Katherine will be giving an Introduction to Brainspotting Workshop on March 2, 2018 from 5-7pm hosted by Center for Integrative Health, 45 Lyme Road, Suite 200, Hanover, NH.
There will be a networking and refreshments gathering afterwards. Please contact Katherine to register.
See further details in the attached flier. All healing professionals are welcome!
If you’d like to earn 2 CE credit, please register here: https://www.academeca.com/CEUReg/SeminarInfo.aspx?seminarId=1627
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays!
This time of year typically brings a huge amount of anxiety and depression when people are focused on keeping up appearances or making up for perceived lack or life about-turns or dealing with grief and loss, all the while trying to maintain a cheery positive exterior. Every single day I mention to clients that they are better off just being “a good honest version of you” and not a shiny version that someone else needs, just to make them feel better or avoid tough feelings or facts. Ugh. It’s so much work not being you!
Our teens are, sadly, struggling too. Holiday downtime might be the very best time to “detox” kids off of their screens and develop better eating and time management techniques; there’s no school schedule to adhere to, we can give them the 3-5 days that any detox takes and they can enter the next semester cleaner and calmer. But, as I also see every day, this is a very unpopular idea. (btw, flip phones have had their single biggest year of sales increase last year…)
The key is not just closing down the devices, maintaining regular sleep and clean eating patterns, getting out into nature and being active, and encouraging a healthy dose of boredom – it’s that they need ALL of these simultaneously. Many practitioners are stuck in focusing on the surface symptoms (depression, disordered eating, anxiety, cutting, etc.) instead of seeing these as the clues to the deeper issue: kids have pain. And, frankly, much of their pain is our fault. Just because we have these shiny devices and ridiculous sports schedules and convenient drive-throughs it does not mean that their developing brains can manage or deal with it. In our home, devices are typically referred to as “portable dopamine pumps” (citing David Greenfield of The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction). And that’s exactly what they are; for adults to a certain degree, but completely to adolescent brains. As I also say every single week: Mother Nature will win this one. We must honor and work with the facts of healthy brain development, quick fixes and scapegoating will get us more of the disastrous results we are seeing.
I love natural solutions and amino-acid supplements as bridges from a toxic landscape into a healthy valley. Trudy Scott always offers wonderful, scientifically-backed (not popular with big pharma) solutions for self-empowerment and taking the reins back. Her recent blog post is very good at describing tools and methods to get teens off of pharma by using amino acids, diet and lifestyle change to traverse this difficult landscape. Parents need to make all of the same changes too, which in my humble opinion, is often why it’s even harder for households to admit and adhere to the changes that are needed. There will be pain – for one and all. But the pain of good change is always preferable to the pain of remaining the same.
Recently, I have become smitten with a local NH advocate for letting kids experience the gift of failure. Jessica Lahey brings sensible, sound and do-able tips to overwhelming feelings and the fear of change. So many parents are terrified of their kids being out-paced or left out or left behind, but have we all slowed down enough to really wonder about where this more-faster-opportunity-fear path is leading us, and them?
So, there you have it, my reflections and offerings to one and all this holiday season. We can all disengage and unplug just a bit more, make a few healthier changes each day regarding diet and time management, and get outside even for a few more minutes every single day. May these changes make you and your 2018 healthy and bright!
The Holiday Season is upon us and with it there can be extra “bumps” for many of us.
Katherine is now available in Hanover for full-days Mondays (9-6) and still half-days Fridays (1-6). Due to Christmas and New Year’s being on Mondays this year, we will have to see what scheduling will allow to cover the holiday season.
In case I can’t meet everyone’s needs, here is a favorite video, a classic Lil Bub Yule Log offering of extreme relaxation and calm in the sea of hubbub out there. Enjoy!
September 27, 2017 @ 6:30-8p
Devorah Heitner, Ph.D.
This event should be valuable to all parents of pre-teens and teens. Dr. Devorah Heitner is recognized for her expertise researching and reflecting upon young adults’ interaction with technology (see her TEDxNaperville presentation). As someone who advocates for zero screen time for young people (yes, I know it’s impossible), I look forward to hearing her most recent insights–this should be a real treat. If you have children and you’re concerned about how they interact with our ubiquitous, unavoidable technologies, I encourage you to participate. It promises to be a lively and insightful discussion.
Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World: presented by the Dorothy Campion Corcoran Fall Lecture Series of Good Beginnings.
Presenter: Dr. Devorah Heitner
Location: Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Auditoria E-F [map]
Additional information: https://dailyuv.com/randolph-vt/913672
This event is provided at no cost.
Screenagers is very informative for parents and educators alike. It will be screened at the Lyme School (Lyme, NH), for free, on Tuesday, September 12, at 7p. More information is available at http://lymenhlibrary.org. If you’re not local to the Upper Valley but are still interested in seeing Screenagers, a schedule of additional screenings can be found here.
This post was originally made by Katherine on the MFT3 Blog on August 22, 2012, and is one of her most popular articles. Her new office in Hanover has a mobile as well!
I have a beautiful mobile in my office and I refer to it almost every day when I am seeking to illustrate the ideas of change and balance. I mention balance quite a lot because, really, at the heart of what we do here in therapy, it is all about finding a new balance.
Balance within ourselves, say in our relationship dynamics or eating habits or spending/soothing patterns. Sometimes its about adjusting (balancing) when those around us make changes, like in divorce or when the economy shifts. The overriding principle is that yes, initially all change feels bad. Even good, planned and sought-after change still feels uncomfortable, like in adjusting to a new job or, cough cough, dieting.
But when we look to the mobile and follow its lead, what does the mobile do after it takes a blow? First: it shakes and reverberates for a while. But then if we give it enough time, it finds a new balance. Is it the same as before the blow? Nope. But is it any less beautiful than before the blow? I think not. It looks different and since we know that different doesn’t mean better or worse, then that’s OK. It’s still a mobile and it still holds the possibility of further future changes and even more unpredictable design, all the while seeking balance. I think that’s pretty cool. I love my mobile.
This post was originally made by Katherine on the MFT3 Blog and chosen as the AAMFT “Member Blog of the Week” on October 11, 2011
Knowing when it’s time to quit
It’s hard to say goodbye even in the best of circumstances. But at the end of the day, essentially it is the end goal of every therapy relationship to ultimately end. Yes we are seeking goodbye from the first time we meet.
Sometimes this is done in a beautiful, Hollywood-worthy way when client reaches stated goal and is healed of the problem and therapist and client come to a collective agreement that yes, it is indeed time for us to part, sad but joyful, accomplished, healed. It can be hard saying goodbye to a relationship where you have shared your deepest secrets, fears, hopes and have grown to trust in this other person, the therapist. Sometimes the therapy relationship is the only honest and healthy relationship a client has ever encountered. Yet even then, especially then, it is important to say goodbye.
Sometimes clients say goodbye in less than flattering ways. Sometimes they just stop answering their phone. Sometimes they feel the need to yell at the therapist to aid in making the break. Sometimes they even need to vilify the therapist because they might have exposed too much, there are still some unresolved raw spots throbbing in pain.
Sometimes a therapist has to essentially fire a client, kick them out of the proverbial nest, launching them into this new world that they are now ready for. Or, sometimes, into a new therapy relationship that will hopefully address the as of yet unmet needs of that client.
Regardless of how or when we say goodbye, it is always emotional. The success stories are bursting with pride and accomplishment in both parties. The bad breakups feel bad, at least to this therapist, only in that it didn’t have to end that way. The vilified ones are awful, hopefully rare, and the fear is that the client will see the whole profession through hurt lenses and never get the healing they obviously need.
Sometimes it happens on a comfortable timeline, sometimes it feels too fast, or in the case of those being pushed out of the nest, too long.
But in the end every therapist is ready and well prepared for the goodbye. The issues arise when the clients aren’t on the same page. So take this lesson and share it – saying goodbye is hard and good, especially when done with mindfulness and understanding.
And just because the issue that brought you to therapy is resolved doesn’t mean that you can never go back. Life has a way of giving us multiple challenges. Know that it is a therapist’s highest compliment when a satisfied client returns in the future, new issue in hand. We’re here to help, ready when you are. And, ready to say goodbye again and again.
(cue Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music…)
This post was originally made by Katherine on the MFT3 Blog and was chosen as the AAMFT “Member Blog of the Week” on March 24, 2011
A recent article in the New York Times has left me a bit steamed. In it, the author (Dr. Richard A. Friedman) states that he does not believe that insight can help someone in therapy feel better. To this point I would agree, insight alone is definitely not enough. But therapy isn’t about just understanding what the problem is, it is about challenging and embarking on answering this question; what are you willing to do to make it different? And this is where my job hits the pavement, sitting with and supporting clients through the hard work of change. Together we identify, interrupt and replace the old pattern/message/story and craft a new one.
There is an adage that comes from the world of addiction recovery but it’s one that I use with every client. It states that “Change will not happen until the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of change”.
In session, I hold out my hands and gesture that in one hand we have the pain of remaining the same and in the other hand we have the pain of change. Clients now have to choose a pain. Clients are typically in my office because the pain of remaining the same has reached a point of being greater than the unknown pain of change. So we discuss this and contract together to move into and through the pain of change.
There are few guarantees in therapy. What I can guarantee clients is pain, they just have to choose which one they are willing to embrace. If they choose the pain of remaining the same then they do not need my assistance, they are already familiar with what it is they do or tell themselves to manage their everyday. If they choose the pain of change, well then here we go. The second thing I can guarantee in therapy is work.
My style and approach may be different from the author’s but I would then challenge him to possibly embrace some pain of change and see how he can offer his patients a new experience.
The truly amazing thing about this profession is that the therapist is never done learning either.
This is the first blog post Katherine wrote when launching her first private practice in August, 2008. The long and winding road now leads to New Hampshire and kTherapy.
What is a “do-over” in real life? I have been going through one for the past several years and it was brought to my attention that maybe others may like to learn and see what my experience has been. (Thank you, Stanley).
kTherapy is the latest entry in my do-over. I am embarking on a private therapy practice after being in advertising for 16 years.
And how does one go from Advertising to Therapist?
Tune in and see.
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