April 05, 2020

The Waves Crash on the Shore and the Boat Alike

April 05, 2020/ James Cole Abrams Therapy/ James Abrams

The therapeutic relationship is unique: a one-sided-yet-authentic relationship which places the good of the client at the center of the work. By keeping ourselves out of the relationship while inviting all of our client into it, we therapists create a non-judgmental space where our clients can show the parts of themselves that they hide to the rest of the world. It is an intense experience, as we explore the most emotionally difficult parts of our clients’ lives while holding our own emotional ground. It’s a bit like the relationship between a lighthouse and a ship - we’re both in the same storm, but only one of us is lost at sea.

June 12, 2016

How to Keep Your Heart Beating

June 12, 2016/ James Abrams

Before I went to sleep last night I reminded myself that I had a blog to write, and ran through the general outline of my idea for this week. I woke up, enjoyed some breakfast, sat in the sun for a bit, and checked facebook. Suddenly I didn’t have a plan anymore - my calendar was immediately and coldly cleared, as my hopes for the day were suddenly pulled and distorted into the black hole of tragedy. Lucky as I am to not know anyone personally involved in the shooting at Pulse, I can’t keep the pain of such a horror from entering my chest. This is the reality of tragedy, that it is impersonal in its ability to cross boundaries, insatiable in its ability to demand attention, and implacable in its ability to cause pain...

June 05, 2016

Path of the Snake

June 05, 2016/ James Abrams

I have a friend who recently dropped out of a grad school he had been wanting to attend for years, and which I thought he was a perfect match for. It was a program in somatic therapy, and he is a person who is naturally in tune with himself and always expressing himself through movement and dance. When he told me he was dropping out, I couldn’t believe it - it was like The Flash quitting the track team. We got to talking, and he told me the reason he was leaving the program was that it was too hard. He said he loved the focus on dance and movement therapy, but that the pressure to turn inwritten papers every couple weeks was just too much. He wondered what was even the point of all this writing when the focus should have been on somatic awareness, and he left...

May 30, 2016

Questions of Medication

May 30, 2016/ James Abrams

As a non-prescribing therapist, I find myself being asked to counsel people on using medication to effect their mood very, very often. People want to know if I think medication might help them, if it might harm them, what kind of medication might be useful, as well as how much. The most frequent question I get from clients and others, though, is simply about whether or not I agree with the idea of medicating a person’s mood. Make no mistake, this is a very popular topic in the therapeutic community. And while I think the answer is simple, I don’t think it’s obvious...

May 22, 2016

Quality Control

May 22, 2016/ James Abrams

Mindfulness seems to be the hottest topic in psychotherapy these days, with near-daily articles about its effectiveness in national papers, and with just as many studies published alongside trying to debunk its claimed effectiveness. Some folks say mindfulness is a miracle cure for everything from stress to autoimmune disorders, others say it’s little more than a hoax. Regardless of your stance on mindfulness, you have to acknowledge it’s a conversation going on with enough frequency that it affects you whether you like it or not. From presidential recognition of its health benefits to corporate coaching to a yoga room at your local airport, mindfulness is coming down the pipe, so it’ll probably pay to have a better understanding of what it is...