10 Ways to Improve a Marriage

By: Naomi Sternberg

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were just 10 do it yourself fix it solutions…

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Caregiving in the Time of Quarantine

By: Jeanne Lankin

How can we as caregivers of elderly relatives, whether they are local or across the world, navigate the realities of this pandemic? How do we adjust to this “new normal” in our lives with responsibilities as adult children to our elderly loved ones? How can we cope with the inevitable guilt that arises from not being able to fully meet our family’s needs during this time of crisis?

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Exodus and Anxiety

By: Ariel Penkower

Slavery, while terrible, represented a secure existence. By that, I mean that life was consistent, unchanging, certain. A slave will never achieve great things or recognition on a greater societal level, but he/she will also rarely encounter doubt and anxiety.

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Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery, Part 4

By: Chava Lederer

Forgive yourself for not having foreseen, protected, or responded more effectively during the trauma.

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Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery (Part 1)

By: Chava Lederer

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.

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

By: Yonatan Schechter

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

 

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Making the First Call: A Guide to Choosing the Right Therapist for You

By: Yisroel Picker

Deciding to seek therapy is a courageous first step, but the initial phone call to a potential therapist can feel daunting. This guide is designed to empower you during that crucial conversation, moving beyond logistics to help you find the right fit. Discover the key questions that reveal a therapist's experience, approach, and, most importantly, their ability to create a safe and trusting connection with you.

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Israel Wartime Anxiety: 3 Emotion-Focused Therapy Tips

By: Daniel Fund

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

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Managing Custody During Corona

By: Linda Avitan

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.

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Why Grownups Should Play Too

By: Rachel Ozick

…as we get older, we stop playing. We feel the need to be productive or we feel so tired from our productive lives that we pursue mindless ways to relax and shut down, like watching TV, but watching TV is not playing, and playing is more important than you think.

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Bagruyot Testing Accommodations for Olim

By: Michael Roth

The primary focus here will be on accommodations for the Israeli Bagruyot. Providing accommodations at the Elementary school level is usually at the discretion of the school based upon psycho-educational testing. The Elementary school is not obligated in any way to provide the recommended accommodations and likewise can decide to allow them without a specific recommendation. There is no regulatory body regarding testing accommodations at the Elementary level.

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

By: Evelyn Rappoport

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...

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The Hidden Layers: A Therapist's Guide to Understanding Trauma

By: Yisroel Picker

Just like an onion, trauma has many layers. What you see on the surface is rarely the full story, and true healing often begins when we start peeling back the "how," "who," "where," "when," and "why" behind the "what." This article explores the powerful onion metaphor in understanding trauma, revealing how a deeper look can lead to profound transformation. Discover why exploring every layer is essential for both clinicians and those on their healing journey.

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Isolation Has Brought Us Together

By: Elan Karten

We’re in isolation, and isolation has brought us together. 

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Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery, Part 3

By: Chava Lederer

While extremely distressing, flashbacks are actually memories. Registering what is a memory, and what is happening now, is essential.

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The CYCLE: The Key to Rebuilding Your Marriage

By: Daniel Fund

Something was comin' there way and it was no good... Shira and David find themselves in a vicious cycle that they are both trapped in for years. They fall back to their default coping styles which continue failing them. In fact, we all fall back to these coping styles...

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Of Guts and Brain: The Gut-Brain Axis

By: Ruth Shidlo

If you are willing to make a few changes, “disease goes away as a side effect of health.” (Hyman, 2012, p. 29)

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Resilience Series Part 3

By: Esther Adams Aharony

In the previous blog, we discussed strategies to manage our emotional reactivity. Although similar, regulating emotions isn’t quite the same as managing how we react emotionally. Whereas managing emotional reactivity works like a light switch that can dim the frequency and intensity of our emotional reactions, regulating emotions, on the other hand, involves altering our emotional responses to situations. We might consider regulating emotions as our ability to adjust our own emotional states. Sometimes we do this by increasing our positive emotions, whereas other situations are better handled by decreasing our negative emotions. How...

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Survivorship Bias: Missing Planes and Missing Data

By: Yisroel Picker

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.

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ADHD or Trauma?

By: Aviva Zahavi-Asa

Over the last few decades, many children and adolescents have been receiving a diagnosis of ADHD at alarming rates. ADHD, which is typically understood as a brain or nervous system disorder which tends to be genetic in nature, is often identified when a child shows symptoms of inattention, distractibility, hyperactivity and/or impulsivity. What unfortunately often gets missed with a diagnosis of ADHD, however, is the possibility that traumatic events may be the source of these symptoms.

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