January 2019

I’m a great believer in fresh starts, especially if you’re a work-in-progress and healing from childhood wounds and you’re feeling stuck, as everyone does now and again. To that end, I look to the start of a new month as a blank page, the start of a new season which always has a different kind of energy, and, of course, the biggest start-your-engines of them all, the New Year. But I’m not talking traditional resolutions here (because they don’t work, for one thing); instead, let’s focus on...

Community Resilience Initiative is officially launching a new series of blog posts, building to our 2019 Beyond Paper Tigers conference on June 25th - 27th. We’ll cover a range of topics relevant to conference material, events, and inspirations. In addition to the regular conference, CRI is offering two training add-on options on Tuesday June 25, 2019 prior to the conference: Resilience-Based Trainings, Course One and Two . https://criresilient.org/beyon...re-conference-event/ “A group of...

Those who struggle with ACE’s have a tendency to focus on the negative as a means of self-protection. We fear opening our hearts because of the brutality we experienced in early childhood when our hearts were already open. It takes a tremendous amount of inner work to free our energy from continuing to produce the false barrier of protection, which constitutes our barrier to experiencing all of the love and joy and support that we long for. In this article I offer an alternative view that...

As a child and adolescent clinical psychologist , I'm a huge fan of using metaphors and analogies when I'm explaining a wide range of psychological facts. I've found that no matter the age, metaphors and analogies are just easier to process. Therefore, whenever I'm talking to someone else about what I do in therapy , I really enjoying referencing an imaginary emotional toolbox. In simple words, my job is to help whoever walks into my office refine that emotional toolbox. Together, we: Find...

This is the fourth post in our “3 Things to Know” series, an explanation of concepts influencing community mental health and our grantmaking. Check out others in this series on Health Equity , Social Determinants of (Mental) Health , and Well-being . Resilience is critical to health and mental health interventions. So critical that major public health institutions have developed frameworks to provide clarity about its definition and its role as a key determinant for a person’s, and a...

According to the National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Justice Statistics, between one and three students in the United States report being bullied at school. In recent years, cyberbullying has become a widespread problem. Cyberbullying is any bullying performed via cell phones, social media, or the Internet in general. [For more on this story by Chiara Townley, go to https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324089.php ]

Afterward I discovered the horrific tragedy that had befallen this child only hours prior. I cried the entire car ride home. My sweet dog helped this little guy smile when smiling seemed an impossibility for these circumstances. She gave him an hour of reprieve from his heartache and trauma.

A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin–Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, recently published online in the journal Psychological Science , is the first to investigate whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion. “Our fundamental question was, ‘Can compassion be trained...

Jack Kornfield shares his wisdom on why it’s important to focus on well-being, even during times of strife. In this conversation, the acclaimed author of books like A Path with Heart and The Wise Heart offers up his perspective on suffering and what we can do to maintain our caring heart, using practices honed over thousands of years from traditional wisdom traditions. Many of these have been validated by researchers studying the new science of personal and social well-being, suggesting an...

When Ya’Acov Darling Khan was 22, he was struck by lightning. Dazed, but otherwise unharmed, he came to on the grass where he had been playing golf as a summer storm closed in. Later he would come to see this near-death experience as his summons to the sacred path of the shaman. After 30 years — and a grueling apprenticeship with indigenous healers in the Arctic and the Amazon, Darling Khan, along with his wife, Susannah, have built a global following for their School of Movement Medicine in...

During a break in taping my new course on dating and relationships, I recorded this story about how hard it can be to change the self-defeating patterns that so often flow from Childhood PTSD. I talk about one summer when I was working hard to get through a dark time, and then a miracle took me by surprise. You can learn the writing/meditation techniques I mention as a source of daily healing, here . You can access my articles, courses and resources for people with Childhood PTSD on my blog,...

In a particularly difficult season of depression, photography was one of the tools Tara Wray used to cope. "Just forcing myself to get out of my head and using the camera to do that is, in a way, a therapeutic tool," says Wray, a photographer and filmmaker based in central Vermont. "It's like exercise: You don't want to do it, you have to make yourself do it, and you feel better after you do." "There were moments that I felt alone and isolated in a dark place, and I wondered if I would see...