The power of mindfulness to treat addiction has become increasingly evident as my sober time increases and I practice meditation in the ways outlined below. Gaining this awareness required a glimpse into the mirror where I could see how badly I wanted to stop and how impossible that was [...]
As I practice acceptance skills through ACT, I can make room for the difficult feelings, thoughts and stories that present themselves in my life periodically. This doesn’t mean I enjoy having painful thoughts and feelings, it means I aim to drop the struggle with them more often than I have in the past.
Acceptance is an often misunderstood word. Many people think acceptance means agreeing or complying with, giving into or even liking what is troubling them. Therefore, most people reject the idea of accepting that someone they love has died, something unfair has happened to them or [...]
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a two-day training with Dr. Steven C. Hayes in Las Vegas, Nevada. When asked if he created Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), he responded, “thousands of people have helped develop ACT, I just lit the match.” A very [...]
You’ve probably heard about the benefits of mindfulness or meditation. New research has shown how may produce lasting changes in attention, cognition and emotional regulation. But why practice mindfulness? What is meditation? And what are the differences between the two? What is Meditation? Meditation has lots of definitions. One [...]
You are exhausted. You’re scrolling through all of these listings unsure of how to choose a therapist, wondering if it will even help you or someone you love. You might be telling yourself you are weak, lazy or broken because you keep falling into the same hole. We understand [...]
As a psychotherapist in private practice, clients regularly ask, “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I stop doing X, start doing Y or figure out Z?” People I meet have often spent years beating themselves up, reading self-help books to get unstuck and telling [...]
