Managing a toxic by-product of empathy. NATALIE FURDEK, M.ED., LPC Alright, let’s talk about GUILT! Not the stuff you feel when you really DO do something wrong. Like I tell clients, if you punch someone in the nose and feel guilty, we’re not going to try to counsel that guilt out of you. Maybe the anger…but that guilt and remorse is a healthy thing in that moment! (none of my clients have ever punched a nose, I’m pretty sure.) No, we’re gonna talk about the kind we have even when we haven’t...

With a lot of "manual" effort NATALIE FURDEK, M.ED., LPC I have a great mom! I'm sure I'll talk more about her in this space, but for today let's start with the fact that she required me to learn how to drive a manual transmission car when I was a teenager. At the time (and still today) I thought it was a pain in the neck, especially driving around town.  But that knowledge and "muscle memory" of how to coordinate the shifting of the gears with the rate of speed and RPMs allowed me to later...

"Fluency" takes time, practice, patience. NATALIE FURDEK, M.ED., LPC In my last post, I talked about a study that has shown a link between self-compassion and unmasking. But how do we learn to be self-compassionate? Especially those of us steeped in ableist conditioning across a lifetime of unrecognized neurodivergence? Well, obviously therapy is a wonderful place to start! But not everyone can afford therapy, not everyone needs therapy, and not everyone wants therapy. So, hopefully I can...