Clinical Skills & Experience
Reimagining God in Therapy
When a Parent’s Critical Voice Is AlmightyCreating a safe space for clients to slowly re-evaluate some core religious teachings they’ve absorbed can be delicate and clinically necessary work. Read more
Three Blocks to Processing Trauma
Getting to the Pain Behind Spiritual BypassHow do you navigate toxic positivity, and other forms of spiritual bypass, when it’s a block to processing trauma? Read more
An Unlikely Companion to EFT
How Can Psychedelics Enhance the Work?Talk therapy can help couples understand their negative patterns cognitively. Adding psychedelics to the work can help them feel it. Read more
Treating the Trauma in Religious Trauma
Body-Based Healing for Faith-Based HarmHigh-control religions can disconnect people from themselves—and somatic therapies are the key to helping them heal. Read more
The Spiritual Therapist
Healing and the Secular PriesthoodMost therapists don’t shy away from discussing charged topics like sex and drugs. But religion and spirituality? That’s a different story—one that a... Read more
Discerning Three Types of Anxiety
Improving Outcomes for Anxious ClientsUnderstanding some of the most common ways anxiety can look in therapy can provide us with guideposts to intervene strategically and support better outcomes... Read more
Rethinking Insecure Attachment
From a Fixed Model to a Fluid SpectrumA new framework for visualizing attachment turns a potentially pathologizing concept into a friendly clinical tool. Read more
When Clients Ask for Session Notes
Tips for Navigating a Legal Gray ZoneFew things can spook therapists as much as emails from former clients requesting session notes for a legal proceeding, but handling these requests thoughtfully... Read more
Listening as the Ultimate Spiritual Act
From Passive Process to Active PracticeHow do we change our habit of defensive listening and make emotional presence our practice? Read more
Helping Clients Find Rituals that Heal
Offerings from a Spiritual TherapistA Sufi therapist invites all clients to find their unique spiritual path through their current struggles. Read more
God, Grief and Therapy
The Quest for Meaning after LossRenowned grief expert David Kessler shares what can grief work teach us about the role of religious beliefs in therapy. Read more
Taking the Blindfold off Couples Therapy
A Tool for Cultivating Emergent LoveHow might a panoramic view of a relationship at the start of couples therapy change what clinicians focus on? Read more
Teaching Practical Wisdom
Helping Clients Build Up Their Own Inner ResourcesWhat if wisdom—the elusive prize so many of us strive for—is actually a practical skill clients can gain in the course of everyday therapy sessions? Read more
How Do You Know if You're a Culturally Responsive Therapist?
Measurement-Based Care with Diverse ClientsEvidence-based tools can help us embrace our clients' feedback, greatly increase our cultural competence. and improve therapy outcomes. Read more
The Funny Therapist
Dismantling Stigma, One Joke at a TimeWhat do therapy and comedy have in common? Therapist and comedian David Granirer has spent over two decades helping aspiring stand-up comics—many in... Read more
4 Things Therapists Should Consider About Political Polarization
Maintaining Client Trust in a Divided NationUnless we want to let down our clients and lose public trust, therapists need to figure out how to navigate a politically polarized world. Read more
FREE Clinical Worksheets
Tools for Releasing Pain and Remembering LoveThis month’s free practice tool is from David Kessler and offers clients a way to accept losses and express the unexpressed. Read more
Facing Post-Separation Abuse
Sometimes the Breakup Isn't the EndPost-separation abuse can easily masquerade as a simple "bad breakup." Read more
When Your Client Goes to Family Court
The Truth about Documenting SessionsHow you document sessions with clients in emotionally abusive relationships can either help or harm them in family court. Read more
When Burnout Threatens Therapy with Survivors
Cultivating Your Stamina as a TherapistEven experienced clinicians can start to feel lost when helping people untangle the psychological effects of coercive control. Read more
Soothing Dysregulation in Couples Therapy
The One Thing We Should All Do FirstIs teaching partners to join forces against their stress where all couples work should begin? Read more
Assessing the Physical Dangers of Emotional Abuse
When to Create a Safety PlanJust because a relationship isn't physically violent doesn't mean emotional abuse won't turn violent. Read more
Healing the Covert Narcissist
When Early Trauma Meets EntitlementEntitlement, the characteristic that best indicates when coercive control is narcissistically driven, makes treating perpetrators challenging—but not... Read more
When Your Client Prefers Chitchat
Finding Meaning in Unlikely PlacesIf a client can't stop talking about the plot twists of a banal TV show, should you try to change the clinical channel? Read more
Shaping Consensual Nonmonogamy Agreements
The Five Steps Therapists Need to ConsiderWhen opening a relationship, the agreement-making process is far more important than the agreements themselves. Read more
The Anxious Therapist
Harnessing Your Discomfort in SessionsWe can use our discomfort with clients to learn how to help them. Read more
Editor's Note: November/December 2024
Facing the Realities of Emotional AbuseThe more informed we are about narcissistic abuse and coercive control, the more we can support survivors of intimate partner violence on their road to healing. Read more
The Art of Detaching from Results
How We Measure Our Competence MattersFor therapists, doing something they love that challenges them—independent of their work with clients—can bring balance to their practice. Read more
"The Piece of Supervisor Advice I Still Use"
Four Exceptional Suggestions for Today’s TherapistsIt’s no surprise that a supervisory relationship can often be enlightening and steadying for both new and experienced therapists. But some therapists have... Read more
Therapists Are Superheroes
Seven Ways We Go Above and BeyondTherapists may not don red capes, or travel faster than a speeding bullet, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t superheroes in our own right. We occupy a... Read more