Recent content by Danielle Szasz LMFT

I’m so glad you found this, too! I hope you can know that you are worthy of compassion and forgiveness for any mistakes you may have made in life. Mistakes are part of how we learn and grow.

Hi Erin, I am so sorry you’re dealing with this. There really is nothing quite like itching to make you feel like you’re losing it a little! First things, first. Clearly you’ve done a great job compiling evidence that this itchiness is, indeed, TMS: it’s inconsistent; it appears to move...

Hello! If you follow me on social media, you likely have seen that I'm starting the 100 Happy Days Experiment this Thursday, which will run throughout the last 100 days of 2017. Mood has such a powerful effect on how our brains process pain and this is an excellent way to commit to laying down...

Here's the infographic I mentioned! I love that you found such an ingenious way to soothe yourself. Did you know that research has shown that our nervous system can't tell the difference between our own comforting touch and someone else's? And when we are touched in a comforting way our brain...

I love this technique because it's very simple and you can use it when pain in intense, when you're feeling overwhelmed by emotions, or when you're fear or anxiety are running high. It's a very gentle way of letting your fear brain know that you are safe in this moment. I'd love to hear about...

Deliberately cultivating positive emotions is one of the absolute best tools we have in transforming our relationship to pain. Our emotional state is one of the largest forces shaping our perception of pain and positive psychology offers tools to help create neural pathways for more positive...

Thank you, Ellen! So key to start in small ways that feel manageable in order to set ourselves up for success.

It's so true. It's frustrating that our first instinct is often the thing that would be least helpful in terms of recovery. I sometimes just have to laugh about how clear it is that our brains are wired much more for survival than for happiness and well-being. Those take a lot of effort!

The practice of loving kindness offers a whole host of benefits, one of the most important being that research shows that the practice produces significant improvements in pain and psychological distress for people living with chronic pain. On a personal note, this practice saved my life. It so...

What a lovely things to read today! I, too, have struggled with taking these mean criticisms from the different parts of myself personally and having this shift has helped me have a lot more ease. I would be so interested to hear what you notice as you practice using this re-frame!

I think that is very helpful. Our brains are so naturally wired to focus on pain and become especially focused on it with chronic pain so doing what you can to gently refocus the attention on the breath, on neutral parts of your body, or even on imagining someone you love in order to generate...