When most people hear the word grief, they think of losing someone to death. That is one form of grief, but it is far from the only one. Grief shows up any time something changes, ends, or shifts in a way that asks us to let go of what used to be. A child starting at a new school. A mother stepping into a role she never trained for. Losing a sense of who you used to be before kids, before a diagnosis, before a move. Even losing quiet time to yourself or the freedom to make yo

Research backs up something many therapists have long sensed in the room. The relationship between client and therapist is one of the strongest predictors of how well therapy actually works. A study by Dorothy E Stubbe, published through the National Library of Medicine, points to this same finding: the therapeutic alliance is a fundamental element of psychotherapy itself.

Enjoy this conversation with Anna Izzo, founder of a San Carlos-based Izzo Family Therapy center providing accessible, compassionate mental health care across the community!

Encouraging family therapy and support. Research backs the idea that family support is strong predictive factor of successful outcomes in many respects. Same applies with grief and loss. We’ve discussed the importance of support for successful navigation through grief. “A child’s ability to cope following a loss seems to be influenced by the remaining parent’s ability to provide support while also managing their own grief.” Support systems don’t just have to come from the par

Grief and loss often bring to mind images of death or major tragedies. Yet, these experiences reach far beyond such moments. They can quietly emerge in everyday life, through changes and transitions that might seem small but carry deep emotional weight. A teenager not getting into their preferred college, a child moving away from friends, or a mother adjusting to the demands of parenthood—these are all moments where grief can surface. Exploring grief through a holistic framew

It’s easy then, to understand why, at times, it can be so difficult to express an emotion with words. A complex process must occur, to get the information from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere where words can be formulated. The more complex an emotion is the more challenging it is for the emotion to get transferred across hemispheres. An analogy for this would be like trying to get an electron to settle enough to pass through a small tube. The more complex the