Therapy
In The Bold Italic. More on Medium.
A product of our social isolation
“I’m kind of annoyed that we moved on when I wasn’t finished yet,” says Sarah, a fortysomething lawyer in one of my weekly online therapy groups as she noticed she hadn’t received enough emotional nourishment from the group.
Sarah had been discussing her feelings of depression and isolation that, as with many of us, have only intensified during the pandemic. She described her pandemic fatigue — that burned-out, low-level malaise many of us relate to. …
With video calls and text check-ins, the therapist-client relationship is adapting to the times
Gone are the days of meeting with your therapist in their orderly office — worlds away from your personal, work, or social life — at least for the foreseeable future. Like most things, the raw vulnerability of therapy has now been forced to go digital, adding new layers of intimacy to therapist-client relationships.
“Therapists are starting to get to know our clients even more because they’re inviting us into their homes, their living rooms, their offices, their bedrooms, and other places very sacred to them when we meet over video calls,” says Laura B. Kasper, a psychologist and adjunct clinical…
We sent two strangers to couple’s therapy on their first date
The very first rendezvous in our new monthly dating series, The Sync Up, kicked off with a helicopter ride, but alas, it didn’t result in a second date. Would this month’s blind date be different?
Our latest date started with dinner and a bottle of wine and concluded with a couple’s-therapy session. Was it love at first sight? Lust at first sight? Did the session end with wine-fueled confessions about early childhood trauma and other issues?
First, to back up in case you missed the news, The Bold Italic launched the Sync Up earlier this year to bring a little…
The owner of Moxie Parlour works mostly with women with hair loss
Getting a haircut is an intimate experience for anyone: you’re sitting there being touched by another person whose head is inches from your face for long spans of uninterrupted time, often while you watch them in the mirror, for a transaction in which you entrust them with your outward appearance. I see my stylist, Cheryl, more often than I see many of most of my friends who live in the East Bay.
Small wonder, then, that many of us develop deeply intimate personal relationships with our hair stylists, sharing with them our inner secrets and our family dramas, and sometimes…
More people are using AI-powered mental health apps. Is that a good thing?
Angela* gave up on the idea of seeing a therapist face to face a while ago. As the sole income earner in her household, her busy schedule and a tight budget led her to download the AI-powered therapy apps Woebot and Wysa to help alleviate feelings of depression. “If my life were more stable, I’d love to see a human therapist—but until then, the tiny, portable ones will have to suffice,” the 27-year-old said.
In the face of a tightening market for traditional psychotherapy in the Bay Area — which we just wrote about in-depth — thousands of San Franciscans…
More people are reaching out for help — but too often the help they seek is out of reach
In San Francisco, it seems more strange to know someone who doesn’t want to go to therapy than someone who does.
In a liberal-minded city like ours, the social stigma against seeking help for your mental health has fallen by the wayside much more in recent years than in many other pockets of our country. That’s not to say it’s not still difficult for many people to take the first step in finding a therapist, but overall, it’s become much more accepted here.
That’s a good thing because — you might have noticed — the Bay Area can be a…
Here’s a hint: put down your phone
Like most of us, Bay Area sex and relationship coach Megan Paige first learned about sex from friends and during awkward middle-school health classes. You remember the ones: your teacher blew up a condom like a balloon and too thoroughly enunciated the word “men-stru-a-tion” while you giggled in the corner and wondered if the boy next to you had a boner. Unlike most of us, she went on to become a sex and relationship coach, teaching people to demystify pleasure in their bodies and help them live the life they truly desire.
I have a Catholic-guilt complex that reached its…
We’ve come to an opening in the Monrovia Canyon trail. A bed of fallen leaves pads the ground, and the air smells of subtle decay. Ben Page, my guide, invites me to let the forest be my guide.
I am skeptical. As an avid hiker, I already spend considerable time with nature, and I’m not entirely sure what this therapy session will involve. Page instructs me to close my eyes, turn around in a circle, open them whenever I feel like it “and just follow where the forest takes you.”
I figure I have nothing to lose. I hear a…
By Emma McGowan
You may have spotted Travis Sigley, cuddle therapist, around town. He’s the handsome guy with long hair topped by a sparkly sequined purple and silver fedora. He may be wearing purple pajama pants with a matching fanny pack, but there’s one thing he won’t be wearing: a shirt.
That’s because Travis hasn’t worn a shirt in over six years, not even during the winter he spent in France. He shed any upper-body covering right around the time he quit his job doing quality insurance for a home security company in Palo Alto and moved to San Francisco…
By Mark Shrayber
You can’t throw a brick in San Francisco without hitting a therapist — and if you’re throwing bricks maybe you should be seeing one? But deciding to work with one isn’t as easy. First, it’s a deeply personal choice to seek therapy, and second, there’s still a stigma about seeing a therapist, no matter the reason. Sometimes there’s a stigma about being a therapist, too. I have a master’s in clinical psychology and my mom still tells people I work in a video store. The video store, by the way, closed three years ago so everyone just…
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