The Interplay of Dread AND Hope: Holding and Navigating Contrasting Emotions in Cultivating Resilience

People often ask me: how it is possible to celebrate amid deep suffering and life-altering traumatic events that shatter any sense of safety or security and leave us in confusion and the unknown?  Dread and Hope, though seemingly contradictory, can coexist in a complex dance that shapes the human experience.  Here's how...

Beyond Their Words: Understanding the Real Question

Peter Drucker wisely stated, "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." This article delves into that profound truth, illustrating how discerning unspoken messages can transform our interactions. We explore the critical skill of understanding the true questions behind the words, from veiled pleas for help to the silent cries hidden in seemingly innocuous inquiries. Discover why truly effective communication requires listening not just to what is spoken, but to the deeper needs and concerns that remain unsaid.

Managing Custody During Corona

The Corona crisis is challenging and stressful on many levels. This is particularly true in families already challenged by divorce and managing custody. My blog addresses basic points of reference around children's needs and challenges around going back and forth between parents and advise to parents on how to best navigate. I offer some "do's and don'ts" for promoting successful communication as well as advise on juggling your life when the children are with you. I invite you to contact me for help, advise or even just venting! Everyone needs someone, now more than ever.

Lets Talk About Therapy The Same Way We Talk About Going To the Gym

Imagine how much easier life would be if therapy was seen simply as a form…

Feeling Helpless? Here Are 3 Corona (or Anytime) Coping Skills

It can happen at any time or place. But especially now, with the impact of COVID-19 still being felt here in Israel even as things are finally opening up, it's an expected emotion to be feeling. Helplessness. And we are all in it together. Including your therapist. What can you do when you feel like this? Here are 3 powerful skills I know of.

Survivorship Bias: Missing Planes and Missing Data

Survivorship bias is like the WWII military only looking at bullet holes in planes that returned, while ignoring the ones that crashed. In the same way, we copy the 'hustle' of famous billionaires and think it’s a blueprint, forgetting the thousands of people who did the exact same thing and failed. If you only look at the survivors, you’re missing the full picture of the risks you’re actually taking. To truly survive, you have to stop obsessing over the winners and start looking at the planes that never made it home.

Sating the Binge

Bingeing is an issue of physiological needs and emotional nourishment. If we attend to these, we can find peace with food, our bodies, and our minds.

Get Grounded With Art

Creative expression can be a soothing and releasing form of self care and help us find our anchor.

On Becoming a Personal Scientist: Living in the half-full glass

The half-full glass is the antidote to the half-empty one.

The Fight or Flight Response: When Anxiety is Your Friend

How to Create a Sense of Normalcy at Home While Navigating the New Normal

Covid brings with it feelings of anxiety, stress and uncertainty. Though children deal with emotions in different ways, your child has been faced with school closures, cancelled events or separation from friends, they are going to need to feel loved and supported now more than ever.

The Power of Art Therapy for Emotional Healing

People often ask me, “What is art therapy and how does it work?” Art therapy…

Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery, Part 2

You can help your brain register that you survived — you are here — to find more stability and presence in your daily life.

Simcha Guilt

A therapist reflects on his sleeplessness on the eve of his son's wedding.

Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery (Part 1)

In trauma recovery, being mindful of your personal gauge will inform you what’s helpful, what is not, what soothes, what activates, what feels good, what is uncomfortable. Listening to your gauge is essential in deciding what’s the best for your recovery.

Grief in the Desert: Moshe, Miriam, and Mei Meriva

The story of Mei Merivah is among the Torah's most challenging narratives. This reflection offers a fresh perspective on Moshe's act of striking the rock, exploring it through the lens of bereavement, emotional overwhelm, and the human limits of leadership. Drawing on both Torah and psychology, it invites us to consider what this event might teach us about grief, compassion, and our shared humanity.

Valuable Tips to Manage Pain

Given what we know today, it appears likely that unresolved trauma, whether minor or major, plays a role in the persistence of chronic pain, through mechanisms of kindling (a self-perpetuating phenomenon of neural excitation) and priming (in which the brain readies itself to respond a certain way), that cause us to continually brace ourselves against the threat that caused the pain or the internal threat of pain itself. This is great news, because it means that to the extent that the trauma is worked through at the body/mind level, the pain should either disappear or lessen.

Israel Wartime Anxiety: 3 Emotion-Focused Therapy Tips

The more we turn towards the pain and express unmet needs, and not avoid them, the less anxious we will be.

From “He Said, She Said” to “He Felt, She Felt” (Part 2 of Winter Series 5786)

Beneath most heated exchanges lie deeper feelings waiting to be understood.

Canary in the Coal Mine

This article is essentially a tool of empowerment for people who may identify as highly sensitive or perceptive; who have grown up in dysfunctional or abusive systems, and who have found themselves treated as if they are the problem.