by Marcia | Sep 15, 2015 | Medical Care, Mental Health
You may have noticed in recent years that more and more doctors are hanging out new shingles. The sign that used to read “Roger Kurall, MD,” now says something like “Cheatham Hospital Medical Group.” The same change is in the works for...
by Marcia | Aug 18, 2015 | Living Well, Mental Health
What is therapy anyhow? When I put this question to clients, they usually mention talking, personal problems, and solutions, which everyone seems to assume lie within you. The insurance companies that pay me would ratchet up the definition to specify medical problems...
by Marcia | Jun 30, 2015 | Anger Management, Relationship Skills
It is tempting to go for payback when someone disses you. If you cut me dead on the street last week, or failed to respond when I as a neighbor asked for your help, the angry part of me might have wanted to hurt you. How could you do this to me? I probably wondered. A...
by Marcia | Jun 26, 2015 | Mental Health
Recently an alternative healer suggested that further training as a personal development coach could make me a far more effective therapist. This well-intentioned advice puzzled me, especially since the healer did not know my work. How does what I do differ from...
by Marcia | Jun 23, 2015 | Anger Management, Relationship Skills
In the wake of the June 17 shooting at Charleston’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the nation’s journalists have expressed outrage, horror, and grief in words familiar from responses to past atrocities. Dylann Storm Roof, denounced as a terrorist and a racist madman, may be...
by Marcia | Mar 31, 2015 | Anxiety, Mental Health
The passage from winter into spring can be a tough time: problems at work, family with cabin fever, hostile winter weather clasping the earth in a viselike grip, and the approach of April 15, the dreaded deadline for Americans’ filing of income taxes—all hard, bad...
by Marcia | Mar 27, 2015 | Mental Health
As a psychotherapist in solo private practice, I don’t see too many people outside of work. It’s not that I’m socially phobic or antisocial—I’d be in the wrong profession if I were—but that I work at times when other people play. When evenings and Saturdays roll...
by Marcia | Feb 27, 2015 | Anxiety, Mental Health
Many people come to see me in hopes that I can help them get rid of their anxiety. But as Irvin Yalom wrote in his wonderful book Existential Psychotherapy, anxiety comes with being human. You can’t erase it. You can manage it. In fact we all do so—by finding ways to...
by Marcia | Feb 17, 2015 | Mental Health
What do people want from therapy? Any solution depends on how the problem is defined, of course. The question you ask determines the answer you get. We therapists must all assess before we treat. When they take a history, social workers factor in each person’s life...
by Marcia | Feb 10, 2015 | Mental Health, Relationship Skills
As a psychotherapist, I work in a “helping profession.” It’s a label that many people swallow whole, without chewing. But what does it even mean? Most people think professional caregivers focus not on making money but on serving others. Still, help is in the eye of...
by Marcia | Jan 30, 2015 | Healthy Aging, Mental Health
I chose psychotherapy as my work in the world because it lets me imagine how it might have felt to be born as someone else. I feel privileged to hear other people talk about their lives. My hours of listening have taught me many things. Most of us licensed therapists...
by Marcia | Jan 27, 2015 | Living Well, Mental Health
No matter how you think or feel, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual seems ready to produce evidence that something is wrong with you. Obsessions and compulsions are a case in point. Ever find yourself plagued with a thought or a worry? It’s as if a bar of music had...
by Marcia | Jan 16, 2015 | Mental Health
Most people come to see me for help not with serious mental illness but with problems dished out by the school of hard knocks. On a first visit we scope the territory, I set up a mental database, and we set goals for our work together. No matter what the issues are,...
by Marcia | Oct 14, 2014 | Childrearing, Mental Health
You are worried that something is wrong with your child. Perhaps worse, you doubt your own ability to fix it, and so you are bringing your child to see me, a therapist. It seems only fair, under the circumstances, that I should tell you up front what I can do for you...
by Marcia | Sep 26, 2014 | Mental Health
Back in the days before I became a therapist, I went to see therapists. Lots of them. Over a period of decades. Most of them have all but vanished from memory. I got nothing out of most of the sessions. So why did I keep on going? My mother died when I was twelve. I...
by Marcia | Apr 29, 2012 | Anxiety, Living Well
These days it seems as if everyone is worried about money and paying the bills. Nothing tops financial stress when it comes to making people feel anxious, powerless, and stuck. If money problems plague you, here’s help. You can get a head start on stress and...
