Mental Health Articles

A gender dysphoria assessment done well takes about six months, not one to six appointments. A licensed psychologist explains what the time is for, what gets ruled out, how capacity to consent is weighed, and what the findings can and cannot settle.

Most of the guilt people bring me is noise. Then there is the other kind, where you let something slide that mattered and you know it. Forgiving yourself for that kind follows a sequence, and skipping to the end does not work. Here is the order I use.

People in their thirties and forties tell me they have a good life and nobody to tell about it. The friendships didn't fail. The structures that used to do most of the work of friendship quietly went away, and nothing replaced them. Here is what that costs and what rebuilding takes.

Pilots who freeze on a checkride are rarely the ones who skipped the studying. They are usually the ones whose flying had become automatic and then got interrupted by the sound of their own supervision. Here is what the research shows, what the ACS counts as a bust, and what the work to fix it looks like.

Yes, controllers can go to therapy, and the FAA's May 2026 guidance names you specifically. The medical standard is the same one pilots hold. The reporting rules are not, and the differences matter. An aviation psychologist explains.

Burnout and ADHD produce almost the same complaint: you can't focus, you can't start things, you lose the thread in meetings. The difference is in the timeline, and a careful evaluation is built to find it. A licensed psychologist explains what separates the two, why online screeners can't, and what changes depending on the answer.

A childhood ADHD diagnosis or an old prescription doesn't end a flying career before it starts. The FAA sorts ADHD histories into a Fast Track and a Standard Track, and the difference between them is one interview versus days of testing. An aviation psychologist explains who qualifies for each, and why the order you do things in matters most.

A DUI, a positive test, or an honest answer on Item 18 can put a pilot in the FAA's HIMS program. It's not the end of a career. An FAA/HIMS trained aviation psychologist explains the evaluation, treatment, monitoring, and special issuance steps, and what a substance abuse evaluation actually looks at.

Pilots can fly on certain antidepressants. The FAA's Antidepressant Protocol has a short list of approved medications, a stability period, and a defined evaluation path. An aviation psychologist walks through what it involves and what to do before you fill the prescription.

Yes, pilots can go to therapy, and as of May 2026 the FAA says it wants you to. What actually has to be reported, what doesn't, and how to walk in with your eyes open, from an aviation psychologist who used to fly.

If the same dream keeps coming back, it's tracking something in your life that hasn't moved. Here's what recurring dreams are, why they repeat, what they can tell you about your mental health, and what it takes to make one stop.

I dreamed about an office building nobody was allowed to leave, with a fake ocean on one floor and a real river under another. Here's the dream in full, how I read it as a psychologist, and what dreams like this can tell you about your mental health.

When I ask new clients how COVID affected them, almost all of them say nobody has ever asked. Then every one of them has an answer. Here's why the pandemic counts as a shared trauma, what it did to adults and kids, why therapists skip over it, and how to finally take it seriously.

Most of us were told we were supposed to know who we are by now. A psychologist walks through James Marcia's four identity statuses and Erik Erikson's psychosocial moratorium, and why the messy, uncertain middle is how a durable identity actually gets built.

The people who come to me for burnout almost never lead with that word. They say they're fine, just tired, and then they explain a life that would exhaust anyone. Vacation doesn't touch it, because burnout was never about hours.

For years, pilots hired life coaches because a psychologist felt like a risk to the medical. That was a rational response to the system. In May, the system changed.

Autistic people are three to six times more likely to be transgender. Nobody has explained why. So why is everyone so certain what it means?

Discover practical strategies to support a family member struggling with loneliness. Learn how to initiate conversation, encourage social interaction, provide emotional support, and foster a sense of belonging.

Loneliness exists beyond the holidays, yet only during this family-themed season do we glimpse the despair endured by millions throughout the entire year.

Claiming religious objection to providing life-saving services is an admission of personal apostasy. You are no longer serving God. I realized that in the years I was actively waving the banner of my faith, I was harming people I'd never met. I caused harm. I caused hurt. And I did it believing I was helping those who were suffering. I realized I was part of the problem after serving the communities I feared the most.

Skiing never came easy to me. My older brother was a phenomenal skier. It came naturally to him, or at least he made it appear so. Either way, it made my lack of talent even more evident and painful. And I do mean painful. My parents were relentless in their insistence I learn to ski, despite coming home from full-day classes with more bruises and fat lips than I can count.

What seems like a lifetime ago, I worked in advertising for a fellow named Tracy. He would occasionally tell the story of how he had won his most prominent client, an established and beloved grocery chain in Utah. While I'm sure he had caressed the story over the years, the underlying lesson was characterologically Tracy.

Not long after moving to Colorado this summer, a stranger from the local religious community began inundating me with countless texts and calls. I was too burdened by the move to respond. My deferrals strengthened this woman's resolve to infringe on my privacy. She left random trinkets and notes on my doorstep. Despite explicit requests to stay off my property, she would knock on my door, hoping to initiate contact.

I’ve struggled my entire life to understand who I am and to know my role here amongst humanity. As a therapist, I often guide people through the process of identity development. I help patients and clients navigate the parts about themselves they like, the parts they dislike and facilitate their identification of characterological elements that transcend various identities they navigate or embrace.

Years ago, at the request of a mutual friend and the consent of all parties involved, I found myself arguing the importance of accepting a person’s stated identity. I needed this mother to accept her son as her daughter. In a quarrel I probably should have been smart enough to avoid, I dug deep into my arsenal of logical and emotional persuasion methods.

I spent my first twelve years on Earth confident my life would end in a sudden flash of light. I was a child of the (late) seventies, and perhaps by then those who had lived through the missile crises of the previous decades had begun to doubt that cataclysmic inevitability.

Maybe it took a global pandemic rendering us isolated and powerless to gain awareness of our loneliness. Why is lonely such a terrifying word? Those kids up to no good: loners. Mass shooters: loners. Those who bother us or are otherwise unworthy of our attention or affection: loners.