Anxiety & Depression

Helping Therapy Clients Cope with the Reality of Death

Clinical Wisdom to Combat Fear, Anxiety, and Grief at the End of Life

For 17 years, managing responses to death has become part of my work, whether originally my intention or not. I’ve aspired to helping families hang tough... Read more

Pornography on the Rise: A Growing Mental Health Problem

Wendy Maltz on the Need to Address Porn Addiction as a Public Health Threat

Nearly 40 million Americans visit Internet porn sites at least once a month. Not surprisingly, concerns about the effect of porn on individuals and... Read more

A Brain Science Strategy for Overwriting Traumatic Memories

Creating Juxtaposition Experiences to Relieve Trauma Symptoms

Brain science offers powerful guidance for freeing clients from the distress triggered by disturbing implicit memories. Read more

VIDEO: Moving Forward When Treatment Seems to Make a Problem Worse

Chris Germer on shifting the focus from fixing a problem to embracing it with compassion

What someone resists persists. It’s a paradoxical dynamic that you’ve probably seen in the course of your own clinical work. In this video, Chris explains... Read more

Functional Family Therapy: A New Road Map for Behavioral Change

Using FFT to Get Parents and Kids Motivated, Allied, and Committed to Change

Over the years, I’ve found that I’ve needed a solid, research-backed clinical model, which would guide me in sessions and keep me grounded during... Read more

What the Financial Crisis Reveals About Our Psyche and Values

Confronting our Definitions of Wealth in the Therapy Room

The current economic crisis may be no more than a rather large bump in the golden road of endlessly self-renewing American prosperity. Still, it's hard not to... Read more

Putting Clients with Asperger's Syndrome on the Path to Success

How Adding Brain Science to Therapy Normalizes Living with Asperger's

Adults with Asperger's syndrome often behave as if they were confused actors walking onto a stage and being the only ones who don't know the lines or the plot... Read more

VIDEO: Treating Anxiety

David Burns on the Paradox of Resistance

David Burns explains how he addresses outcome and process resistance in a way that quickly leads to meaningful and lasting change with clients. Read more

IFS for Self-Compassion

Some Forms of Self-Love Are Harder than Others

IFS founder Dick Schwartz believes a genuine state of self-compassion entails a journey into multiple parts of yourself that may include the good, the bad, the... Read more

Inside the Heart of Healing

When Moment-to-Moment Awareness Isn't Enough

As the mindfulness movement sweeps through our field, many therapists are discovering that traditional contemplative practices grounded in detached... Read more

The 5 Myths of Self-Compassion

What Keeps Us from Being Kinder to Ourselves?

Research proves false many of the common myths about self-compassion that keep us trapped in the prison of relentless self-criticism. Read more

VIDEO: Depression Is Not a Disease, It’s a Wake-Up Call

James Gordon on Healing without Antidepressants

Depression is not a disease, so the promise of antidepressants as a cure just doesn’t hold water. That’s the assessment of James Gordon, M.D. and he should... Read more

VIDEO: The Mindful Path Out Of Depression

Zindel Segal on Helping Clients Take The First Step

What’s happening when a client suffering from symptoms of depression is willing to follow the therapist’s voice with eyes closed? According to Zindel... Read more

VIDEO: Changing the Brain to Take In the Good

Rick Hanson on 5 Simple Steps to Use Right Away

In this brief clip, Rick walks us through surprisingly simple steps that can shift our memory systems to internalize positive experiences and states with equal... Read more

Solutions for Moving Beyond the Therapeutic Impasse

Three Strategies for Making Progress with Stuck Clients

When clients get immersed in their problems, they often suffer from a kind of tunnel vision, focused on a small range of experiences, with their bad feelings... Read more

Uncovering the Source of Suicidality with Brain Science

Are Serotonin Levels the Key Factor in Suicidal Depression?

I'm at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in northern Manhattan. My guide, Victoria, has been studying the brains of people who committed suicide, and... Read more

Burnout Reconsidered

What Supershrinks Can Teach Us

Jessica, a counselor in her mid-30’s, works at a large, public mental health clinic in a major metropolitan area. Her workday begins early, the alarm... Read more

Don't Go It Alone

The Power of Focusing Partnerships

It’s not exactly a state secret: most of us become therapists because we want to help people. We want to help them feel less alone with their pain and find... Read more

Since it was introduced as an anesthetic in the 1970s, ketamine has occupied an uncertain pharmacological status. It’s been used as both a Vietnam-era... Read more

Rediscovering Happiness

The Use of Positive Childhood Triggers in Psychotherapy

To create deep change, we need to help people mine the sources of intense pleasure in their lives, wherever they may find them. Read more

Hypnotic Language in the Consulting Room

Bill O'Hanlon on the Power of Giving Permission in Therapy

As therapists, we must recognize the complexity and ambivalence at the core of human experience. People run into problems when their lives are dictated by... Read more

It’s time we address the psychological toll of the daily bombardment of information that permeates our lives. Read more

Narrowing the Gap

Striving for Honesty in the Therapy Room

Irv Yalom explores what it means to be honest with a client in session, even when that means processing your clients' fears of your death. Read more

Lost in the Maze

Finding the exit from OCD

Review: The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in ThoughtFinding an exit from the bewildering maze of a disorder that confounds... Read more

Larger than Life

Marianne Walters Was Family Therapy's Foremost Feminist

Marianne Walters didn't invent a brilliant new therapeutic paradigm, publish a large and magisterial body of research, or establish her own unique school of... Read more

The Anxious Client Reconsidered

Getting Beyond the Symptoms to Deeper Change
Graham Cambell

Anxiety attacks anything and everything in a person's life. Sometimes the targets are the mundane activities that others take for granted. At other times, it... Read more

The mental health professions are now being forced to address the debate over marijuana legalization. Read more

Voices of Reason

Empowering clients to alter their internal experiences

The case of a young man hearing voices shows how even problems that first appear to be extreme can be resolved by empowering clients to alter subtle aspects of... Read more

The Depression Epidemic

Can Mood Science Save Us?

It’s time to get beyond simplistic notions about “chemical imbalances” and finally reckon with how deeply rooted depression is in the uncertainties and... Read more

A Brief History of Anxiety

The Invention of a Modern Malaise

Life today is, in many ways, easier than it used to be. Therefore, shouldn’t we be less anxious than we once were? Read more