Panoramic Counseling Blog

Black Widow: A Book Review

As a therapist, grief is something I encounter often. Earlier this year, one of my clients, Diane, experienced a series of events that felt like something out of a soap opera. When the dust settled, she found herself widowed at the age of 51. I support my clients through email between sessions. Earlier this week, Diane posed the following questions:...[ read more ]

Removing “Should” from my Vocabulary– Parenting a Child with Developmental Delays

As a child, I imagined what life would be like once I became old enough to drive and become an adult. As I progressed into my twenties, my perspective on adulthood continued to evolve. I eventually reasoned that the adults who I thought "had it all together" in my childhood were actually just big kids who acquired bills. Like many,...[ read more ]

Free Mind

My anxiety has been especially challenging over the past month. In this post, I’m going to share the various coping and calming strategies I’ve been using to free my mind from the symptoms of anxiety. I resonate deeply with the song, “Free Mind” by Tems, so I’ll include some relevant lyrics throughout the post as well. Exercise My favorite form...[ read more ]

Memoirs of Mental Health: Edward Enninful

A Visible Man by Edward Enninful was one of a few memoirs that I finished in December. The book is different from most of the memoirs I choose because I had no prior knowledge of who the author was; rather, Audible kept recommending it to me. I'm glad I gave his book a chance and I look forward to sharing...[ read more ]

Memoirs of Mental Health: Fat Joe

I've had Fat Joe's new memoir, The Book of Jose, on my Audible wishlist for a while and I finally got around to giving it a listen. As a hip hop fan growing up in the 90s and early 00s, I've kept up with Fat Joe's career. Prior to reading his story, I didn't know much about his personal life...[ read more ]

Memoirs of Mental Health: Megan Thee Stallion

While this blog focuses on mental health, I occasionally get creative with a relevant book or movie review. Today, I'm doing something a bit different. When Megan Thee Stallion released her sophomore album, "Traumazine," last Friday, I knew I wanted to write about it here. As an EMDR therapist, I know a lot about trauma; however, I'd never heard the...[ read more ]

Memoirs of Mental Health: Josh Peck

Like many in their late 20s-early 30s, I grew up during Nickelodeon's heyday (ahem... back when it was good) and enjoyed watching shows such as All That, The Amanda Show, and Drake & Josh. Josh Peck played roles on all the aforementioned shows. Having been chubby throughout my childhood and adolescence, I appreciated seeing the representation that Peck's characters brought...[ read more ]

Medication for Mental Health

I keep up with the Freeform show, Grownish, and was impressed with how they tackled the topic of mental health meds in this week's episode. So today, I'll be sharing some of the insights I gleaned from the episode (Sidenote: you don't have to be familiar with this show to learn from this post.) To start, I love that the...[ read more ]

Book Review: Genesis Begins Again

For today's book review, I selected Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D. Williams with my middle and high school therapy clients in mind. Though this book is written for that age group; as an adult, I found the novel to be very compelling, as it addresses the issue of colorism in a way I haven't seen before. So let's get...[ read more ]

Memoirs of Mental Health: Jamie Lynn Spears

Today, I'm excited to share about the memoir that I just read by Jamie Lynn Spears titled, Things I Should Have Said. Background I wasn't sure how I'd like this book, as celebrity tell-alls often come across as exaggerated; however, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I'm about the same age as Jamie Lynn and I remember loving her...[ read more ]