Maybe you’re doing all the things. You meditate, eat well, exercise, seek out appropriate social support, set good boundaries, and follow good sleep hygiene practices. But you’re still feeling significant distress. There can be a tendency to push ourselves harder, to berate ourselves for not feeling better despite our best efforts. But this is often…

Consider taking care of a child, a pet, or a garden. Do you ignore them for long stretches and attend to them periodically and call that good care? Or does caring for pretty much anything or anyone you can imagine involve paying consistent attention to their needs and taking steps to meet those needs? Self-care…

“When someone is drowning, that is not the time to teach them how to swim.” How does the concept of self-care land on you? Do you envision morning meditations, beach vacations, a dedicated yoga practice, or something else that replenishes and renews you? Or do you experience it as another obligation, just one more thing…

Consider this scenario: I am approaching my house, which I believe to be empty. I hear unmistakable noises from inside. If I conclude that I am interrupting a break-in, I will take precautions. If it turns out to be a surprise party, that’s okay. I may have felt frightened for no reason, but I really…

One of the biggest challenges with setting boundaries may be an unacknowledged internal drive to avoid those boundaries. We talked last time about challenging ideas of work as worth and about accepting that no amount of accomplishment can resolve empty feelings. You could pour a literal ocean into a cup with a hole in it…

Though this is frequently unacknowledged, physicians experience intimate partner violence (IPV) at a rate consistent with or higher than the national average (Reibling, et al., 2020). Some progress is being made, but there are still a number of significant barriers to reporting this experience. Physicians and other healthcare professionals may be reluctant to seek medical…