I was in conversation with a dear friend recently about something I was struggling with, and at some point she became worried that she wasn't being helpful. She was angry about something someone had done to me. I wasn't particularly angry. And she was worried that because she was having an anger response, she wasn't mirroring or validating me accurately enough. Maybe she was putting something onto my experience that wasn't there. Maybe she wasn't validating where I actually w

When a client comes in, they often don't only need you to understand their uncertainty. They bring you into uncertainty. Then, at some level they ask: What do you do when you face uncertainty? They don't only tell you about feeling helpless. You become helpless also. Then, at some level ask, What do you do with your own helplessness? Your client hands you the same predicament they are struggling with. And asks, without words, and watches without knowing: how do you live that

Vulnerability is a big word in the healing world. And yet we—even the most emotionally intelligent of us, even the therapy community—often unintentionally champion a definition and experience of vulnerability that is…well, the opposite of vulnerable. I saw it again the other day, in a comment that had nearly a thousand likes on a therapy page on social media. He said that the men he knew don’t struggle to open up, but rather they struggle to trust the share won’t be used agai