Welcome to my little corner of the internet, where I hope to chronicle a little corner of myself.   I know how awkward ICE-BREAKING can be, so I'll keep this short and sweet.

I'm a future clinical psychologist, currently in graduate school.  I hope to emphasize psychotherapy practice over research in my future career, although I am planning to keep a toe or two in the research pool (despite how chilly it can be!).  I would describe myself as a cognitive-behavioral therapist who believes in experiential learning and emphasizing the therapeutic relationship.  I suppose that really means that I tend to be eclectic in an Arnold Lazarus sort of way. Some interests of mine include psychotherapy history, grief work, the psychology of religion, complementary and alternative medicine (e.g. hypnosis, meditation), and integrated healthcare/behavioral medicine. 

Doing psychotherapy is hard.  Being a primate with an unnecessarily large brain is hard.  Affording a therapist can be next to impossible for most of us.  For these reasons, as a psychotherapy trainee, I like to practice what I preach.  That is to say, I like to actually try out the sorts of discrete techniques that I might use with a patient.  In fact, I like to try out therapy techniques that I might never use with a patient.  I feel (or should I say hope and pray?) that this makes me a better therapist and a more exciting lecturer because I have some real visceral experience with the mumbo jumbo that I'm selling to people.

This little slice of the internet, therefore, is a place for me to organize the therapy techniques that I apply in a self-help fashion, sometimes structured sometimes decidedly un-, with my own poor psyche.  I don't recommend that anyone who might read this blog try any of these things on their own.  I don't plan to cite a ton of sources or research.  Let's all enjoy the simplicity of being strict phenomenologists here as I record the experiences that I have, some interesting, some boring.