Jeff Levy, LCSW
(originally posted on Branching Out; The Live Oak Blog, April 2017)

​I was talking with a colleague who recently completed her graduate degree in counseling.  We were discussing one of her cases—a young man who had experienced considerable trauma as a teenager.  Her client knew he had experienced the trauma, but didn’t have clear memories around it.  She was concerned about how much she needed to delve into his traumatic experiences in order to help him heal.
 
My colleague had taken a trauma course in graduate school, and said that it was one of her favorite classes.  Some of the content in the course, all of which seemed current and relevant, included the study of the neurophysiology of trauma and the impact of trauma on neurodevelopment.

Jeff Levy, LCSW
(originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, and Linked In, September 2016)

​“Will it be a tree or a new garden?” my partner asked me two weeks ago. For the past 15 years, we have been planting as a way to acknowledge and memorialize people and animals in our lives we have loved and lost. The question we ask now is not “what do we do to acknowledge loss” as much as “where do we put what we’re going to do?” With several explicit conversations, we have agreed that anniversaries of losses are recognized with the ritual of digging in the earth, planting, and nurturing growth.
 
Rituals occur in our lives on a regular basis. People have weddings, graduations, quinceaneras, confirmations, and bar/bat mitzvahs. We have funerals for people who have died, and baptisms for people after they are born. It seems reasonable for rituals to find their way into psychotherapy. Books and articles have been devoted to the concept of incorporating ritual into the healing process.

Jeff Levy, LCSW
(originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, and Linked In, September 2016)

News reports, radio, and the internet had been highlighting a recent sent to incoming undergraduates from the administration at The University of Chicago (U of C). Among other things, the letter states that the University does “not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” It may be useful for all of us to further consider the concepts of safety and safe spaces as they manifest in the world, in therapy and in the classroom.
 
I am an enormous proponent of safety. In fact, it’s at the foundation of my work as a social worker, psychotherapist and as an educator. I believe that growth can only occur when enough safety has been established to allow us to experience discomfort. And sitting with the tension of discomfort is what challenges us to examine ideas, thoughts, feelings, and ways we have been moving through the world. If we don’t feel safe, our energy is diverted away from change and toward self-protection. It’s virtually impossible to change when we are afraid.

Jeff Levy, LCSW
(originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, August 2016)

Monica had been adopted when she was days old.  She knows nothing about her biological family, but came to therapy because of years of abuse and neglect in her adoptive family.  She describes her mother as cold, critical, and dismissive.  Her father was physically and verbally abusive.  In retrospect, she believes he had a drinking problem, but as a child, she assumed the abuse and neglect she endured were related to something wrong with her; that if she behaved better, got better grades, anticipated her parents’ needs more quickly, she would be rewarded. 
 
At 42, Monica is a professor at a local university, owns her own home, and has published numerous articles.  Still, she believes she is unworthy of giving or receiving love.  And to make matters more complicated, she believes that she needs to love herself before anyone else can love her and before she can love anyone else.