When it comes to feelings of vulnerability, fear, or distress, reassurance is one of the earliest forms of soothing our parents and caregivers provide.
From as early as infancy, our parents say comforting words to us when we cry, as […]
I recently learned about an evidence-based treatment for OCD that I had never heard of before, called inference-based CBT (or icbt). The icbt website has some helpful worksheets available for free for those wanting to learn more […]
Social Anxiety has a way of making us feel we can’t stand up for ourselves in social settings that make us nervous or uncomfortable.
The anxiety about how we appear to others or how they’re judging us, as well […]
An unquenchable search and thirst for knowledge, theories, and ideas is often a source of creativity, accomplishment, and intellectual achievement.
Yet the pull towards knowledge-seeking can also mislead us if it compels us to look for answers that don’t exist; to find neat resolutions to unresolvable paradoxes; or to try to solve emotional […]
A common symptom of anxiety or OCD is a need for information and knowledge, and difficulty coping with uncertainty or ambiguity.
When things are unclear, unpredictable, or unknown, sometimes we cope with anxiety about this by overanalyzing things, […]
Each of us has our specific go-to ways of protecting ourselves from pain or trauma, often subconsciously chosen in large part based on our inborn temperaments and personalities. Some of our protective mechanisms were learned in very early childhood, before we even […]
Sometimes married clients come in struggling to figure out whether they’re “in love” with their partner or not, even though the partner is nice, stable, and not doing anything wrong? These clients don’t essentially have any complaints about their marriage, but are struggling more with fear about what it means about them and […]
Supportive vs. Expressive Therapy Approaches
Therapy approaches and techniques tend to be on a supportive/expressive continuum.
What this means is that sometimes a therapist focuses on helping a client gain deeper insight into memories, feelings, thoughts, wishes, and expectations that are dynamically unconscious (out of one’s […]
One of the most painful things that can happen in relationships is to feel like we really just can’t get through to another person; that no matter how hard we try to make ourselves heard, somehow the other person just can’t or won’t see our point of view.
The need for understanding is a basic and […]
Yesterday I was talking to a couple of clients about how self sufficient they are.
Some people find it hard to lean on other people. It feels too vulnerable or too weak or they simply don’t believe there’s anyone they can trust to have their back.
I often talk […]