CBT offers a clinical toolbox that ensures that treatment never becomes merely unfocused chitchat.

We were therapists counseling men who broke their children's bodies, raped their wives, killed those they were closest to. How could I describe the black pit widening in my gut each year, the gray haze like a smoky window through which I viewed the world, my husband's growing anxiety about my lengthening periods of silence?

in 1972, David Rosenhan shook the foundations of psychiatry with a classic experiment that stunningly demonstrated how the world is always warped by the lens we're looking through. Thirty years later, an intrepid therapist-writer sets out to retrace Rosenhan's steps and test the mettle of 21st-century psychiatry.

Two recent landmark overviews of research separate myth from reality in the treatment of substance abuse.

Working with self-harming teens often seems like riding a runaway roller coaster, which keeps threatening to go off the rails altogether. Just as things get smooth and predictable, a crisis sends you hurtling downhill again.

Difficulty in retaining new insights and skills from session to session and putting them to use is frustrating for therapists and clients alike. Rather than building on last week's insights, we're too often obliged to take one step back to review, remind, and reinforce. Fortunately, some creative memory techniques can reduce the need to repeat ourselves with our clients.

Everyone's reconciliation story is different, but everyone can reconcile in one of four ways.

At the most basic level, we must discover how to perform the balancing act of simultaneously giving up the need to see clients change while holding open the possibility of change.

We frequently assume that all clients must feel hopeful and believe that life is meaningful before they'll make much progress in therapy or in life. But in the wake of catastrophe, it's often impossible to summon up the least glimmer of hope or faith or sense of life's meaning. To clients who have suffered profound trauma, it's ludicrous to suggest that they can be coaxed into feeling hopeful about the future. But sometimes, the simplest act can have profound power.

Q: I find myself getting extremely reactive when clients lose their temper in my office. What can I do to better control my anger and anxiety in the presence of an angry client?