Ariana Grande's body has once again become a topic of public conversation.

People are worried.
People are angry that people are worried.
People are defending her.
People are criticizing her.
People are diagnosing her.
People are telling everyone else to stop talking about her.

This is a conversation that does not ask simple questions, and it certainly does not provide easy or comfortable answers. Questions like: When is it appropriate to comment on someone's body? And does someone's influence or position in the public eye put them in a position to be scrutinized more?

We can know something, understand it, and still struggle to feel differently. We want our thoughts to be the thing that controls our emotions. We want to be able to reason our way out of anxiety, talk ourselves out of hurt, or remind ourselves of what we know until our feelings finally fall in line. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way.

As I mentioned in my last blog, we don't choose our emotions. We choose what we do with them. And sometimes, that means accepting that knowing something is true and feeling that it is true are two very different things.

I hear frequently that someone has come to therapy to “control my emotions.” Very often, they do not recognize that controlling their emotions is not the same as regulating them. We often talk about emotional regulation as if the goal is to stop feeling so much. To calm down faster. To stay composed. To not react. But emotional regulation was never supposed to mean controlling your emotions. In fact, sometimes trying too hard to control an emotion can make it even harder to regulate.

Once a year, we have a day to celebrate you being brought into this world. As a kid, birthday parties, cake, and presents all make that one day feel magical. Yet, as we get older, it seems that magic can get lost. In fact, it can be replaced with other emotions that don’t really align with celebration at all.

Birthdays can bring up a lot of emotions and it can be hard to process when the cultural expectation of a birthday is all about fun and celebration. If you feel sad, angry, lonely, or really anything other than happy, it can feel like you’re not being appreciative enough or like maybe there is something wrong. But really, as great as birthdays can be, they can also be very hard and that is completely normal.

Gaslighting. Love bombing. Trauma bond. Narcissist. These are just a few words I see used frequently in everyday conversations and across social media. While increased awareness around unhealthy relationship patterns can be incredibly valuable, pop psychology has often removed the context and complexity behind these terms.

Just because someone hurt you, made you feel guilty, manipulated a situation, or lied to you does not automatically mean they are a narcissist. Their behavior may have been harmful, their actions may have impacted you deeply, and you may still decide they are not someone you want in your life. But harmful behavior alone does not equal Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

It feels like everywhere you look today, someone is talking about neurodivergence. Friends and family are having conversations about it, social media is filled with people sharing their lived experiences, and more people than ever are wondering whether the stories they relate to might also describe them.

Yet despite becoming a common part of our everyday vocabulary, neurodivergence is also widely misunderstood. Many people are left asking, What does it actually mean? and Why does it suddenly seem like everyone is talking about ADHD, autism, or being neurodivergent? Alongside greater awareness has come greater confusion, and with it, a number of misconceptions about what neurodivergence is.

Building this practice meant asking myself some important questions. How did I want to show up in this profession? What message did I want people to walk away with? And perhaps most importantly, how did I want someone to feel when they sat across from me for the first time? The answers came surprisingly easily once I thought about why I became a psychologist in the first place. To help others in a way that did not feel like they were being judged and to create a safe space to deal with all of the uncertainty in life.

Have you ever walked out of a therapy session thinking “Did I waste my session today talking about nothing really important?”

It is probably a more common thought than most people realize. The hour of time you just spent might have been talking about what TV shows you have been watching, how the World Cup is going, or maybe just something funny that happened that week. It is often assumed that every session of therapy should be ‘doing the work’ and when you leave a session asking yourself if you wasted your time there, it can be disheartening.

But here’s the thing - therapy is never meant to be just one thing. When we pigeonhole ourselves into thinking one way about something, we often miss the bigger picture…myself included. I personally had this experience with my own therapy just recently. I was frustrated and feeling like I wasn’t utilizing that precious hour of time wisely. It felt like a waste and made me really wonder about my own clients’ experiences with this type of session. And then I realized why those types of sessions are so incredibly important to the entire therapeutic process.