A concept I find helpful in clinical work is emotional capacity. Many clients interpret overwhelm as personal failure when it is often a capacity issue rather than a character issue. When stress accumulates, the nervous system has less bandwidth for problem solving, regulation, and decision-making. Helping clients recognize this shift can reduce shame and open the door to more compassionate pacing. Curious how others are conceptualizing capacity limits with clients. 📎 Subscribe & Fly https://www.fowlercounseling.org/subscribe---fly ℹ️ Educational purposes only. Not a substitute for therapy or professional mental health care.

How I keep myself going. I am currently juggling a lot. I am caregiving a parent (for the past year, with the help of my 3 siblings). I am paring down my private practice but keeping it going. Referrals, billing, client services. I am building an online and in-person coaching business and I have my first 1:1 coaching client...high ticket, intensive training. I am so psyched! The work I've done to make this pivot over the past three years is starting to take shape. My new client starts tomorrow. We'll see how their transformation comes around in about 5 weeks. I am building two online Skool communities...this one and one called The Spiral Reset Lab where all the materials from my teacher and mentor, Dr. Liana Mattulich are housed. When I am pushed or pulled by life, and I am every day as we all are, I swear...every time I need a somatic practice my body intuition says "hey. hello. go. go outside. go move your body." And I am getting so much better at listening, moment-to-moment. When I'm sitting with a client and I feel the pull I do my best to regulate that pull to stay with them in the session, breathing, moment to moment awareness, staying present with what is. How do you ... moment-to-moment?

I’m curious how others approach disclosing diagnoses to clients when a diagnosis isn’t required for insurance, meds, or external documentation. Do you: 👉Always share the diagnosis? 👉Share it collaboratively only if it feels clinically useful? 👉Hold off unless the client asks? 👉Frame symptoms/patterns without naming a diagnosis? One piece I’m actively wrestling with is whether sharing a diagnosis can sometimes create a self-fulfilling prophecy—where clients begin to identify with or even manifest symptoms they hadn’t experienced prior to being informed, especially with highly descriptive or stigmatized diagnoses. I’m holding this alongside values of transparency, client autonomy, empowerment, and neurodiversity-affirming care—and wondering when a label supports growth vs. when it subtly narrows self-concept. Would love to hear how others think about this ethically and clinically, what you’ve observed in practice, and how this plays out across different populations (teens, ND clients, trauma histories, etc.). No right answers—genuinely curious about collective wisdom. 💬✨

I am thinking this morning about how I teach my clients to turn their thinking around to solutions. It's tricky sometimes because the healthcare system itself is built around problem-focus. One of the first questions that is asked is often, "so what's the problem?" When I taught BrainWise to elementary school children as a social emotional learning specialist (a job I LOVED) the very first lesson is "Problems." In this curriculum we start with problems, identifying who has problems - duh EVERYONE - and then we commence to learning about problem sizes - small, med, large. Small problems we solve all by ourselves, we don't need permission or help to solve small problems, we just solve them (broken pencil, ripped paper, late for work, etc.). Medium problems require some help (bullying, left my lunch at home), even for adults but adult's medium sized problems are usually very different from children's medium-sized problems. Big problems are usually an emergency or something dangerous. We learn how to identify problems so we know what is bothering us. I loved seeing the kid's eyeballs light up when they "got" the lessons. I also love seeing my clients eyes light up when they "get" the learning. Solution focus thinking is subtly different. I love to start with what is going well. I often ask clients what is good, what they are currently enjoying, where they feel resourced. Then we can drill into what stands in the way of them getting more of what they want. This is the fun part. Where is your focus, in sessions and in your life? How do you help yourself, and your clients learn to find solutions?

In grief work, clients often arrive searching for solutions to something that cannot be undone. One of the most meaningful shifts can happen when the work moves from problem solving to adaptation. Not everything can be fixed, but clients can learn to live alongside loss with greater steadiness. Frameworks like spheres of control often help facilitate this shift by clarifying where effort is helpful — and where compassion may be more appropriate than control. I explore this concept further in a recent Brainz Magazine article. 📖 Read the article: https://www.brainzmagazine.com/post/how-to-manage-grief-and-understand-your-spheres-of-control 📎 Subscribe & Fly (monthly insights) https://www.fowlercounseling.org/subscribe---fly Curious how others help clients transition from problem solving to adaptation in grief work. ℹ️ Educational purposes only. Not a substitute for therapy or professional mental health care.