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.

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.

The results are in: Mikey Madison has officially taken home the Oscar for Best Actress, capping off an incredible awards season where she also won the Independent Spirit Award and the BAFTA. In a historic night, Anora dominated the Academy Awards, proving that its raw intensity and indie roots were no barrier to Hollywood’s top prize. Anora is the film with the lowest budget ever to win best picture.

Directed by Sean Baker, Anora is a striking commentary on wealth, power, and sex work—a clear reminder that, despite progress, it is still a man’s world. Baker, known for his 2015 iPhone-shot indie hit Tangerine, once again spotlights the lives of sex workers with unflinching realism and respect. His protagonist, Anora, or Ani as she prefers, is a New York City-based stripper and escort. Her grandmother never learned English, so she speaks a bit of Russian. When Ivan, the reckless, entitled son of a Russian oligarch, requests a dancer who speaks his language, Ani is the obvious match. Their chemistry is immediate, but their connection—like so many modern relationships—is built on performance and illusion.

Ani presents herself as confident and agreeable, masking the harsh realities of her profession with a well-practiced charm. Ivan, meanwhile, embodies unchecked privilege, approaching his surroundings—both in terms of people and places—as a limitless playground. Their relationship escalates when Ivan offers Ani $15,000 to be his girlfriend for a week—a transaction she negotiates matter-of-factly. As their dynamic deepens, the film peels back their façades. Ani is not just a seductress; she is a vulnerable young woman in pain. Ivan is not just a playboy; he is an impotent child lost in excess. Together, they expose the thin line between self-deception and survival.

As a therapist who works with many clients navigating modern dating, what makes Anora especially compelling is how it mirrors common challenges of real-world courtship. Beneath the film’s exaggerated scenario lies a universal truth: in early relationships, people often wear masks. Ani feigns enjoyment of bad sex. Ivan convinces himself he’s falling in love. Their self-delusions unravel when reality—in the form of Ivan’s furious parents—comes crashing into town.

I often remind clients that rushing into intimacy can cloud judgment. The modern dating landscape makes slow, intentional connection increasingly rare. Ani and Ivan’s memorable, marvelous, heartbreaking story serves as a cautionary tale. Their circumstances may be extreme, but the emotional risks they take are all too familiar. In the end, Anora forces audiences to confront uncomfortable truths—about power, relationships, and the transactional nature of desire.

With its Oscar triumph, Anora is no longer just a critical darling—it’s an undeniable cinematic milestone. And Madison’s fearless performance has been rightfully celebrated as one of the most unforgettable in recent memory.
If you are interested, check out my original version of this post – pre-oscars, on Psychology .Today

Ann Patchett’s 2023 novel, Tom Lake, is a relationally-oriented therapist’s dream. A love letter both to northern Michigan’s cherry farms and to small-town family life, Patchett’s novel unpacks how greater emotional maturity is conducive to choosing healthier, more sustainable romantic partnerships.

The novel begins during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic while protagonist Lara is quarantining with her three daughters and her husband on their cherry farm in northern Michigan. With the world at a standstill, Lara’s daughters insist that she finally share with them the story from her early adulthood when she dated a young actor who went on to become the world’s most famous movie star. Lara’s three daughters worship the devastatingly handsome Peter Duke and demand that their mother finally give them the backstory. Reluctantly, and with strict and entertaining boundaries, Lara agrees.

What unfolds is a moving tale of a young, innocent and unassuming girl plucked from small town life in part because of her uncanny ability to portray small-town life through her performance in the lead role (Emily) in various productions of Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town. Lara’s youthful whirlwind romance with Duke is a classic Hollywood tale of innocence lost and how the spotlight of fame corrupts and contorts. Tom Lake’s plot toggles between Lara’s quarantine with her close-knit family and the complexities of life on the farm and Lara’s detailed description of her years as a young, unsuspecting, aspiring starlet. Heartache, sibling rivalry, and family love are concurrent themes, and Our Town’s cherishment of the wholesomeness of small-town life works as a convincing psychological template for emotional maturity and the beauty of healthy choices and a quiet, connected, authentic life.

The late Shirley Glass, a prominent infidelity researcher, encouraged an ideal script at the outset. Her suggestion is that when a married person notices a spark with another, it is highly advisable to discuss this spark with one’s spouse. To say something like:

“I was having coffee with Lucy today and I felt surprised that our conversation quickly became both personal and flirtatious. I was also surprised that I enjoyed it. It reminded me of how you and I used to be with one another, and I want to try to get that back. Can we work on that?”

If only more married adults chose to run this script.

Elizabeth Stroud’s latest novel, Tell Me Everything, is one of her very best. In a showcase that feels something like a finale, she allows her beloved, previously unacquainted characters from her various critically acclaimed series to intersect and collide with one another in the small town of Crosby, Maine. Set during the later part of the pandemic, the novel begins with the meek, brilliant novelist Lucy Barton having recently befriended the angsty attorney Bob Burgess. The friendship has become romantic, though Lucy and Bob remain in denial of their palpable romantic spark. They believe they are good friends and insist their frequent walks are covid-friendly and purely platonic. Quirky local fixture Olive Kitteridge (of Stroud’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name) understands the blossoming romance between Lucy and Bob and easily sees straight through their blind spots. Olive’s friendships with Lucy and Bob animate the novel as does the plot’s unfolding murder mystery.

Stroud understands that intimate life happens in the small quiet moments rather than the large romantic gestures. Lucy and Bob cherish their deep unfiltered conversations. Lucy calls Bob a sin eater because she understands that Bob has sacrificed to much for others, especially his older brother. Lucy opens up about her impoverished and abusive childhood:

“But I don’t remember feeling envious a lot, Bob, and I don’t understand that. You would think, I would think, that I would have been envious of people from the start, all these mothers who seemed to love their children as they picked them up from school, all those kids who seemed to have normal lives, but I just somehow understood: That’s not my life. And I was always inside my head, and I remember thinking: I’m glad this is my head.”

Even Bob’s bad haircut illuminates the intricacy and hilarity of the human connection. He and Lucy both agree that it makes him look like a twelve-year-old with a man’s face, and their dual experiences of this unfortunate new style represent their powerful connection and the unexpected path forward.

Bob loves his wife, the minister of their local church. And Lucy loves her ex-husband William. Lucy and William reconnected during the pandemic and are giving it another go. Despite these satisfying unions, the chemistry fueling Lucy and Bob’s conversations anchor the plot and transfix these two central characters.

Emotional repairs, infidelity, betrayal, sexual abuse, neglect, isolation, therapy and memory are all important themes explored with rich emotional intelligence. And yet, as a therapist, what stays with me most about this beautiful story is its exploration of the road not taken.

The post Should I consider psychedelic assisted therapy? first appeared on DC Counseling & Psychotherapy Center.]]> https://dccounselingcenter.com/should-i-consider-psychedelic-assisted-therapy.html/feed 0 https://dccounselingcenter.com/what-is-emdr-therapy.html https://dccounselingcenter.com/what-is-emdr-therapy.html#respond Thu, 07 Sep 2023 20:20:19 +0000 https://dccounselingcenter.com/?p=27178 I completed the level one EMDR training in 1998 and this groundbreaking way of healing has evolved deeply over time. What an honor to speak with Deany Laliotis LICSW about her monumental contributions to the development of relational EMDR therapy. Listen to Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts or check out the links…

In Mitzki’s critically acclaimed song and music video, “Your Best American Girl,” she starts out feeling cute. Then, she is rebuffed in exchange for an “All-American” prototype that she doesn’t fit into. That most Americans do not fit into. True to Mitzki’s wise – though, absurd – style, she turns to herself for answers. One thing I love about Mitzki’s music and her videos is that the absurdism takes the stance: “well, what did you expect me to do?” Absurd situations are going to get absurd responses.  It’s not her that’s absurd, she’s just a thinking and feeling person living in a crazy world. Many people can relate. So much so that “Your Best American Girl,” has been listed by many music reviewers as one of the best songs of the 2010s and even the 21^st century.

The stand-out lyric for this song is the lyric, “your mother wouldn’t approve of my how my mother raised me but I do, I think I do.” In the end, the “I think I do,” changes to “I finally do.” Such a powerful recognition would be a breakthrough in therapy. In this case she has differentiated from problems in her surrounding culture in order to better connect with her family.

Mitzki and her conscientious, beautiful, everything music is such an honest reflection of American culture at this time. Beyond the catch-all “indie,” musical style, Wikipedia classified her as both “folk rock” and “art pop” – two styles that might contradict each other, yet describe her as best as anyone could. Her sound ranges anywhere from the clear melodic beauty of Joni Mitchell to the shoe-gazing chaos of My Bloody Valentine. It makes sense that she was part of the composition team for a song featured in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.

Mitzki has been open about her identity crises/exploration, and even considered quitting music. Again, I think many Americans can relate with the feeling of just not knowing what to do with ourselves right now. “Your Best American Girl,” comes from her album Puberty II. America is going through its own adolescent reconning. We are figuring out who we really want to idolize. We are figuring out what to ignore, and what to listen to from previous generations. In this song she recognizes she couldn’t help trying to be the best American girl, but she has to define what that means for herself.

Anyway, Happy Independence Day!

This post marks my 50^th Therapy Jam Session post!

I started this blog almost 5 years ago in September 2018. For years I had wanted to start a therapy blog, but I struggled with writer’s block.

So, guess when an idea for a blog finally came to me? Two months after my first child was born. Suddenly, with less time than I have ever had in my life, I had all these ideas for posts!

Over the past five years, a lot has happened. There were bad things that took more time away: the pandemic. But there were good things too: I founded and began managing a Relationship Therapy Training program at Mary’s Center, and my family grew even more. Through it all, I never stopped thinking about what I could write for this blog. I was going to say, “I never stopped working on this blog,” but that’s not so accurate. There were many times I just had to stop writing for months because I had so many other demands. But I didn’t let go of my idea. When I couldn’t write, I listened to tons of music. From October 2020 to March 2023 I listened to all 500 of Rolling Stone’s “greatest albums of all time.” I have so much to say on that once I compile my spreadsheet….

Anyway, I set a goal and worked to get here. My specific goal right now is to get to 100 blogs, so I am half-way there as of this post. I can see my progress. I feel so much more confident in the developing value of my work. I am not sure what many other people think, but I am getting to a point where I am ready to share more widely to invite feedback and engage in conversations. I want to keep doing this work.

I have some more recently written blogs already cued up and ready to post, but I wanted this one to be more connected to marking the 50^th post. For this post, I dug into my “too shy to post” folder. The post was written by a silly former-me circa Fall 2019. I was still figuring out how Therapy Jam Sessions was going to work. Was it going to be me writing to song lyrics as if they were my clients? Was it going to be a straightforward resource link with a musical twist? Was it going to become more of an informed cultural commentary? I am still working it out, but I have a clearer vision now.

Now that I feel more secure with my work, I can have fun with past things I did when I was still figuring it out. With that whole story conveyed, here is the original post that attempts to point out how change requires lots of work. I do this through a lyrical exploration of Britney Spears’ Work B*tch:

One of my clients was realizing the other day how he had to work harder and do his part in his recovery. This is not identifying information, this is a common realization for many clients, and y’all have no idea when the other day was.

Anyway, this client was telling me how once he started putting in the work of a daily mindfulness practice and more awareness of negative thinking, and changing it to positive thinking, he was feeling much better. I was very happy for him. I did not tell him that “Work B*tch” became the session theme song in my head that day…

I fixed the lyrics though. Here they are:

 You want a calm body? You wanna love somebody?

Reach out when you need somebody?

You better THERAPY!

 Wanna stop thought meanies? Ditch the martinis?

Accept yourself in a bikini?

You better THERAPY!

 You wanna live caringly? Existential expansion?
Let go and dance?
You better THERAPY, you better THERAPY

You better THERAPY, THERAPY

Now get to THERAPY!
Now get to THERAPY!

 Interestingly these next lyrics did not need much of a rewrite. See my notes below:

THE ACTUAL BRITNEY LYRICS:

Bring it on, ring the alarm
Don’t stop now, just be the champion
Work it hard, like it’s your profession
Watch out now, cause here it comes

 I mean one part of therapy is figuring out your triggers, aka alarms, and being able to work through them…

MORE ACTUAL BRITNEY LYRICS:

Here comes the smasher, here comes the master
Here comes the big beat, big beat disaster
No time to quit now, just time to get it now
Pick up what I’m putting down
Pick up what I’m putting down

 OooOOooo it looks like someone is having a breakthrough!

 THE REST OF THE ACTUAL BRITNEY LYRICS:

Break it off, break it down
See me come and you can hear my sound
Tell somebody in your town
Spread the word, spread the word
Go call the police, go call the governor
I bring the treble, don’t mean to trouble ya’
I make the governor, call me the governor
I am the bad bitch, the bitch that you’ll never know

 I mean, therapy can often lead to necessary break offs and breakdowns. And maybe the police and the governor do need therapy. And through good therapy you can become a good police and governor of yourself.

 And here we have the serenity we were seeking in therapy:

 Hold your head high, fingers to the sky
They gonna try to try ya’, but they can’t deny ya’
Keep it moving higher, and higher
Keep it building higher, and higher
So hold your head high, fingers to the sky
Now they don’t believe ya’, but they gonna meet ya’
Keep it moving higher and higher
Keep it moving higher and higher and higher