Tags
- compassion
- coping with anxiety
- couples therapy
- creative anxiety
- creative expression
- creative process
- death anxiety
- embracing mortality
- emotional processing
- emotional risk-taking
- encouragement
- expanding emotional capacity
- finding purpose
- friendship in marriage
- healthy relationships
- intentional living
- making meaning
- mental health
- perfectionism
- personal growth
- self-discovery
- shame
- skill-building
Journaling, Part Three: Overcoming Obstacles and Making the Practice Your Own
If you want to try journaling but feel inhibited by that persistent voice insisting your journal should be aesthetically pleasing or filled with profound insights, I encourage you to keep experimenting. That voice is standing between you and a potentially transformative practice.
Journaling, Part Two: Tools, Methods, and Finding What Works for You
I have a strict policy against buying blank books that feel too expensive or precious; I simply don't want that kind of pressure. Journals are tools, not objects of reverence. A journal should be like a hammer or a spatula — you want a tool that fits the task at hand, not one so intimidating that you can't even begin to use it. The best journal is the one you’ll actually use.
Journaling, Part One: A 27-Year Love Affair
Journaling has been my most faithful companion through decades of life's twists and turns. During times of anxiety or grief, my journal offered refuge — a judgment-free space where my raw, unfiltered thoughts could live. I'll never forget the day I found an old black-and-white Composition Book during a painful breakup. As I flipped through the pages filled with my own handwriting, I was stunned. The relationship problems crushing me now were documented there in my own words — five years earlier, during our first months together. Finding that journal became more than an eye-opening moment. It created a through line, connecting present-me with past-me, reestablishing trust in my own inner knowing.
Alua Arthur: Why Thinking About Death Helps You Live a Better Life
“Death creates context for our lives… How we die creates the period at the end of the sentence but it is the period that makes it a sentence at all.”
Living in the Spirit of Friendship
“Couples need to learn to be friends, to live with each other in a spirit of friendship, to take the quality of friendship as a guide through the tangles we have made of love.”
“There is only one of you in all of time”
Creative encouragement from the great American teacher, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.
The Space, the Bridge, and the Encounter
Hedy Schleifer and the power of connection: “Our relationship lives in the space between us. It doesn’t live in me or in you or even in the dialogue between the two of us. It lives in the space that we live together.”
Parts Work: A Gentle Approach to Your Inner World
Parts work recognizes that we all contain multiple perspectives, emotions, and needs within us — this is our fundamental nature. This approach views internal conflict as a conversation between different aspects of yourself, each with its own concerns and wisdom. Rather than trying to eliminate difficult emotions, parts work invites you to listen to all aspects of your experience with curiosity and care.
The Power of Vulnerability
Brené Brown is a researcher and storyteller who’s spent two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy. Her 2010 TED Talk on vulnerability took the world by storm and since then has been viewed and shared by millions. It remains a delight to watch, and foundational concept to the therapy work I do.
What Really Matters at the End of Life
BJ Miller is a physician whose passion for hospice and palliative care stems from his own near-death experience.