Home: Kailua Beach

This November, MHT is participating in the Miry’s List Friendsgiving Fundraising Drive. The money goes to programs that support refugee families that have been resettled in the United States. In tandem with these efforts, our clinicians are writing posts reflecting on what home means to them.

One of the most frequented places of my childhood and one of my favorite places in the world is to be sitting on the sand staring out at the ocean on Kailua Beach on the island of Oahu. With the trade winds blowing and the steady force of the movement of the Pacific Ocean while sitting on an island that is a bit Eden-like, I experience a sense of knowingness and consolidation. On a concrete level, I am home -- this is the town I grew up in, so it is no surprise I would feel this feeling of being at home when I visit. On a more symbolic level, this external landscape resonates with the dynamic terrain of my internal world as I have come to know it -- the magnitude, the depths, and the beauty. Because of the places I have been able to go inside myself, with the help of my own psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in robust relationships, I have found more solid, peaceful places to stand inside myself, regardless of where I am. This is what home means to me – an at-one-ness or at-home-ness with myself.

“These foreign places did not feel so foreign to me, which I think has been a direct result of getting to know the foreign, unknown parts of myself. I have felt more at home in the world because I have felt more at home in myself.”

As I have gotten older, I discovered that I could feel connected to myself, wherever I was on the planet, regardless of differences in ethnicity and language, culture and religious traditions. I have traveled to many places around the world, all over the US during different seasons – harsh New England winters and unforgiving heat in desert Summers. I’ve walked amidst the beauty of the dramatic edges of Western Ireland and through the rolling hills that surround quaint towns in Southern Spain, to name a few. In all of my travels, I have learned that I could easily fall in love with the beauty of the natural world and ancient history of our human experience, in all its unique expression, and still feel at home. These foreign places did not feel so foreign to me, which I think has been a direct result of getting to know the foreign, unknown parts of myself. I have felt more at home in the world because I have felt more at home in myself. Through my own growth and development, which has truly been a pursuit of my own sense of feeling whole, I have grown sturdier and more at peace in my own mind and heart. This has made risking my vulnerability in relationship a truly meaningful encounter, offering me a sense of love and connection to all of life.

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HERE'S HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN FRIENDSGIVING WITH US:

Give! Visit our Miry’s List campaign page and make a donation. It's that simple and no sum is too small. Truly.

Follow! Be sure to follow us on Instagram and our blog throughout the month of November. We will be reflecting on what it means to be welcomed, received, and known.

Share!  Help us spread the word. You can do this by sharing our social media posts or links to our Miry’s List Friendsgiving Fundraiser page.

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A little about Miry’s List:
Refugee families come to the United States seeking a safe haven from violence and persecution in their home countries. They leave behind family and friends, as well as virtually everything they own. Many Americans, seeing these families in their communities, wonder: What can I do to help? Miry's List provides a mechanism for people to directly help new arrival refugee families with the things that they need to get started in their new lives – from diapers to beds to cleaning supplies and toiletries. To learn more, visit miryslist.org.

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Dr. Gabrielle Taylor is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who serves as Clinical Director at Michelle Harwell Therapy.

Women are Fecund

“We are meant to give birth to love. ”

Fecund. Such a fun word. Fecund. See, what I mean? It’s so fun to say. And, then, when you look up the definition, because you do have to look it up, (how else would I have known what it means??), it’s so deeply meaningful. “Capable of producing offspring, fruit, vegetation, etc. in abundance: prolific: fruitful. Very productive or creative intellectually.” A powerful combination - a word that contains the joy of playfulness and depth of meaning - and what it’s like to work at MHT. I came on board as Clinical Director with this group of wonderful women about six months ago and my time has been just that, joyful and deeply meaningful. 

And with Christmas upon us, I keep thinking about how this joyful, deeply meaningful word - fecund - encapsulates the message of Christmas in the Judeo-Christian narrative. The story starts with an ever important announcement - the Angel Gabriel visiting the virgin Mary in Luke 1:26-38. The story is fantastical! An angel visiting a terrified, virgin woman, telling her she is to give birth to the son of God. Crazy! Right? But I say dismissing it as “crazy” is old news. How about we let ourselves play with it a little bit, give our imagination some room, and let the story be a parable of sorts, with room for metaphor. The concrete, literal message has a broader reach. A deeper meaning for our everyday lives, loaded with a crucial message for us.

When we let metaphor in, the story teaches us that, as women, (and humans), we are meant to give birth to love. Generative and creative and help meet the world’s needs. No matter our circumstances and when we think it’s impossible, we are called to be growthful, fruitful, and, in abundance, for the world’s sake. Fecund. And, if we remember the way love permeates Jesus’s message in the story as it continues - “For god so love the world, he gave his only son,” “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. And the greatest of these is love,” “love the lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. These are the two greatest commandments.” 

This is the message of Christmas to me - that we are called to give birth to love and this love will heal us, forgive us, and ultimately, save us. I wrote a poem in this fecund spirit. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you from MHT!

Love Has Come

The Angel Gabriel and Mary. 

The encounter. 

She, 

cowering in the corner, 

hiding in the darkness. 

The message. 

Love has been born, 

inside you. 

You are pregnant 

with love.

The floor is moving, 

the walls shaking, 

the house’s foundation 

put to test. 

Earthquake news. 

An identity crisis.

Love has come,

out of the darkness.

Out of the cold.

Through you. 

I know you didn't know, 

how hard it would be,

to love. To birth love. 

To steward love. 

Terror. Rage. Despair.

The hardest thing 

you’ve ever done. 

I know you're scared. 

I'm scared too. 

But just because 

you're scared, 

doesn't mean 

you can't do it. 

You can’t not. 

We can’t not. 

Where will we be 

If we don’t bear love? 

Lost.Alone.Dead.

The walking dead,

I tell you. Do you 

get what I'm saying?

Love has come, inside you.

We.are.the.mother.of.love.

Labor.Birth.Growth.

This is how healing takes place.

This is where our suffering

can be held. 

This is what we need 

to be human.

Love has come. 

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HERE'S HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN DRESSEMBER WITH US:

Give! Visit our Dressember page and make a donation. It's that simple and no sum is too small. Truly.

Follow! Be sure to follow us on Instagram and our blog throughout the month of December. We will be documenting our fierce fashion choices but our deepest intention is to empower and educate.

Share!  Help us spread the word. You can do this by sharing our social media posts or links to our Dressember fundraising campaign page.

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Dr. Gabrielle Taylor serves as Clinical Director at Michelle Harwell Therapy and is a licensed Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Pasadena, CA. She is also a member at New Center for Psychoanalysis where she serves on the Admissions Committee. She is Core Faculty at Wright Institute Los Angeles whee she supervises and teaches – her class The Poetry of Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory is favored among many of the students.

"A Call to Love": A Conversation about Our Planet with Dr. Gabrielle Taylor

Lauren Ziel, ASW, talks to Dr. Gabrielle Taylor, Clinical Director at Michelle Harwell Therapy, about growing up immersed in the beauty of the natural world, making small efforts to effect change, and the ethical demands of being a mental health professional.

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Lauren Ziel: Hi Gabrielle!

Gabrielle Taylor: Hello Lauren!

LZ: I’m really excited to talk to you because ever since we’ve had you as Clinical Director here at MHT, you bubble over with enthusiasm whenever we talk about conservation efforts and the state of our environment. With November being our month of focusing on the intersections between nature and our health as people, we just thought that you’d have so much to say on the topic. We’re excited to pick your brain about it. So, my first general question is: How has your connection to nature shaped you, from childhood to now? And has it informed you both personally and professionally?

GT: How my relationship with nature has informed me? That’s such a great question, actually. 

Like I have shared…I grew up outside. I grew up in Hawaii - pretty much born and raised there. So, that greatly shaped what my external life looked like. And I think that it greatly shaped my interior life. The landscape, the ocean, the mountains, the greenery….it really affected and infected my insides. Essentially, to be able to identity what growth looks like and what life looks like. I mean, I don’t want to be too corny…but it’s beautiful. Tropical beauty (laughs). So, how does it shape me? Well, I reference or resource my internal life to do the work I do and also to be in my personal relationships. There are landscapes there of width and depth that I can resource and can go into my self in order to go to places with others. I don’t know if that’s a corny answer, but I think it’s true.

LZ: Yeah, what you said about being able to see what growth looks like…yeah, nature being a metaphor. I love your use of language there. It makes me think about change that is both human and that you see in our environment and our external world - not the same, but mirrored and parallel…that’s a cool visual that you speak to.

GT: Our humanness is so interconnected to the natural world, right?

LZ: That’s a great segue…how do you view our humanness, our nature, and how it intersects with the world around us? How does being in and of nature benefit us and how being out of it can actually be a huge barrier to health?

GT: I think that our estrangement is a delusion. Our estrangement from nature is a delusion because we as living beings are part of the living world….that’s where we are headed given our mortality. There’s just an inextricable nature. And yet, with the Industrial Revolution, and with the concrete all around us, it greatly shapes us, and then we begin thinking concretely. We lose the spaciousness that we can access when we’re in nature, when we are walking through the woods, when we’re looking out at the horizon when we stand at the beach - that kind of space where we can get out into nature really helps us connect to ourselves in such a profound way.

LZ: I was thinking how ancient civilizations [or indigenous cultures] did have more of that connection….such as the buffalo eats the grass and we eat the buffalo…that there is this cascade that you can always bring it back to a source, which is this planet. Our place on it is only one spot in this big massive web. 

GT: A massive universe.

“To me, care for the planet, being a good steward of the planet, is an extension of a mental health professional’s life....we’re called to be loving, compassionate, supportive people to others and to help people walk through the suffering that comes with being human, for whatever reason that suffering comes. The way that we are with people as analysts or therapists is to me the way we need to be with people in our lives, with the planet, with animals. To me, it’s a call to love. Caring for the environment and being concerned about climate change is not a political discussion...you’re in a relationship with the planet and what does it mean to care for it?”

LZ: So, we are therapists and you’re an analyst. You spend so much time inside, face to face with human suffering and internal struggle…How do you get your “outdoor fix” — how do you with commune nature when you’re not outside?

GT: Yeah, that’s a good question. Or yeah, even when I am inside. I think you can relate to this, Lauren…a lot of times when I have a break, I do a plank pose. Or do a headstand. Or do some core work. So, the snippets of movement where I can keep my body moving. And not fall into the abyss of sedentary life, which really leaves me in a lot of pain. Sitting decreases our lifespan 7 or 8 years or something? In a very literal way, l I keep myself moving. My art and the plants in my office can remind me of the importance of sunlight, the planet, and nature and what kind of emotional health that brings. But beyond that, and outside of the office…I think we all do this—we crave beautiful places. We crave a walk at sunrise. We crave a walk at sunset. We’ve got dogs; taking the dogs for a walk. In terms of vacation, I certainly want to go where earth is more accessible - essentially what is inspiring in a way that brings me back to myself in a certain way and reminds me of what’s important. Sometimes I can get lost in all the freeway, street driving, buildings that surround me in my day in and day commute and walk. I think going to beautiful places on the planet is so important to keep myself centered on what matters. All of this to me is about relationship. We as human beings are created for relationship with all living things. And I think that includes the planet, that includes animals. To stay related with each other and with the earth…it helps me feel more human.

LZ: You talk about that relational piece….yeah, even when you are “stuck” in the office, you can use that and find a relationship with yourself through movement. And then when you go out in these [natural] spaces, it’s a relationship that is just bigger than you. The more that we can touch into it, the more we realize how important it is. Given the state of the world, it evokes a sense of necessity to do something to maintain this ability to have something to connect to, have these beautiful spaces to visit, and to have a healthy body. The way things are going and have been going…it’s fraught, it’s scary….we may not have these extensions of self and relationships with the natural world because it’s not going to be here. 

How do you take the idea…you know, we work with people and we work with relationships…that is a love and a passion…what is our responsibility as therapists to maintain these connections outside of our therapy rooms and sessions? How can we as a community of therapists address the climate change crisis? You are both - an analyst and an advocate. How do you marry the two and do what you do and make an impact?

GT: For me, it all goes hand in hand. It’s all connected. I think if I were to distill it down…it would distill down to being loving, being compassionate. If you see someone throw trash outside out their window or just throw it on the street, it’s such a hostile, angry act. To me, that’s how it lands on me. You know, you much be upset inside to do that. To me, care for the planet, being a good steward of the planet, is an extension of a mental health professional’s life. Because we’re called…I don’t use this language to be overly religious, but we’re called to be loving, compassionate, supportive people to others and to help people walk through the suffering that comes with being human, for whatever reason that suffering comes. The way that we are with people as analysts or therapists is to me the way we need to be with people in our lives, with the planet, with animals. To me, it’s a call to love. Caring for the environment and being concerned about climate change is not a political discussion. Well, actually you’re in a relationship with the planet and what does it mean to care for it? And to leave it in as good as shape as you can, given that you get to use for a time? It’s just an extension of what we get to do in the consulting room. I don’t know if it’s a chicken and egg situation. It started outside for me as a little girl, and maybe that led me to the consultation room to participate in people’s and get to engage in the creativity of what therapy is and the growth process. 

Again, I don’t want to be heavily moralistic, but along the lines of the analyst Donna Orange who writes about climate change and the ethical mandate that we have as mental health professionals….I just think we need to be concerned with all of life and think about how we take care of ourselves, and that includes the environment in which we live. They are inseparable for me. 

LZ: This is very specific. Since you’ve been at MHT, we’ve been making very practical changes to make this a more green small business. What are your favorite way to show your love and appreciation [of the environment] that you make sure to practice?

GT: The environment and the concerns around the planet…and the amount of plastic and trash that we are producing as our human population continues to grow is completely overwhelming. You can just feel completely overwhelmed and paralyzed. If you read that National Geographic issue that came out this summer, you could easily just fall into a puddle of despair. So, I’m of the mindset, like what we do in therapy…doing things one by one. I think every little small thing we do is of importance. For example, at MHT, when we had the move to put in a towel instead of paper towels because paper towels have already been recycled down and they are no longer recyclable. So, we made this move. I love that we did that. Every time I go in there, I’m reminded of the environment…and how we aren’t generating more trash with paper towels. I think it has a ripple effect. We use glasses in the waiting room instead of disposable cups. We recycle…we have been trying to use the recyclable trash bags. All of those things are so great. There’s so many opportunities to buy something that you can throw away or recycle. I tend to carry those things that are recyclable along with me throughout the day. If I don’t see a recycling bin, then I’ll just take the bottle home with me until I can get to the appropriate bin. It’s not that big of an effort to make my small contribution. In my private office, I try to put as much as possible in my big recyclable bag and try to throw very little in my trash bin. It’s crazy not to do these things that take only a little bit of effort.

LZ: Yeah, with all that we use…everything we get is from our environment. So, what is holding a glass bottle in your purse for 8 hours?

GT: I have imagery that helps me and reminds me. I saw that picture of the sea turtle that ended up with a plastic straw in its nose. I just have that imagery come to mind and feel the conflict inside when I see a plastic straw. I think it’s a good conflict to feel. So long as we use the conflict instead of giving into it or falling into despair — it’s motivating.

LZ: Yeah, having that imagery…once you see it, you can use it as motivating factor. You can’t put your head in the sand and pretend that it doesn’t exist anymore..…After we had our open house, we had a lot of food waste, which you know we had a lot of guests, there was a lot of food…I want to get a compost..an MHT compost is next!

GT: I brought some of the extra food home and I put in straight in my yard waste, in my compost. I couldn’t tolerate it going anywhere else. I also think with MHT going green.…as more and more businesses do that, it reminds other people of what we need to do together as a community of human beings. It’s like “Hey, let’s all do it together.” We don’t have to do it alone. We remind our patients who come in, “Okay yeah, I’ll think twice about asking for that plastic straw.” Or thinking about staring their own small contributions. It’s so important that MHT is doing it, to me.

LZ: Yeah, there’s that lean in approach….you’re doing little things. You don’t have to completely re-work it, go vegan, recycle everything, but that doing little things, at least in the beginning can elicit more and more change. I like that idea of not placing some high bar up; living in the constraints that you’re in but beginning to modify them. 

GT: Right, well said. 

LZ: Thank you so much. I’m really excited that you’re here and being an outspoken pillar to keep us all accountable. Talk about a ripple effect! It quickly took root in our practice and now we’re going green. It would have happened eventually but you made it happen a little faster.

GT: Well, I don’t know if I made it happen (laughs). I might have given voice to something and then everyone else was bringing things in and making the changes. The collaboration was certainly already there. The action has been taken.

Yes, thank you for having me!

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Dr. Gabrielle Taylor serves as Clinical Director at Michelle Harwell Therapy and is a licensed Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Pasadena, CA. She is also a member at New Center for Psychoanalysis where she serves on the Admissions Committee. She is Core Faculty at Wright Institute Los Angeles whee she supervises and teaches – her class The Poetry of Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory is favored among many of the students.

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Lauren Ziel, MSW is a Registered Associate Clinical Social Worker, ASW #76483, working under the supervision of Gabrielle Taylor, PhD. Through the use of movement and mindfulness, Lauren develops specialized treatment for anxiety, depression, eating disorders, challenges in life-stage transitions, relational difficulties, and identity/intrapersonal development.

When *FOE leads to FOMO: A Millennial’s *Fear Of Engaging in Real Life

I am part of a generation that has grown up in-tandem with the emergence of social technology — the dial-up modem tone (along with No Doubt’s ‘Tragic Kingdom’) was the soundtrack to my pre-teen years, my Motorola razor flip phone was a kind of social status symbol in middle school, and my freshman year of college was punctuated by deciding between cementing my online identity on either MySpace or Facebook.

But putting my farcical tone aside, it is sobering to look at my developmental timeline paralleling the proliferation of technology. How has this impacted my trajectory and that of my peers’? In what ways has it helped and/or hindered our humanness? 

On a positive note, technology has given me a way to grow my knowledge and expose me to things I may otherwise remain naïve to. But with all that real (and valuable) information to absorb, I admit a moderate pre-occupation with the curated perfection friends/followers/influencers present regarding their latest exotic adventure or gastronomical endeavor.

While this in and of itself does not dismay me outright (except perhaps the amount of time I spend scrolling aimlessly), it is more that I often times find myself preferring to consume the stories and public content of my online friends to having actual in-person interactions with them. With an internal gasp, my anxious self-criticizing voice pipes in: “Are you some kind of voyeuristic sociopath”?

“Turkle further cautions that not only are ‘… we not making the time because we feel we don’t have the time, [as a result] we’re losing the skills that we get from talking to each other face-to-face: skills of negotiation, reading each other’s emotion, having to face the complexity of confrontation, dealing with complex emotion, and [navigating] confrontation.’”

Thankfully, author and researcher Sherry Turkle, who has been studying the effects of digital culture on young people for over 15 years, can provide some sobering information to quash my paranoia. She reports social media is contributing to people choosing simplified communication over unpredictable yet meaningful conversation.

In her work, she asks my fellow millennials why real conversation is something to avoid. A common response is: “You can't control what you're going to say, and you don't know how long it's going to take or where it could go.” She goes on to identify that “…this is the kind of thing that people feel they don't have time for in their incredibly busy [and stressed] lives…and it's what people are getting used to - not wanting to make space for [conversation] emotionally.”

Turkle further cautions that not only are “… we not making the time because we feel we don't have the time, [as a result] we’re losing the skills that we get from talking to each other face-to-face: skills of negotiation, reading each other's emotion, having to face the complexity of confrontation, dealing with complex emotion, and [navigating] confrontation.”

Her words ring so true for me. It’s as though my time interfacing with well… anything except a real face…has left me little chance to develop the competency to negotiate the rich complexity of interpersonal interaction. Rather, my mind is too busy playing catch-up to the tsunami of content available at my fingertips. In this regard, I am the modern every (wo)man; as convenient access to content increases, consumption of it increases; and in turn, the less time/energy is available to do things that are less convenient (say have a face-to-face conversation) and, therefore, we do it less.

My glowing screen has become the proverbial Great Wall of content – it is hard to escape its reach and it provides an illusion of safety from the uncertainty of unscripted dialogue with others. But it’s lonely behind the wall - a space paradoxically full yet empty. Perhaps I have to face my fears of engaging in an unpredictable world full of unpredictable humans. I guess my Fear of Engaging (FOE) is what is giving me real FOMO.

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Lauren Ziel, MSW is a Registered Associate Clinical Social Worker, ASW #76483, working under the supervision of Gabrielle Taylor, PhD. Through the use of movement and mindfulness, Lauren develops specialized treatment for anxiety, depression, eating disorders, challenges in life-stage transitions, relational difficulties, and identity/intrapersonal development.

Paced Out?

My guide sent me out with a friend, but we parted company some hours ago, as she was attracted to the crest of a hill, and I was attracted to the womb of the valley. We had been instructed to vocalize loudly once we honed our location - to help us release what needed to be released.

I found the most private area I could, nestled in the valley with trees around me, in a little gully. I decided to start slowly with just a little air reverberating through my vocal chords, and then gradually allowed myself to grow louder. To my surprise, the louder I got the better it felt until I was really belting with my mouth wide open. After some time, the vocalizing faded as tears came, offering their own gifts about where I had left my self. With the tears came an understanding that I had been leaving MY pace over and over again in ways that I moved internally in my own being and externally in relationship to the world.

“Where does our pacing come from? – not the pacing that has been conditioned, but our pacing that connects us to ourselves and to our world organically and in ways that sync us.”

I learned a lot about myself that day. I understood that in pushing and not listening to regular visceral calls back to my center, it had the capacity to effect small things, like a lovely meal, or large things, like missing a job opportunity, a relationship, a treasured project, or even my sense of feeling safe and loved by ME. And it seems somewhat cumulative – the more my pacing is off each moment, the more it dominoes. For when my pacing is off, my connection to myself is also off.

Coming back to myself and where I was internally long ago…in the womb, before the womb. Where does our pacing come from? – not the pacing that has been conditioned, but our pacing that connects us to ourselves and to our world organically and in ways that sync us. And how does our pace work to harmonize with all the other paces and rhythms we encounter, like a river that flows fast at times, and meanders slowly at other times, even catching in stillness in moments maybe near the shore or in a shallow pool between rocks?

Like most of us, I imagine, when we lose our pacing, we lose so much more. Staying with my body, it seems to know more even than my mind…about how to bring me back. Our bodies are wired to find their way back when we get help with how to connect to their wisdom, how to read the signals we are being given. In a fast paced, often disorienting world, our organic pace may be one of our greatest strengths, greatest friends, and very welcomed ally to those around us.

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Michelle Levy, PhD, is a Registered Psychological Assistant #PSB94024010 working under the supervision of Gabrielle Taylor, PhD. Dr. Levy’s clinical interests focus on parenting practices, attachment, child mental health and developmental concerns, as well as the effects of trauma on youth, families and communities.