As I revisited my 2021 reading list, some pretty distinct themes emerged: relationships, attachment, personal value, and self-compassion. I didn’t intentionally seek out books with these subjects in mind, but what I read tends to follow my day-to-day work as a therapist.

The job of a therapist involves hearing, and sometimes vicariously experiencing, some of the most tragic and heart-rending facets of the human experience. People come to sessions with every kind of trauma imaginable, and it’s our job to receive it all with an empathetic ear and an open heart. But being on the receiving end of someone’s difficult or harrowing story is not an experience exclusive to therapists. It’s something we can all experience in our daily lives!

Everyone talks to themselves. Most of the time, we chatter on to ourselves inside our head and we aren’t even fully aware that we are doing it. Our thoughts and opinions and judgments simply play on like a never-ending record in our mind, and we oftentimes don’t stop to pay any attention to what the lyrics are actually saying.

A very common question from first-time clients: How many sessions will this take? From a financial perspective, this question seems very valid. People want to know what their financial obligation is going to be before getting started, which is definitely information worth knowing.