Reflections by Dr. Barbie Hessel
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Please be advised that some of the content below includes sensitive material.
How Do You Know If Therapy Is Actually Working?
When one of my clients first came to therapy, she believed there were certain triggers she would never get past. Her anxiety sometimes made her vomit. She had flashbacks and carried a tremendous amount of shame, both about what had happened to her and about the way...
When Competence Becomes Armor
I am usually the person who remembers the appointments and the details of what needs to be done at home. I notice when we are almost out of toothpaste or garbage bags. None of these things is difficult on its own. It is the accumulation of them and the fact that they...
How to Recognize the Patterns That Keep Getting in Your Way—and Start Changing Them
Most of us have patterns we know pretty well. We overthink, avoid conflict, try to keep everyone happy, shut down when we are hurt, procrastinate or feel like we need to control what happens next. We may even understand where some of these patterns came from. The...
What If We Stop Optimizing?
I have been thinking lately about how much time we spend trying to make ourselves better. If my IG algorithm knows something about this, it's that I am not immune. Most of us want to grow and develop and some of us want to become “better” people. That all probably...
What If I’m Not Unhappy?
I have been thinking a lot lately about what actually makes us satisfied with our lives. Or maybe satisfaction isn’t even the right word. For a long time, I think I assumed happiness and satisfaction were more or less the same thing and that both were somehow the...
On Turning Seven: Seven years of Simply Being—and the choices, changes, and people that quietly built what it is today.
Simply Being turns seven in September. Seven is a funny age. You're definitely not a baby anymore. You have friends, opinions, a personality. You know what you like and what you don't, although you probably still have a lot to figure out. Simply Being started in...
When Did Everyone Start Talking About Therapy?
The first time I went to therapy, I was a teenager, and I lasted only a few sessions. I don’t remember much about the therapist or even what we talked about, which is probably telling in itself. What I do remember is how strange the whole thing felt. I had no idea...
Why Is It So Hard to Set Boundaries?
I've been thinking lately about the way we talk about boundaries, particularly outside of therapy. Spend a few minutes on social media and you'll come across some version of the same advice: protect your peace, cut people off, don't tolerate people who make you...
Why We Keep Repeating the Same Relationships Patterns
One of the questions I hear most often in my office is some version of, “How did I end up here again?” The relationship may look different from the last one; the circumstances may have changed. Yet there is often a familiar feeling running through it. A person may...
I Understand…So Why Haven’t I Changed?
One of the things I've found myself thinking about more over the years is how much my understanding of therapy has changed. When I first became a therapist, I was deeply drawn to insight. That probably isn't surprising. I've always loved ideas and theories, and I...
Meet Dr. Barbie Hessel: Nashville’s Leading Trauma Therapist and the Heart Behind Simply Being Therapy
There is a particular quality to the air inside the Simply Being Therapy office in Berry Hill, Nashville. It is the kind of space that seems designed not just for comfort, but for permission — permission to slow down, to exhale, to arrive exactly as you are....
On Turning 50
I've been thinking a lot lately about getting older. I turned fifty this year, and somehow I'm already almost fifty-one. That seems impossible because in my head I was just having my 40s birthday celebration not that long ago. People ask me what fifty feels...
Why I Can’t Stop Thinking About “From”
The season finale of From is over. Some pieces fell into place. Many didn’t. There are still so many questions, so we are left where the writers clearly intended us to be—waiting in the Lake of Uncertainty. All us From fans are anxiously waiting for the next season....
Why Are We Drawn to Obsession? A Therapist Explains What These Stories Reveal About Attachment
By Dr. Barbie Hessel Almost everyone has looked back on a relationship and wondered, How did I end up here again? I know I have. The details may be different. The person may be different. But something about the relationship feels oddly familiar. Maybe you find...
Why Are We So Fascinated by Obsession?
If you know me as a friend or as a client, you know I love engaging with a good story. Specifically, I’m drawn to darker films or books that ultimately are about an aspect of the human experience we often don’t care to look at. So, I watched the indie films...
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy vs. the Medical Model: Understanding the Difference
As ketamine treatment has become more widely available, I’ve noticed that many people assume all ketamine treatments are essentially the same. In reality, there can be significant differences in how ketamine is approached and what providers believe is responsible for...
Holding Complexity in an Overstimulated World
As the child of immigrants, I have always understood identity as layered. Culture, language, history, and generational story shaped my early understanding of who I was long before I encountered the simplified categories often used in broader American conversations....
Unbinding From the Past: The Journey Toward Wholeness
There comes a point in healing when survival no longer feels like enough. We begin to sense the weight of our history—the stories, patterns, and wounds that once kept us safe—now holding us back from truly living. To unbound from our past is not to erase it; it is to...
Anxious for the Holidays? Here’s How to Help
Why your mental health is worse during the holiday season and what to do about it. BY SARAH AND MICHAEL ZELLER To read the actual article as it appeared in Nashville Lifestyles Click Here. Gone are the days of daydreaming about what might be awaiting us under the...
Four Ways to Build Resilience & Begin to Heal Anxiety.
“Human beings are extremely difficult to kill,” said the nurse practitioner I was seeing at the time. She was trying to convey to me how resilient we are as a species and provide some reassurance. I struggled then with illness anxiety. And, if I am totally honest, I...
Hack your Anxiety in 5 Easy Steps with Mindfulness.
Staying in my head had been my best survival tool until it wasn’t. I thought that if I could stay with my thoughts, I could fix things or, at least, understand the why behind each problem. And it worked for a while. Wow, did it work! I thought it helped ward off...
“I was Raped”: 4 Ways to Respond when a Sexual Abuse Survivor Confides in You.
When I first started working with survivors of sexual abuse, I struggled with the vivid images my mind created when listening to their stories. I remember having difficulty staying present, not to mention being triggered, with client after client and story after...
One Simple Technique that Will Change How You Move in the World
How Noticing your Surroundings Can Change How you Feel The Thrive Global Community welcomes voices from many spheres. We publish pieces written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not...