Olympic Athletes Champion Honesty About Mental Health

By Anna McKenzie The postponed 2020 Olympics in Tokyo showcased more heroes than those who won medals. The aftermath of COVID-19 and an extra year of training took its toll on many athletes, and several of them spoke out about their physical, emotional, and mental health struggles. In fact, the… Read More

Pursuing Post-Traumatic Growth

By Melissa Riddle Chalos There’s nothing like a full-on, worldwide pandemic to bring life as we know it to a crashing, hard stop. We were moving along at a nice clip, working our jobs, going to school, raising our families and then, boom! The entire world stopped on a dime. Read More

Sand Tray Therapy: What Is It and How Does It Work?

By Anna McKenzie Most of us haven’t played in a sandbox in years, and while we might jokingly refer to a vacation at the beach as “sand therapy,” neither of these activities are officially “therapeutic.” Sand can play a role in treatment, though, in the form of Sand Tray Therapy. Read More

Trauma’s Rising Public Profile

By Wesley Gallagher Trauma—it’s a big word with many connotations. Terms like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have entered the American lexicon, tied to news of terrorist attacks or stories of combat soldiers. But trauma is something that is experienced in big and small ways by people in all… Read More

The Many Masks of Unresolved Grief

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding and could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which… Read More

How Psychodrama Heals Trauma

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, touted by Oprah Winfrey as one of the most important studies of our time, has successfully made the connection between emotional and psychological childhood trauma and physical health problems later in life. In other words, what begins in the mind alters the body’s… Read More

The Anxiety of Living with Unresolved Grief

By Tian Dayton, Ph.D., Psychologist, Author, Psychodramatist, Senior Fellow at The Meadows Grief that’s out in the open, part of the natural cycle of life, or part of one of life’s tragic circumstances has a dignity to it. The person experiencing a loss feels that they have a right to… Read More

Write a Love Letter to Your Inner Child

Write a love letter to your inner child, to that part of you that is young, playful, innocent and vulnerable. That part of you who you need to be listening to, who you need to be on good terms with so that you can feel spontaneous, alive and creative! Letter… Read More

Growing Up in the Shadow of Addiction

Children of addicted parents who experience relational trauma can carry the imprint of that pain for the rest of their lives. As adult children of alcoholics (ACoA), we can be perplexed about what we’re healing from and how we should heal it. Many of us think that we can… Read More

Men’s Trauma Affects Their Recovery and Relationships

Mental health professionals can improve treatment through trauma-centered and gender-responsive approaches. When men seek treatment for addiction, depression, and mental health disorders the outcomes are often quite positive. However, there is still room for improvement, since the risk for relapse after treatment is still somewhat high. Dan Griffin, an American sociologist who has studied gender and recovery and trained at Hazelden as a chemical dependency counselor, thinks that the men would be more likely to maintain recovery if treatment programs take a more trauma-centered and gender-specific approach. Read More