For many people I work with, there is a disconnect with public success and private reality. Persistent low self worth, relational instability, or past trauma may be disrupting your day to day.  On paper everything looks great. But underneath, you feel like you walk around with a mask on. On the outside, holding everything together. On the inside, you struggle with your self worth, feeling lost, anxious, and fearful of exposure. Getting through the day at your well respected job keeping up with your mask exhausts you. Your personal life is riddled with conflict with your loved ones that makes you feel like a failure as a partner, child, parent. You are so afraid that someone will understand you are not as perfect as you seem to them. When that armour comes off, you hate the person underneath.

Clients I work with often have questions about the ways in which social justice informs the work we do together in therapy. Social justice is a constant presence in the therapy room. This presence is largely because social justice is a constant in life outside of the therapy space, which the therapeutic relationship reflects.

So you have had a consultation call, decided on a weekly time for us to meet, and completed your consent forms. The hour is rolling closer for your first session and you feel the nerves creeping in. What will our first hour together look like? 

A growing number of people are using AI tools to support their mental health. Some individuals are going as far as to use AI as a therapist. In the age of both rapid developments in AI and a deepening mental health crisis, it is easy to see why we would turn to AI tools to cope with mental health distress– they are accessible, easy, and provide quick answers. All of these factors make AI seem like the perfect choice for mental health care but I want to consider benefits to therapy with a human provider that are foundational for effective care. 

We see the word “Trauma” thrown around a lot in culture today. It shows up in your social media feed, favorite books, and on the websites of most therapists you have perused so far when looking for “trauma-informed care near me.” While the use of the word ‘trauma” in our everyday vernacular is great for destigmatizing aspects of mental health, over use of the term also means that many of us don’t actually know what it means or how it applies to us and therapy treatment.

Working with C-PTSD requires a therapist who is in tune with the impacts of chronic trauma, understands how to approach care from a trauma-informed lens, and is willing to take it slow with the client at a pace that feels safe. This is exactly what therapy with me looks like. I work with many C-PTSD survivors through relational and psychodynamic therapy to manage symptoms, process experiences, and find new meaning and growth in their lives.

In practice, this may look like the therapist observing to you that a feeling you have with others shows up for them in the therapy space too. For instance– perhaps you and your therapist are talking about how you struggle to connect with others. Your therapist may say “have you ever felt trouble connecting with me, here in therapy?”

Infertility grief is a nuanced form of grief that affects many different individuals. I want to  talk about two ways that infertility grief is unique: Disenfranchised Grief and Ambiguous Loss.

Developmentally, confusion in this period is so normal. But, it doesn’t make it any less comfortable. In therapy, we can work together to understand your unique challenges post-grad and sit in that discomfort and uncertainty together.