March is Self-Harm Awareness Month - Let’s open up the conversation to help de-stigmaize the experience and open doors for support! For a primer on this topic, check out the post I wrote a few years back by clicking here ! The main change to this post is that the contacts for support have developed to be the following: Text “HOME” to 741741 from anywhere in the United States – this 24/7, free, confidential text crisis line provides a live, trained volunteer Crisis Counselor t

Did you know that 1 in 20  individuals who menstruate experience highly disruptive hormonal symptoms before their period?  Despite this, premenstrual disorders, including Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), are often overlooked and training in many healthcare professions is far from ubiquitous. Fortunately, the first step to increasing overall awareness is education! According to The International Association for Premenstrual Disorders (IAPMD) , “ PMDD is a cyclical hormo

The Year of the Horse. On February 17th, people around the world will be celebrating Lunar New Year - more commonly known as Chinese New Year. It’s a time of the year where many Asian countries observe the change of the new year using a lunar calendar versus the Gregorian calendar used by most other countries. Celebrations can last up to 16 days, but only the first 7 days are considered a public holiday (February 17th–February 23rd) in some Asian countries. To read more about

The question (perhaps cliché at this point) often posed in therapy is, “How did that make you feel?”  And you may also hear, “where do you feel that in your body?” What these questions are getting at is the act of bringing awareness to one’s interoception. Interoception  is defined as the perception of your internal body signals and senses. These questions may be beloved and/or disliked, depending on your relationship with them, but they are important ones to be curious about

You or someone you know may have a deep passion for pop culture and fandom like Star Wars, Batman and Buffy the Vampire Slayer while others in your life may enjoy games like Settlers of Catan, Tekken 8 and Dungeons and Dragons.  Perhaps your joys lie in anime like Sailor Moon, Jujutsu Kaisen or Dragonball Z. Whether you like to play games or cosplay (dress up as your favorite character),or like to find the newest boardgames, there are venues called Comic Con(vention)s for you

Living with others—whether roommates, friends, partners and/or family members—can be both challenging and rewarding.  I have recently come across a few   essays  that explore the act of living together and the types of compromises you may end up making in doing so. One suggestion these essays focus on is the idea of flexibility and how, when living with others, you may need to “ loosen ” certain strong preferences—such as décor, how dishes are put away or how common areas are

Prior to working at Looking Glass Counseling, one of the staff at the day program I worked at introduced me to the practice and art-making style of Zentangles. What made this approach special to me was that it was introduced by the program’s Peer Specialist, a colleague who self-identified with having mental illness while valuing the recovery model we were both working at. Whether in group therapy sessions when accessing the day program or an employee helping our group pract

As we stare at the tail end of 2025 while simultaneously stumbling through a sea of various holiday celebrations, it can feel complicated. But, if you identify with this sentiment, know that there is a way to soften the impact. Consider this to be a music themed part II to my previously written entry, “Coping Your Way Through the Holidays.” According to Starcke and Von Georgi, among many other music therapy researchers, the iso principle is an incredibly effective way to modu

Lights! Camera! Action! Welcome to your Monday Mental Health Moment at the movies, a series discussing the intersection of psychology and cinema. Some spoilers ahead… Nobody talks about the dark side of motherhood, but in Mary Bronstein’s new film , the horrors of postpartum  are on full display. The film follows Linda, a full-time therapist trying to support her daughter’s mysterious illness while she herself is in a downward spiral. Sleep deprivation, overstimulation and co

You may have a sense that the darkest time of year is not actually on the Winter Solstice (December 21), but during the first week of December.  While the solstice technically has the shortest amount of daylight, the earliest sunset does not occur on that day. Rather, the earliest sunset was last week. Thus, these early weeks of December may feel the darkest. After the winter solstice, we inch closer to longer days, though it may not feel like it. After the holidays in Januar