Anthony Bourdain died a few days ago on June 8, 2018 and Kate Spade died just three days earlier on June 5, 2018. Both allegedly took their lives via suicide despite both having established great fortune and status in their professions. Their problems may have resulted from similar blows cascading from challenges including divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, and the stress of the public eye on their personal lives.

The truth is that it’s the personal difficulties of our lives that can both have a positive and profound negative effect on our well-being. Oftentimes, after news of such tragedies, pundits…

I have always been a writer and have kept a journal since I was a child. In my teens, I wrote every night about my day and whatever I was into at the moment. In my 20s, I wrote about how I wanted to change the world, but didn’t really know how. In my 30s, my writing turned a little dark and I now equate that to how I viewed my challenges. Everything was no longer a broad brush stroke and society seemed to support and typecast the individual. …

Let’s say you’ve got a situation where you need to make a critical decision. In my work with children and adolescents, this happens all of time in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. Although I have been traditionally trained to be objective in my findings, I have found the subjective and projective measures to be important to consider in many situations, particularly with severe personality disorders, autism, and emotional disabilities.

What I have considered and lectured over the past decade is that our guts may be telling us something important. Although I exercise caution in relying completely on our guts, it is…

As I sit back to read the Post at my neighborhood library in D.C., I reflect upon the various positions I’ve been fortunate to manage over the course of my career. I’ve worked primarily in the areas of counseling, acute and partial hospitalization, private practice, public and private schools, academia, and higher education. I am at the cusp of mid-career and am currently focusing on my next professional endeavors and goals.

Although Washington, D.C. is officially a district, it is the 7th state in the U.S. where I have lived. Having been a resident here for about a year, I…

One of my earliest memories of the life I dedicate to social justice was from my elementary schoolyard in the mid-seventies. I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and, in 1975, my family moved to the Heartland where I grew up in Springfield, Illinois for 13 years. I later moved to Southern California, Charleston, South Carolina, Philadelphia, Chicago, and now D.C. and have often reflected on the experiences of my early childhood and its direct impact on my career and life journey.

I remember the playground that sat on the east side of the school and sprawled out to the edge…

Your news feed is being delivered directly to your phone via a personal algorithm of sites you visit, subscribe to, and like and sites you block or simply ignore. You can thank facebook and google for single-handedly mining and sorting your interests for you. The only problem is your “news” is now skewed and biased to be precisely what you want to see. In the states, this news further reflects the polarization and, subsequent, dissonance of its citizens. It seems we are living in the future of some very precarious mind control.

Doctor of Psychology, School Psychologist, and Academic continually looking for ways to improve. I see the world as an immense playground from which we have the opportunity to launch into infinite endeavors, some good and some not so good. Either way, it helps us to see we are imperfect and can only work to be better than we were yesterday. The idea is to endeavor, remain curious, and achieve, all the while accepting our losses, cherishing our loves, and relishing in our successes.