Let’s be clear: releasing files that expose survivors while shielding perpetrators is not accountability. It is institutional betrayal. It is the system doing what it has always done - protecting power while demanding visibility, restraint, and silence from those it has harmed.

For survivors around the world, this latest Epstein file release is not news. It is a re-enactment. Names of victims disclosed. Names of perpetrators concealed. The message is familiar and brutal: you will be identified; they will be protected. This is retraumatizing. Not only for those named, but for survivors everywhere. Trauma does not require proximity. The nervous system doesn't care whether you were involved. Many survivors are feeling rage, despair, grief, numbness, and deep hopelessness that says, nothing ever changes. If that’s you, you are not weak. You are responding normally to an unjust and abnormal reality.

We are witnessing narcissistic abuse and dysfunctional family systems. In these systems, truth-tellers are punished, scapegoated, or exposed, while abusers remain insulated by status, money, secrecy, or process. Survivors are made visible without protection, a hallmark of narcissistic dynamics. Accountability is inverted. Harm flows downward. Silence is enforced upward. Sound familiar?

Many survivors were raised in families where speaking up made things worse. Where naming abuse meant becoming the problem. Watching this play out on a global stage is not just infuriating, it's destabilizing. It tells the body, once again, that power is untouchable and safety is conditional.

Let’s be clear about something else: survivors are not responsible for the crimes committed against them. Not because they were young. Not because they were groomed. Not because they froze, complied, dissociated, stayed, or survived. Shame belongs to the perpetrators and to the systems that continue to protect them.

Anger in response to this moment is not pathology. It is clarity. It is the nervous system rejecting a lie. And if you need to step back from the news, do it. That is not avoidance; it is self-protection. If you feel activated, you don't owe the world composure while injustice is dressed up as transparency. Here is the rally point. Say it with me: They do not get to win by breaking our spirits. Survivors are not collateral damage. We are witnesses. We are truth-bearers. We are not ashamed and we are done being quiet for the comfort of systems that failed us.

If This News Activated You, Do This Now:

Some of us are feeling incredibly hopeless, having suicidal thoughts, feelings of despair, and/or panic. This is a normal response to threat and it's helpful to stay grounded. 

• Orient to the present using 54321. Name five things you can see, four you can feel, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste. You are here. You are now. The danger is not happening in this moment.
• Engage your body. Trauma lives without language. Press your feet into the floor. Push your palms together. Splash cold water on your face, hold an ice cube, or hold something textured. Let your body know it has edges.
• Limit exposure. You are not obligated to consume ultra processed speech from media, both major outlets and social. Stepping away from the news is not denial, it is regulation. Doom-scrolling is not helpful when you're triggered. 
• Externalize the shame. If a voice inside you is saying this is why nothing changes or what’s the point, recognize it as trauma talking, not truth. The shame doesn't belong to you. Give it back to those who deserve it. 
• Reach for regulated connection. Text someone you trust. Sit near another safe human. Let your nervous system borrow calm. Healing does not happen in isolation, and neither does justice.

If dark or self-harming thoughts surface, take them seriously, but don't interpret them as desire. They are signals of overwhelm, not intent.

You are allowed to take up space.
You are allowed to protect yourself.
And you are allowed to feel everything this brings up without turning it against yourself.

We need you here. Grounded. Angry. Alive.

I just finished reading Ultra-Processed People, which explains why modern food leaves us anxious, inflamed, and disconnected from our bodies and one another. Then during a period of doom scrolling one night, I stumbled upon an interview with Jon Steward commenting on the impact of social media and thought how apropos. What we’re consuming daily through social media isn’t conversation, it's ultra-processed speech. 

Ultra-processed speech is language engineered for scale, speed, and our immediate attention. It’s flattened into slogans, weaponized into memes, and pumped full of emotional additives: fear, moral superiority, outrage, certainty. Like ultra-processed food, it’s cheap, omnipresent, wildly profitable, and available, and like junk food, it hijacks our nervous systems while pretending to nourish us with legit info.

In today’s political climate, this kind of speech thrives. Algorithms don’t reward accuracy or wisdom; they reward escalation and attention. The loudest, angriest, most absolutist voices rise to the top, while nuance is buried. Everything becomes a binary: good vs. evil, us vs. them, agree or get canceled. There’s no room for ambivalence, grief, or honest uncertainty - only allegiance.
The result is a population that’s emotionally dysregulated and chronically overstimulated, convinced we’re “informed” while feeling increasingly hopeless and hostile. We’re not talking with one another, we’re consuming pre-chewed ideological products designed to keep us reactive and divided. That’s not civic engagement. That’s political fast food.
​
Whole speech - slow, relational, imperfect - doesn’t go viral. It doesn’t fit neatly into a reel or a tweet. But democracy, like digestion, depends on the ability to tolerate complexity without immediately attacking it. If we want less overwhelm and less hatred, we may need to radically change our media diet. Not everything that’s loud is nutritious. And not everything worth saying can be swallowed in one bite.

A lot of people carry deep shame about their habits - what they do repeatedly, automatically, or when they’re overwhelmed. But habit is not the same thing as nature, and confusing the two is one of the fastest ways for shame to take root in person's psyche. 

Human nature refers to our core capacities of self: connection, care, creativity, curiosity, and the drive to survive and belong. Habits, on the other hand, are learned responses shaped by environment, stress, modeling, trauma, culture, and what once helped us get through tough times. Habits are adaptive strategies, not moral verdicts.

When someone says, “This is just who I am,” they’re often pointing to a habit that’s been reinforced over time, not to their essence. The nervous system loves efficiency and doesn't want to work harder than it has to. If something reduced pain, soothed anxiety, or created safety at one point, the brain will keep reaching for it, even after it stops serving us. That doesn’t make someone broken, it makes them human.

Shame collapses this distinction. It tells us our behavior reveals a bad core. And I love it when clients argue this point because it means they're thinking about it and applying it to their life. My stance is that compassion and understanding restore it when we say “Something learned this. Something needed this.” It focuses on the many parts of us and their maladaptive ways of coping. We are products of our habits and environments, but not defined by them. Habits can be interrupted, reshaped, and replaced. Nature doesn’t need fixing.

At our core, most of us are not dangerous or defective. We’re tired, conditioned, and trying our best with the tools we've been given. And that’s a very different story.

When people doom-scroll or witness terrifying and illegal actions in their community, the nervous system often shifts into threat mode. The amygdala flags danger, the sympathetic nervous system revs up, and stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline surge. This prepares the body to fight, flee, or freeze. The problem is that scrolling doesn’t resolve the threat, so the body stays activated even after the phone is put down.

Completing the stress cycle means helping the body discharge that energy so it can return to baseline. This isn’t about “calming down” cognitively or justifying why you feel afraid or stressed, it’s about sending the nervous system a signal of safety through the body. Effective ways to do this may include:

• Physical movement: walking, shaking out the arms, stretching
• Breathwork: inhales with longer exhales
• Orienting: naming what you see/hear around you right now in the moment
• Connection: talking, hugging, eye contact with safe people
• Creative or sensory input: music, warmth, nature

The key idea is that our caveperson nervous systems need completion, not more information. Once the stress cycle closes, clarity and agency can rise to the surface again.

Have you ever walked away from a perfectly ordinary interaction and felt terrible about it? You replay the conversation in your head. Pick apart what and how you said what you said? But nothing actually happened. No one was cruel. No boundary was crossed. And yet you feel like a turd, insecure, and/or mad. 

This is what I call hurting your own feelings. Buddhism has a name for it too: the second arrow. The first arrow is the thing that happens, which we have little to no control over. The second arrow is what we tell ourselves about it. It might look like...

• Someone doesn’t respond to your text right away. That’s the first arrow. The second arrow sounds like, I said something wrong, I’m annoying, or they’re upset with me.
• You make a small mistake. First arrow. Second arrow: Of course I messed this up. I always do.

The second arrow lands fast and hard, and most of the time, we don’t even notice we're responsible for firing it. Our brains are experts at filling in the blanks. When there’s uncertainty, we look for familiar stories, usually shaped by past experience, old hurts, or fears. The problem isn’t that we tell stories, it’s that we forget that they are stories. They feel like facts, so our bodies react as if they are. And suddenly we’re anxious, ashamed, defensive, or withdrawn - all without new information.

If this sounds familiar, there’s nothing wrong with you. It's as human as sneezing.  At some point, your nervous system learned that anticipating pain was safer than being surprised by it. That strategy may have been useful at one point, but now it just makes life harder. The work isn’t about never feeling hurt. Pain happens. The work is learning to pause between the first and second arrow with curiosity by asking:

• What actually happened?
• What am I assuming?
• Is there another possible explanation?

This isn’t about positive thinking or talking yourself out of your feelings. It’s about creating a little space - enough to choose curiosity over indulging your inner critic. You don’t have to stop caring. You don’t have to toughen up. Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is notice the story forming and kindly say to yourself, I don’t actually know that yet. And maybe - just maybe - put the bow down.

For many, therapy becomes a sophisticated form of procrastination. We call this Passive Processing. The client isn't necessarily lying or trying to be difficult; rather, they have unconsciously substituted talking about a problem for solving it.

When someone is passively processing, the therapy hour acts as a weekly "exorcism" of frustration. They vent about the "same old shit," feel a temporary sense of catharsis, and leave the office feeling lighter. However, that lightness isn't growth, it just releases a pressure valve because the discomfort has been temporarily relieved. Clients no longer feel the necessary friction required to actually change their behavior in their day-to-day lives.

Then there are those who soak up everything there is to know about the human psyche, treating therapy and the therapist like a national geographic special every week. They can recap lessons learned in therapy, share new insights, connect it to their family of origin trauma, and still do nothing to change. This intellectualizing is another defense mechanism devoid of emotion, which also keeps clients stuck.

To understand why this happens, let's look at the Stages of Change. Most stagnant clients are stuck in a loop between Contemplation and Preparation, never crossing the bridge into Action:

• Pre-contemplation: "I don't have a problem; everyone else does."
• Contemplation: "I know I have a problem and I’m thinking about it (and talking about it... for years)."
• Preparation: "I’m planning to change soon; I’m gathering information."
• Action: The actual modification of behavior, experiences, or environment.

When a client stays in the Contemplation stage for years, therapy becomes a defensive maneuver. By "being in therapy," they can tell themselves and their loved ones, "I’m working on it!" This protects them from the terrifying vulnerability of actually changing, which might involve ending a relationship, quitting a job, taking accountability for their part in a relationship, or facing a deep-seated fear of failure.

Why do clients repeat the same stories? Because familiarity, even when painful, is safer than the unknown. Psychologically, this is a form of Repetition Compulsion. The client reenacts their trauma or frustrations in the safety of the therapy hour. The therapist offers an intervention or practical tool, and the client responds with the "Yes, but..." maneuver. The "Yes, but..." is the ultimate shield. It acknowledges the therapist’s attempt to assist while simultaneously rendering it useless, ensuring that the status quo remains undisturbed.

If you're a therapist stuck with a client in a "performative" therapeutic alliance, the most clinical (and kindest) thing you can do is hold up the mirror.

• Metatherapeutic Communication: Stop talking about the content (the stories) and start talking about the process. You might say: "I’ve noticed that we've discussed this specific conflict with your boss twelve times in the last six months. We’ve explored the roots and the strategies, yet nothing changes. What do you think would happen if you succeeded in changing this?"
• Highlight the Cost of Stasis: Therapy is an investment of time, money, and spirit. Sometimes, highlighting the "opportunity cost" of staying stuck helps shift the client’s perspective.
• The "Safety" of the Stuckness: Acknowledge that staying stuck is serving a purpose. Is it keeping them connected to an identity? Is it protecting them from the responsibility that comes with change? 

​If you're a client and feel stuck, talk to your therapist directly about it. You're feeling the friction that precedes change!

Psychotherapy isn't a spectator sport. It's a laboratory where the experiments must eventually be taken out of the lab and into the wild. Without the "Action" phase, therapy isn't a bridge to a new life, it’s just a very expensive and comfortable waiting room.

One of the most common questions I hear, either directly or indirectly, is: “How long is therapy supposed to last?” Behind that question is usually something deeper: Am I doing this right? Shouldn't I be ‘done’ by now? The short answer is: There is no single right way to be in therapy. In fact, there are two very different and equally valid ways to think about it: The medical model and the wellness (or maintenance) model. Understanding the difference can help you feel more assured in your process. 

Most of us are familiar with the medical model because it’s how we approach our health concerns. Something hurts. Something isn’t working. You seek professional help to diagnose and treat the problem. In therapy, the medical model may look like: 

• A relationship crisis;
• Addressing acute symptoms, like, panic attacks, depression, trauma, or big life transitions;
• Working toward stabilization, relief, or a specific goal; and,
• Ending therapy once things feel manageable again.

This approach makes a lot of sense. When you’re in pain, you want help and you want it NOW. Therapy can be life-saving in these moments, and for many people, short-term or episodic therapy is exactly what they need. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this model. It’s not a failure if therapy has an end point. It’s not avoidance if you return later when life throws you another curveball. It’s simply care.

The wellness (or maintenance) model views therapy less like medicine and more like preventative care, reflection, and growth. In this model, people may:

• Stay in therapy for years;
• Come in regularly even when life is “basically okay”;
• Dip in and out during different life stages; and,
• Use therapy as a place to think, process, and recalibrate.

Here, the therapist isn’t just a crisis responder, we've become a guide. Someone who knows your history, your patterns, your values, and your blind spots. Much like having a primary care doctor, financial advisor, or personal trainer, this relationship builds over time. The work becomes less about putting out fires and more about maintaining emotional health, navigating transitions, and deepening self-understanding. This model can feel unfamiliar or seem indulgent because many of us were taught to seek help only when something is wrong. But tending to your inner life before it reaches a breaking point is not a luxury. Again, it’s care.

Most people don’t stay neatly in one model forever. Life doesn’t work that way. You might:

• Start therapy in crisis (medical model);
• Continue once things stabilize because the space feels grounding (wellness model);
• Take a break when life is steady; and,
• Return years later during a major transition.

Therapy can evolve as you do. For some clients, therapy is like a home base they return to during big moments: grief, parenthood, career changes, illness, aging, or identity shifts. For others, it’s more like urgent care - used when something hurts badly enough to need immediate attention. Both are valid. Both are healthy. Both are normal.

One of the harms of the medical-only view of therapy is the pressure it creates:

• I should be better by now.
• Other people don’t need this much help.
• If I’m still here, something must be wrong with me.

None of these are true. Staying in therapy doesn’t mean you’re broken. Returning to therapy doesn’t mean you failed. It means you recognize that being human is complex and that support over time can be stabilizing, insightful, and meaningful.

When therapy is viewed as a lifelong resource rather than a last resort, something shifts. The therapist becomes a witness to your story across chapters, not just emergencies, and you don’t have to choose one model forever. You have every right to use therapy when you need relief. You have every right to use it when you want growth. You have every right to leave and come back. If therapy has been part of your life for years, that’s not something to explain away. It may simply mean you value tending to your emotional world with the same care you give other parts of your health. And that is a strength.

There is a quiet myth that lives in the therapy room: that the therapist has somehow transcended ordinary human experience. That we are calmer, more regulated, more resilient, and immune to the messiness of life by virtue of our training. It’s a comforting idea but complete bullshit. Psychotherapists are people too and it is our humanity - our lived experience of love, loss, fear, illness, joy, and uncertainty - that makes us effective guides in this work.

We sit with clients through their hardest moments, often holding space for emotions that feel unbearable. From the outside, that can look like strength, but behind the scenes, therapists are also navigating relationships, aging parents, financial stress, health scares and illness, grief, and challenges with our own inner landscapes. We feel overwhelmed. We doubt ourselves. We get tired. We grow. We get sick. We bitch about life being hard. And rather than weakening our clinical effectiveness, these human experiences often deepen it. When therapists have lived through hardship, we tend to listen differently. We don’t rush to fix it. We don’t minimize pain. We know that some experiences don’t have solutions. This knowing allows us to sit with discomfort rather than trying to rescue someone from it.

There is a kind of humility that comes from being knocked off balance by life. Illness, trauma, and loss have a way of stripping away the illusion of control. For me, living with an autoimmune condition and surviving a stroke fundamentally changed how I understand vulnerability. Overnight, my body became something I could no longer take for granted. Neuro fatigue, aging, fear, and grief entered my world in new ways. What emerged alongside those challenges was a deeper compassion - for myself first, and then for my clients. I understand now, in my bones, how frightening it is to feel betrayed by your body. I understand how exhausting it is to manage uncertainty while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy. I understand the grief of losing parts of yourself and having to review the different layers of life impacted by illness. These experiences didn’t make me less professional. They made me more present, patient, and attuned to the struggles my clients carry.

The idea that therapists must be blank slates has thankfully evolved over time - and for good reason. Ethical boundaries matter. The therapy room is not a place for the therapist’s needs to take center stage. But having boundaries does not require being inhuman. Authenticity, grounded in self-awareness, can coexist with professionalism. In fact, therapists who deny their own humanity are often at greater risk of burnout and have difficulty connecting with their clients. When we believe we should be endlessly available, perfectly regulated, and unrealistically strong, we set ourselves up for burnout. Allowing ourselves to be affected by life - and tending to our own healing - keeps us emotionally honest. And emotional honesty is the foundation of effective therapy.

There is also hope that comes from having walked through darkness and found a way forward. Not with spiritual bypass or blind optimism, but a steady belief that people can survive what feels unsurvivable. When therapists carry that kind of hope, clients feel it. It doesn’t need to be spoken. It lives in our tone and our willingness to stay with what people are feeling. Being a therapist does not mean having fewer wounds, it means we're learning or have learned how to care for them.

So, yes, therapists are people too. We are shaped by our stories, our bodies, our losses, and our recoveries. When we allow those experiences to deepen rather than harden us, we become more compassionate, patient, and trustworthy companions in the work of healing. Our humanity is not a liability in the therapy room, it is one of our greatest strengths.

​Marijuana is a psychoactive substance that's classified as a hallucinogen. Most users of the drug would describe it as a depressant because it induces a state of calm or relaxation. The drug's pretty sneaky though and can have serious implications that are so subtle the user often doesn't connect their use of the drug to its consequences.

Initially a person's anxiety may be the motivator for marijuana use but over time the person may notice an increase in anxiety and there's a reason why. Studies show that marijuana in small doses can reduce anxiety but can increase anxiety in larger doses. And the addictive qualities of marijuana turn it into a regular habit where people are smoking larger quantities more frequently, which builds up in the body and boom! - you guessed it - more anxiety. Marijuana is also highly addictive because it triggers the brain's reward system, which also leads to withdrawal. 

In addition to the reward system, marijuana impacts the endocannabinoid system, which is expressed in all brain regions that are important for processing anxiety, fear, and stress. It's a big player in our nervous system and also regulates biological functions such as eating, learning and memory, reproduction, metabolism, etc. It's what's responsible for giving people the "munchies." The THC molecule is able to attach to the anandamide receptor (see pic). This decreases the endocannabinoid system's tone (think: muscle tone but for the brain) and further adds to marijuana's addictive properties. If the brain doesn't need to create anandamide molecules because a person is replacing it with THC, then the brain loses that tone. This is why a lot of heavy marijuana users aren't hungry unless they're smoking.

Because both of these systems are impacted by marijuana you can run into a number of psychological and behavioral issues that may seem like they're not related. Misinformation is a big issue and obstacle in addiction treatment with this drug. Think of every marijuana smoker who's sworn on their life that marijuana is not addictive. The impact on memory, motivation and alertness are all well known but my big concern is the impact it has on a person's mental health. Anxiety isn't the only manifestation of an out of whack endocannabinoid system. People can also feel paranoid and suicidal. Add some denial that marijuana is addictive and/or problematic to the mix and you have someone walking around wondering why they're so depressed and paranoid. 

Maybe you've had a moment of clarity around your relationship with marijuana or there's someone you care about in your life who's use is out of hand. My suggestion to the former, take a month off and see if your symptoms improve. Another avenue is to examine how marijuana has impacted the following five areas of your life:

• Relationships: Do you only hang out with people who smoke or feel uncomfortable hanging out with people who don't? Have people told you to stop smoking or that you smoke too much? Has impulsive behavior caused rifts in your relationships? Do you think some of those behaviors could be related to marijuana use?
• School/Work: Do you call in sick or miss class because you feel hungover or would rather get high? Are you having a hard time learning or remembering new information, which is impacting your performance?
• Legal: Have you nodded off behind the wheel of a car while driving? Have you been pulled over for going too slow or given a DUI for being high while driving? Driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal. See link below. 
• Financial: Are you spending more than you can afford on marijuana? 
• Health: Do you have a smoker's cough? Crippling anxiety? Lethargy? Poor memory? Low concentration? 

Marijuana has very legitimate uses in appropriate doses for medicinal use but when it comes to recreational use, it's a drug like any other drug with addictive qualities and consequences to match.

More information can be found here:

Driving under the influence of marjiuana: https://www.nstlaw.com/guides/driving-under-the-influence-of-marijuana/

General information about marijuana: https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-marijuana

"I feel rejected." 
"It feels like you're disrespecting me."
"You abandoned me."

Everyone confuses their thoughts and feelings at some point - especially when our brains are hijacked by strong, painful emotions. These strong emotions can trigger a threat response in the brain that has the power to turn our lovers into adversaries and friends into foes.

Emotions are pretty basic. A psychologist in the 70's, Paul Eckman, identified 6 basic emotions: Happiness, Anger, Disgust, Fear, Sadness and Surprise. This was a cross cultural exploration of the basic emotions all humans share. We have a much wider range to describe different hues of the primary 6 but you won't find words like abandoned, rejected, disrespected or ghosted. These are actions. Better yet, they're a perception of an action. 

I'll rewrite the above statements in feelings words:

"I feel sad."
"I'm angry."
"I'm hurt."

Take accountability for how you're feeling. They're healthy cues letting you know how to engage with the world.  That's where you have the power to assert yourself and create change.