Elisabeth LaMotte
Alice Hoffman, Simon & Schuster, 2015 “I suppose this is what love can do to a woman, bring her into a garden at night, convinced she somehow can affect fate’s plan with her desire. Love like this was a mystery to me. I didn’t understand how people allowed sheer emotion to get the better of…
Read MoreMany clients seek therapy feeling stuck in a painful place and unsure of how to move forward. Moving forward often involves developing a deeper understanding of how you got to where you are, and what may have happened in the past that may be creating anxiety or unhappiness. To do so effectively through therapy, it…
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“Marriages come and go, but divorce is forever.” Nora Ephron This provocative quotation would be a suitable tagline for Jonathan Demme’s 2015 film Ricki and the Flash, released for on demand viewing this week. This unexpectedly moving tale explores the long-term impact of divorce and maternal estrangement. When a crisis in their adult child’s life…
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What happens when two misfits find each other? Why is intimacy sometimes trigger for anxiety and self-doubt? What does it mean to have a true friend? Mary and Max, a 2009 film by writer/ director Adam Elliot, delves into the friendship that builds through the unexpected correspondence between kindred spirits turned pen pals. Set in 1976, the…
Read More This unsettling but inspiring film profiles composer and performer Brian Wilson’s life, from his early years in the 1960s forming the Beach Boys through his mid-life years in the 1980s living in the aftermath of an apparent paranoid psychosis. Love and Mercy begins as the mid-life Wilson (John Cusack) breezes into a Cadillac dealership, where, he encounters and is eager to impress a beautiful saleslady…
Read More James Ponsoldt’s 2015 film, The End of the Tour, (recently released on cable) is easily relatable for therapists. Perhaps especially so for therapists practicing in areas like DC full of high achievers. Opening in 2008 with the news that acclaimed author David Foster Wallace has suicided, lesser acclaimed writer, David Lipsky, begins listening to old…
Read MoreShame is a word my counseling clients sometimes dance around when trying to express their pain. It is a feeling experienced by many, but people have trouble saying the word. Somewhat ironically, shame feels like a “shameful” word to say. Nevertheless, developing the ability to articulate difficult sensations like shame can act as a catalyst.…
Read More Director: Noah Baumbach Writers: Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig With so many engaging, independent women living the single life in New York and in cities everywhere, it’s surprising there aren’t more authentic films about the single woman’s experience. Sure, Sex and the City was a great fit for my cohort, and now Girls continues to…
Read More Us David Nicholls 396 pages, 2014 “It was dizzying, really, to be in love at last. Because this was the first time, I knew that now. Everything else had been a misdiagnosis – infatuation, obsession perhaps, but an entirely different condition to this. This was bliss; this was transformative.” Despite pages of engaging writing about…
Read More The pursuit of meaningful work is a common topic in therapy. Especially in a town like Washington, DC, where the question “What do you do?” is an unfortunately mandatory opener in most social settings. The answer to this question can provoke anxiety and self-doubt, especially among those who are facing a professional fork in the…
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