Your manager gives you a small piece of feedback in a meeting. Reasonable, delivered kindly, genuinely not a big deal. Everyone else moves on. You are still turning it over at eleven that night. If that sounds familiar, you have probably wondered at some point whether you are simply too sensitive. It is worth knowing […]
Written by Daniel Goldstein, PhD, CGP As therapists, we spend much of our professional lives helping people understand what happens between us and other people. We study attachment, conflict, vulnerability, boundaries, and repair. We listen closely for the relational patterns shaping our clients’ lives. Yet most therapists receive surprisingly little opportunity to examine those same […]
Defense mechanisms protect us from feelings that our mind has decided are too much to handle. It redirects, reframes, deflects, and sometimes distorts reality in convincing ways, all in the service of keeping us functional. These mental strategies are called defense mechanisms, and once we know how to recognize them, we start spotting them everywhere. […]
At first glance, May feels hopeful. The weather is warmer. Summer is approaching. School is winding down. Vacations, graduations, celebrations, and longer days finally arrive after a long winter. Yet, for many of us, May can feel less like a fresh start and more like a stressful sprint to the finish line. Calendars become packed […]
Sometimes changing ourselves means changing how we relate to other people. Yes, we can experience a lot of growth in individual therapy. That said, one of the most powerful tools we have for improved relationships is group therapy. Group therapy works really well for clients who intellectually understand why they pull away from people they […]
At first glance, kindness and people pleasing can look almost identical. They can appear like showing up for others. Both can look like generosity, flexibility, and care. They also both often include saying “yes,” being accommodating, and trying to make things easier for the people around us. Yet, many of us have had the experience […]