I’m on an extended leave from the office until June 2013. If you’d like to speak with a therapist while I’m away, you are welcome to call my colleague, Linda Cunningham, Ph.D., at 415.346.6363. If you’d like to be notified when I return, please fill out this form on my contact page. Thanks for your understanding.

I’ve been on Twitter for a year or two and it’s a fascinating peek into our collective consciousness. Some of my favorite follows are teachers and mentors who post inspiring (but not trite) quotes and sayings: These provide a momentary break from the non-stop action of the day and a reminder that we can always come into the present moment and connect more deeply with ourselves.

Honest and well-written memoirs are good to read when going through a hard time or processing big life events. Hearing someone else’s story can help us understand what we’re going through and feel less alone. Here are a few memoirs that I’ve read and recommend. They’re very different from each other, but each one affected me deeply.

I’ve been reading an excellent book by Barent W. Walsh called Treating Self-Injury: A Practical Guide. Walsh draws important distinctions between self-injury and suicide, which is useful for both clients and therapists to understand. He deconstructs the stigma and misunderstanding that self-injuring people go through and helps clinicians develop the most relevant ways to think about and help their clients.

Restorative yoga is a good practice. It helps relieve the effects of stress by providing a completely supportive environment where you alternately stimulate and relax the body to move toward balance. This quiets the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides a “recovery phase” for all the activity of the world. Here’s a simple restorative yoga posture that you can try at home.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. The first Federal child protection legislation was passed in 1974 and growing awareness of child abuse and child welfare continued to develop through the 80s and 90s. My practice includes adults who are survivors of child abuse who grew up during these time periods. While much of Child Abuse Prevention Month is focused on the well-being of today’s families, it’s a good opportunity to share information and resources for adult survivors too.

Robert Sapolsky, the Stanford neuroscientist and writer, revealed an important fact about primates under stress during an interview on KQED: one of the most effective ways to diffuse stress is to take it out on someone else. I was struck by how relevant this is for couples. In fact, couples do this to each other all the time, and they often regret it. So how can you change this behavior?

Language is one of the ways to connect our conscious and unconscious worlds. Things we don’t yet realize we know have a chance to rise to the surface. This allows our perceptions to become more deeply felt and understood. Sometimes we forget this amazing function of language in a culture that overflows with data and information.

The holidays can get hectic. But the winter days are also a good time to slow down and have some quiet, contemplative time. It helps to set a few intentions before everything gets busy. I know that “setting intentions” can sound serious and time-consuming, but all it takes is finding an idea you like and saying a simple one-line statement to yourself.

I’ve been reading Cheri Huber’s book, There is Nothing Wrong With You: Going Beyond Self-Hate. She talks a lot about how self-hate works, and how to intervene on your own behalf. She says that spiritual practice is essential because “in order to be free of self-hate, we must find the unconditional.” Not everyone who comes to psychotherapy is interested in spiritual practice, so here are some of her suggestions that are free of spiritual or religious requirements.