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Reflections

The Cultivating Capacity Blog

I offer these writings, practices, and prompts to support your healing journey in or outside of therapy. They can help you deepen your awareness, regulate your nervous system, and reconnect with your inner wisdom. Drawing from systems theory, neuroscience, and narrative approaches, Reflections explores the deeper currents of healing, relationships, and what it means to fully embrace your story. My hope is that you find something here that resonates, challenges, or simply holds space for where you are right now.

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Black and white image of a woman yelling in rage
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Female Rage as Sacred Fire, Not Scorched Earth

Many women carry a particular kind of anger that arises when care, protection, and dignity have been repeatedly compromised. This reflection explores sacred female rage as meaningful information shaped by relational wounds, ruptures in sisterhood, and our shared relationship with the living world. When listened to rather than silenced, this anger becomes a call toward repair, attuned leadership, and a more protected, interconnected way of being.
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Black envelope with a butterfly inside
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When Care Outlives the Clinician: Ethical Stewardship, Continuity, and Professional Wills

Continuity of care does not end when a clinician becomes unavailable—it becomes more essential. This reflection explores professional wills as an act of ethical stewardship, examining how unplanned endings can burden clients, loved ones, and legacies, and how trauma-informed, well-designed continuity planning honors the relational trust at the heart of therapeutic work.
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A person holding a globe that looks like the moon.
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Centering Lived Experience: Reimagining MFT Training Through Cultural Humility

Marriage and Family Therapy training often emphasizes cultural humility without structurally including lived experience. This reflection explores why centering service user voices is essential for ethical, relational, and systemic change—and how reimagining training through co-creation fosters trust, accountability, and third-order transformation.
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Mushrooms growing on moss.
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Transparency & Trust are the Foundation of Healing

Many people leave therapy feeling confused—not because they lack insight, but because transparency and consent were missing. This reflection explores why clarity, pacing, and collaboration are essential for nervous system safety and meaningful healing.
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Woman holding fern leaf
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Cultivating Professional Capacity: A Living Plan for Growth, Integration, and Integrity

A reflective exploration of professional growth as an ethical, embodied, and relational process—inviting clinicians to cultivate capacity rather than chase credentials.
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A woman holding a sphere that looks like the moon.
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Expanding Our Sphere of Knowledge: Logical Fallacies, Ethics, and the Practice of Discernment

A reflective exploration of how logical fallacies quietly shape therapeutic practice, ethics, and clinical judgment—and how cultivating discernment supports relational integrity.
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A woman,listening to a large seashell.
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When Being Heard Changes the Shape of Care

This reflection explores why voice, consent, and partnership are not optional elements of therapy, but the foundation of ethical, relational care. Drawing from lived experience, systems thinking, and clinical insight, it invites a reimagining of what becomes possible when clients are truly heard.
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Woman in White Long Sleeve Shirt Sitting on an Antique Loveseat Looking Away From Therapist
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When Clients Become Collaborators

How does therapy change when the client's voice truly guides the work? Feedback-Informed Treatment invites clients and clinicians into collaboration, strengthening alliance, deepening trust, and improving outcomes, especially in relational therapy.
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A young woman with curly hair framed by the sun.
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Beyond Competence: Cultivating Cultural Humility in Therapy

Cultural humility is not something a therapist achieves—it’s a relational practice that unfolds over time. This post explores the multisystemic dynamics of culture, power, and identity, and why transparency, self-reflection, and collaboration matter more than mastery in meaningful therapy. Rooted in relational ethics and nervous system–informed care, this reflection invites a deeper, more humane way of doing therapy—one that honors lived experience and centers self-trust.
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A couple facing each other against a backdrop of fallen autumn leaves.
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Where Healing Actually Happens

Marriage and Family Therapy views healing through a relational and systemic lens, focusing on capacity rather than pathology. Drawing from narrative therapy and systems thinking, this reflection explores why lasting change happens when relationships—not symptoms—become the intervention.
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A disorted image of a brunette woman behind rippled glass.
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From Secondary Trauma to Shared Resilience: What Research Teaches Us About Caring for Survivors—and Ourselves

This reflection explores research on sexual violence, secondary trauma, and survivor care through a relational and systems-oriented lens. It highlights the ethical necessity of boundaries, supervision, and collaborative therapy, while inviting a deeper conversation about resilience, integration, and shared responsibility.
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A Woman in Gray Long Dress Standing on Big Rock while Looking Afar
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Your Brain Has Radar: Understanding Your Inner Threat-Detection System

Our brain’s ancient “radar” scans for danger with fierce loyalty—so loyal it can mistake drifting debris for threat. Therapy helps us gently recalibrate that radar, restoring discernment, capacity, and connection so we can move from mere survival toward a life that feels safe enough to thrive.
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A long gravel road leads through fields of purple flowers toward a small white church, with mountains and low clouds in the background.
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Cultivating Awe: An Embodied Pathway to Presence, Wonder, & Regulation

Awe can be a gentle interrupter of stress—a softening, a widening, a return. With intention, we can find awe in ordinary moments and let it regulate the nervous system, deepen connection, and remind us we’re part of something vast and meaningful.
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Stylish Tattoo Parlor with Artistic Wall Mural in Keltern, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
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Tattoos as Life Stories

Tattoos become living stories—externalized moments of identity, healing, and reclamation. They help us re-author who we are, honor lineage, and make meaning visible on the skin.
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Three women wearing jeans and standing arm-in-arm, holding baby’s breath flowers, symbolizing shared lived experience and connection in healing from sexual violence.
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Letter to the Psychology Today Editor

A reflection on Psychology Today’s view of therapist self-disclosure, naming subtle bias and inviting a deeper, third-order lens. I honor lived experience as capacity-building and call our field toward inclusivity, reflexivity, and truly transformative practice.
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Two hands reaching toward each other holding small purple wildflower at sunset, backlit against golden field backdrop.
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The Relational Roots of Maslow’s Hierarchy

Most of us have seen Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: a pyramid that begins with food, water, and shelter, then rises through safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
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Black and white photo of child in white dress walking alone through grassy wooded area, shot from behind.
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E-STAIR: Returning to Ourselves

In a world that often celebrates the climb, the conquest, and outward displays of strength and individual “resilience,” many women feel a quieter call—one that pulls inward, downward, and toward something older, wilder, and more aligned with our deepest selves.
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Motion-blurred photo of person running or spinning in warm sepia tones, capturing dynamic movement and energy.
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E-STAIR: Enhanced Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation

For survivors of childhood sexual abuse and incest, healing from complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) can feel like an overwhelming journey. Fortunately, therapeutic approaches are evolving to meet the unique needs of those with histories of complex trauma.
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Woman with long curly hair sitting on wooden dock by mountain lake, looking at tablet device in relaxed pose.
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Poetry: Where Expressive Arts Meet Narrative Therapy

Narrative Therapy offers a unique approach to understanding and reshaping the stories we tell about ourselves and influencing the stories others tell about us. One of the lesser-discussed but profoundly impactful tools in Narrative Therapy is poetry.
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Close-up of two people's hands clasped together, one wearing an engagement ring and the other a dark band, intimate moment.
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Feminist Clinicians Fighting for Justice

Sexual violence is a profound violation that affects individuals, families, and communities. It shakes our trust in a just, safe, and caring world. Addressing its aftermath requires a nuanced understanding of power dynamics, systemic oppression, and the resilience of survivors.
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Tarot card spread on wooden plate with crystals, including Knight of Wands, Eight of Cups, and Six of Swords cards in mystical setting.
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Tarot as a Narrative Therapy Tool

In the realm of therapy, Narrative Therapy stands out for its focus on personal narratives and the stories we tell ourselves. It's about reshaping these narratives to empower personal growth and healing.