By Marian Sandmaier - Until very recently, most families with transgender children had never met another family like theirs. Now, parents and children from the trailblazing Ackerman Institute’s Family & Gender Project talk about their experience of joining a healing community that offers acceptance and a validating mirror of their own experience.

By Marian Sandmaier - For almost 25 years, Jim Gordon and his team at the Center for Mind-Body Medicine has worked in war zones, refugee camps, and communities struck by natural disasters and mass shootings, both in the United States and internationally. And still doing this work at 77, he has no plans to slow down.

By Marian Sandmaier - Virtually all clinicians make clear to departing clients that they’re welcome to return to therapy at any point. But for clients with recurrent depression, that may not be enough. I propose that before termination, therapists talk with clients candidly about the possibility of another episode of suffering down the line.

By Marian Sandmaier - Nearly all therapists will soon be working with substantial numbers of aging families, whether or not they ever consciously choose to. The question at hand, then, is how can this juncture in the family life cycle be transformed from an emphasis on adjusting to loss and disappointments to a focus on growth and possibility?

By Marian Sandmaier - Tony Robbins, who will give a special session at the 41st annual Networker Symposium in March, is a pop psychology phenom. Over the last four decades, his work in the area of emotional growth and healing has influenced millions of people. But can therapists learn anything useful from him?

By Marian Sandmaier - On a hot August morning in 2012, I sat with 25 strangers in a former Capuchin monastery overlooking New York’s Hudson River. We were there to spend a week learning about a therapeutic process known as Focusing. I couldn’t have known then that this deceptively simple practice would alter my life.

By Marian Sandmaier - Today, we’re entering a new and fast-expanding universe of emotional self-help—one populated by smartphone apps. They offer tools for everything from depression, social anxiety, and binge eating to phobias, postpartum problems, and substance abuse recovery. Since solace-by-app is here to stay, how might clinicians become a meaningful part of this mental health game changer, in ways that might benefit both themselves and their clients?

New investigations are beginning to shed new light on a question that's hounded psychotherapy for more than a century: what's the relationship between nature and nurture, and what does it mean for the human project of change? As we come to understand more about the complex process of temperament development, therapists may be able to better help clients master one of life's trickiest balancing acts---making peace with one's inborn nature while knocking against its boundaries, in search of a larger self.

If ever a conference devoted to “The Art of Healing in an Anxious Time” was needed, this is that time. At the 2020 Virtual Symposium, some of the field’s leaders offered both practical guidance and personal perspective on how to put what we know about trauma, mindfulness, and emotional connection to work as we confront a crisis few of us imagined possible.

Spearheaded by high school students and supported by some influential adults, a movement is underway to mandate a limited number of mental health days as part of a public school’s official sick-day policy.

Whatever one’s position on abortion, it’s hard to dispute that the debate has ramped up radically over the last year.

Although it’s not usually acknowledged, change in the consulting room goes both ways. Even as they help clients wrestle with their issues, it’s the rare therapist who hasn’t experienced his or her own eureka moments. Five therapists share their tales of personal transformation.

Wherever people have been uprooted and stripped raw by the devastating force of war, sudden violence, or natural disaster, you’re likely to find Jim Gordon at work. For 25 years, he’s been bringing the tools of mind–body healing to trouble spots around the globe. His goal? To make himself unnecessary.

Most clinicians know that if a person has suffered one bout of serious depression, he or she is much more vulnerable to another one. But most therapists still don’t address a vital question with their clients—how can they stay well once their most recent bout of misery has ended and they’ve left therapy?

In our own small way, the Networker has tried to revive the ancient, tribal practice of storytelling. At our third annual Symposium storytelling event, five veteran therapists fearlessly got on stage and told disarmingly revealing stories about therapy experiences that challenged them and taught them something vital about themselves.

Does being a therapist give us an edge in coping with the inescapable phenomenon of aging? Three prominent psychotherapists—Irvin Yalom, Joan Klagsbrun, and Erv Polster—share both how their experience with older clients has shaped their slant on their own mortality and how their own aging may be changing the way they approach psychotherapy.

Despite his four decades in the public eye, most therapists are only vaguely aware of Tony Robbins and his take on personal change. But if you attract millions of people from a staggering range of backgrounds and interests to your seminars, it’s a good bet you have something to offer. So what’s that elusive “something” that he transmits to people? And can therapists learn anything useful from him?

Eugene Gendlin and his work on Focusing and the “felt sense” left an indelible mark on modern mind–body approaches to psychotherapy.