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Author: Michael Fraley

School-Based Counseling: Better than Sushi with Ice Cream

One September day in 2014 my first child client walked through the door of my office with his head down and hands clasped tightly together. He sat in silence for the entire session. Joey had selective mutism and did not speak a word to me for several weeks—an experience teachers and students had with him on a daily basis. I remember thinking to myself that first day, “Why in the world did I sign up for the school-based fellowship program? I have no idea what I am doing when treating kids.” [Read More]

A Discussion of the Oliver Stone film, Snowden

We might say that in some ways, the structure of Stone’s narrative follows the common anxieties of a child transitioning from innocence to growing complexity in his experience of the world. We start with Snowden being a young idealist, who doesn’t seem to notice or mind the unsavory actions of his government and views himself as part of a larger, beautiful, and all good nation where the big problems are not really reflected on and even less criticized, but just accepted as the way things are from the point of view of his reality. His girlfriend, Lindsey, has her own ideas, but he writes them off initially as just “her reality.” So he is safe in his image of being an all-good warrior fighting in the name of, and in some ways fused with, the all-good and powerful country. My country is good, and I am good. [Read More]

From Confidence to Incompetence: A Backwards Journey

In learning theory there is the idea that we move from being in a place of “unconscious incompetence” to unconscious competence, stopping in between at conscious incompetence and conscious competence. This has been my story. I had to learn I wasn’t the therapist I thought I was, in order to get on the road toward being the therapist I wanted to be. [Read More]

Addiction: Our Best Frenemy

By Guest Blogger Richard Achiro, PhD. Someone recently told me that it would be best for everyone if addicts just died. She was referring to a reality TV show featuring a miserable woman who struggles with drug addiction. Despite my initial shock at its tactlessness, her comment made me ponder the prospect that this fantasy to “off the addict” may in fact be quite widespread (albeit more hidden from most of our awareness). The fantasy that all of the problems in a family or even of the world can be packed into someone/something and then done away with is very attractive. [Read More]