therapy

How to make friends with your anxiety

How to make friends with your anxiety

Clients often come to me looking for a way to “get rid of” their anxiety. Even if most people know it’s not realistic to think they’ll do away with it forever, their underlying intention is to “fix” their anxiety, “overcome” their anxiety, and get themselves to a place where they won’t have to “deal” with anxiety anymore.

The truth is, you’re never going to just “get rid of” anxiety. It’s kind of like saying you can just get rid of sadness. Sadness will come and go many times in your life, and quite frankly I don’t think we’d want a life completely without it…

How to stop comparing yourself to others

How to stop comparing yourself to others

One of the biggest things I do as a coach and as a therapist is hold a mirror up for my clients.

Mirrors make it possible to see some of the things we can't from our own limited point of view, and while often many of these reflections tend to be patterns and beliefs we may have previously been unaware of, I've found that one of the most consistent and significant ways I serve my clients is to mirror the unique strengths and qualities in themselves they simply seem unable to accept.

Becoming your "actual" self

Becoming your "actual" self

Did you know that a lot of goals in therapy revolve around helping people become their more "authentic selves"? In fact, the idea of self-actualization as explained by the great humanistic psychologist and theorist Carl Rogers is nothing more than "to be that self which one truly is." So while it might seem like making it to the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is about becoming someone different, someone "better," or someone society thinks you "should" be, it's actually about a deep sense of self-understanding, authentic living, and peeling away all the layers of conditioning that have been added over time so that you can be more uniquely and authentically YOU. ⁠

What I learned in my first quarter of grad school to be a therapist

What I learned in my first quarter of grad school to be a therapist

It seems therapy has recently grown quite a bit in popularity, and you need look no further than bestselling books like Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb, shows like Couples Therapy with Dr. Orna Guralnik, or podcasts like Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel (all of which I personally recommend). Therapists have even taken over Instagram with bite-sized recommendations for managing burnout and anxiety, or gentle reminders that you are not defined by your trauma.

So, while my first quarter was not yet focused as much on treatment or applicable takeaways for the everyday person, I thought that given the newfound interest in therapy as a field I’d still share some of what I learned from the therapist-side of things in my classes this past quarter.