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Mental Load of the Holidays for Moms
It starts sometime around Halloween. Somebody asks what the plan is for Thanksgiving, and you realize you are the one who is supposed to know. Then comes the rest of it. Who is hosting, who is bringing what, what the kids want, what the in-laws want, what Grandma will say if the cards do not go out, and whether the teacher gifts are big enough.
Nobody handed you this job. You just notice that if you do not do it, it probably will not get done.
Overworking in Men: When Staying Busy Is a Way to Avoid Feelings
It is Sunday afternoon. The inbox is clear, the kids are occupied, nothing is on fire. And instead of relaxing, something starts to itch. You feel restless, a little flat, a little uneasy. So you check email “just to get ahead,” or start a project, or find something that suddenly needs fixing. Within ten minutes you feel better.
If you know that feeling, it is worth asking whether the work is really about the work.
EMDR vs Talk Therapy: What Is the Difference?
You have been in therapy for a while. You can tell the story of your childhood, your relationships, your patterns. You probably understand why you react the way you do better than most people in your life. And you still react that way.
A lot of people land in my office at exactly this point. They have circled the drain with a talk therapist, they have a ton of insight, and knowing the problem has not made it go away. They are not looking for more understanding. They want to try something different.
How to Survive Cold and Flu Season with Health Anxiety
Your niece coughs right in your face at a family dinner. You laugh it off in the moment, and then spend the next three days waiting to see if you caught it. Every swallow gets checked. A scratchy throat on Wednesday morning sends you straight to the search bar, and by lunch you have read about five different illnesses and decided you probably have one of them.
Beyond Self Care: 10 Things That Help Your Mental Health Right Now
Self care has become its own kind of pressure. The spa days, the bubble baths, the elaborate morning routines. And while none of those things are bad, they are not always accessible and they are not always what moves the needle on how you feel.
Here are ten things that help. Most of them are small. All of them are real.
EMDR for Chronic Pain: How It Works and Who It Helps
Chronic pain is not just a physical experience. Anyone who has lived with it for any length of time knows that. The pain changes how you think about your body, how you move through the world, how you feel about yourself. It creates a loop that is hard to break because the pain affects the nervous system and the nervous system affects the pain.
Postpartum Depression in Men: Signs, Causes, and What Helps
About one in ten new fathers experience postpartum depression. Most of them have no idea that is what is happening.
Postpartum depression in men does not look like the images people associate with postpartum depression. There is no crying, no obvious sadness, no visible breakdown. It looks like irritability. It looks like working late. It looks like a guy who seems fine on the outside and is anything but on the inside.
What Progress in Anxiety Therapy Looks Like
You started therapy. You have been going for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months. And you are not sure if anything is working.
You still feel anxious. You still have the hard days. You were maybe expecting to feel different by now and you are not sure if that means the therapy is not working or if you are doing something wrong or if this is just how it goes.
How Therapy Can Ease the Pressure to Be Perfect
You are good at this. The managing, the executing, the keeping everything moving. You show up, you follow through, you do not drop things. By most measures you are doing it right.
And you are exhausted in a way that does not make sense on paper because you are also doing everything you are supposed to be doing.
EMDR vs Brainspotting: What Is the Difference and How Do You Know Which One Is Right for You
If you have been looking into trauma therapy you have probably come across EMDR. You may not have heard of Brainspotting. Both are trauma-focused approaches, both work with the nervous system rather than just the thinking brain, and both can be effective for the same kinds of issues.
Men and Grief: Why Doing Everything Right Still Is Not Enough
You have been handling it. Going to work, staying busy, keeping things moving. Maybe you even feel like you are fine most of the time. And then something small happens, a song, a smell, a random Tuesday afternoon, and something surfaces that you did not expect and do not know what to do with.
When Back to School Brings Back Last Year's Worry
It is not just your kid who gets anxious in August. It is you.
You remember last year. The call from the teacher you were dreading and then got. The birthday parties your kid was not invited to while they watched everyone else's photos show up online. The homework that piled up faster than they could manage it.
What It Is Like to Be a Food Allergy Mom (And Why Your Nervous System Never Fully Clocks Out)
My son was about six months old the first time I knew something was wrong. We were trying scrambled eggs for the first time, the way you do, introducing foods one at a time, following the guidance. And then the reaction came and suddenly I was a mom and a therapist and completely undone at the same time.
Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop: When Anxiety Won’t Let You Enjoy the Good Stuff
Things are going well. The relationship is solid. Work is steady. The kids are okay. Nothing is on fire.
And you cannot enjoy any of it.
How Trauma Keeps You Stuck in Survival Mode (Even After the Danger Has Passed)
You are safe now. You know that. And yet your body has not gotten the message.
You are still bracing. Still scanning. Still reacting to things that should not feel threatening but do. You cannot fully relax, cannot fully trust, cannot fully land in a life that is, by most measures, okay now.
When Anxiety Makes It Hard to Trust Your Own Decisions
From the outside you look like someone who has it figured out. You make decisions at work. People come to you for answers. You have built something, earned something, proven something and none of that is fake.
Perfectionism and Kids: When Your Child Is Harder on Themselves Than You Ever Would Be
You did not tell them they had to be perfect. You have never said anything close to that. And yet there they are, in tears after striking out, refusing to turn in an assignment they have rewritten four times, shutting down after a test they were convinced, they failed.
What Is Hypervigilance and Why Does Relaxing Feel Like a Risk
You scan the room when you walk in. You track other people's moods before you have even taken your coat off. You replay conversations looking for what you might have missed. You cannot fully relax even when nothing is wrong, especially when nothing is wrong, because that usually means something is about to be.
The Most Common EMDR Myths
If you have looked into EMDR and walked away with more questions than answers, you are not alone. There is a lot of information out there and some of it is outdated, oversimplified, or just wrong. Here are the most common myths worth addressing.
How to Find a Therapist (Without Having to Figure Out the Whole System First)
You decided you want to try therapy. That part is done. Now you are staring at a Google search results page with approximately four hundred options and no idea how to tell the difference between any of them.
This is where a lot of people stop. Not because they changed their mind but because nobody told them how this part works.
Here is what to know.