Why Understanding Isn't Enough: The Difference Between Knowing and Changing
"I know my anxiety is irrational. I know I shouldn't avoid things. I know the pattern." You understand your psychology perfectly. And nothing has changed. This is not a failure of intelligence. It is the difference between two fundamentally different kinds of knowing — and therapy that works addresses the one most people have never been taught.
Why I Practice Process-Based Therapy: Moving Beyond Diagnosis-Driven Care
Process-Based Therapy (PBT) shifts the focus from diagnostic labels to the unique psychological processes driving each person's difficulties. Dr. Rachael St.Claire explains why she centers her Colorado telehealth practice around this personalized, evidence-informed framework.
How I Practice Psychotherapy: A Collaborative, Evidenced-based Approach
How an integrative, process-based approach to psychotherapy draws from ACT, CBT, DBT, and mindfulness to address the unique psychological processes driving each client's difficulties.
Seeing Yourself Through Someone Else's Eyes: How Perspective-Shifting Changes Everything
Right now, you are reading this from a particular point of view — yours. But you can also imagine how the room looks from across the table. You can remember how the world felt when you were twelve. You can picture what a friend might think if they could hear your inner monologue. This capacity to shift perspective is more than a cognitive trick. It is the foundation of empathy, self-compassion, and psychological freedom.
The Container and the Contents: A Different Way to Think About Who You Are
You are not your anxiety. You are not your worst thought about yourself. You are not even your best story about who you are. You are the awareness in which all of these things arise, change, and pass. This distinction — between the container and the contents — changes everything.
Why Motivation Disappears (And What to Do When It Does)
You know what you should do. You even know why it matters. But when the moment arrives to do it, the motivation is gone — replaced by fatigue, dread, or a blankness you can't explain. This isn't laziness. It's a disconnection between knowing and feeling, and there's a reason it happens.
What Matters to You — And How to Find Out When You've Lost the Thread
You used to know what mattered. Maybe not in precise language, but in the felt sense of being pulled toward something — a direction, a quality of engagement, a way of being in the world. Then, gradually or suddenly, the thread went slack. This post is about finding it again
Self as Context vs. Self as Content:Finding Perspective in the Stories We Tell Ourselves
The labels we carry about ourselves — "I'm anxious," "I'm not good enough" — feel like facts. But they are stories, and they come with a hidden cost. Understanding the difference between self as content and self as context is one of the most important shifts in therapy
You Are Not Your Worst Moment: How Labels Become Prisons
"I'm an anxious person." "I've always been this way." "I'm just not the kind of person who..." These labels feel like truths about who we are. But they started as descriptions — and somewhere along the way, they became cages.
When "I Should" Runs Your Life: Understanding Rules That Keep You Stuck
"I should be more productive." "I should be over this by now." "I should be able to handle this." These rules feel like truths. But most of them were inherited, not chosen — and they may be running your life without your permission.
"But" vs. "And": One Word That Can Change How You Relate to Difficult Feelings
"I want to go, but I'm anxious." That three-letter word quietly turns your anxiety into a wall. Change it to "and" — and watch what happens.
Cognitive Fusion and the Shark Metaphor
When we are fused with a thought, it feels like reality — urgent, threatening, inescapable. The sharks and aquarium metaphor illustrates the difference between being overwhelmed by thoughts and learning to observe them from a safe vantage point.
The Quicksand Problem: Why Fighting Your Emotions Makes Them Worse
The harder you struggle in quicksand, the faster you sink. The same is true for many of our instinctive responses to emotional pain — suppression, distraction, numbing, overthinking. Understanding why this happens is the first step toward a different approach.
Why Your Mind Won't Stop Talking: How Language Creates Psychological Suffering
The same mental capacity that lets us plan for tomorrow and learn from yesterday also lets us relive pain that has passed, anticipate catastrophes that may never arrive, and believe harsh self-judgments as though they were physical facts.