It doesn’t take very long to walk around our schools, rehabilitation centers, mental health facilities, prisons, and other systems of care to recognize that largely, they have been constructed to be more institutional in nature. They often feature hard surfaces, maintenance-free corridors, narrow spaces, little space to be alone, almost no space to regulate, little […]

All of us have watched the absolute horror of the impact of Hurricanes Fiona and Ian in the past month. For Puerto Rico, almost 5 years to the day the amount of property damage, the electric grid failures, the displacement of families, and the destruction of homes from its second hurricane devastated the island. In […]

As we know one of the lead killers in the world of drug addiction is fentanyl. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is designed to help patients who have severe pain. It is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and even in small doses it can be lethal. Fentanyl is involved with 90% […]

With all the carnage we have seen recently in the news, we need to consider what we know about talking with someone who has lost a child. Parents who lose children to illness and accidents need and deserve to be supported by their families and friends to help them move through the painful process of […]

Once again, our headlines are filled with the story of the tragic shooting and multiple deaths in Uvalde, TX. For days the news headlines have reported on the horrific details of this tragedy. Podcasts, newscasts, journals and social media speak of the ways to make such tragedies something that never happens again. Yet here we […]

I would be remiss to continue my normal posts on non-profit leadership in light of the tragedy that has occurred with the mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School. This has been a devastating week in our country and for all those who have been involved in this brutal set of murders in this Texas […]

In my last blog I shared some of my thoughts about why Will Smith behaved as he did at the Oscars, suggesting his amygdala hijacked his behavior, a concept proposed by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence. As I shared my thoughts with friends and colleagues, I received mostly strong opinions that a person […]

A friend was appalled when I shared that I was writing a blog describing my trauma theory that might explain Will Smith’s violent outburst and assault on Chris Rock at the Oscar’s on March 27th. He couldn’t believe I was going to excuse his violent behaviors because it was somehow related to childhood trauma. He […]

As important as it is to understand what trauma is all about, it is really the symptoms after having experienced it that can so profoundly impact someone’s life. Whether physically painful and/or emotionally devastating, trauma often leads to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with its many very troubling symptoms. These symptoms include ongoing fear and anxiety, […]

For those of us who deal with students who are having struggles in school there can be such a dilemma as to how to understand and categorize certain behaviors. When students are dysregulated, demonstrate “acting out” behavior or struggle to maintain their emotional balance there could be several possibilities as to what is really going […]