Taking Rejection Personally, When It Literally Is Personal
I went to art school before I became a therapist, which means my first real experience with rejection happened in a critique room. You pin your work to the wall, then stand next to it while people talk about it in front of you. The polite fiction is that they’re discussing the piece. Everyone in […]
Because It Is a Skill You Never Learned
For a lot of people, doing nothing was never neutral. If you grew up in a home where love tracked achievement, or where the mood could turn and staying busy kept you useful and out of range, your nervous system filed rest under unsafe, and productivity became less a habit than a shelter. Fast forward […]
Success: Achieving It, and What It Costs
I’ve spent more than twenty years sitting with people who work hard at what they do. Actors, artists, content creators, teachers. People building lives out of their own effort and talent. And here’s one of the quiet secrets of my profession: a lot of them come to therapy not in spite of their success, but […]