While having coffee last week with my friends Christina and Peter, fellow writers from my Thursday afternoon group, we were discussing how a young philanthropist here in Chapel Hill had helped raise funds to rebuild a beauty salon burned during the riots in Ferguson. The young man’s efforts struck me as very personal: he did… Continue reading Second Thoughts on Sliding Scale Payment
The Role of Intuition (ESP?) in Psychotherapy
While working on an article about virtual psychotherapy for The Atlantic, I began to think about the role of intuition in the work we therapists do: how it functions and what enables us to understand the way a client is feeling without being told. In part, we’re responding to visual cues. Even when clients are… Continue reading The Role of Intuition (ESP?) in Psychotherapy
Seasonal Affective Disorder and the Healing Power of Sunlight
The effect of sunlight upon mental health has been obtruding into my consciousness of late. To begin with, when I needed continuing education hours to renew my license, I took an online video course a couple of months ago focused on borderline personality disorder. In one segment of this class, the presenter stressed the importance… Continue reading Seasonal Affective Disorder and the Healing Power of Sunlight
My Idea of Friendship
One day many years ago, my friend Ann told me she had scheduled an appointment with a surgeon to discuss whether to undergo a hip replacement. She and her doctor would be evaluating the results of x-rays and a recent MRI. As a candidate for this type of surgery, Ann was young, in her late… Continue reading My Idea of Friendship
Disappearing Comments
I’m not sure why, but a couple hundred comments (most of them probably spam) have disappeared from the approval queue. I apologize if your comment was deleted before I had a chance to read and approve it. Feel free to re-submit!