You don’t need IFS or EMDR
The Music Theory of Psychotherapy As a white dude in his early twenties with a penchant for melancholy, at some point, I had to learn guitar. This seems to be genetic destiny for my people, like how homing pigeons instinctively know how to find True North. At some point our DNA activates and we know […]
Everyone’s Meditating But Me
Aftermath: I’m having lunch with my supervisor, a meditation and Buddhism enthusiast, someone particularly interested in the fusion of psychotherapy and meditation. I am present with him and in my day-to-day life in a way that is both different from before and yet paradoxically noteworthy and not-special at the same time. He tells me he […]
How Meditation Became Medicine
Day 3 S.N. Goenka, the teacher of this technique, offers only the meditation technique of “the body scan.” A copper-skinned bullfrog of a man with a sonorous baritone voice, he instructs us to scan from our feet to “the top of de head” over and over. The amount of sensations that reveal themselves is staggering—numbness, […]
How I Actually Use Meditation in Therapy Now (or don’t)
Aftermath: I’m having lunch with my supervisor, a meditation and Buddhism enthusiast, someone particularly interested in the fusion of psychotherapy and meditation. I am present with him and in my day-to-day life in a way that is both different from before and yet paradoxically noteworthy and not-special at the same time. He tells me he […]
How to Find a Therapist in San Francisco
When I first moved to San Francisco in 2008, so many people I met believed that with a good idea and a $500 computer they could change the world. The self-assuredness of the tech industry at that time, deluded or not, made me feel like whatever I wanted to accomplish was possible. I hadn’t lived […]
How to Get the Most Out of Therapy
Therapy can be confusing. It’s expensive. It’s time-consuming. It’s also weird and confusing. The diversity of approaches is staggering – IFS, CBT, DBT, Somatic, Psychoanalytic, on and on. Anyone you talk to has tremendously strong opinions about what works and what doesn’t, what’s “correct” practice and what’s borderline abusive. The narcissism of minor differences reigns, […]
