Couples
Let's talk about sex! (In therapy!)
I practice pro-sex therapy. I don’t really feel I have the option not to in my NYC therapy office. In the case of sex, everyone has it, had had it or has a significant relationship with it. Sex is such a vital part of who we are as human beings. To ignore it would be akin to ignoring feelings. People need to talk about sex. This isn’t just because people can have all sorts of challenges related…
Oct 20, 2016
Exploring Your Tribe: Family Therapy and Family History
Family history in family therapy and beyond. Through my work as a psychotherapist and family therapist, I’ve learned that understanding family histories and identifying family patterns can help us understand why we find ourselves in repeated situations. This is vital in both family therapy--where a family unit is in the therapy office, as well as in individual therapy. Ever wonder why you seem to…
Sep 06, 2016
Family therapy: For New Yorkers an unconsidered psychotherapy option
New York family therapists love family therapy. Therapists who offer family counseling love family counseling. And often, those who aren't family therapists find the idea of family counseling terrifying. Ironically this is often for the same reasons. Families are tough. If you've spent time in one, it's like that you get that very well.New York's family identity: A different conception of family…
Mar 23, 2015
I didn't say we wouldn't be talking about your mother in therapy
We have something of a reputation here at TriBeCa Therapy for being therapists who aren't overly invested in the psychoanalytic method of excavating the past. It's accurate, and it's a reputation that's been well earned on our part.We take exception to two corresponding assumptions underlying the dominance so often placed on the past that many therapists make:That understanding the…
Mar 18, 2014Stop listening
Wherever I wander in New York City, people make a lot of assumptions about me as a therapist. People figure I'm psychoanalyzing them (I'm not--I don't even do that in the therapy room). They wonder how I can "handle listening to people's problems all day" and they nearly universally figure I must be a good listener.Maybe I am a good listener. Okay, I am; any therapist should be. But the…
Nov 08, 2012"Just like me"
I got an email this morning from someone in New York who found my website searching for group therapy. He said a few things about himself, what he's struggling with, and then wrote, "I'm looking for a therapy group with people just like me."I was touched. It was clear that this guy spends most of his life feeling like the oddball. I could relate. For an awful lot of my life I felt the same way,…
May 24, 2011
But why?
Last night I finally got around to watching the stunning documentary Man on Wire, chronicling Frenchman Philippe Petit's astonishing 1974 tight-wire walk between the recently erected twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center. The feat took years to plan (not to mention a lifetime of practice on Petit's part). Petit and his crew of supporters plotted every detail of the seemingly…
Feb 22, 2011
Two meanings of catastrophe
I've had a number of conversations in the past few weeks with folks who's lives, in one way or another, are falling apart. Being a psychotherapist, it's not so unusual. What seems different is in just how many of these cases what fell apart needed to fall apart:A pursuit of a PhD 9 years on, without much progress but at great expense (and opportunity cost). A business that's been making everyone…
Jan 25, 2011
Other people, who are a pain in the ass
When I was a freshman in college things were bad, and I dragged myself to therapy. I'd stopped being able to cope with the depression I'd just barely coped with most of my life. College was hard, and I didn't have a clue. There was this girl who was into me and then not into me and then into me again. And I had this roommate... It was college.Dr. R. and I talked about a lot of things. We talked…
Jan 04, 2011The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers (from the NY Times)
I've been excited about this article from the New York Times for weeks. Basically, a group of researchers at Harvard "found" some credible evidence for more-than modest implications of a high-quality kindergarten teacher over the life of a child. By implications, of course, this is to say that the team of economists measured the impact of good teaching in the first year of elementary school on…
Oct 25, 2010
A perfectly good game of catch
My first job out of college (not counting a few highly-forgettable temping nightmares--definitely another blog post) was at a wonderful, progressive child welfare agency in Chicago. The agency was a pioneer in an approach that's now common in social services called wraparound. As the name implies, wraparound grew out of the idea that kids and families (and foster families) could make it through…
Jun 14, 2010
Quid pro quo
"From the Latin," says Wikipedia, meaning "something for something."It's implicit in just about every conversation I have with my therapy patients about fairness. It's the idea that when we do something for someone, we should expect them to do something of roughly equal value in return. We feel taken advantage of if we give something and don't feel it's reciprocated.The balance sheet approach.…
May 10, 2010Browse all Tribeca Therapy topics
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