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In the Pacific Northwest, I (and likely many of my colleagues) see a seasonal shift in therapy: as daylight returns and mood lifts, clients reduce sessions. Sometimes this is planned; other times sessions get missed or cancelled. In patterns consistent with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), this makes sense. Light exposure, energy, and motivation are closely linked. When environmental conditions improve, symptom intensity often decreases and initiation becomes easier. From

One of the things that keeps showing up for me in psychedelic therapy, and more broadly in work with altered states, is that intensity on its own doesn’t seem to be healing. In some cases, it appears to overwhelm an already taxed nervous system rather than organize or repair it. Insight and integration also don’t always arrive together. Mystical or expansive experiences don’t automatically translate into maturity or stability. At times, powerful altered states seem to open ge

I’ve been increasingly interested in older symbolic systems as a way of thinking about transformation, especially when modern psychological language feels incomplete on its own, and spiritual language starts to lose grounding. Not as replacements for clinical work or evidence-based approaches, and not as something to romanticize, but as symbolic systems that might still hold psychological value if they’re engaged carefully. Alchemy is one example that keeps coming up for me.

I recently came across a phrase that stayed with me: “Uncertainty is a regulating force.” At first, it felt counterintuitive. In therapy, regulation is usually something we move toward. We talk about emotional regulation, nervous-system regulation, and co-regulation as ways of creating greater stability, safety, and capacity. Those ideas often feel calming and grounding. Uncertainty, on the other hand, tends to evoke anxiety. Most of us experience uncertainty as uncomfortable

Modern mental health care seems to be getting better at helping people survive. That feels significant. Trauma-informed therapy, neuroscience, somatic work, and psychedelic-assisted approaches have all expanded how we understand suffering, and in many cases, they have made it easier for people to receive care without being reduced to labels like “broken,” “crazy,” or “weak.” There is something important in that shift toward greater nuance and compassion. At the same time, I n