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How can mornings pages and artist dates help you? They are the basic building blocks of recovering your creative spirit. But what are they and how do I do them? Check out the video to find out! :-)
P.S. The next 12-week Artist's Way Workshop therapy group will meet Sundays starting Feb. 4 in San Diego. Registration begins Jan. 2, and space is limited. Click here to receive updates via email.  Join us for the 2018 Artist's Way Workshop therapy group. We'll meet for 12 weeks — 10 am-12 pm Sundays, starting Feb. 4. Please click here to add your email to the interest list. Registration opens Jan. 2!
Why does this time of year feel so weird for so many of us? It's supposed to be happy, and it is, yet sometimes it can also feel sad or even tragic. Maybe it's the culmination of everything from the year right before we begin a new one...
If you're in need of extra support right now, please feel free to contact me for a free, 15-minute phone consultation. 
Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash
I'm exited to announce I'll be launching a new newsletter soon for Rachel Moore, LMFT. It will include info like announcements for groups such as The Artist's Way Workshop, new blog posts, and other helpful tidbits. Please sign up below!
Rachel Moore, LMFT, is now open for business! :-) I have two offices in the Hillcrest/Bankers Hill area. This video is a quick, whirlwind tour of my Tuesday office. Enjoy! P.S. If you'd like to schedule a free, 15-minute phone consultation with me, please click here. My friend and fellow clinician, Joel Schwartz, and I recorded a Facebook Live video as a follow-up to my recent blog post about Gabor Maté. Our freewheeling conversation covered lots of topics, including the nature of creativity itself. We also talk about the push-pull dynamic between feeling compelled to express and desiring to hide our creative selves. Click to 4:30 on the video to get to the start of our conversation. I hope you enjoy! If you are interested in pursuing psychotherapy with either of us, here is our contact: Rachel Moore: rachel@rachelmoorecounseling.com, 619-452-1082, http://www.rachelmoorecounseling.com/ Joel Schwartz: dr.jschwartz1@gmail.com (424) 265-8185  By Rachel Moore, LMFT
I was recently invited along with a few dozen other mental health clinicians to a small, salon-style discussion with author Gabor Maté. When I had the opportunity to ask him a question that night, he told me I was wrong. And I’m glad he did. If you’re not familiar with Maté, he is a renowned Hungarian-Canadian physician who specializes in neurology, psychiatry, psychology, and addiction. His basic premise is the mind and the body are inseparable. Maté’s books include “When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection” and “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.” Maté is also a Holocaust survivor, and he focuses on the effects of early childhood trauma in disease and addiction. In one interview, he said: “There are genetic predispositions to addictions, but they don’t cause addiction by themselves; they just increase the risk. In both animal and human studies subjects don’t become addicted if they receive the proper nurturing, even in the presence of predisposing genes.”  I spoke on the San Diego country radio station KSON this morning about the recent shooting in San Diego and how best to help those who were affected and dealing with the aftermath. You find the full interview here. In this blog post I address my psychotherapist colleagues, though I believe it would also be beneficial for clients and others to take a look at and learn from as well. -Rachel  I've seen discussions in online psychotherapist groups recently about current events like the Charlottesville rally and the presidential pardon of Joe Arpaio. In these groups, some therapists have encouraged their colleagues to specifically check in with clients who are people of color (POC) about these issues. This seems appropriate to me because part of our responsibility as clinicians is to broach difficult subjects, and race is certainly one of them. It doesn't matter what our particular political views are, but it does matter what our clients think, feel, and experience. White therapists in particular have a responsibility to create an environment where POC clients feel safe to open up. I was surprised to find some other therapists in these groups disagree with the need to check in with POC clients and/or derail the focus away from race. (I was even more surprised when the administrators of one group deleted a black therapist’s thread and removed her from the group). It seems clear to me there is work to be done in our profession about how to initiate conversations on race because this is a real issue that affects many of our clients directly. The personal is political.  Recently I checked out a pop-up art installation in San Diego called Wonderspaces. One of the exhibits was Not Myself Today. It consisted of a wall of buttons with emotions written on them. The instructions invited participants to choose a button that showed how they felt at the moment. (I picked the "Awkward" button and wore it upside down, just to be cheeky.) It got me thinking, what would it be like if we literally wore our feelings on our sleeves (or lapels)? How would we treat one another if we knew the other person was feeling sensitive or stressed that day? Would we be curious if we saw they were feeling proud? Would we be envious if they displayed their Zen status every day? If you're someone who doesn't usually pay attention to or understand your own feelings (or even if you do), try this as an experiment: Each morning when you wake up, write down what you're feeling. You can use a journal or your phone or even a scrap of paper. If you want to, write more about what your feeling looks like, tastes like, sounds like. Get to know it and understand it. There's no guarantee your feeling will change if you want it to, or that it will remain the same if you so desire. What you might discover, though, is you may have some feelings about your feelings. Maybe you judge them as good or bad. Maybe you judge yourself as good or bad for having certain emotions. Just notice this. Think about how you would treat someone who was wearing that particular feelings button. Would you judge them or want to help them? Perhaps you would seek to understand and connect with that person. Or maybe you'd want to give them some space. What would happen if you took this same approach with yourself? Try it and see... To request a free, 15-minute consultation with Rachel Moore, LMFT, and find out how she might be of help, please click here. |
AuthorRachel Moore, LMFT, is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapy in San Diego, CA. Rachel helps writers, artists, musicians, and other creative types overcome anxiety, trauma, and depression. She is trained in EMDR therapy. Archives
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Rachel Moore, LMFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist MFT #102826
rachel@rachelmoorecounseling.com
www.rachelmoorecounseling.com
(619) 577-4514
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist MFT #102826
rachel@rachelmoorecounseling.com
www.rachelmoorecounseling.com
(619) 577-4514