Wise Mind Therapy Services LLC

06/02/2025

UnTrump Your Soul

05/21/2025

Thoughts from a therapist during troubled times: I find it important to acknowledge to myself frequently, the care of the inner world and engagement with the outer world are two different things. The horrible state of the outer world needs a response, which is why it is so important to take care of our inner world.

I would name our era as the "Age of the Ascending Narcissist." So diminishing our inner narcissist is part of a response of healthy resistance.

What is narcissism? A quick premise is that it is a shame-based response to repressed feelings of smallness, inadequacy, worthlessness, and unimportance. It is an outward attempt to escape from and compensate for these feelings. So creating an inner security that belongs to us, that situations may challenge but not steal from us, is the inner work to be done.

I find it helpful to start from the foundation that "I AM NOT BAD" -- it is ok to dispel shame forcefully. Shame that is not defied leads to Shame-Full-Ness and behaviors that align with the perceptions of shame. So I kick that to the curb.

The next step I take is "I AM NOT PERFECT" -- there is room for improvement, growth, discovery, and moral reflection. I can unload the burden of the need to be perfect. Painful outcomes in my outer world do not immediately become my fault. I have less to defend so that I can be softer with myself and others.

This leads to my last movement "IT'S OK TO BE ME" -- I start where I am not from where I should be. It is even ok that I majorly or minorly f**k up. I can make room for myself. And again, the state of the outer world cannot completely rob this from me.

What do you think?

10/22/2024

Hello Friends
The election is approaching and I know everyone reading this is pulling for a victory for Harris/Walz. Anytime we lean so intensively into the future, we are vulnerable to anxiety. Enough anxiety to motivate our efforts is useful and congruent with humanistic values. Too much is self-defeating.
My profession is to help people find the right balance with the constant anxieties of being human. When we find that balance, the internal and communal resources needed to respond to any eventuality become more available and robust.
My belief is that we are either going to need those resources to resist open fascism and totalitarian control or to continue to work to improve our progressive direction.
Starting this Sunday morning at 6:30 am and at 5:30 am each day until and including election day I will be on YouTube live leading a mindfulness practice to help bring balance to our anxieties. This is work I have been doing for about 30 years in my professional practice. Personally, I learned meditation at age 18 in 1978 -- it was a needed remedy to help me with an overwhelming anxiety disorder.
I want to extend an invitation to join me and others. If the hour is not convenient, the meditations will be available at any hour.
You can find the meditation sessions here. https://www.youtube.com/
Here is an example of previous work from 2020. https://www.youtube.com/live/2n8REm7OxFs?si=OR2PD4X_nQv2FP8Z

We are flowing down the stream of time and space while we create our destiny. We are in a difficult passageway -- a time of danger and desperate opportunity....

04/30/2023

For the Ancestors!!
I have had this weird thing take shape for me in my spiritual practice recently. The more I have done my own personal work, looking deeply into my patterns, the more I have recognized the legacy of my ancestors. I feel their emotional process, their traumas, their strengths, their aspirations, and their failings.
At first, when I felt this in my 20s, this pi**ed me off and felt like an invasion or a dumping of their s**t onto me. But, as my compassion for self and others has grown, it feels like a rich inheritance of longing, striving, making mistakes, learning, woundedness. Recently the mantra of "for the ancestors" is resonating with me every day. It pulls me together in a way that I can't really completely explain. Maybe it is the acceptance of the incomplete parts of their journey, a willingness to take on the human project of meaningful living. It is also felt as a deep sense of acceptance of myself and the meaning of my struggles. So, for Bill and Joan, for Mildred and Frank, for Florence and Gerald, for Claire, for Frank, and too many others to name, I carry on and commit to living well today.
It may be useful to look into what your ancestors handed you. Perhaps willing acceptance of that inheritance, the good and the bad, is the self acceptance you need to really get going.

11/22/2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/obesity-cause.html?smid=url-share
Another human problem where blame and shame do not help.

Rates of obesity won’t budge as long as society views it as a personal issue.

02/10/2022

https://fox4kc.com/news/missouri-news/why-theres-a-push-to-legalize-psychedelic-drug-therapy-in-missouri/amp/

Many people think of psychedelic drugs as a recreational high, but used in a therapeutic setting, veterans and their families say it saved their lives.

12/19/2021

Interesting direction in the quest to be able to adjust to the stress of the world we live in.

“Nurses right now and doctors are leaving the field in droves. This kind of mental health treatment is really a new way of thinking.”

09/26/2021

Toxic relationships are real. It doesn't require that anyone be judged as evil. It is just such an incredibly powerful and vulnerable need. There are resources for improving your experience out there. https://nyti.ms/3i9Gnoa

Experts question whether we can describe a toxic relationship the way we talk about gambling or alcohol. But some have found that framework to be a helpful step in the road to freedom.

09/26/2021

06/13/2021

Interesting review of a book about women's health and systemic sexism in medicine. A call for women to receive more complete care. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/books/review/unwell-women-elinor-cleghorn.html?smid=url-share

The British scholar Elinor Cleghorn’s new history traces medicine’s sexism from Hippocrates to today.

05/04/2021

There is a price for the pressurized demand for achievement and success. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/opinion/coronavirus-mental-health-teenagers.html?smid=url-share

“My school is giving too much work,” a 10th grader wrote during the pandemic. “At first, this was just a break from school, but now all I feel is stress, anxiety and pain.”

05/01/2021

Psychiatry Confronts Its Racist Past, and Tries to Make Amends https://nyti.ms/3aTyU98

But there is a lot to apologize for — from Reconstruction to today.