Back in 2008 when I first opened my private psychotherapy practice, I had one clear objective; to serve adolescents in acute crisis. It’s no secret I love working with kids and the adolescent years are 100% my jam. There is enormous creativity, passion, exploration, and vulnerability during these years. Everything is on the precipice and that is exciting, hard, and also tremendously inspiring. Teens are wild and weird. And that's perfect. As I struggled with how to market the fact that I had officially hung up my shingle, I received some really great advice from my mentor. “Know the population you want to serve, but also, notice who finds you,” he said. And this has been a piece of...
I recently spoke with someone who would really benefit from therapy. Nothing is in crisis, but they have been repeating the same pattern over and over again and they finally started to think that maybe this behavior doesn't serve them anymore. And maybe it is holding them back. Hopefully this illumination happens to all of us. This realization is hard. Change is hard, but if we are not changing then we aren't really living. So let's hope for the hard stuff every now and then. I’m not sure this individual will ever go to therapy. And I’ve done what I can to try and facilitate the process. I’ve been an outspoken therapist and I have shared with them about...
Let’s talk diagnosis. But first, let me backup a bit. I receive the most wonderful questions from JOY listeners and readers of this newsletter. Y’all are really paying attention and few things make me happier than answering your questions about psychology. What I didn’t know was going to happen when I started JOY, was that I would get asked quite frequently for my take on things that are floating around the psychological ether. Kind of like a myth buster. Here’s what that looks like. A DM of a post on social media that just doesn’t sit right with you. What do you think about this Lisa? Is there any truth to this? I call bullshit. Thoughts? And...
On the second floor of SFMoMA within Open Ended: Painting and Sculpture, 1900 to Now, lives a Jackson Pollock painting titled, Guardians of the Secret. Completed in 1943, Guardians was part of Pollock's first solo exhibition. Much has been written about this work, mostly pointing out its Native American influence and Jungian archetype themes. Pollock is said to have brought his Jungian analyst to the show opening, which of course makes Pollock even that much more intriguing to me. Upon completion of graduate school, I gifted my mentor a small framed postcard of the painting. To me, the images evoke a tale of the therapeutic relationship. The analytic couch appearing in the center, the male and female representations of the patient at either...
