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Sep 24

Fall Reading: Tiny, Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love from Dear Sugar, by Cheryl Strayed.

Assertiveness Therapy

The Art of Therapy: Book Review of Tiny, Beautiful Things

IN THE 1970s, THE VOYAGER 1 space probe was sent up into the galaxy with a recording of the pianist Glenn Gould playing Bach on a golden record. The music is set to emanate as long as the probe lasts and is broadcasting Gould’s music as one sign of our humanity and beauty and capacity for genius. In our next probe, I’d like to add the words and advice of Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny, Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love From Dear Sugar to echo into the deepest parts of the galaxy.  (Along with a dictionary and a bottle of fine scotch, for good measure.)

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May 17

Panic Attacks: Cultivating Safety

 

 

A FRIEND ONCE TOLD ME an alarming story about staying in an old empty hotel in the southern United States. At dusk, she and her partner were strolling across the dilapidated landing on their way to grab a bite. At once, small black forms began wriggling and dropping down from the Spanish-style rafters on glistening threads. Spiders. Large ones. Some lowered themselves slowly from their nests. Others fell in a jagged motion, jerky – remarkably fast, like a living curtain – toward the couple’s faces.

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Mar 7

Letting Go: Some Thoughts On Anxiety

WHAT WOULD A FIRST DATE BE without that garden of butterflies in your body?  What would a moment before jumping off a high diving board—or a bungee tower!—be like without that dizzy, sky-blue high? We wouldn’t feel alive without the common symptoms of stress.

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Jan 13

“We Become What We Imagine”*: Writing and Drawing The New Year

Art Of Therapy - We Become What We Imagine

A FEW YEARS AGO, A FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE, Nicola Holmes (a wonderful career and life coach in Toronto) shared with me a New Year’s exercise. The exercise asks us to look back on the last year, before we imagine how we might change. It’s become a kind of informal, yearly ritual for my friends and I, with helpful insights. And it works best for me when I create a calm atmosphere, turn off phones and laptops and put aside time when I won’t be distracted.  (I’ve included the exercise below, and also added some thoughts on using drawing as a way to explore what we want to change in the new year.)

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Dec 21

Solstice Greetings

This is the time of year when we create our own light. It is not a coincidence that throughout Chanukah a few weeks ago candles blazed nightly, or that Christmas lights adorn and glitter through our cities and towns, as if we have tugged the stars down to earth to be with us in the dark.

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Nov 10

The Careful Path To Vulnerability

IN A WELL-KNOWN AND POWERFUL TED Talk, Brene Brown talks about the power of vulnerability. She speaks of the courage required to be vulnerable, and that the original meaning of courage is “to tell the story of who you are, with your whole heart.”

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Nov 1

Separation and Divorce

A quick blog post… Here is a short poem by the late poet Jack Gilbert, Failing and Flying, on separation and divorce.

 

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It’s the same when love comes to an end,

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Oct 28

GRIEF – Thoughts and Poems

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GRIEF COMES TO ALL OF US. It is one of the pains that makes us so human. It is also what makes love possible, for without love we wouldn’t have its ghostly twin, grief, or loss of love Read more

Oct 14

The Family Of Things: Poetry and Healing

POETRY, IN ITSELF, CAN HEAL. As Saskatchewan poet Tim Lilburn writes, “We are lonely for where we are. Poetry helps us cope.” Verse can be a balm to help us as professionals, as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, as children of parents, and simply to help us in the task of being ourselves. How?

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Oct 1

Perfectionism

You Will Never Be Complete, That’s How It’s Meant To Be

 

I WORK AS A COUNSELLOR in a downtown Toronto college and daily my students sweat and yearn to be perfect. They desire the highest marks, the best presentations, the question perfectly formed before they ask it in class. It’s not only these hardworking and focused folks with their back-straining backpacks  – I see a desire for perfection in many people. Sometimes in myself and my friends. Also in my private practice clients. A desire for perfection can, in certain moments, have the intensity of someone clinging to life against death. It’s as if people are expressing: “If I can do the perfect job on _______ , then I exist.” It could be anything. A paper at school. Your exam. Your job interview. A birthday party for your child. Your dress. Your life.

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