FPA Blog

  Much of therapy, though not all, may relate to a person’s experience of suffering. Throughout human history, there are a number of shared general experiences, and of these the experience of suffering would be one. Depending on the context, how someone would define or describe “suffering” may change, but in general we might consider “suffering” as a form of extreme distress or pain that results from encountering (once or chronically) some form of harm or threat which so significantly affects the person, their perception of themselves and life as well as their general well-being. Frequently, when talking about “suffering,” we may reference it by talking about persevering or enduring through the experience. What does suffering look like? Suffering is not something that only briefly appears, but it remains present for a period of time; and, during this time, the person may feel hopeless, despair, desiring relief from suffering and potential separation from the source of sufferi...

  Picture this – You’re sitting in the doctor’s office for a follow up appointment. Lately, you’ve been working on your health because recent results came back showing it’s time to focus more on your health. So, that’s what you’re doing. And while you’re sitting in the office, you are given a short questionnaire asking how often you felt a particular way, or if it’s hard to relax, or if your sleep or appetite has been off lately. What do these have to do with the test results? Picturing this scenario may be easier for some than others, because this may have recently been your experience. Some of you may have answered questions about anxiety, while others were asked about depression. Some even may have been asked about both. These moments in the doctor’s office show how your medical provider is concerned about your holistic health, and in these moments your provider is performing a mental health screener to confirm if there is not additional consideration needed to support your o...

  “Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn and work well, and contribute to their community. It has intrinsic and instrumental value and is a basic human right.” (World Health Organization, 2025) So you’ve learned that there is a therapist at your doctor’s office. Perhaps you learned this from a recent notification shared by FPA, or perhaps your primary doctor recommended that you meet with the therapist. What do you do now with this information? What benefits are there in meeting with the therapist? What is therapy even like? These questions, as well as many others, are very common to have when considering the usefulness or necessity of meeting with a therapist. Even when it is recommended, it can be difficult to feel comfortable opening up with a therapist about your life or current stressful experiences. If you’ve never experienced therapy before, that can also add a layer of “new” an...

December is upon us! I hope you are spending this season gathering with loved ones and enjoying a slower pace of life. As December rolls around, there’s often a quiet moment — between the busyness, the gatherings, and the year-end noise — when we start to look back. We might think about what went well throughout the year, what didn’t, and where the time even went. But real reflection isn’t about judgment or checking boxes. It’s about slowing down long enough to notice yourself — your growth, your challenges, and everything in between. I encourage everyone to take a routine inventory, helping cultivate gratitude for all we have and clarifying the vision we hope to manifest in our lives. If you’re ready to take a mindful look at your year, here are some gentle suggestions to center your thoughts. Start with Curiosity, Not Criticism When you think back over the past year, try to let go of the instinct to measure or evaluate. Think about moments that stood out — not just the big milestones...

Hello FPA community! I was recently chatting with a patient of mine who works as a cattle farmer. We were talking about how to prepare a farm and a herd for the winter months. Just as we change our habits to keep our animals safe and comfortable when the weather changes, we also need to change our own habits to keep good mental health in the winter months. As the days get shorter and the weather turns colder, many people notice their energy, motivation, and mood start to dip. It's known that less sunlight affects our neurological functioning. The good news? There are small, effective steps you can take to ease symptoms and help protect your mood through the darker months. Seek out natural light whenever you can Sunlight helps regulate your body’s internal clock and supports healthy levels of serotonin — the “feel-good” brain chemical. Try to get outside during the day, even if it’s cloudy. A short morning walk or lunch break near a window can make a real difference. Move your body ...

Hello dear FPA community! Happy October. I hope this time finds you crunching leaves underfoot, enjoying fireside chats with your loved ones, and baking all the spiced goods for the season. This season I personally am facing the challenge of embracing a big change and wanted to share some thoughts with you on why change is hard for many of us and what we can do to navigate it with better agility and grace. Change is the one constant of our human experience- ironic, isn't it? Change happens in big and small ways, across our health, our relationships, our work and even our identities. Change feels hard for most of us. As beings of nature humans are wired to seek predictability as a way to minimize risk and maximize survival. Uncertainty usually incites fear, in turn triggering a stress response in the body and in the mind. Emotional responses to change might include grief, anxiety, resistance, and irritability among many others. We are constantly faced with options in confronting cha...

Hello FPA and happy September! This month I wanted to share some thoughts with you about something I work with almost all of my patients on. My first meeting with a patient I usually set the expectation that in therapy we will often think about how we think and talk about how we talk. I know that might sound a little funky, but it's true! We don't take much time in our day to day lives to think about how we're thinking and talk about how we're talking. Our thoughts are so automatic within our own minds, but not every thought we have is accurate or helpful. Read that again real quick… not everything we think is true. Not every thought reflects a fact or a full reality. Each of our thoughts are influenced by past experiences, emotions, or biases. Sometimes our brains fall into patterns that overlook or neglect certain truths. We might get caught in black and white thoughts, or overgeneralizations, or catastrophizing. Black and white thoughts might sound like "If I ...

  Hello FPA friends and family! We have arrived in the month of August. We're gearing up to send our kiddos back to school and resume some of our normal rhythms. We're also on the edge of a changing season, shifting away from the heat of the summer into the crispy cool of the fall. You may have noticed (I'd be shocked if you didn't) that our summer came with some intensely high temperatures. I stay curious about the relationship between external environment and internal experience. The heat waves of the season made me wonder about the impact of hot weather on irritability, mood, and relationships. There are some real implications of abnormally hot weather on our physical, emotional, and relational well-being. You might notice during heat waves that you have a shorter fuse, you tend to snap back at others, you might have difficulty concentrating, some general restlessness or an antsy feeling, your baseline frustration might have risen. This is all directly correlated wit...

Happy July FPA friends! Tis the season for travel, sunshine, pool days, and time off. Except, even when the hotel is booked, the out-of-office message is set, and the bag is packed… sometimes our brains don't get the memo that it's time to turn off. Why is it hard for some of us to unplug? Even in the best of circumstances, we can still feel restless, guilty, or just have a hard time relaxing. Some of us are too used to going a hundred miles a minute that we've forgotten how to slow down. Or we're just so out of practice slowing down, being still, and enjoying the moment that when we get the opportunity to take it easy, it feels hard. Our fast-paced culture and productivity-driven expectations as well as our attachment to our digital devices can keep us constantly activated. We've grown accustomed to being available to literally the entire world every waking moment of our lives. The notifications keep coming. The to-do list is never actually complete. Our minds are...

Hello to FPA as we welcome the month of June! You might not be aware that June is designated as Men's Health Month , which is why I want to share some thoughts with you specifically about men's mental health. You'll notice as I write that I make some generalizations about both male culture and female culture, and I want to note up top that of course these things are not true for all individuals and that my language choice of men/man is not exclusionary to other masculine gender identities. So why am I writing about this and what's the problem here? Men don't talk about things that need talking about.  What outcome does that yield? Men suffer. They suffer in silence. They feel alone. They are at much higher risk of death by suicide.  What are we going to do about that? Talk to our men. Men, talk to each other. The conversation is truly just beginning about men's mental health and how it intersects with our cultural ideas of masculinity and the expectations we pla...

Hello FPA! Today I want to share some thoughts with you about how we can untangle our identities from our medical and mental health illnesses. In our fast-paced world of diagnoses, prescriptions, and quick fixes, it can be easy to forget a simple truth : you are more than your symptoms . You are something more than your anxiety or your high blood pressure. You are a whole person. This is especially relevant if you are a person with a severe or chronic illness. At FPA, we believe in whole person care. I've written before about my treatment model as systemic- meaning all parts of us are connected to all other parts of us. Being a daughter impacts being a mother. Being a friend impacts being a colleague. The same is true for your medical conditions. Having a chronic illness, such as an autoimmune disorder, impacts so much more than your immune system. It impacts how available you can be socially, how much energy you have to play with your children, how many days you need to call off ...

Hello FPA and happy April! This month I want to share a few thoughts with you about aging. If you're one of my patients, you've seen my face and probably noticed I'm one of our younger providers. I've noticed that different age groups respond differently to perception of my age. I used to be self-conscious about working as a provider with a face as young as mine. I was only 23 when I finished my graduate studies and became a licensed professional. I wanted to be taken seriously, I didn't want patients to judge me based on my youth or make assumptions that I wouldn't be able to provide good care because I was young. I wanted the opportunity to earn the trust and confidence of my patients, and I feared I wouldn't get that opportunity based on bias or assumption. I wanted to look older and be perceived as older so I wouldn't be dismissed. That was 8 years ago, and now that I've been in healthcare for awhile I've learned some things. Here’s the thing...

 Ahhh, friends. Let's talk about being happy. 'Being happy' is a goal lots of people have, especially when they begin a therapeutic process. I often ask, '"What do you want to be different when therapy has concluded?" and lots of patients respond with "Being happier." So that's a big goal. And a bit ambiguous for my liking. What does it mean to be happy? And what does science and research have to tell us about the experience of happiness and the sources of happiness? Happiness is, of course, an emotion. Data tell us the emotion of happiness is most closely linked with 4 specific neurotransmitters, which act as chemical messengers throughout our brains and bodies. Those four chemicals are: Dopamine Serotonin Oxytocin Endorphins   Dopamine is our feel-good chemical, the primary contributor to motivation, pleasure, and satisfaction. Serotonin is our mood boosting chemical, helping us regulate sleep and appetite. Oxytocin is our connector chemical, p...

Hello FPA friends and Happy February! This month I want to share with y'all a poem that was read by my brother during my wedding ceremony. I just think it's lovely and captures some foundational ideas about how I view romantic relationships. I hope you read it and enjoy it and maybe take a moment to reflect on the relationships in your life- the ones you've had, the ones you've witnessed in your families, the ones you hope to someday have. Does your love look the way you want it to? Does it look the way you need it to? What part can you play in building a healthier connection to the ones most important to you? This poem was written by Neil Gaiman, for his friends on their wedding day: This is everything I have to tell you about love:  nothing. This is everything I've learned about marriage:  nothing .   Only that the world out there is complicated, and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain, and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes, is to reach ...

Hello FPA and Happy New Year to you each! January has arrived, along with it a new start as we welcome 2025. In our part of the world a new year comes in the middle of our winter season- when the trees are bare. I write a lot about the changing of the seasons and the way our weather affects us. I think because one of the universal human experiences is the experience of weather. Weather is also a way to connect to our own communities, as we experience the changing seasons together. The energy of the collective shifts as the energy of the sun and the rain and the temperatures shift. I also love connecting to the changing of the seasons. As life comes in seasons, in waves of celebration and sadness, in ups and downs of abundance and scarcity, so does our environment. I've been thinking this season about the juxtaposition of newness with winter. The idea of 'new' brings with it ideas of spring, of blossoms and baby animals, of growth and expansion. Winter is not a time of growt...

Hello friends of FPA! December is in full swing. The holiday season is upon us. With the holidays often comes an increase in stress. We manage the expectations of ourselves and our loved ones around traditions, gatherings, gifting, and events. This is your gentle reminder to be honest with yourself and others about what matters to you during the holiday season. Less can be more. Doing less can lead to having more- more bandwidth, more quality time, more patience, more presence, more gratitude, more joy. Less pressure can mean more ease with your loved ones. Less gifting can mean more security for your family finances. Less hosting can mean more patience during times of togetherness. If you find that the holidays put you in a funk, get curious with yourself about why. You might be grieving the loss of an important person, celebrating without them for the first time. You might be stressed about finances and anxious about how you're going to afford everything expected of you. You migh...

Hello FPA Friends- and happy November! We’ve all just experienced the conclusion of a tumultuous election cycle. However you’re feeling about the outcome, you probably have people in your life who feel differently than you do. I’ve been talking with a lot of people lately about how to talk to their friends and family about their political opinions, especially when the beliefs underlying the opinions are in stark contrast. We want to be able to express ourselves, while we protect the health and the longevity of our most important relationships. Here are some basic suggestions to make your political conversations more productive and less harmful: Time, Place, and Temperature Don’t attempt a conversation when you’re already emotionally escalated, intoxicated, or distracted. Choose a time and a setting to talk when you won’t be rushed, and you have the option to end the conversation should it become unproductive. I highly recommend your conversation take place at least over the phone r...

Happy October FPA! It’s harvest season! The weather is turning, the leaves are changing, fall is arriving. What does it mean to harvest? To gather the fruits of your labor? To dig up the product of your hard work and enjoy and rest and celebrate? The harvest season means many things to many cultures, but the themes of harvest season tend to be abundance and joy. This is a season to celebrate and be at ease. So many of us aren't familiar with peace and rest. We stay busy. We stay busy with kids and family and work and friendships and hobbies and communities. We forget how important resting is, how vital a harvest season is to the goodness and fullness of our spirits.   Abundance and joy . Close your eyes for a mindful moment and reflect on the words abundance and joy . Think hard about the last time you really felt joyful, about the last time you really felt at peace. Picture yourself in that moment, just content. A moment when there was nothing to do and nowhere you needed to be, ...

Hello to September and hello to our FPA friends. This month I wanted to share with you something I’ve noticed in my 7 years practicing therapy that I find a bit strange. My patients’ concerns seem to come in waves of certain themes. What I mean is, I experience these clusters when a lot of people come in saying the same things to me in a marked period of time. I’ll have a few weeks where it seems like all of my patients, or a huge proportion of my patients, are dealing with the same thing. It’s always very specific. I don’t know how to explain the phenomenon. There are a few problems that I talk with almost everyone I treat about. I imagine that because we’re all humans navigating a wild world we’ll all experience flavors of the same dishes. We all know what it’s like to be sad, we all know what it’s like to be stressed, but every once in awhile I’ll have a few weeks when I hear over and over about a specific pain point. The theme of my work lately has been grief. Specifically, latel...