I am not a counselor. Nevertheless, having worked as a lobbyist for the American Counseling Association for the past fourteen years, I’ve learned a little bit about how counseling works, and one of the tenets I’ve heard more than once is that change is scary. My recent work for ACA on health care [...]

“We must all face the fact that we are very precariously suspended in life: we have a very slender foothold on the planet.” – Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
As I sit down and prepare to write this entry, a hawk circles outside against the blue sky. I marvel as it moves slowly, precisely, [...]

As therapists, we are taught that who we are is based on the collection of our experiences. Aristotle said something like: as for the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. This is often forgotten in todays society where we tell children how to consider others feelings [...]

I have been counseling for ten years and I have learned a thing or two in those ten years. I have learned to meet families, children and couples where they are. I have learned you can’t rush progress and probably the biggest gem is people only change when they are ready. I [...]

I have in the past blogged a bit about eating disorders. Now I would like to climb on a soap box because I have had yet another mishandled client with an eating disorder. I don’t know if others would refer to me as an expert in the field of eating disorder treatment, but [...]

This blog will have a more personal tone than some of my earlier ones. I believe it is typical of counselors to process our experiences in several of our life roles, and I will process my recent experience in my life role as a son and counselor. Over the holidays, like many people, I planned [...]

I was watching Rachel Maddow’s show the other night as she interviewed Tracy Kidder. Kidder has written several books including a moving one about Haiti called “Mountains beyond Mountains” that details the work of Paul Farmer and the organization Partners in Health (www.pih.org). Kidder also wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece this week called [...]

A friend of mine had been in the hospital for weeks experiencing a combination of pain, boredom and a disconnection from her loved ones. She tried texting, facebooking, watching TV, striking up conversation with the nurses but what finally roused her out of her funk was hearing the familiar jingling sounds sound outside her room. [...]