Parental estrangement—when adult children significantly limit or cut off contact with their parents—has become increasingly common in...

When searching for a therapist, it's natural to focus on credentials, specializations, and years of experience. These factors matter, but...

Many high-functioning adults struggle with a particular kind of inner conflict: they know something was missing from their childhood, yet they feel guilty for acknowledging it. After all, their parents weren't abusive monsters. They were just... absent. Emotionally unavailable. Overwhelmed. Doing their best with what they had.

In recent years, the word "trauma" has become increasingly common in everyday conversation, social media, and popular psychology. While this increased awareness has helped reduce stigma around mental health, it has also led to some confusion about what trauma actually means from a clinical perspective.

Guilt might be one of the most misunderstood emotions in the human experience. We treat it like a houseguest that overstays its welcome, when in reality, guilt is more like a smoke detector—incredibly useful when there's actually a fire, but absolutely maddening when it keeps going off because you burned toast.

Picture this: You're sitting in a therapy session, trying to explain why you feel so disconnected from yourself and others, why you struggle with relationships, or why you can't seem to trust your own emotions. Your therapist asks about your childhood, and you shrug. "It was fine," you say. "Nothing really bad happened. My parents weren't abusive or anything." And that's exactly the problem.

When faced with perceived danger, our nervous system has four primary responses that have kept humans alive for millennia: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn.

Our brains evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to thrive in small, tight-knit communities where physical movement was constant, social bonds were essential for survival, and threats were immediate and concrete. Yet in just a few decades, we've created an environment that contradicts nearly every aspect of how our minds are designed to function.

A non-pathologizing approach to therapy offers a different lens—one rooted in the idea that your struggles are not signs of defect or disorder, but adaptations. They are evidence of how you’ve survived.

In this post, we’ll explore the differences between constructivist and objectivist therapy approaches, and how each shapes the therapeutic relationship, the role of the client, and what we consider to be “problems” in the first place.

Talk therapy can be incredibly powerful—but for many people, insight alone isn’t enough to create real, lasting change.

Codependency has become a buzzword in pop psychology—a shorthand for being “too much,” “too needy,” or “bad at boundaries.” But what if we’ve misunderstood codependency? What if, instead of seeing it as a flaw, we saw it as an adaptation? What if it’s not what’s wrong with you—but what happened to you?

Perfectionism often gets framed as a personality flaw or an overachiever’s quirk—something to tone down with better work-life balance or stricter time management. But for many, especially those with histories of attachment trauma, perfectionism isn’t just a habit. It’s a survival strategy.

If you work in a high-pressure field—whether you're a healthcare worker, educator, first responder, therapist, corporate leader, or caregiver—you're no stranger to stress. You probably already have some solid strategies to get through tough days. But even with all that strength and know-how, the stress often doesn’t go away—it just burrows deeper.

You might find yourself panicking after a mildly critical email from a coworker, feeling like a total failure when you make a small mistake, or shutting down emotionally when your partner asks for connection. These aren’t overreactions—they’re past reactions, still alive in your nervous system.

You may know something rationally but still feel stuck emotionally. Why? Because different memories are stored in different ways.

Intellectualizing is the habit of staying in the realm of thought as a way to avoid emotions.

Even when we make choices that feel right, it’s natural to look back and wonder about the life that could have been.

Many people grow up in well-intentioned but emotionally neglectful environments, leaving them with hidden wounds that shape their adult live

The Science of Change: Why Memory Reconsolidation Matters For decades, therapists have worked within structured models—Cognitive...