Scott Smith LCSW

07/08/2025

Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT) was developed beginning in the 1980’s to provide a road map to relationship repair and recovery. EFT is well-researched and empirically supported, proving to have long lasting and meaningful results.

70-75% of couples working with an EFT therapist go from distress to recovery. Those results also last with EFT couples therapy. No other model of Couples Therapy has such robust research results.

Learn more about how EFT can help you: https://thrivefamilyservices.com/emotionally-focused-couple-therapy/

07/08/2025

“This is what happens when people trained to teach, lecture, and grade exams develop psychotherapy models. They recreate therapy in their own image: education. They can’t step outside their own frame of reference to recognize that psychotherapy can be something else entirely—and must be, if it is going to help people live more freely, more richly, and more deeply connected to themselves and others.

“They even, so help me, measure therapy outcomes with multiple-choice tests, like it’s a final exam.
Consider the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS)—the outcome measures most often used in research on therapy for depression. They’re formatted like multiple-choice tests…

“It’s not how expert psychotherapists think about their work. But academic researchers have little contact with expert psychotherapists. And most have never been in meaningful psychotherapy themselves—where they might confront their own emotional defenses and come to understand, firsthand, what a real psychotherapy relationship entails.”

Why Academics Make Poor Therapists

They recreate therapy in their own image—and call it science.

05/08/2025

Licensed, accredited therapists are legally required to keep your discussions with them confidential. They are also required to prioritize your interests and well-being.

None of these restrictions apply to your interactions with AI: all of your information can be saved AND published. What's more, AI could give you false information or harmful advice and you would have no recourse.

As one expert says: "There is no accountability."

People are sharing everything from their payslips, to blood results and relationship problems with AI – but experts say the risks are high.

04/08/2025

Each of us has a suite of perceptual, emotional and cognitive capacities that allow us to engage and understand one another socially. Suppose I am sitting across from you at a pizza party, and I recognise that your gaze is drifting towards the last slice of pizza. I sense that you are feeling a bit agitated or uncertain. I might, then, predict that you are thinking of taking the last slice. If I’m feeling generous, I might encourage you to go for it. If not, I might grab it myself before you make a move.

These capacities help guide and structure all sorts of mundane interactions, and we are generally not even aware we are using them. They are generally, but not perfectly, tuned for human interaction, either through evolution or personal experience.

Things can get messy, though, when we use them to interpret animals.

Perhaps the best-studied version of this is the primate ‘grin’. Other primates will pull back their lips and bare their teeth in a display that looks very much like a human smile. The visual impact of seeing this face is often clear: it looks like the animal is happy, even sometimes deliriously happy.

Our unconscious, automatic minds function in ways we don’t fully grasp and can’t easily foresee

The animal is not happy, it turns out. The exact signalling function varies by species, but it usually signals something more like fear or anxiety, often by a submissive individual in a tense social situation. (In chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest relatives, it seems it can signal pleasure in specific situations; this is likely a sign that the display is evolutionarily related to the human smile.)

Interpreting the emotional lives of animals requires a subtler and more nuanced understanding of anthropomorphism

04/08/2025

Users may be led down conspiracy theory rabbit holes or into emotional harm by chatbots designed to maximize engagement and affirmation, some say.

Users may be led down conspiracy theory rabbit holes or into emotional harm by chatbots designed to maximise engagement and affirmation, some say

31/07/2025

/ Simone de Beauvoir /
"The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength - each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving."
"Simone de Beauvoir, (born Jan. 9, 1908, Paris, France—died April 14, 1986, Paris), French writer and feminist. As a student at the Sorbonne, she met Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she formed a lifelong intellectual and romantic bond. She is known primarily for her treatise The Second S*x (1949), a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the myth of the “eternal feminine”; the book became a classic of feminist literature. She also wrote four admired volumes of autobiography (1958–72), philosophical works that explore themes of existentialism, and fiction, notably The Mandarins (1954, Prix Goncourt). The Coming of Age (1970) is a bitter reflection on society’s indifference to the elderly." (Britannica)
"The Second S*x". Book by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by H. M. Parshley. Book 2, Part 5, Chapter 2: "The Mother", p. 522, 1972.

30/07/2025

What we want is quick, clever fixes. What we need is quite different: the ability to tolerate intolerable feelings, to sustainably change and grow

27/07/2025

“The current state of psychiatry, with its emphasis on biological interventions and the devaluation of psychotherapy, has led to a sense of discouragement among trainees and a questioning of the purpose of therapy. While evidence-based practices and manualized therapies have become prevalent, they can overlook the richness and depth of the human experience. Despite these challenges, there remains an underground popularity and recognition of the importance of psychotherapy among residents. We argue that the actual point of therapy lies in understanding the point of life itself—to achieve acceptance and a sense of one's own narrative—and that the integration of therapy into psychiatric practice will improve the lives of patients and the psychiatrists who serve them.”

Reclaiming the Narrative: Why Psychiatrists Must Learn Psychotherapy https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/reclaiming-the-narrative-why-psychiatrists-must-learn-psychotherapy

Psychotherapy faces skepticism in psychiatry, yet it remains vital for understanding patients' narratives and enhancing therapeutic relationships.

25/07/2025

"Despite the proliferation of mental health content, the way it’s seeped into the zeitgeist, the way we all diagnose ourselves and others with myriad conditions, we’re not getting any happier. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence we’re getting less happy – particularly younger generations, who are the biggest consumers of social media content.

"Is it because the commodification of mental health has promised us something that doesn’t exist? While the factual inaccuracies in mental health content are obviously cause for major concern, perhaps the most dangerous piece of misinformation is that there’s a version of ourselves that’s free from the inevitable friction of living. But only if we would do 'the work'”.

We’re awash with mental health advice. Meanwhile, a generation is getting sadder

The outcomes of mistaking an influencer for a trained health professional are anything but good. Why are so many of us consuming scam content?