Writing
Notes from
thirty-five years
of listening.
These begin as things clients ask, or things I keep having to explain. They are free to read, and they are not a substitute for treatment — think of them as a place to start thinking.
Race & Identity
Always Being Watched: The Perspective of Blacks Living in America
To be Black in America is to learn early that visibility can feel like both a gift and a warning: seen, but not always understood; noticed, but not always protected.
Read the article
Race & Identity
The Psyche of Racism and Its Associated Dangers
Racism distorts perception, hardens the heart, and turns inequality into something that appears normal. Undoing it begins when people refuse to look away.
Race & Identity
What Are the Mental Health Implications for Black Families Living in America?
What generations of vigilance, code-switching, and quiet endurance cost a family — and how that load passes down.
Race & Identity
What's Behind More Black Youth Taking Their Own Lives?
The pressures that go unspoken among young Black men, and why asking directly is not optional.
Therapy & Counseling
Are Mental Health Disorders Hereditary?
What runs in families is usually not just biology. Patterns of coping and silence are inherited too.
Trauma
Are Women Just Emotional, or Is It a Trauma Response?
The label “too emotional” hides a history. Read closely, much of what gets called overreaction is a nervous system doing its job.
Therapy & Counseling
The Benefits of Online Therapy Sessions
Privacy, no commute, and a room you already feel safe in. Telehealth is not a lesser version of the work.
Therapy & Counseling
How to Choose the Right Counselor for You
Credentials open the door. Fit does the work. What to listen for in a first conversation.
Trauma
What Drives Athletes: Talent or Trauma?
Discipline, pain tolerance, the refusal to lose. Some of what looks like greatness began as survival.
Teens & Families
Generation Z (14–29): What's Going On in Their Head?
A generation raised on comparison, on camera, in the middle of a mental health crisis. What they need is not another lecture.
Teens & Families
The Challenges of Being a Teen in These Days and Times
Explosive anger, trouble focusing, defiance at home and school. Behavior your teen cannot explain in words.
Teens & Families
Can Keeping Family Secrets Kill You?
What a family agrees not to talk about does not stay contained. It moves into the bodies of the people who live there.
Teens & Families
Do My Kids Really Hate Me?
Most teenage contempt is not hatred. It is a child trying to become a person without permission.
Men's Issues
Masculinity and Trauma
Boys are trained out of expression and then blamed for being closed. Trauma underneath the training rarely gets named.
Men's Issues
How Men Show Hurt: Understanding Emotional Expression
Anger, withdrawal, work, sex, silence. The many ways a man can say 'this hurts' without using the words.
Men's Issues
Men and Porn
What the behavior is doing underneath, and why willpower alone keeps failing.
Men's Issues
Men and Intimacy
Closeness without control is unfamiliar ground for a man taught that vulnerability is a risk.
Men's Issues
What Men Fear in Relationships
Not commitment itself. What commitment might expose.
Men's Issues
Major Childhood Traumas Men Experience and Their Impact on Adult Life
The events men are least likely to report are often the ones driving the most in adult life.
Men's Issues
What Does It Mean to Be a Real Man?
The standard most men are measured against was written by somebody who never met them.
Men's Issues
The Sexual Insecurities of Men
What men carry quietly about their bodies, their performance, and their worth.
Relationships
The Hidden Secrets of What Men Desire in Relationships vs. What They Get
What men actually want is rarely what they have been taught to ask for.
Relationships
What Do Women Desire in a Relationship — and Is It Culturally Relevant?
Safety, attention, partnership. What culture adds to that list, and what it gets wrong.
Relationships
Do Women Really Want Marriage, or Are They Trying to Beat the Clock?
Separating what a woman wants from what she has been told she is running out of time to get.
Relationships
Are Men Afraid of Commitment and Marriage?
The fear is usually not of the person. It is of repeating something.
Relationships
Why I Can't Seem to Find the Right Man — Still Looking
When the pattern repeats across different people, the pattern is the information.
Relationships
Why Do Women Not Trust Men?
Trust is not a decision a woman makes. It is an accumulation.
Relationships
I Hate Being with My Partner on the Weekends
For some couples, the weekend removes the structure that was holding the relationship together.
Self-Care
Control Your Mind or It Will Control You
Attention is the most valuable thing you own, and the easiest to lose without noticing.
Self-Care
Tips for Taking Back Control of Your Life
Small, repeatable decisions beat one large act of willpower. Here is where to start.
Self-Care
Signals That You Need to Engage in Self-Care
The body usually raises its hand before the mind admits anything is wrong.
Self-Care
The Pressure of Other People's Expectations of Me
When you have been good at meeting expectations, nobody notices the cost of meeting them.
Self-Care
How Current Events Impact Emotional Well-Being: Recognizing the Signs
You are not imagining it. The news lands in the body, and some of us carry more of it than others.
Workplace
When Your Job and Employer Cause Continued Emotional Distress
A workplace can be a source of harm that follows you home for years. That is not a personal failing.