Over the weekend I heard a phrase that captures something I see regularly in the therapy room: “drip, drip, drip.”  It made me think of couples who can’t point to one big, catastrophic event that broke their relationship. Instead, they describe a slow erosion. A gradual pulling away. A relationship that died not with a bang, but with a whisper repeated over time. Drip, drip, drip. Last month, a couple sat across from me, both looking exhausted. When I asked “what brings you in today”, they...

By Chris Cantergiani This past Friday marked World Mental Health Day, and a friend posted something on Facebook that stopped me mid-scroll. He shared an AI-generated image of himself with his younger self, explaining that he'd heard a therapist suggest this exercise for anyone struggling with childhood trauma. The idea was simple but profound: use AI to create a picture of your present self doing something fun with your younger self. Even without childhood trauma, he noted, it's still pretty...

by Chris Cantergiani I've been listening to a lot of David Bowie this month. Part of his 1982 song "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" keeps running through my head in particular. “It’s just the fear of losing you”, Bowie croons, in a baritone rumble. “And I’ve been putting out fire…” Dramatic pause…. Then that visceral moment where his voice leaps an entire octave on the words "with gasoline."It's brilliant and unsettling—you feel something shift when he punches those words. It leaves you...