So when a client tells me a book moved him, I listen. When several clients mention the same book, I consider it part of my continuing education. And when my adult daughter brings Heart the Lover by Lily King on vacation and can’t put it down, I pay attention.

I came to this novel without having read King’s companion book, Writers & Lovers. I will likely circle back. But Heart the Lover stands beautifully on its own—a work of elegant prose that captures both the innocence and the psychological complexity of young adulthood.

We follow a protagonist whose name is withheld until the final pages, a choice that feels psychologically intentional. Identity, after all, is not fixed in youth—it is constructed, tested, defended, and revised in relationship. Within an intoxicating circle of collegiate friends who both intimidate and inspire her, she becomes “Jordan,” a version of herself that feels braver, sharper, more socially fluent. She falls into a love triangle that ultimately crystallizes into something deeper: a connection between two ambitious, idealistic young people who want their lives to matter.
What unfolds is tender and devastating in equal measure. King captures something rare: the almost sacred intensity of first adult love. It is fragile. It is precarious. It is infused with longing and projection. And it is often unsustainable—not because the love is false, but because the people inside it are still becoming.

That is where the novel feels especially relevant to my work as a therapist.

Heart the Lover is not simply a romance. It is a study in development. It shows how profoundly we are shaped by our families—by what was spoken, and what was not; by what was expected, and what was silently demanded. The characters are intelligent and sincere. They want to love well. But wanting and being ready are not the same thing.

Many young adults carry into romance unresolved family dynamics, unexamined fears, and unconscious loyalties. The capacity for intimacy requires differentiation—the ability to remain oneself while moving toward another. And that capacity often lags behind longing.

What I admire most about King’s writing is her portrayal of the approach–avoidance dance so common in love: the simultaneous pull toward closeness and retreat from it. In one scene, the narrator waits at baggage claim for the man she loves. Her anticipation is electric; her body is alive with sensation. Yet she recognizes a quiet truth: if he fully understood the depth of her love, it would terrify him.
That moment captures something universal. Intimacy exposes us. To be loved is to be seen. And to be seen can feel dangerous when we are still uncertain of ourselves.

Alongside this exquisite rendering of young love, King writes with unusual clarity about existential awakening. Her characters metabolize pain in real time. They feel it in their bodies. They struggle with it. And through it, they become more conscious, more deliberate, more themselves.

As both a therapist and a mother of adult children, I find myself moved by that arc. Youthful love is rarely tidy. It can be misguided, misaligned, or mistimed. And yet it is formative. It shapes the nervous system. It clarifies values. It exposes vulnerabilities that must eventually be integrated.
In that way, heartbreak is not the opposite of growth. It is often its catalyst.

And perhaps that is why so many of my clients—and my daughter—pressed this book into my hands. It does what good fiction does best: it illuminates the private terrain of becoming.

Thank you, Spencer, for sharing such important, honest insights that highlight your clinical skills, your humor, and your emotional intelligence.

Millennials who grew up as bedroom kids notice they are raising living room kids.

Last weekend, at a friend’s suggestion, my husband and I watched the 2013 film The Lunchbox—a surprisingly moving and unexpected love story that unfolds through something almost quaint by today’s standards: handwritten notes.

The premise is simple and quietly heartbreaking. Ila (Nimrat Kaur) wants to recapture her husband’s dwindling attention. Sensing they’ve fallen into a rut, she hopes that elevating his daily lunch—once routine, now carefully spiced and lovingly prepared—might awaken his affection.

The film is shot on location in Mumbai, where the city’s legendary dabbyawallas deliver fresh, homemade lunches from household kitchens to offices across the city through an astonishingly precise delivery system. In a rare error, Ila’s lunch is mistakenly delivered not to her husband, but to Mr. Fernandes (Irrfan Khan), an older, isolated widower nearing retirement after more than thirty years as an insurance claims officer. His work is methodical, lonely, and as monotonous as his personal life.

When Ila’s husband complains about “her” cooking—which is actually the mediocre takeout Mr. Fernandes typically receives—Ila realizes her lovingly prepared meals are landing in the wrong hands. She slips a note into the lunch container to explain. When Mr. Fernandes replies, a tender and witty correspondence begins. Over time, the two strangers become confidants, sharing longings, disappointments, and the small details of their inner lives.

(With today’s explosion of food delivery apps and single-use plastic, the dabbawallas’ clean, reusable metal lunch containers feel like characters in their own right—and a quiet, compelling alternative vision of care and sustainability. But that may be another movie, or at least another conversation.)

The Lunchbox understands that loneliness is a disease of both heart and soul—and that it can exist both inside and outside of a romantic partnership. Ila’s aunt insists that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and the film plays gently with this idea. Ultimately, though, it is the written word—not the food—that becomes the most loving gesture of all.

There is something deeply nostalgic about how true the film feels. It reminds us that not so long ago, writing—slow, intentional, written by human hands—was a primary way we reached for one another. In a world now dominated by instant, disposable messages, The Lunchbox offers a quiet reminder: being seen, named, and responded to may be the most sustaining nourishment of all.

While many hoped that the end of the COVID-19 pandemic would bring a collective lift in mental health, it’s clear that many people continue to struggle emotionally. I was honored to speak with Marisa at Good Day DC on World Mental Health Day about the importance of turning away from social media and toward community.

In times of stress, many of us instinctively reach for our phones. We scroll to self-soothe—yet the opposite occurs. Social media use can heighten anxiety, activate the nervous system, and disrupt sleep, all of which worsen symptoms of anxiety and depression. We are wired for connection, and we heal in relationship, not in isolation.

Whether your sense of community comes from a place of worship, an artistic pursuit, volunteer work, or time with family and friends, consider making community a priority. Time in community gives us more to bring back to our day-to-day lives—and it’s something we lost during the pandemic. It’s time to reclaim it.

Families, relationships, and communities shape us in ways both obvious and invisible. Jonathan Spector’s This Much I Know explores how our personal histories, inherited beliefs, and the stories we tell ourselves collide—sometimes painfully, sometimes with unexpected insight. In this beautifully acted play, competing truths coexist, challenging us to sit with ambiguity and consider how context shapes conviction.

Therapists understand that children can grow up in the same family and yet experience profoundly different childhoods. A couple can weather the same adversity and later remember it as if they lived through two separate realities. In therapy, two competing truths can share the same space—though it is rarely an easy space to inhabit.

The question of competing narratives frames This Much I Know, which recently left a successful run at Theater J in Washington, D.C., for New York’s 59E59 Theaters. A superb trio of actors fluidly inhabit multiple roles through subtle shifts in costume, accent, and setting, creating a world where memory, identity, and ideology overlap.

We first meet Lukesh (Firdous Bamji), a psychology professor whose dry humor and knowing detachment come through as he asks the audience to silence their phones and launches into a lecture on confirmation bias. His wife, Natalya (Dani Stoller), wrestles with the aftermath of a traumatic experience, channeling her turmoil into research for a book about her grandmother—who fled Russia and was rumored to have been a childhood friend of Stalin’s daughter.
Natalya leaves Lukesh early in the play, while Harold (Ethan Rapp), a university student, faces a reckoning of his own when a news story exposes him as the son of a prominent white supremacist. He insists he doesn’t share all of his father’s beliefs, but no professor will sponsor his thesis—except Lukesh, who reluctantly agrees. Their charged exchanges about truth, bias, and belonging become the play’s intellectual core, while Natalya’s search for her grandmother’s story, and her portrayal of Stalin’s daughter, add layers of haunting symmetry.

Questions of ownership, blame, the butterfly effect, genetics, and epigenetics weave through the dialogue. This Much I Know resists easy answers and refuses to label narratives as right or wrong. Instead, it invites the audience to sit with ambiguity—to consider how context shapes conviction, and how difficult it is to break free from the gravitational pull of family legacy.

Like therapy itself, the play offers no tidy resolution. It asks us to tolerate complexity, to listen for truth in stories that contradict our own, and to recognize that understanding—like healing—requires curiosity more than certainty.

“Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.”

That lyric came to mind as I watched ART, the hit Broadway revival now playing at the Music Box Theatre. The show, starring Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris, layers a conversation about art and taste into a deeper meditation on what it means to sustain friendship over time — to keep the “gold” even as life offers us plenty of “silver.”
Set in Paris, Serge (Harris) is over the moon about a new piece of art he’s just purchased and can’t wait to show it off to his longtime friend Marc (Cannavale). Marc’s reaction is tepid at best — and when he learns the staggering price Serge paid for what appears to be a minimalist white canvas, he’s downright offended. He confides in their mutual friend Yvan (Corden), and from there, a witty, poignant debate unfolds about taste, loyalty, and the strain of changing perspectives within lifelong friendships.

We all have those friends who’ve known us forever — the ones who remember our childhood pets, our parents, our first heartbreaks, and our most embarrassing moments (like maybe spraying fart spray in the high school hallway just to see what would happen). As we grow and our lives diverge, those relationships can be tested. ART captures that tension with humor and heart: What do we do when a friend’s choices seem shallow, foolish, or foreign? Can affection outlast judgment? Can shared history withstand wounded pride?

I still remember my high school chemistry teacher — a man with wild, Einstein-esque hair who looked like his last experiment had gone awry — telling our class that the most important thing to remember wasn’t chemistry, but friendship. He reminded us that these early relationships, though sometimes distant later in life, are embedded in who we are. Like gold, they don’t tarnish easily.

Corden steals the show as Yvan — the most humble of the trio and the least “successful” by conventional standards — yet he’s also the most soulful. His frantic monologue about an upcoming wedding invitation is one of my all-time favorite moments in theater. It’s a reminder that friendship, like art, isn’t about perfection or prestige. It’s about recognition — seeing and being seen — and remembering the gold that endures even as we collect new silver along the way.

Psychological takeaway:
Friendship is one of our most powerful emotional regulators. It anchors us in identity, softens anxiety, and reflects our capacity for differentiation — the ability to stay connected without losing ourselves when disagreements arise. ART reminds us that the tension between closeness and individuality isn’t a flaw in friendship; it’s the heart of it.

On the surface, they’re frothy and absurd: wealthy women in fabulous wardrobes, meticulously designed mansions, murder mysteries, and eccentric philanthropists. But look closer, and they’re each telling a deeper story about trauma, birth order, and the bonds that form between sisters who survive dysfunctional families in very different ways.

Chaos Enters the Penthouse
In The Better Sister, Nicky Macintosh (Elizabeth Banks) makes a dramatic reentry into her younger sister Chloe’s life by showing up, un-welcomed, to her pristine Manhattan penthouse. A murder investigation is already underway—Chloe’s husband, who also happens to be Nicky’s ex-husband, has just been found dead. Chloe Taylor (Jessica Biel) is an influential media figure with a picture-perfect life and an image she’s desperate to maintain. Nicky, by contrast, is messy, contrarian, and undeniably inconvenient.

Meanwhile, in Sirens, Devon DeWitt (Meghann Fahy) is released from a night in jail and returns to care for her ailing father. She discovers that her younger sister, Simone (Milly Alcock), has sent an elaborate edible arrangement which is much more performative than helpful. Furious, Devon grabs the display in her car and sets out to confront her sister. She finds Simone at the legendary “Cliff House” working for Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore), a hyper-stylized billionaire philanthropist. Simone has abandoned her upstate New York identity for headbands, cheekiness, and florals. Her tattoos have been removed and Devon finds her almost unrecognizable.

Devon and Nicky are cut from the same chaotic cloth. Both speak in cringey, grammatically obtuse sentences, wear the wrong clothes, and offend nearly everyone they encounter. Law enforcement doesn’t know what to make of them, and their younger sisters—Simone and Chloe—vacillate between embarrassment, protectiveness, and avoidance. They’ve both tried to leave the past behind. But the past, in the form of their big sister, has other plans in store for them.

As a therapist, I often see how unresolved trauma shows up in family relationships. What’s psychologically compelling about Sirens and The Better Sister is how they depict strikingly similar responses to childhood trauma. Both shows invert the familiar sibling stereotype. In many families, the older child plays the achiever, the responsible one, while the younger rebels. But in homes shaped by trauma, especially when the mother is absent or compromised, it’s often the eldest daughter who bears the brunt of the father’s rage. She becomes the shield. And that role comes with consequences—depression, addiction, a deep sense of unworthiness.

In both of these current popular shows, the older sister copes through acting out, numbing, and self-destruction. The younger sister copes by striving, perfecting, and escaping.
Both sets of sisters come from profoundly abusive or neglectful households. The fathers are violent, controlling, or cruel; the mothers are absent, weak, or complicit. In both stories, the older sister—despite her flaws—tried to protect the younger one. But as adults, both younger sisters survive through secrecy, deception and feigned perfection.

Camp with a Core
Sirens and The Better Sister are not high art. They’re over-the-top, glossy, and often ridiculous—streaming’s version of a beach read. But that doesn’t mean they’re devoid of meaning. When the sisters in both shows are forced to confront one another, old wounds resurface. They lash out, shut down, try to run. But in fleeting, tender moments, the emotional core glimmers through: a look, a shared memory, a flash of loyalty or sorrow.

In families marked by danger, siblings often become the only witnesses to the full story. They remember what others can never fully understand. Their bond may be fraught or fractured, but it’s also forged in shared survival. One may long to forget; the other may be paralyzed by what she remembers. That tension, and the love that sometimes endures beneath it, is where these shows find their emotional resonance.

I can’t recommend Sirens or The Better Sister for their realism, narrative logic, or emotional nuance. But I can say this: the messy connection between sisters shaped by trauma is something these shows surprisingly get right. The glitz may be superficial—but the emotional truth, in moments, rings loud and clear.

I found the full documentary, Paris is Burning, on YouTube for free when I went to search Madonna’s 1990 smash hit “Vogue.” I realized that this documentary offers richer ground for reflection.

There is a complicated irony in having a song by a cisgendered white woman like Madonna bring voguing to the mainstream. Madonna never needed to hide her glamour the way that the queens of the Harlem ballroom did. Like this film, there is no denying that Madonna is a gay icon and in many ways an ally, but not without some controversy given consideration of privilege and appropriation relative to the movement.

Whether you love it or hate it, or somewhere in between (me), Paris is Burning serves a rich slice of American and LGBTQ+ history. This documentary was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2016.

Some controversy surrounds how the filmmaker, Jennie Livingston, a white woman, shot and edited the interviews and footage with Black and Latinx drag queens. The film has been criticized for not fully examining how colonialism and whiteness shape who gets to tell these stories. Feminist writer, bell hooks, wrote an especially insightful critique titled “Is Paris Burning?” in her book Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992). hooks’ essay emphasizes and explores the film’s missed opportunities to unpack the meaning of gender-bending and imitating whiteness, relative to power and control. Whether or not Livingston made the best choices for the film, the images and voices she captured give us a glimpse into the dynamic lives of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers of color at the end of the 20th century.

I recommend this documentary to anyone who wants to look back and honor a part of the LGBTQ+ scene in the New York in the 1990s, and its significant influence on our mainstream culture and advocacy. It is a reminder of progress we have made, and progress we still dream of.

Paris is Burning was filmed over several years spanning the mid-1980s up to1989. It was released in September 1990. Yes, six months after Madonna’s “Vogue,” for those of you minding the timeline. “Voguing” as a dance form had been around for about 30 years before it hit the mainstream. It emerged as a dance style and culture from the Harlem Ballroom scene in the 1960s, cultivated by Black and Latinx performers. If you watch Paris is Burning, you will see some amazing voguing.

The film illuminates so many aspects of the performers’ lives: the brilliant, the sad, and the horrifyingly tragic. I don’t want to cheerily gloss over the countless struggles the performers share by skipping to a celebration of resilience. There is a fine line between celebrating creative feats of survival and glossing over very real hardships due to systemic oppression. I don’t want to justify anything these performers went through by sounding like it was all worth it for art.

Yet, it’s precisely out of these struggles that the balls emerged. The balls were created as vibrant spaces where marginalized people could embody the very identities society tried to deny them. This is why there is such sensitivity to appropriation of the movement. Black and Latinx performing artists were so successful at creating fabulous expression to escape hardship that people without a deep understanding take trends from the Harlem balls for granted as just glamor and fun. In her critique of the film, hooks laments moments of incongruent laughter and cheering from white film viewers who seemed to misunderstand the experiences depicted.

As a therapist, the creative expression and its context in Paris is Burning fascinates me. I prize creativity as one of the most effective interventions to heal and prevent trauma. Movement in general has been shown to literally break up the chemical impact of trauma. Dance incorporates both creativity and physical movement, which puts it at top of my list of best ways to overcome mental health struggles.

Here are some of my favorite creative acts of resilience highlighted in the film:

The creation of community. The film depicts the joy, and connection found in the Harlem ballrooms. Later in the film they detail the systemic layers of this community by explaining how “houses” work. Houses are loving networks of found families. They are named for notorious ball-walkers.

The leader of each house is called the “mother.” The mother often does the most nurturing and is the most powerful. The houses serve both as support systems, and as fiercely competitive teams in the balls. The competition is depicted as mostly friendly between the houses.

Dance Battles and Voguing. Voguing emerged from dance battles, where ball-walkers could sublimate conflict into stylized movement. Voguing is a full-body art form that transforms conflict, admiration, and self-expression into physical choreography. Just imagine a world where this is a norm for self-expression! I want permission to dance my feelings at someone. If someone “throws shade” at me, I want to playfully lay myself out on the floor and twist my body around them in aggressively creative shapes. I wouldn’t even care if I lost a battle!

One of the queens, Dorian Corey said it best, “If everyone went to balls and did less drugs, it would be a fun world, wouldn’t it?”

Overall, Paris is Burning is story of reaching for joy to pull ourselves and each other out of trauma. It’s a story of hopes and dreams for a more peaceful and inclusive world. It’s a reminder that identity and expression are deeply tied to healing. Trauma compromises our identity, it frazzles our development of who we are, it makes us question who we are. LGBTQ+ Pride and advocacy is a movement against identity compromising trauma. When we support the right to existence and expression beyond binaries and boxes, we support the expansiveness in all of us. In my work as a therapist, I witness how giving people space to be fully themselves opens powerful pathways toward healing and connection.

The book explores how certain people’s strong social skills can significantly improve cohesion among an entire group. The author explains the characteristics of “high centrality participants,” who are essentially the “supercommunicators” the book talks about. The author points out that the characteristics supercommunicators are not the ones that our current system of power and esteem values. Our current system of power and esteem values being the center of attention, holding on to control, and being directive as a leader, whereas supercommunicators often refrain from centering themselves, or trying to steer conversation or actions. Instead, they connect and ask questions. Supercommunicators lead others to a greater sense of insight, agency, and empowerment. Celebrating supercommunicators is especially validating to my therapist peers and I, since much of our communication training goes against domination and control models of power assertion.

The heart of the book is to explain how connection can improve through conversations if one or both people adequately orient towards three pivotal questions: “What is this really about? How do we feel? And who are we?” A robust understanding of how to respond to each of those three questions ensures that misunderstanding and disconnection is limited when people converse.

I appreciate how the author explored some of the biggest communication issues we are currently facing in our culture. These explorations include online communication, and talking about diversity equity and inclusion issues at work. The author’s exploration offers nuanced reflections of all the factors at play in these situations. The author especially emphasizes how rigid attempts to control others in a conversation backfires, and how letting go of control creates a path to connection.

Finally, I appreciate the authors conclusion. It is a common conclusion, but in the context of the illuminating explorations throughout the book, it felt fresh and nuanced: we should choose love. The author highlights love and connection’s positive influence on longevity. Importantly, the book reminds us that love isn’t just about romantic or close relationships – connection in any form matters. The book encourages heartfelt exchanges in as many ways as we can throughout our lives, including with strangers that briefly enter our time and space. He is so convicted in his beliefs about the positive impacts of outreach and connection that he shares his email address and encourages readers to write to him with a promise that he will respond!

I wonder what he might think of this little blog. Maybe I’ll send it to him – after all, he did say he’d write back.

A while back I wrote about how the story of Orpheus and Eurydice haunts me as a relationship therapist. How Orpheus could have saved their relationship if he had been able to manage his anxiety and reactivity.

This is a song I might sing to Orpheus: “Listen to your heart.” This would include all of the renditions of this song originally released by the Swedish rock duo, Roxette, in 1988. For this blog, I chose the 2005 Furious remix by the Belgian group DHT, with vocals by Edmdee. This is because sometimes distress tolerance interventions needs to be accessed quickly.

If I could sum up a good way to calm yourself out of destructive reactivity in one phrase, “listen to your heart,” might be it. But you must know what that really means.

Too often we listen to what we think is our heart, when it’s really something else. That something else might be overthinking, overreacting to a surface level emotion, thinking with just one part of ourselves rather than the grounded whole.

There could be many other names for what “your heart,” means in therapy. I would consider “wise mind,” “rational thinking,” and “differentiation,” as terms that could also mean, “your heart.” When you are listening from this perspective, you can listen with love.

Some therapists encourage their clients to “slow down.” That’s not a bad idea. The original form of this song is a slowed down ballad. This ballad might slow your heart rate if you breathe in time with it. If you have the luxury of slowing down, I do recommend it. Adrenaline is like fire. Very helpful and necessary, but flames get wild. Smaller flames are easier to control.

I like the EDM version of “Listen to Your Heart,” because I think it’s a realistic situation. Sometimes we must listen even when adrenaline is pumping. The most important times for the reminder, “listen to your heart,” are when life becomes a techo mash-up remix. Or, a journey out of hell. Or, a stressful journey in general. Maybe you’re a parent on a road-trip with the kids?

To me, Orpheus’ situation, is best depicted by EDM. So fun, and so sad. To prevent an Orpheus situation, your skills must happen quickly to keep up with the quick automatic thoughts attempting to trigger reactivity.

If you are in an Orpheus situation, I encourage some quick self-talk antidotes to fearful thinking.

My favorite reminder is:

“You will be okay no matter what happens.”
Even if she or the fates betray you, you will be okay. You are whole, and you will survive this.

Other quick reminders include:

“Take care of yourself no matter what the other person is doing.”
Regardless of whether she’s behind you, you still need to get out of hell. This is not a “we” task. You needs to focus on your own task knowing that her actions should not affect your own differentiation.

“Turning around makes it worse no matter what.”
If she is really gone, now you’re trying to get out of hell all upset instead of just confidently plodding out of there alone.

“You are *drunk* with emotion.”
If you are the type of person who knows not to make certain decisions when you are too sleepy or too intoxicated, remind yourself that states of heightened emotion are also a type of intoxication. If you can manage to restrain yourself during those other times when you know your judgement isn’t clear, then hopefully you can restrain yourself now as well.

In conclusion, “listen to your heart,” means listen to YOU. Listen to what you can do. Accept what you can and can’t control. You can’t control where Eurydice is. You can control where you are, and where you are looking.