I love one-on-one Internal Family Systems (IFS) parts work. I am forever indebted to my IFS therapist Nancy Morgan and to IFS founder Dick Schwartz, who I’ve been blessed to do some one-on-one work with from time to time. I highly recommend seeing an IFS therapist...
Everyone deserves to be loved, especially the people who didn’t get love growing up. We all deserve companionship, affection, attention, appreciation, nurturing care, safe touch, comfort, and someone to have fun with. All human beings deserve to feel special,...
Like almost everyone else I know, I loved Liz Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. I read it right after I blew up my own life by quitting my stable job as a doctor to pursue an unknown life of God knows what, and I wanted to be Liz Gilbert. I hadn’t published any books of...
Many spiritual teachings, self-help messages, and therapies focus on forgiveness as either a spiritual virtue or a way of freeing ourselves from seething resentment and freeing others from the bitterness of our judgments. Forgiveness is viewed as a noble act of...
I’m new to Sonoma County and actively in pursuit of new friends, new community, and a new sense of belonging. After 17 years of feeling very embedded in my beloved Muir Beach, I feel oddly vulnerable in a town where I barely know anyone. With my new empty...
When it comes to healing, justice is big. Many trauma survivors struggle because their childhoods were so unjust, and then because history repeats itself, this often sets them up for relationships and jobs where the injustices play out again. And then there are the...
As I explained in my blog about IFS-informed Dating and Dating The Day Democracy Died, I learned a ton about myself and my own parts by going on about thirty first dates before I wound up with my current partner Jeffrey Rediger, who I met at a trauma conference we...
Kids can grow up with developmental wounds that put them on one end of the unhealthy entitlement spectrum or the other. On one end, kids grow up too entitled. They feel entitled to things they’re not actually entitled to, and this can put them at risk of...