DEBORAH COX BLOGS
The Beauty Bind, Chapter One
In the mirror at Pilates class, I discreetly scan the line of women in workout attire. I perceive I have the widest hips in the room. I feel a downward tug of tension for the rest of the day. Low back. QL muscle. To shake it off, I seek another comparison in which I...
Write Your Way Out of Depression
I was 41 and it seemed like the gate had closed forever on my life goals. I couldn't sleep. I coughed constantly and had mysterious pain in my butt that resisted all chiropractics. I kept falling – even up the stairs. I felt trapped in an academic job I’d outgrown. My...
Write. Heal. Create.
I love to write and collage and paint. And I love to help smart people do more of the creative work they were meant to do in this world. I also do EMDR therapy. That’s eye-movement-desensitization and reprocessing therapy. Click here to learn more about EMDR, the most...
Creativity = Rest: Survival for the Innie
For me to get rested over the weekend, after a week’s work, I require three things. Decent Sleep, Exercise, & Nutrition Solitude, and Creative Time The first goes without mention, but I put it here because if I get #s 2 and 3 on the list but eat a bunch of sugar...
Trauma Therapy for Couples: Reconnect and Heal
All couples are traumatized couples. That is, every relationship goes through some kind of traumatic incident: a breakup, a cheat, a lie, a devastating discovery by one partner that the other partner is flawed. I believe all couples can benefit from EMDR therapy. Jen...
How Relationships Heal Us: Connection, Health, & Energy
My husband calms me. Joe and I entertain ourselves with art and home improvement projects. We brainstorm tile mosaics on long car rides. We consult about family therapy (he too is a psychologist). We talk about good books and he gives me ideas for topics and language....
Letters on the Life of the Therapist, Chapter One: Vessels
Dear Dr. Cox, I've been thinking about our last supervision meeting and I have some questions. You always seem like you have it all together. You know your stuff and never appear distressed. Like an Olympic athlete who trains and trains. But what happens when...
Life-Writing: Pain Into Art
How to Write about your Life and recover from Trauma We all experience trauma: Big T and little t and all-points-in-between trauma. Relationships end. We fail at things. People die. We meet more people. Lessons get learned. And each life holds a unique story...
The Life Cycle of Long-Term Love . . . Or the Many Major Traumas of Life Partnership
“Where did I go wrong?” Says the woman across from me, her husband’s chair, the third point in our triangle. “I mean, at what point did I screw up so badly that my marriage turned into a roommate situation.”
What’s Wrong with Me? The Many Faces of Depression
Some of us feel tired and run down all the time. We can’t summon the energy to exercise or go out with friends or get rolling in the morning. We notice it’s hard to organize our minds around a project. Our weekend to-do list gets lost in the detritus of unfinished...
Your Brain on EMDR, Chapter One
Why EMDR Works to Resolve Trauma and Calm Anxiety Recently, I attended a workshop in Dallas presented by Uri Bergmann, a psychologist who specializes in the neurobiology of trauma and EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy. I found this workshop...
Under the Pillow: Depression and Smothering Religious Doctrines
Religious abuse affects us even after we've de-converted. Ever have those dreams where you open your mouth to yell and nothing comes out but dust? You run from an attacker and you scream for help but make no sound, or you try to speak your outrage to an old bully and...
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