Embracing Your Fear

By: Nancy Schwartz

Eight years ago when I was diagnosed with Lyme disease I had a deep-seated fear of never walking again; that I would never be able to take long aimless walks like the days before.

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Dying at a Distance: Grief During Covid

By: Jeanne Lankin

Humans are incredibly resilient. I am constantly in awe of the people that I speak to, in my role as a bereavement therapist, who are creating amended rituals to help them cope with their painful losses. There is no correct answer to our predicament. It feels unfair to be deprived of the comfort of our traditions that help guide and heal mourners. However, we can try to creatively engage in meaningful adaptations of our rituals during this crisis to help us process our grief.

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How to Connect With Your Partner in the Pandemic and Beyond

By: Judy Markose

Consider this dream: you and your partner experience the pandemic with your marriage intact and your family even closer and more connected than ever. You can practice a more loving way of relating, with more kindness and giving. This blog offers practical tips for becoming a great communicator, being a generous listener, and adding gratitude to your relationship.

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Three Ways That Differentiation- Based Couples Therapy Changed My Life

By: Melanie Landau

The more that my sense of self is reflected to me by others the more I make myself vulnerable to be manipulated and gaslit. If I want to be loved, liked, appreciated by the other person more than I listen to myself then I set myself up for trouble.

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Ways to Manage Worry Instead of it Managing You – Part TWO

By: Daniel Baum

In part two of my blog, “Worry! Ways to Manage Worry Instead of it Managing You”, I am going to present to you some general recommendations and thoughts about dealing with worry.

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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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How to Choose the Right Therapist

By: Tanya Prochko

Choosing the right therapist may feel overwhelming. Here are some tips to help guide you.

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Can You Commit to Love Without All the Facts?

By: Micki Lavin-Pell

When we choose to marry, we often don't know everything. There are often things that are missing. After all, we haven’t seen how our partner behaves in a variety of circumstances, many of which they haven’t yet encountered. But more importantly we don’t always know ourselves. So we search for things to worry about in our partner in hopes of having some level of control. Not wanting to come to terms with the fact that we can't control the other. However, there is one element of control, and this lies within ourselves.

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Intergenerational Trauma in Times of Crisis: Echoes of the Holocaust in the Present

By: Jeanne Lankin

Intergenerational trauma refers to the transmission of trauma responses from one generation to future generations including patterns of coping and survival strategies. In the case of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, trauma may have been communicated not only through shared or unspoken stories but through the emotional messages communicated in the home including generalized fear, silence, secrecy, overprotection, familial dysfunction and vigilance.

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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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Imagination Makes Sense

By: Sara Jacobovici

We are sensory beings, and one of the earliest abilities that we acquire is imagination. Imagination allows us to form mental images of things not currently sensed, simulate possible future scenarios, create novel ideas, and engage in symbolic thinking.

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On Becoming a Personal Scientist: Beginnings

By: Ruth Shidlo

As the baby gains enough safety and security via his attachment systems with the significant people in his life, he is able to identify and then befriend the familiar within the strange.

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Simmering Soup: On the Importance of Asking Questions

By: Robin B. Zeiger

Sometimes the question sits on the back burner like low-simmering stew that has all but been forgotten. An innocent question may ignite a fire in a chilly room and we are off in a new direction. Or sometimes it buzzes around like a nasty mosquito.

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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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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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Grief for the Loss of our Parents

By: Jeanne S. Lankin

Those of us granted life have to face the loss of the most profound of all our relationships. The relationship a person has with a parent, affects every stage of our life. Therefore, losing a parent at each stage in life has unique challenges.

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Healing the Inner Garden: A Journey of Creation, Connection, and Inner Peace

By: יוסף זאב בראווער

Explore a path to healing that unites therapeutic insights and Jewish wisdom. This article bridges Internal Family Systems, mindful awareness, and timeless spiritual teachings, offering readers a journey toward self-discovery, purpose, and inner peace.

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Encopresis: A Four-Pronged Treatment Approach

By: Sara Feinberg

Encopresis, more commonly called “soiling” or fecal incontinence, refers to the involuntary passage of feces. Typically, this condition results from chronic constipation, but it can also be triggered by emotional issues. Encopresis, which has a 9% occurrence rate worldwide, is not considered to be a medical condition until a child is 4 years old. While encopresis is often very distressing to both the child and the family, it is treatable. The earlier treatment begins, the better the outcome. In my years of private practice as an art therapist, I have successfully treated many children with encopresis using the following four-pronged treatment approach.

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PERFECTIONISM is the Enemy of FREEDOM

By: Tanya Prochko

It's getting close to Pesach and I'm thinking: what do I want to focus on at my seder table with my adolescent children who can now carry intelligent conversations and think about things in a deeper and more complex way? Afterall, our exodus from Egypt is not just a historical event and with kids, the way to facilitate spiritual connection is through relatable modern-day experiences. The obvious answer would be to focus on what each of us finds ourselves enslaved to in our lives and how we can access our personal freedom, but we've been down that road before and it hadn't hit home the way I'd want a good juicy introspective theme to do. So, I came up with IMPERFECTION

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The Pike Phenomenon: A Lesson for an Empowered Life

By: Elan Karten

In Proverbs, King Solomon taught the sluggard to go and learn from an ant. More recently, researchers have taught us that we should go and learn from a fish. Move over, Grandma! There’s much more to pike than just gefilte fish.

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