As a first post it seems fitting that I tell you a little about who I am and why I think you should read my blog. I suppose another way of saying that is why should you care that I am here and have created this blog….

The first part of that is easy enough to answer. My name is Michael and I am a Clinical Psychologist. I have been in practice as a psychologist for about ten years and for the five years before that I was a marriage and family therapist (MFT). So that means I have a lot of college debt and by extension degrees.

Why am I here, creating this blog? That is a bit more of a story.

I have three sons, whom I adore, and they are all grown and off building their lives, but for years they made time to come over every Sunday for dinner. At those dinners we would talk and catch up, by going around the table and talking about what was new in their lives. They would often bring friends and girlfriends with them and I would do my best to incorporate everyone into the conversation. I am sure I traumatized a girlfriend or two as they were not expecting me to ask them what was new with them (often because this may have been our first meeting) but I wanted them to feel welcome at my table.

Over the years those conversations would include someone discussing some issue they were having in life and I would dispense my best fatherly advice. Some of that advice must have worked out because my sons have been telling me for years now I should start a blog. So in part that is why I am here. To follow my sons’ advice. I actually started writing the material which will become this blog in 2020 just prior to the pandemic and the world shutting down.

Another and perhaps larger reason for my being here is because over the past fifteen years of working as a psychologist I have noticed something about the reasons why people come to see me. Mostly what I noticed was that the people coming to see me all snuggled to one degree or another with the same issues and I thought if I could put some of that exploration process out into the universe in some form or another, maybe it could help someone. I am not so narcissist as to believe that this blog will answer all of everyone’s questions, but I suppose I am narcissistic enough to believe that maybe the things I post here will help someone to feel at least a little less like some kind of freak for wanting to schedule an appointment with a therapist.

I suppose my ultimate fantasy for this blog would be that it would be more of a dialogue than perhaps my limited understanding of how running a website will allow for but maybe not. I will eventually figure out how to let people send me emails/questions and I will attempt to answer them all with as much research based information as possible. I am also narcissistic enough to believe I can write this in a way which you will want to read but I suppose only time will tell about that.

In the end this may just be a hole in cyberspace that I scream into on a weekly basis. I suppose that will be fun too.