The Power of Art Therapy for Emotional Healing

By: Sara Feinberg

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

Read More

The Emotion Valve

By: Yonatan Schechter

When someone is friendly, capable, and well-liked yet can't seem to make a relationship work, the answer may lie not in who they are today, but in who they had to become in childhood.

Read More

Seen, Heard, Felt: Why AI Falls Short in the Therapy Room

By: Yisroel Picker

Thinking of using an AI app for mental health? It might offer tips, but it can't replace a therapist. AI lacks intuition, can't read the room, and doesn't understand complex human nuance like a trained professional does. Learn why the human connection is still essential for navigating your mental well-being effectively.

Read More

Understanding Group Therapy: Benefits, Core Principles, and Distinctions 

By: Malka Cohn

Therapists often discuss the need for their clients to have supplemental support and another avenue for self-growth and reflection. Group Therapy, also known as a Process Group is more than support. It is a social microcosm where personal struggles are discussed in the here-and-now. While sharing similar benefits as other group models,  it becomes a living family dynamic where members can support, challenge and model healthy interactions with guidance of the therapist group leader.

Read More

What is Somatic Experiencing (SE) ?

By: Ruth Shidlo

As a body-mind practitioner and clinical psychologist, I have found that incorporating principles of Somatic Experiencing (SE) into my practice has provided me with a whole new way of helping people move on with their lives when stressed, anxious, depressed, traumatized, or otherwise in pain (including living with chronic pain). So what then, is Somatic Experiencing, and how does it work?

Read More

Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery, Part 2

By: Chava Lederer

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

Read More

40 Years of Research: Why Solving Your Marital Disputes is Not the Solution

By: Daniel Fund

Many couples think that they just need to be able to find an agreement, a compromise, a solution to their disagreements. And that couples' therapy is about solving their disagreements. In fact, for many years this is how couples' therapists approached therapy as well. Unfortunately, this approach failed and statistically, their success rates were very low. But the field of couples therapy research has changed dramatically. In the last 40 years, Dr. John Gottman, Dr. Leslie Greenberg, and Dr. Sue Johnson, to name a few major names have made real breakthroughs, having studied many thousands of couples, watching them closely in action, on live cameras, video, behind one-way glasses and otherwise. One of Gottman's findings is that about 70% of our disagreements as couples, never get solved! And this is true not only for failing couples but for the very successful couples as well! So, if solving problems is not what leads to success, what does? The answer is that as a therapist, I can help them reach such an emotional bond that makes the issue of solving problems redundant, a non-issue. Once they have this bond, they will not necessarily need me to solve their problems. Find out more inside.

Read More

Good Therapy is a Change in Scenery: Insights from the Other Side of the World

By: Robin B. Zeiger

Every once in a while, important insights for my known world reveal themselves from the most unusual of places. My recent trip to the Far East: Myanmar and Thailand gifted me new insights and inspirations as a Jungian analyst. My mantra became, Good therapy is a change in scenery. In the safety of the therapist’s temenos (a beautiful Jungian term for the sanctity of the therapy space), patients meet the messages of the unconscious often for the first time. And in meeting these unknown voices and images, our inner and outer worlds transform themselves into newness and rebirth.

Read More

Vulnerability Just Ahead

By: Nancy Schwartz

Is feeling vulnerable a good thing?   Many of us see it as a sign of weakness, as we’re not being good enough!!  We’re afraid of not being seen by others as the “perfect” mother/father, spouse, child, worker, etc.   

Read More

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.

Read More

Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery, Part 7

By: Chava Lederer

Finding meaning, creating purpose, and gaining control is a recipe that results in greater resilience and fuller recovery.

Read More

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

By: Daniel Fund

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.

Read More

Earth, Water, Air, and Fire

By: Chava Lederer

The four classical elements are channels through which we make contact with the present moment reality, and engage our uniquely human mind – a mind capable of creativity, of connecting to others, of faith and spirituality.  I offer you these four elements as resources in moments of stress, panic, fear, or any other overwhelming experience.

Read More

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.

Read More

Challenges of Returning Reserve Soldiers

By: Aharon Herskovitz

“Wow, so great you’re home, Aharon, now everything can go back to normal!” This sentence, and variations of it, have been said to me and countless other reserve soldiers over the last few months. Though well-meaning (and also an important injection of optimism and hope!), people’s wider networks are sometimes unaware of the challenges that returning reserve soldiers face.

Read More

Simcha Guilt

By: Elan Karten

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

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More