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Notes

Things I find myself saying

Short pieces on the questions that come up most often: why patterns repeat, what anxiety is maintained by, how to help someone who will not be helped, and what therapy can and cannot do about any of it.

Fine ripples spreading across shallow water in pale morning light

Anxiety · 5 min read

5 signs your anxiety may be more than everyday stress

Almost nobody calls me because they feel anxious. They call because the anxiety has started charging rent — sleep, appetite, patience, the ability to enjoy a Saturday. Stress is a response t…

Ordered grid of warm paper strips on a pale surface

Anxiety · 6 min read

How does a clinical psychologist actually treat anxiety disorders?

People arrive expecting either breathing exercises or a very long conversation about their childhood. Anxiety treatment is neither, and it is considerably more boring and more effective than…

Long grasses bending in even wind under a wide pale sky

Stress · 5 min read

Chronic stress: when to get help, and why help works

Chronic stress is unusually good at disguising itself as competence. You are still delivering, still showing up, still the person others rely on. The cost is real, but it is being paid somew…

Sunlight moving across a plaster wall in slow bands

Stress · 5 min read

How to recognize emotional burnout

Tired is fixed by a weekend. Burnout is not, and the difference matters, because treating burnout with rest alone is why so many people come back from a two-week break and feel nothing.

Soft gradient of slate blue into warm bone, like light through glass

Practice · 4 min read

Is virtual therapy right for you?

I work both ways — telehealth anywhere in California, in person in Santa Monica — and I have no ideological position on which is better. The research broadly finds them comparable for most c…

Still water under low morning fog, horizon barely visible

Trauma · 6 min read

Understanding PTSD: symptoms, triggers, and treatment

PTSD is often pictured as flashbacks and nightmares. Those are real, and they are the minority of it. For most people the condition looks like a nervous system that never received the messag…

Fog resting on flat water, light diffusing at the horizon

Trauma · 5 min read

Why trauma deserves professional treatment

The most common thing I hear is that it was a long time ago and should not still be affecting anything. Time is a poor treatment for trauma, because the mechanism that keeps it alive is not…

Slate and taupe handmade paper texture with a faint amber cast

Trauma · 5 min read

5 things not to do when your partner has PTSD

Partners are often doing enormous work with no instructions. These are the five patterns I see most often in people who are trying hard and getting the opposite of what they intend.

Sunlight falling across a linen-textured surface

Family · 5 min read

5 ways to support someone living with psychosis

Many people living with psychosis work, parent, study, and manage their symptoms with a level of daily effort that goes almost entirely unrecognized. Support works best when it is respectful…

A single amber line crossing a deep slate field

Trauma · 5 min read

Mental health support for immigration-related stress

This is not anxiety about an imagined outcome. When the possibility of enforcement is genuinely present in your household or your community, the vigilance is accurate. Treatment has to begin…

Two overlapping circles drawn in slate ink on warm paper

Relationships · 5 min read

Why do my partner and I keep having the same argument?

Couples rarely have twenty arguments. They have one argument twenty times, wearing different clothes. The dishes, the in-laws, the phone at dinner — different surface, identical structure, s…

Two woven paper strands crossing on a bone-colored ground

Relationships · 5 min read

How therapy actually improves communication

Most people asking for communication help do not have a vocabulary problem. They are articulate, self-aware, and can explain the dynamic in detail. What fails is not the wording. It is what…

Layered translucent papers in taupe and slate, edges just visible

Relationships · 5 min read

Why it is so hard to let go of an unhealthy relationship

People in this situation almost always have the insight already. They can list what is wrong, often chronologically. Then they stay, and then they feel stupid for staying, and the shame does…

A single steady line drawn across textured warm paper

Relationships · 4 min read

5 ways to help someone in an abusive relationship

The instinct is to make the case: list the evidence, name the behavior, insist they leave. It is a loving instinct and it usually backfires, because it puts the person in the position of def…

Overlapping sheets of slate blue and taupe paper in soft light

Family · 4 min read

3 things to do when someone you love refuses therapy

You cannot install motivation in another adult. I wish that were less true. What you can do is change the conditions around the decision, and stop paying a price that helps nobody.

Overcast light on a still field of muted green and gray

Depression · 4 min read

5 things you can do to help a friend with depression

Depression is very good at making a person hard to help. It removes the energy required to accept an offer, then supplies the belief that they are a burden for needing one. Knowing that chan…

Muted horizon under soft gray cloud, no detail in the distance

Grief · 5 min read

Why grief sometimes needs professional support

Grief is not a disorder and most of it does not need treating. It needs time, people, and permission. But there are situations where support makes a real difference, and knowing which is whi…

Long grasses bending in even wind under a wide pale sky

Grief · 4 min read

5 things not to say to someone who is grieving

Nearly everyone who says the wrong thing meant well, and the fear of saying the wrong thing is why so many people say nothing at all — which is worse. Here is what to skip and what works.

Sunlight through young leaves against a pale sky

Teens · 5 min read

When your child is struggling: how to know it is time

Adolescence is supposed to include moodiness, privacy, and the sense that you have become deeply embarrassing. The question is not whether your teenager is difficult. It is whether something…

Warm light diffusing through pale layered paper

Stress · 5 min read

Anger management, done properly

Most people who come to me about anger are not angry people. They are people who absorb, absorb, absorb, and then release at the wrong time, at the wrong person, at a volume that frightens t…

Free Consultation

Start with a conversation, not a commitment.

The first step is a free consultation call. We talk about what brings you here, what you have already tried, and whether working together makes sense. If I am not the right fit, I will say so and point you somewhere better.

· Consultations run Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Tell me what suits and I will confirm by email
· Telehealth anywhere in California, or in person in Santa Monica
· Private pay, with superbills for out-of-network reimbursement
· 48 hours' notice for changes or cancellations

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