Many sayings and beliefs about parenting and children have been passed down through generations. Although they are often shared with good intentions, they may not reflect what we now know about children’s nervous systems, attachment, and emotional development. Let’s take a closer look: Kids are resilient. Children are not automatically resilient simply because they keep going. Resilience grows when children have enough safety, support, connection, and repair to recover from stress. A child...

We hear it all the time: “I need to process this,” or “I’m still processing that.” But what does it actually mean to process something from a therapeutic perspective? Processing occurs when we try to make sense of an experience that has left us feeling unsettled—something that didn’t sit right mentally, emotionally, or physically. This might be an event, a conflict, a thought, a memory, or an emotion. Another way to understand processing is to think of it as the psychological equivalent of...

The human brain is inundated with vast amounts of data every second. To manage this overwhelming influx, the brain employs various shortcuts such as chunking (grouping information) and unconscious bias—tools that help us quickly determine what is relevant for our survival and what can be disregarded. As a result of these mental shortcuts, what we consciously perceive is only a small, filtered portion of the reality that originally enters our minds. This selective awareness means that much of...