How do childhood experiences impact self-esteem into adulthood? How about if you are trans? How about if you are also biracial and an immigrant learning a new language while interpreting for your parents? While these factors of intersectionality in identity play a crucial role in the psychotherapy process, there is still precious little research and clinical literature addressing them. This may be a continuation of the long history of colonizing and heteronormative mindsets in psychology and psychiatry. But new generations of therapists are radically expanding the definition of therapy, including Sydney-based, Chinese-Australian clinical psychologist Xi Liu, who says they are “queering therapy” with their new therapy/theater project called “In Session.”

What is resilience targeting?

Resilience targeting is an attack on individual and community resilience during disasters through misinformation, confusion, and efforts to overwhelm, in order to prevent communities from recovering and keep them vulnerable.

There's a lot of stigma and negativity about narcissism floating around, particularly online.

Narcissistic personality disorder exists on a spectrum with a wide range of personal experiences.

Having self-compassion, working on personal growth, and focusing on others can all help one's mental health.

Homework between therapy sessions is a practice dating back decades and based on the idea that a client can improve therapy outcomes through practice. But what happens if therapy homework itself is too challenging or difficult? I have eight ways you can explore to understand and navigate therapy homework.

People often feel regret over a past action that doesn't represent who they are or who they want to be.

Regret can offer valuable feedback, or it can initiate a harmful negative loop.

A simple exercise can break the loop and transform regret into a growth opportunity.

There are two types of empathy style, detached or involved, and knowing your style and that of your partner will help you to communicate with less friction.

HBO’s "Succession" captures the emotional chaos one can feel around the death of a parent who is both loved and hated.

A common tendency is to focus on the positive qualities of the deceased, but often ambivalence plays a role in the grieving process.

Self-talk, using elements of chairwork, can help a person in grief fully express themselves.

Unlike in the movies, to access the therapy multiverse, you don’t have to chew old gum you found under a desk, staple your forehead, or talk to Dr. Strange.

What is narcissistic tolerance? What is the empathy trap? If you have narcissistic people in your life, you may need to know if you fall in one of these categories, and how to cope.

How to understand a trauma-informed approach to your boundaries.

By focusing on the inner child and the simple feelings we feel, we connect with the right side of the brain and the amygdala, the place of powerful impulses and feelings. Then we switch to an idea of our best self—the healthy caring adult—where we connect with the pre-frontal cortex, or the place of judgment, logic, and useful self-awareness.

Where does punitiveness schema come from?

6 signs of punitiveness schema.

How punitiveness schema makes you vulnerable to narcissistic hidden manipulation.

Negativity schema is believing you are likely to fail if you try, the world will not provide for you, and you are better off not trying.

Negativity schema may come out of an experience of genuine deprivation, neglect, and emotional hardship.

Too much negativity leads to paralysis of action, making positive change even harder, which reinforces a negative outlook.

Approval-seeking schema is a pattern repeatedly triggered in an individual who feels compelled to find others' approval.

Approval-seeking schema originates in early childhood unmet emotional needs.

Over time, the person with the schema may feel resentment, and the partner may feel burdened with demands and unexpected hurt feelings.

“Glass Onion” is a whodunit in the tradition of Agatha Christie, and audiences can’t stop watching for reasons related to neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. All will be revealed!

When you combine a strong inner critic with an insecure, vulnerable child, the vulnerable child turns to the inner critic for care and support.

The inner gaslighter may threaten you with a worst-case scenario of being rejected and abandoned.

Notice when the inner critic is talking, how it makes you feel, and stand up to it.

Insufficient self-control schema is the experience of states of impulsiveness, usually related to several compulsive behaviors.

If it’s tough for you to moderate or control your impulses around pleasure, you may have an insufficient self-control schema.

Schema therapy defines the schema as originating in childhood attachment experience as a reaction to negative emotions.

On the surface, Christmas is a holiday about love, gratitude, generosity, and light.

In reality, Christmas can be about pain in relationships, disappointment, performance anxiety, and loss.

Movies depicting the full range of feelings we have about the holidays are emotionally validating.

Your "Inner Scrooge" is an attitude that says you are never enough.

You may think your Scrooge helps you get things done, but you really don’t need him.

Charles Dickens suggests three ways of dealing with the inner critic, and they sound a lot like schema therapy.