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First responder trauma lives in the body. Years of operational conditioning teach emergency service personnel to suppress emotional and physiological responses to distressing stimuli, but...
Post-traumatic stress disorder in police officers is one of the most extensively studied yet persistently undertreated conditions in occupational mental health. Law enforcement trauma carries a...
Of all the first responder disciplines, paramedicine asks something uniquely intimate of the people who practice it. Paramedics and emergency medical technicians do not arrive at scenes to contain...
Firefighters are among the most publicly celebrated of all first responders, and among the least adequately served by the mental health systems that are supposed to support them. Their occupational...
Emergency dispatchers and telecommunicators are the invisible architects of emergency response. They are the first voice a person in crisis hears, the coordinator who holds an operation together...
Parents ask me about format more than almost any other practical question, and they usually ask it as a trade. Online is easier. In person is better. How much better, and is it worth the afternoon?...
Most parents who call me about a child open with some version of the same sentence. I don't know if this is a phase. It is a reasonable thing not to know. Children change constantly, and much of...
Two children come to mind whenever I am asked this question, and they are not the same child. The first was fine, and then something happened, and now is not fine. There is a date. The parents can...
By the time a parent asks me this question, they have usually done a fair amount of reading, and they have arrived at two names. Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, which turns up...
Parents calling about a single event often apologize somewhere in the first minute. It was just a car accident, and nobody was seriously hurt. It was only a dog bite, and the dog was small. He was...
Your Teenager Refuses to Discuss It. EMDR May Still Work The calls I get about teenagers sound different from the calls I get about young children. With a seven-year-old, a parent wants to know...
EMDR Therapy for Children: A Parent's Guide to How It Actually Works Nearly every parent who calls me about EMDR for their child asks the same question within the first few minutes, though they...
Balanced Mind is a psychotherapy and counseling center offering online therapy throughout New York. We specialize in Schema Therapy and EMDR Therapy. We work with insurance to provide our clients with both quality and accessible care.
First responder trauma lives in the body. Years of operational conditioning teach emergency service personnel to suppress emotional and physiological responses to distressing stimuli, but suppression is not resolution. The stress hormones, the muscular bracing, the...
Post-traumatic stress disorder in police officers is one of the most extensively studied yet persistently undertreated conditions in occupational mental health. Law enforcement trauma carries a clinical profile that is genuinely distinct from civilian PTSD and from...
Of all the first responder disciplines, paramedicine asks something uniquely intimate of the people who practice it. Paramedics and emergency medical technicians do not arrive at scenes to contain threats or suppress fires. They kneel beside suffering human beings,...
First responder trauma lives in the body. Years of operational conditioning teach emergency service personnel to suppress emotional and physiological responses to distressing stimuli, but suppression is not resolution. The stress hormones, the muscular bracing, the...
Post-traumatic stress disorder in police officers is one of the most extensively studied yet persistently undertreated conditions in occupational mental health. Law enforcement trauma carries a clinical profile that is genuinely distinct from civilian PTSD and from...
Of all the first responder disciplines, paramedicine asks something uniquely intimate of the people who practice it. Paramedics and emergency medical technicians do not arrive at scenes to contain threats or suppress fires. They kneel beside suffering human beings,...
Firefighters are among the most publicly celebrated of all first responders, and among the least adequately served by the mental health systems that are supposed to support them. Their occupational trauma is shaped by a distinctive constellation of factors: the...
Emergency dispatchers and telecommunicators are the invisible architects of emergency response. They are the first voice a person in crisis hears, the coordinator who holds an operation together across a mass casualty event, and the professional who stays on the line...
Parents ask me about format more than almost any other practical question, and they usually ask it as a trade. Online is easier. In person is better. How much better, and is it worth the afternoon? It is a fair way to frame it, and most families now have enough...
Most parents who call me about a child open with some version of the same sentence. I don't know if this is a phase. It is a reasonable thing not to know. Children change constantly, and much of what looks alarming in a given month is development doing its ordinary...
Two children come to mind whenever I am asked this question, and they are not the same child. The first was fine, and then something happened, and now is not fine. There is a date. The parents can name it. Before the ambulance, or the dog, or the night the fire alarm...
By the time a parent asks me this question, they have usually done a fair amount of reading, and they have arrived at two names. Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, which turns up everywhere and is often described as the gold standard. And EMDR, which sounds...
Parents calling about a single event often apologize somewhere in the first minute. It was just a car accident, and nobody was seriously hurt. It was only a dog bite, and the dog was small. He was in the hospital for two nights, which is nothing compared to what other...
Your Teenager Refuses to Discuss It. EMDR May Still Work The calls I get about teenagers sound different from the calls I get about young children. With a seven-year-old, a parent wants to know whether their child is old enough, and whether the treatment will be...
EMDR Therapy for Children: A Parent's Guide to How It Actually Works Nearly every parent who calls me about EMDR for their child asks the same question within the first few minutes, though they phrase it a hundred different ways. Will he have to talk about it? Does...
How Can Couples Therapy Help Partners Navigate Chronic Sorrow? Imagine one partner has been carrying a deep, ongoing sadness for months. Maybe it started after a major loss, a chronic illness diagnosis, or a job loss that changed everything. The other partner wants to...
Can Couples Therapy Heal the Wounds of Infidelity? Infidelity can shake a relationship to its core. It breaks trust, stirs up anger and grief, and can leave both partners wondering if the relationship can survive. But an affair does not have to mean the end. With the...
Can High-Conflict Couples Therapy Improve My Relationship? Picture a couple who love each other but cannot get through a single conversation without it turning into an argument. Small disagreements about chores or plans spiral into hours of tension. One partner shuts...
How Can Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Help My Relationship? Every relationship has its ups and downs. Partners argue, misread each other, and sometimes struggle to feel truly heard. When one or both partners are neurodivergent, these everyday challenges can look a...
How Do I Find a Therapist for Non-Monogamous Couples In New York? Relationships come in many forms. Some couples choose monogamous relationships, while others explore open relationships, polyamory, or other non-traditional relationships. No matter the relationship...
Demystifying Bias in Couples Therapy One of the most common concerns I hear before meeting a new couple has nothing to do with communication, intimacy, or conflict. It's this: "I'm worried the therapist is going to take my partner's side." If you've ever felt that...
My partner and I had been together for almost 10 years. From the outside, people probably thought we were doing fine. But somehow every conversation turned into an argument. It always started with something small. And at times we even started screaming at...
What Is a Couple Gridlock? Picture two partners at the kitchen table, having the conversation again. One wants to move closer to family. The other has built a career they love right where they are. They've circled this before, and it isn't stubbornness keeping them...
What Is Protest Behavior and How Is It Affecting My Relationship? Imagine this: it's Tuesday evening, and you've just had a long, draining day at work. You come home hoping to decompress, but within minutes, a small disagreement with your partner spirals. They go...
How Can We Break Zero-Sum Dialogue Patterns in Couples Therapy? Few things are more exhausting than a fight with your partner that feels like someone has to lose. You each dig in, the tension builds, and instead of solving the problem, you end up further apart than...
Are You and Your Partner Stuck in a Loop? Picture this: one partner brings up a concern about the relationship. The other shuts down, goes quiet, or leaves the room. The first partner pushes harder to be heard. The other withdraws further. Nothing gets resolved, and...
Can Couples Overcome Compatibility Issues? Picture this: you and your partner are at the kitchen table, disagreeing about finances. Again. Last week it was how you spend your free time. Before that, it was family obligations. Different topic, same standoff, like...
Summary Critical Incident Stress Management has been one of the most widely implemented and most vigorously debated psychological interventions in emergency services for four decades. Nearly every significant fire department, law enforcement agency, and emergency...
Female First Responders: Gender, Identity, and Compounded Trauma Summary Female first responders occupy one of the most psychologically complex positions in contemporary emergency services. They are doing the same work as their male colleagues, under the same...
The Madman’s Face of the Professional God: Projection, Shame, and the Dissolution of Self in Wei Shujun's Only the River Flows: Projection, Shame, and the Dissolution of Self in Wei Shujun's Only the River Flows I want to make an argument that might sound, at first,...
Organizational Trauma-Informed Practice in Emergency Services: What Fire Departments, Police Agencies, and EMS Systems Can Do Summary Individual clinical care, however skillfully delivered, cannot fully address the psychological harm generated by organizational...
Summary Of all the organizational interventions available for improving first responder psychological health, peer support programs occupy a uniquely powerful position. They leverage the most potent resource that emergency service organizations possess, the peer...
Understanding Resilience in the First Responder Context Summary Resilience training for first responders has become one of the most widely promoted and most inconsistently implemented components of emergency service psychological health programming. The term...
