often did not get along or were in conflict with one another. As a result, Schwartz began to develop a system […]

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared loneliness a “global health threat”. They have started new programs to help establish social connection as a global health priority.