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Notes From a New Clinician
As a new clinician interested in working with survivors of complex trauma and dissociation, insight from experienced practitioners is invaluable to me. Recently, I connected with Amy Zajakowki Uhll, LCPC, a psychodynamically trained therapist with over 25 years of experience, to learn more about her work in the field, current treatment approaches, and her thoughts…
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How Our Nervous Systems are Impacted By Everything Going On In the World
I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone that there is a lot going on in the world right now. COVID-19, the uprising that is happening in response to police brutality and white supremacy and violence; politics and the upcoming election and the state of our democracy and the soul of country. Just to name…
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Micropractices: Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Anyone exploring mindfulness meditation will find that there are so many different styles and approaches. This can be liberating or confusing, or both! Luckily, there is something for everybody. The most important is that we each find what is helpful for us. This might be a process of trial and error. “Micropractices” is one way…
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COVID-19, Essential Trauma Concepts, IP-Integrated Practices for Healing Trauma Groups, Trauma-Informed ServicesIntegrated Practices in the Time of Coronavirus
In the 10 years I have been facilitating Integrated Practices (formerly Becoming Safely Embodied) group, before this past March I had not considered providing them online. I have run groups consistently throughout these years as a part of my practice and I am deeply connected to this aspect of my work. Due to the…
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The Power of Bearing Witness
Over the past week, I have been reflecting on the article Holding, Containing and Bearing Witness: The Problem of Helpfulness in Encounters with Torture Survivors by Dick Blackwell (1997). In the article, Blackwell (1997) explores the role of the therapist in supporting our client’s wants and needs in therapy, especially with respect to survivors of …
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An Evidence-Based House of Cards
Here is my bias: I believe that therapy is unavoidably complex. How could it be otherwise, encountering as it does all manner of human experience? Wrestling as we do, both client and therapist, with suffering and meaning? It stands counter to reason and intuition alike that formulaic clinical practices would result in solid treatment outcomes. …
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What if there’s nothing wrong with your body?
“What if there’s nothing wrong with my body?” This is an astonishing question – or at least it felt that way to me the first time I asked it of myself. It’s a question that multiple and interlocking systems of oppression such as racism, misogyny and fatphobia rely upon us not asking ourselves. Not to…
