Blog
This is What Lives at the Very Heart of Anxiety
I was driving into town one evening last week and as I drove down our local highway I flashed on a time over twenty years ago when I drove from Los Angeles to San Diego. As my body sank into the somatic memory, a wave of nostalgia surged up that said, "I miss Los...
There is Not One Prescription for Healing
Piggybacking off the post I shared a few weeks ago, I wanted to expand upon the statement that there are many ways to heal. What I see in the field of psychotherapy, as I see in many other fields and areas in our lives, is that at we've divided the mind, body, and...
This is One Way to Serve the World (and it’s not what you think)
Our earth is calling on us to rise up, to be active, to do our part in making the world a better place. Perhaps our world has always asked this of us, but the call to serve seems more dire and poignant these days. When we think of activism, we tend to think of the...
Why is Sex So Confusing? I Have a Few Ideas.
Healthy and sacred sexuality is our birthright. Just like we're born to learn and are wired for curiosity, so we're born to experience pleasure in our bodies and to share this pleasure with a special other. But somewhere along the way, this natural desire and creative...
How to Have the Greatest Sex of Your Life
If ever there's an area where we're sold a bill of goods - where we're fed an impossible ideal and told what we "should" be feeling, doing, and thinking - it's around sex. Here's what we're told: You should be having sex 2-3 times a week. You should be having...
This is How to Rewire Your Anxious Brain
Some people are called to explore the vicissitudes of depression; Johann Hari comes to mind. Other are tasked with uncovering the underpinnings of eating disorders, like Anita Johnston, author of the exquisitely wise book, Eating in the Light of the Moon. For a myriad...
This is How I Transform Worry into Trust
With the pandemic surging, worry is on the upswing. Worry is a culturally acceptable way to refer to anxiety, but I think of them as the same thing. If you're on my site, worry may be taking centerstage in your life, if not every day then some days. The stakes are...
These Overlooked Traumas Can Lead to Anxiety
We talk a lot about big T traumas in psychological circles these days, which are the moments or experiences that overload our capacity to cope and cause us to go into fight, flight, freeze or fawn. These might be: growing up with addiction or abuse; repeated bullying;...
How to Navigate the Holidays During a Pandemic
For highly sensitive people, the holidays can be challenging. As I've written in several posts, including here, and talked about in the free webinar called "How to Maintain Your Sanity During the Holidays" (you can access it at the bottom of this page), the holidays,...
This is What Often Unleashes Anxiety and Panic
As I've shared many times, the panic attack that dragged me into the underworld of my unearthed pain and initiated me into the landscape of anxiety that would become my life's work occurred at age twenty-one, three months before graduating from college. What stands...
This is What Strikes Me About Relationship Anxiety
Every week for almost two years I've met with a small group of the most lovely people to talk about relationship anxiety. Like you, they're highly sensitive, deeply empathic, analytical, and conscientious. Like you, they found me because they were struggling with...
Memories, Dreams and Reflections on my 49th Birthday
I’ve shared a birthday post almost every year that I’ve run this blog (this is the first one I wrote ten years ago). I typically write a few days before my birthday both to mark time and also to share with you, my highly sensitive audience prone to anxiety, what it...
What is the Difference Between Relationship Anxiety and ROCD?
When I first started writing and talking about relationship anxiety over seventeen years ago, the term ROCD (relationship obsessive compulsive disorder) was barely a blip on the psychological radar screen, and it certainty hadn't hit the mainstream cultural lexicon....
This is What is Hidden Inside Intrusive Thoughts – and How to Break Free
An intrusive thought arrives... What if I harm someone? What if I've harmed someone in the past and I don't remember? What if I'm with the wrong partner? What if I'm gay/straight? What if I left the stove on? What if I have a terminal illness (or covid)? What if I...
Our Family is in a Big Transition. This is How I’m Navigating It.
We've arrived at the end of a cycle in our family's life. An essential and positive end, but an end nonetheless. And if there's anything I've learned about endings in my nearly forty-nine years on this planet, it's that they need to be grieved otherwise they manifest...