Creative Counseling

There are moments in therapy when a single sentence changes the temperature in the room. “Sometimes I think everyone would be better off without me.” “I don't really want to die. I just don't want to keep feeling like this.” “Last week, I thought about killing myself.” For the therapist, these statements immediately activate professional and ethical responsibilities. They should. Suicidal ideation requires thoughtful assessment. But the therapist's responsibility is not simpl

There are some things people walk into therapy ready to talk about. Stress at work. Relationship problems. Family conflict. Anxiety. Grief. And then there are the things people rehearse in their heads before deciding whether it is safe to say them out loud. “Sometimes I think about dying.” For many people, the thought that comes immediately after that is: If I tell my therapist this, are they going to send me to the hospital? It is an understandable concern. Movies, televisio

As summer comes to an end, therapists may notice subtle changes in the concerns clients bring into the therapy room. September often represents more than a change in season. It can mark a return to structure, responsibility, expectations, and routines that may have been temporarily relaxed during the summer months. For some clients, this transition is welcome. Routine can provide stability and predictability, particularly for people who function well with structure. For other

There is something about the end of summer that feels like a reset. The days are still warm, the calendar technically says summer for a few more weeks, but everything around us starts shifting. Kids go back to school. Vacations end. Work schedules become more structured. Traffic gets worse. Calendars fill up again. Suddenly, all the things we said we would deal with “after the summer” are waiting for us. For some people, that return to routine feels good. Structure can be com

Not every client enters therapy in crisis. Some arrive with stable employment, supportive relationships, intact families, financial security, and no obvious precipitating event. They may even struggle to answer one of our most routine intake questions: “What brings you to therapy?” Their answer may simply be, “I don’t know. Everything is fine. I just don’t feel like myself.” That answer deserves our curiosity. High-functioning clients can be particularly skilled at using exte

There are seasons when you can point directly to the problem. The relationship ended. The job is terrible. Someone died. Money is tight. Your family is in crisis. You know exactly why you’re struggling. And then there are seasons when, technically, everything is fine. You have people who love you. You have a place to live. Maybe your career is going well. Your children are okay. You’ve accomplished some of the things you once prayed, worked, cried, and fought for. When someon

When an adult child moves back home, families often assume the biggest challenge will be sharing space again. In therapy, I find that the harder part is often sharing roles. A 25-, 30-, or even 40-year-old child can walk through the front door, put their bags down in their old bedroom, and suddenly everyone is behaving like it's ten years ago. Parents start reminding, questioning, monitoring, and sometimes rescuing. Adult children may become defensive, dependent, or irritated

My 26-year-old son recently moved back home. He graduated from college in 2024, took a job across the country in 2025, and did what we so often encourage our young adults to do: he went out into the world and started building a life for himself. Now, after having some time and experience under his belt, he's decided he may want to go in a different direction. And I support that. I don't believe the first decision he made after college has to determine the rest of his life. At

A Clinician’s Guide to Looking Beyond the Words and Understanding the Patterns Beneath Couples’ Communication When couples come to therapy, one of the most common concerns we hear is some version of, “We just don’t communicate anymore.” It is an understandable way to describe the problem, but as therapists, we know that most couples are communicating quite a bit. They may argue, withdraw, become defensive, overexplain, shut down, criticize, pursue, avoid, send long text messa

I don’t usually get very personal in this space, but as I prepare to enter the final semester of my graduate program, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it has taken to get here. I’m 50 years old, a grandmother, and a full-time employee in a high-stakes leadership role. I have a family, a career, clients, responsibilities, and a life that does not particularly care whether I have a paper due Sunday night. Somehow, in the middle of all of that, I have made it to my final seme