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Solid State and Removing the Noise
There comes a point where your brain stops fighting the world. Not because the world became quieter. Because you did. We live in a society that celebrates constant stimulation. Every notification demands...
Jul 263 min read


Who Has the Right to Be a Victim?
Who has the right to know they have been harmed? Who has the authority to recognise someone as a victim? Who has the right to speak for a community? When medicine, advocacy, the law, and society...
Jul 246 min read


Rediscovering Identity Beyond What You Do and Learning to Separate Worth From Productivity
For many years, if someone asked me who I was, I would have answered with a list. I am a speech pathologist, a business owner, a wife, a mother, and someone who helps. These answers are all true.
Jul 235 min read


The Nervous System Crisis Nobody Talks About and Why Stress Goes Beyond the Mind
When people think about stress, they often imagine a busy mind, endless worries, and emotional overwhelm. Yet, according to many holistic health practitioners, stress is far more than a psychological...
Jul 235 min read


Why Movement Reduces Anxiety, Improves Mental Health, and Increases Our Happiness
Psychotherapy, though irreplaceable, isn’t always the fastest or most accessible path to feeling better. This is because the key to its success is the quality and depth of the relationship between the...
Jul 226 min read


Why There is No One-Size-Fits-All for Wellbeing
For decades, health has largely been measured by what is wrong with us. Blood pressure, cholesterol, body weight and disease markers have dominated conversations between clinicians and patients alike.
Jul 226 min read


Merula Manifesto III – In the Name of Being Honest
Time after time, the same question resounds in my ear. "Sandra, how do people change so quickly when working with you?" Most of the time, I just smile. That gesture hides more than it shows. Not because...
Jul 2212 min read


The One Thing Every Cancer Patient Deserves
A cancer diagnosis has a way of dividing your life into two chapters: before cancer and after cancer. One moment you're making plans for the future, worrying about everyday life and thinking about...
Jul 2110 min read


You Are Functioning, But Are You Actually Okay?
On high-functioning burnout, the nervous system that learned to call exhaustion normal, and why looking fine on the outside is not the same as feeling safe on the inside. This article explores why many high-achieving...
Jul 2011 min read


Chronic Pain is Psychological Too
When patients come to us with chronic pain, they rarely expect to find themselves sitting in a psychologist's office. Most have already seen a physical therapist, an orthopedist, or a pain management...
Jul 175 min read


7 Hidden Costs of Childhood Trauma That Success Can't Fix
From the outside, someone can appear to have it all together. A successful career. A thriving business. A loving family. A busy social life. They smile, they achieve, and they keep going. Yet...
Jul 165 min read


How to Feel Your Feelings and Why You Don’t
Many neurodivergent (ND) people have a hard time feeling their feelings. On its face, this is a curious concept, after all, it's right in the name. Feelings should be easy to feel. There are several...
Jul 156 min read


What to Know About RSD if You're Neurodivergent
First, what exactly is RSD? Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria is an extreme and distressing emotional reaction to perceived rejection or criticism. While anyone can experience rejection sensitivity, RSD...
Jul 155 min read


The Journey to Self Offers a Practical Roadmap to Real Healing in a World That Never Slows Down
In a culture that celebrates busyness and pathologizes stillness, the simple act of turning inward has become quietly radical. We are a society in which being "fine" has become the default public performance...
Jul 1511 min read


You Already Know What to Do, So What's Stopping You?
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where, on paper, making a simple behaviour change should be straightforward, yet in practice it is quite the opposite? You are not alone.
Jul 149 min read


What the Robins Taught Me About Survival
For two weeks, right outside my window, I watched a mother robin guard her nest, three soft blue eggs, each no bigger than a thimble. When the babies hatched, they were tiny grey blobs, their hearts...
Jul 129 min read


Beyond the Code and Why Healthcare Must Rethink Workplace Violence Prevention
For more than two decades as a nurse, I have walked into healthcare environments where safety was never guaranteed: psychiatric hospitals, emergency rooms, state hospitals, correctional healthcare...
Jul 94 min read


The Forgiveness Factor and The Physiologic Impact of Releasing Painful Experiences
Forgiveness is increasingly recognized as more than a psychological or spiritual practice, it is a measurable contributor to physical health. Emerging evidence from psychophysiology, neuroscience, and...
Jul 85 min read


What an Old Road Atlas Taught One Woman About the Hidden Beliefs Keeping Her Stuck
Sometimes the biggest obstacle to change isn’t the road ahead, but the internal map we no longer realize we’re still following. Barbara wasn’t planning on a moment of insight that Saturday. She was just...
Jul 84 min read


Which Beats Anxiety Between Meditation and Affirmations?
Many of my mental health clients ask me for help with anxiety. Unfortunately, not many of them know they will also have to start a new habit: listening to their “self talk.” “That’s really hard,” or “I have no...
Jul 79 min read


What Chronic Stress Did to My Brain and What I Wish I Had Known Sooner
Most of us know that stress is bad for us. But what if the real danger is not the big, dramatic moments of stress, but the quiet, relentless accumulation of it over months and years? This is the...
Jul 75 min read


Understanding Fearful Avoidant Attachment Through the Lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS)
There's a particular kind of confusion that comes from loving someone who seems to want you and not want you at the same time. Things get close. Something shifts. They withdraw, sometimes coldly...
Jul 77 min read


The High Performer Who Is Still Delivering Is Often the Last Person Anyone Thinks to Ask
There is a sentence I hear more often than almost any other in early conversations with clients who come to us. It goes something like this: I still get to work every day. My family is intact. The numbers...
Jul 64 min read


We Forgot How to Play, and It’s Costing Us Our Color
“Thank God it’s Friday.” That’s a popular American slogan. We finished our work week with plans for the weekend already established, or with high hopes of arriving at work or school on Monday after a...
Jul 63 min read
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