Health Archives - Heather Hayes & Associates https://heatherhayes.com/category/health/ Interventions & Treatment Consulting Sat, 12 Sep 2026 13:40:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://heatherhayes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cropped-HH_logo-32x32.png Health Archives - Heather Hayes & Associates https://heatherhayes.com/category/health/ 32 32 The Lens We Choose: Who Decides What “Healthy” Looks Like? A Decolonization Lens on Behavioral Health https://heatherhayes.com/the-lens-we-choose-who-decides-what-healthy-looks-like-a-decolonization-lens-on-behavioral-health/ Sat, 12 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7817 Part Three of Three Across the first two parts of this series, I have focused on the idea that behavior means something. In Part One, we considered what changes when we stop reading behavior as defiance and begin reading it as communication. In Part Two, Internal Family Systems took us further inside the person, where […]

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]]> The Lens We Choose: When Behavior is a Part Trying to Protect – An Internal Family Systems Perspective https://heatherhayes.com/the-lens-we-choose-when-behavior-is-a-part-trying-to-protect-an-internal-family-systems-perspective/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 18:29:14 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7811 Part Two of Three In the first part of this series, I wrote about the importance of reframing behavior as communication rather than as defiance. That reframe changes a great deal for a family, but it leaves a further question unanswered. If behavior is communication, then who or what is doing the communicating? Richard Schwartz’s […]

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]]> The Lens We Choose: Reframing Behavior as Communication, Not Defiance https://heatherhayes.com/the-lens-we-choose-reframing-behavior-as-communication-not-defiance/ Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:03:09 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7805 Part One of Three In clinical work with families and their loved ones, one of the most important decisions we make is often invisible. It is the lens through which we choose to see. Before intervention strategies, before diagnoses, before treatment recommendations, there is perception. And perception shapes everything that follows. A loved one who […]

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]]> Presence Is the Intervention: What Gestalt Therapy Still Has to Teach Us About Trauma, Awareness, and the Nervous System https://heatherhayes.com/presence-is-the-intervention/ Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:30:00 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7791 A client sits down and begins to tell you what happened to her. Her voice is even. Her hands are folded. Three minutes in, her breathing shortens, and her shoulders begin their slow climb toward her ears. She does not notice this, but you do.  What you do in the next thirty seconds is, in […]

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]]> Traumatic Invalidation: The Hidden Harm that Deepens Trauma and the Healing Power of Being Seen https://heatherhayes.com/traumatic-invalidation-the-hidden-harm-that-deepens-trauma-and-the-healing-power-of-being-seen/ Fri, 31 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7784 There is a form of harm that is often invisible, frequently minimized, and yet profoundly damaging. It does not always involve physical danger, does not require overt abuse, and happens in conversations, in families, in treatment settings, and in moments when someone reaches out for help and is met with dismissal instead of understanding. This […]

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]]> The Power of “Yes”: How Milton Erickson’s Yes-Set Builds Hope, Movement, and Change in Families https://heatherhayes.com/the-power-of-yes-how-milton-ericksons-yes-set-builds-hope-movement-and-change-in-families/ Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7720 There are moments in clinical work, intervention, parenting, and family systems care when pushing harder only deepens resistance. Families become polarized, and communication collapses into defensiveness. The more fear rises, the more people retreat into rigid positions. In these moments, many clinicians instinctively try to persuade harder, confront more directly, or increase pressure. Yet some […]

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]]> America Is Repeating Its Worst Mistakes With Ketamine https://heatherhayes.com/america-is-repeating-its-worst-mistakes-with-ketamine/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:45:51 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7714 Ketamine was never supposed to become wellness culture’s answer to despair. Developed in 1962 as a dissociative anesthetic and approved by the FDA in 1970, it earned a legitimate and important place in hospitals, battlefield medicine, and procedural anesthesia, valued precisely because it preserved breathing and cardiovascular stability better than many alternatives. Decades later, researchers […]

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]]> Benzodiazepine Addiction: The Quiet Epidemic Hidden Inside Modern Anxiety Treatment https://heatherhayes.com/benzodiazepine-addiction-the-quiet-epidemic-hidden-inside-modern-anxiety-treatment/ Fri, 29 May 2026 07:00:00 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7595 By the 1960s, medicine believed it had found a safer answer to anxiety. The era of barbiturates, which carried high overdose risks and profound sedation, appeared to be ending. In their place came a new class of medications that promised calm, sleep, and emotional relief with far less danger: benzodiazepines. What began as a pharmaceutical […]

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]]> The Power of Seeing the Whole Person https://heatherhayes.com/the-power-of-seeing-the-whole-person/ Fri, 22 May 2026 07:00:00 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7560 Why the Work of Arnold Lazarus Matters More than Ever in Modern Clinical Care The most effective clinical care has never come from viewing human beings through a single lens. People are too complex, too layered, and too deeply shaped by biology, psychology, relationships, trauma, environment, culture, and lived experience to be understood through only […]

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]]> The Cost of Burnout in Leadership Roles Supporting Trauma and Addiction https://heatherhayes.com/the-cost-of-burnout-in-leadership-roles-supporting-trauma-and-addiction/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:00:09 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7514 As leaders in the field of trauma and addiction recovery and support, we face considerable pressures and stresses that very often lead to burnout. Burnout is understood by the World Health Organization as an occupational phenomenon [1] – in other words, it is a condition which is explicitly linked to the work we do. And […]

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]]> The Difference Between Emotional Regulation and Emotional Suppression https://heatherhayes.com/the-difference-between-emotional-regulation-and-emotional-suppression/ Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:30:00 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7477 Emotional management is one of the key skills we all need to develop over the course of our lifetimes. Feelings are a crucial part of the human experience, yet no two emotional experiences will be exactly the same. You might feel hurt and sadness in a very different way than I do, and my best […]

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]]> Across Cultures, Women Are Carrying Pain Quietly, and the Future of Wellness Depends on Whether We Respond with Shame or Support https://heatherhayes.com/across-cultures-women-are-carrying-pain-quietly-and-the-future-of-wellness-depends-on-whether-we-respond-with-shame-or-support/ Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:00:24 +0000 https://heatherhayes.com/?p=7470 Across cultures, languages, religions, and economies, women are carrying pain quietly. In boardrooms and refugee camps. In gated communities and rural villages. In faith communities and on university campuses. In families with privilege and families in poverty. While the external narratives differ, the internal experiences are often the same. Women are disproportionately carrying trauma, relational […]

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