Anxiety & Depression

Karaoke on Five South

From an Evening of Storytelling 2018

A karaoke performance on a psych ward helps a mother and daughter find a way to reconnect. Read more

Taken Over

Breaking the Spell of Obsession

A therapist struggles to help an obsessive client with whom she develops an unusual preoccupation. Read more

VIDEO: How to Think Scientifically about Medications

Why Having a Hypothesis Works for the Non-Medical Therapist

Despite the increasing popularity of psychiatric meds as the go-to remedy for everything from seasonal depression to social anxiety, drugs are often not the... Read more

VIDEO: Why Anticipating Relapse Is Our Best Defense Against It

How to Mobilize the Client’s Support System

It’s always cause for celebration when depressed clients nears the finish line of treatment, feeling energized, empowered, and more content with their life... Read more

Tuning into Attunement

How to Harness Your Social Engagement System

We all know people who have the magic touch when it comes to relating to others. They can instantly connect with strangers and put people at ease without even... Read more

From Weight to Well-Being

The Challenges of Treating Binge Eating Disorder

Although binge eating disorder is more prevalent than anorexia and bulimia, many people still don’t get the help they need for it. Read more

Learning to Look at Anxiety in a New Way

The Two Truths About the Nature of Anxiety Disorders
Graham Campbell

Anxiety disorders are a means of keeping the external world at bay. Anxiety keeps new ideas and information out of a person's awareness. It saves overloaded... Read more

The Therapeutic Relationship, Revisited

A Man Discovers a Safe Guide, and a Real Person, in His New Therapist
Stephen Lyons

By Stephen Lyons - My work with Sara began in an uninspiring, windowless, downtown suite that she shared with another therapist. But before long, my therapy... Read more

An Awareness of the Soul

What Does It Mean to Really Get in Touch with Yourself?

When I was 5 years old, I experienced something that made me feel viscerally, mentally, emotionally, and inescapably connected to everything and everyone... Read more

VIDEO: How to Broach the Subject of Medication with Kids

When Is It Necessary? An Expert Explains.

Given the stigma still attached to psychiatric drugs, it’s no surprise that today’s kids might have reservations about taking them. But as a specialist in... Read more

Coping and Learning After a Client's Suicide

A Therapist Reflects on What He Might Have Done Differently

I've been in full-time private practice for almost 30 years. In that time, three patients in my practice killed themselves. Each suicide has left me... Read more

Hacking Happiness

How Social Media Can Enhance Well-Being

Both ancient wisdom traditions and modern psychological research can help us make more enlightened choices as we navigate our way through the digital age. Read more

Is teen suicide contagious? Clinicians weigh in on the controversy around 13 Reasons Why. Read more

Playing with Anxiety

Helping Young Children Face Scary Situations

How to use the therapeutic play zone to help young children face difficult situations. Read more

Candyce Ossefort-Russell

By Candyce Ossefort-Russell - I was appalled when I encountered the heavily publicized resilience book by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Option B: Facing... Read more

Psychotherapists are usually on the front lines of mental health treatment, trained to spot and assess everything from changes in mood to unusual physical... Read more

When All Else Fails

Stories of Vulnerability and Possibility

The self-assurance of expert practitioners who publicly present their work can lead everyday therapists to believe that psychotherapy is a far more predictable... Read more

Being There

Inhabiting the Moment with Traumatized Teens

With traumatized adolescent clients, it’s emotion that gradually changes emotion—not rational explanation or interpretation, not snazzy techniques or... Read more

When Helping Doesn't Help

Why Some Clients May Not Want to Change

Rather than just commiserating with clients’ misery, most therapists want to engage in more active forms of helping. So we try to persuade clients... Read more

Adjusting the Unconscious

Making Quick Work of Lasting Change

Some claim that much of psychotherapy is a pseudoscience, promising far more than it can deliver, with lengthy, expensive interventions for the common problems... Read more

Speak Easy

Keeping It Real with Your Teen Clients

How to keep it real with teenage clients. Read more

Navigating the Bipolar Spectrum

Diagnosing Mood Disorders Requires Great Care

Diagnosing and treating mood disorders can be tricky, especially when it comes to an often overlooked, subtle form of bipolar II. Read more

Feeling Anxious?

A Longtime Researcher Weighs In

How can you keep on top of the proliferation of anxiety treatments today? Read more

VIDEO: A Breathing Antidote for Stress Responses

A Six-Minute Exercise for Overcoming Stress

Our depressed clients don’t only exhibit their symptoms through speech and vocal tone. You see them in their body language too—in slouching torsos, folded... Read more

Changing How You Think About Weight

Four Steps to Transform Your Internalized Views About Body Size

By Judith Matz - I’ve come to believe that the way we as therapists feel about our clients’ body size is not only a clinical concern, but a social justice... Read more

VIDEO: Maggie Phillips on the Four Levels of Traumatic Pain

Exploring an Uncommon Side Effect of Trauma

When Maggie Phillips and Peter Levine co-authored Freedom from Pain, they aimed to explore what’s been missing from the field’s treatment of chronic... Read more

Then, Now & Tomorrow

Oral Histories of Psychotherapy 1978-2017

A group of innovators and leaders look back over different realms of therapeutic practice and offer their view of the eureka moments, the mistakes and... Read more

What do we know as therapists that can guide us in moving forward in both our personal lives as well as our work with clients? Read more

The Empathy Gap

Digital Culture Needs What Talk Therapy Offers

Conditioned by the experience of life on the screen, clients today find it harder to concentrate on face-to-face conversation. They may not even see its value... Read more

Is VR a Game Changer?

Virtual Reality in Therapy

To date, virtual reality’s most visible therapeutic role has been in the treatment of phobias and other conditions where it’s served as an adjunct to... Read more