Adam L Smith, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic. Irvin D. Yalom

The new fancy website is live! Finally, a web presence that does my practice justice. Take a look, and spread the word! http://www.therapysonomacounty.com

What an honor to be recognized in the Best Of the North Bay 2017 by the readers of the Bohemian. Thank you!

If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic. Irvin D. Yalom

Tomorrow I will be saying goodbye to my clients in Davis. I have been working toward closure with them for months now, and they will all be paired with a new therapist if they wish to continue their work. While I am not worried about them professionally, I will miss them deeply. As a goodbye gift, I crafted hearts for each of them, made form the strongest, most resilient wood I have ever worked with. I hold their hearts in the same regard.

The new fancy website is live! Finally, a web presence that does my practice justice. Take a look, and spread the word! http://www.therapysonomacounty.com

Got to help train service dogs for veterans with PTSD this morning! Canine Companions for Independence does amazing and groundbreaking work, and Sarah Birman does miracles with these dogs. Thanks for the opportunity Sarah!

An argument for Humanistic Therapy: "Care and panic/grief/separation distress are the Janice faced twins of deep social attachments, and it will be interesting to see how their shared chemistries, especially oxytocin and endogenous opioids, can eventually be used therapeutically. ... Medicinal use of such social chemistries may one day allow clinicians to selectively enhance prosocial emotional feelings that may promote therapeutic progress." - Jaak Panksepp "The Healing Pow...er of Emotion [Brain Emotional Systems...]" From my perspective as a psychotherapist, "Medicinal use of social chemistries" is already a large part of my job. Proper treatment affords clients the opportunity to experience a corrective relationship, and as this author argues, therapy occurs through exercising brain/chemical states which have been injured or neglected. In other words, the experience of healthy, bounded, genuine care and attachment between client and therapist is therapeutic. It is therefore my job to experience love, care, and empathy. Can do.

"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is a ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity--even under the most difficult circumstances--to add a deeper meaning to his life. ... Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not." -Victor E. Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning

Many American therapists are culturally individualistic, and therefore use an individualistic approach, asking, for example, "what do you need from this relationship?" Today I was schooled by one of my clients. 'What do you need' was irrelevant and unhelpful. The correct question for this person was, "what does the relationship need from you two?" Some people think in terms of I. Others in terms of We.

All people hope to bring themselves wholeheartedly into the world - to be seen, known, and accepted completely. It is not our task to find the perfect relationship to fulfill this need. Instead, it is our task to develop the courage to bring ourselves into the world fully, and to find faith that we can find acceptance when we do. It is through disappointing relationships, small or large traumas, and oppression that this hope and faith is lost, leading to insecurity, problematic relationships, and hopelessness. Once we find the belief that we are enough... that we can someday have access to what we want, we can find peace, break patterns, and create the life we deserve.