Blog posts
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What psychotherapists can learn from district nursing: Takeaways from “Call the Midwife”
“Call the Midwife,” beginning in impoverished London in 1957, deals with challenging issues such as illegal abortions, thalidomide, and spousal abuse. And yet, when watching it, I (JS) felt a great longing to be part of the caregiving community living at Nonnatus House, the nurses and nuns who cared for those in the district. What…
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Parenting Young Adults: An uncertain stage of raising kids
The kids are grown. In theory, the parents’ job is done. But for many parents, the anxiety regarding their children’s wellbeing continues. Though there are shelves full of books on parenting young children and teens, there is a relative dearth of advice for this stage, which occurs between finishing traditional school and having a career…
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The Emotional Ramifications of “I told you so”: Why this classic response is unproductive
The temptation is almost unbearable. A family member has done something ill-advised. A colleague messed something up badly. There are so many situations when it is so easy to say “I told you so.” What situations provoke this comment? Here are some scenarios: An opportunity is lost because someone didn’t check their email when you…
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Supernanny for Psychotherapists: Learning from a popular TV show
The simplicity of a television show about a British nanny solving family issues without much difficulty is quite appealing. Supernanny, an American reality tv show, was broadcast on ABC from 2005-2011 and continues to be viewed as reruns and on YouTube. In my own moments of personal stress, I (EB) rely on Supernanny Jo Frost.…
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Supervision
Expectations for Quality Supervision: It Takes Two Hands to Clap Despite coursework and training on how to do clinical work, for many there is one subject lacking: how to “do supervision (Falender, 2018).” The APA has published Guidelines on Supervision, meant to “inform the practice of clinical supervision…(2015, p. 34)” which delineate an array of…
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Feel Better by Doing Less
Feel Better by Doing Less Does your life feel frantic?Between jobs, kids, household responsibilities, dealing with parents, seeing friends, working out, meditating, walking every day, chauffeuring the children to activities, making sure that there is every tutor and lesson available, being in a relationship, and whatever other wonderful things your life is filled with, do…
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When to Intervene
Timing is Everything: Effective Times to Intervene when Parenting The Benjamin Franklin quote, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” should be the motto of parenting. No one ever regrets preventing a problem, though they may never know what disasters were averted. We remediate problems presented to us, though no reaction can…
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Don’t laugh when your child is crying: Attachment research guides parenting practice
As an intern at The Cambridge Hospital, I was assigned an international attachment expert, Karlen Lyons-Ruth, as a psychological testing supervisor. During lulls in the testing, we met and discussed her research on infant-parent attachment. In a stroke of enormous good fortune, she offered me the opportunity to work with her data, examining the nuances…