The Fight or Flight Response: When Anxiety is Your Friend

Beyond Their Words: Understanding the Real Question

Peter Drucker wisely stated, "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." This article delves into that profound truth, illustrating how discerning unspoken messages can transform our interactions. We explore the critical skill of understanding the true questions behind the words, from veiled pleas for help to the silent cries hidden in seemingly innocuous inquiries. Discover why truly effective communication requires listening not just to what is spoken, but to the deeper needs and concerns that remain unsaid.

Hope and Healing: From Warsaw to Jerusalem

It was amazing how the strength of the comradery of the women enabled them to shift their view of themselves and their experience of MRKH from one in which they were hard done by and less of a woman, to feeling special. They were able to explore the possibilities that having MRKH presented to them. They also recognized the hope and possibilities that lay within their situation, on many levels. When the women started the workshop, many were nervous and fidgety. By the end, they were sitting up straight with big smiles on their faces and hope in their eyes.

What I learned was that we can all be hope experts, as we have all experienced life challenges. The more we recognize the challenges that we endured, remove the shame connected to those challenges and celebrate the accomplishments, the better able we can help others feel more hopeful too.

Healing the Inner Garden: A Journey of Creation, Connection, and Inner Peace

Explore a path to healing that unites therapeutic insights and Jewish wisdom. This article bridges Internal Family Systems, mindful awareness, and timeless spiritual teachings, offering readers a journey toward self-discovery, purpose, and inner peace.

Opening the Emotion Valve: Challenges and Strategies

Emotional growth is hard-won, but with the right approach, it is within anyone's reach.

The Emotion Valve

When someone is friendly, capable, and well-liked yet can't seem to make a relationship work, the answer may lie not in who they are today, but in who they had to become in childhood.

Lesson from a Construction Site: Don't Dismiss the Scaffolding in Your Relationships

Marriages, like buildings, sometimes need scaffolding - temporary, unglamorous interventions - that provide the platform needed to repair damage and build a strong, lasting structure.

New Job Jitters

When beginning a new job if you are constantly worried about failing and feeling like you need to prove yourself at every turn that can cause significant stress which will most likely hinder performance.  Rather than engendering positive relationships and being open to learning, the fear of someone discovering shortcomings will be so pervasive that it will be very difficult to acclimate to the new position effectively.  On the other hand, a growth mindset which encourages you to learn from others, think about mistakes as essential to the process of learning and acclimating and being open to a new way of doing things will lead you to have more joy and energy, feel less anxious,  and make a good impression on your colleagues.

Of Guts and Brain: The Gut-Brain Axis

If you are willing to make a few changes, “disease goes away as a side effect of health.” (Hyman, 2012, p. 29)

Good Therapy is a Change in Scenery: Insights from the Other Side of the World

Every once in a while, important insights for my known world reveal themselves from the most unusual of places. My recent trip to the Far East: Myanmar and Thailand gifted me new insights and inspirations as a Jungian analyst. My mantra became, Good therapy is a change in scenery. In the safety of the therapist’s temenos (a beautiful Jungian term for the sanctity of the therapy space), patients meet the messages of the unconscious often for the first time. And in meeting these unknown voices and images, our inner and outer worlds transform themselves into newness and rebirth.

Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery, Part 4

Forgive yourself for not having foreseen, protected, or responded more effectively during the trauma.

Feeling Helpless? Here Are 3 Corona (or Anytime) Coping Skills

It can happen at any time or place. But especially now, with the impact of COVID-19 still being felt here in Israel even as things are finally opening up, it's an expected emotion to be feeling. Helplessness. And we are all in it together. Including your therapist. What can you do when you feel like this? Here are 3 powerful skills I know of.

Lets Talk About Therapy The Same Way We Talk About Going To the Gym

Imagine how much easier life would be if therapy was seen simply as a form…

Resilience Series Part 3

In the previous blog, we discussed strategies to manage our emotional reactivity. Although similar, regulating emotions isn’t quite the same as managing how we react emotionally. Whereas managing emotional reactivity works like a light switch that can dim the frequency and intensity of our emotional reactions, regulating emotions, on the other hand, involves altering our emotional responses to situations. We might consider regulating emotions as our ability to adjust our own emotional states. Sometimes we do this by increasing our positive emotions, whereas other situations are better handled by decreasing our negative emotions. How...

What Makes Us Miss Relationship Red Flags?

Have you come out of a relationship recently where you feel like banging your head against a wall because yet again you’ve dated someone who turned out to be a bad apple? So you go into this mantra of telling yourself there must be no good people to date, because everyone you go out with ends badly.
Your dating pattern may look something like this. You meet someone, they make you feel really good in the beginning, they treat you nicely, take you to nice places and show you a good time. Then slowly they show less interest in you. Maybe they distance themselves from you, start saying things that are hurtful, or seem to care less about your opinion?

Managing Custody During Corona

The Corona crisis is challenging and stressful on many levels. This is particularly true in families already challenged by divorce and managing custody. My blog addresses basic points of reference around children's needs and challenges around going back and forth between parents and advise to parents on how to best navigate. I offer some "do's and don'ts" for promoting successful communication as well as advise on juggling your life when the children are with you. I invite you to contact me for help, advise or even just venting! Everyone needs someone, now more than ever.

Who's Afraid of Retirement?

Navigating retirement is not only about filling your time or learning new skills. There is value in looking back, at what was, in addition to what’s next. There are relationships with others that will be impacted by retirement, and more than that; there is also the relationship with yourself.

Beginnings & Endings: Making Sense of Life Changes

The holiday season has ended, the parties and festivities subsided, and we come back to…

At Home Therapeutic Art Activities for Children During Global Pandemic

During challenging times, it is important to encourage children to express how they are feeling. Children often have difficulty articulating their emotions verbally- communicating through art or play is a great alternative. This can serve as a cathartic release, empower them, and help them process new circumstances. 

Encopresis: A Four-Pronged Treatment Approach

Encopresis, more commonly called “soiling” or fecal incontinence, refers to the involuntary passage of feces. Typically, this condition results from chronic constipation, but it can also be triggered by emotional issues. Encopresis, which has a 9% occurrence rate worldwide, is not considered to be a medical condition until a child is 4 years old. While encopresis is often very distressing to both the child and the family, it is treatable. The earlier treatment begins, the better the outcome. In my years of private practice as an art therapist, I have successfully treated many children with encopresis using the following four-pronged treatment approach.