Eye Openers

Do you ever find that someone-perhaps an author, actor, or pop icon-comes along and makes you a better therapist? Perhaps the day after reading their work or seeing them on TV, you find yourself just a little more conversationally brave, open, structured, or spontaneous? As our family eye-dabblingly makes our way through the most recent season of Netflix's Queer Eye, lately for me that person has been Karamo Brown. Brown is a therapist and life coach who gracefully repeats phrases of individuals whom the "Fab Five" are trying to help. He affirms ("You deserve the best") and challenges ("I'm going to push back on that"), holding people accountable to their strengths and to the ways that their defenses have become a barrier to fulfilling their desires. Similarly, this month, the Book Forum features 2 books that a pair of academic child and adolescent psychiatrists wrote to me about, feeling that these books make them better therapists.