I've learned so many different types of therapies over the past 20 years and continue to take from everything I’ve ever learned. In a series of posts, I'm going to share what I've personally learned about therapy and becoming a therapist. I hope these posts help future therapists embrace their own journeys and help patients feel more informed and empowered to seek good and smart therapists rather than good and smart therapies that fit their needs in their current moment. 

I led a training for a group of dedicated people who work with the most difficult adolescents in the city--the teens who run, cut, spit, and fight. 

a brief snippet of supervision on how to talk to an angry then remorseful patient

This is how I tried to teach my interns how to sit in the mystery of therapy. 

Should a therapist cry with their patients?

Though many therapists are trained to believe that they need to suppress or control feelings of anger, I think it is incredibly important to use them in therapy because they often reveal important patterns in the patient’s life--ghosts of relationships past. When these feelings go unexamined, they can harm the patient because they can slip out in hurtful ways. But, when examined, they can be some of the most healing moments in therapy.

This post describes some heart warming events that happened when I visited a juvenile detention center last week. 

This post is about how a trauma-informed approach, at least the way I view it, might differ from standard clinical practice.