As the world counts down to Christmas, many feel excitement, others feel dread, and most never stop to consider what they could be counting toward instead. In this episode, Piper Harris invites you into a different kind of countdown: thirty-nine days of intentional shifts that move you toward clarity, resilience, and genuine hope.

Drawing from cognitive-behavioral principles, neuroscience, and deep human insight, Piper walks through thirty-nine practical, grounded shifts, each one designed to interrupt unhelpful patterns and redirect you toward steadiness and growth. These are not affirmations or resolutions. They are small, deliberate pivots that shape the trajectory of your life.

The episode concludes with a fortieth shift, pointing to the true source of lasting hope, especially for those who feel they have nothing left to pull from internally.

If you’re tired, overwhelmed, or walking through a season where healing feels slow, this episode becomes a guide, a challenge, and a reorientation.

Thirty-nine days. Thirty-nine shifts.
And one true hope that anchors them all.

#untangledmindllc #integrativeCBT #traumatherapist #anxietycounselor #Holidays #countdown #Hope #JesusChrist

In this fifth installment of the Empathy Series, Piper Harris turns the focus inward to the counseling profession itself. Our field has long celebrated empathy as its highest virtue, but what happens when feeling becomes the only tool in the box?

Through clinical insight, CBT framing, and a touch of Shel Silverstein’s wit, Piper explores how the industry keeps “eating soup with chopsticks”, recycling emotional tools that look noble but leave both clients and clinicians hungry.

She traces the historical swing from William James’s pragmatic psychology to Carl Rogers’s humanistic empathy, showing how good intentions evolved into burnout culture. You’ll hear how unmanaged empathy activates the brain’s threat system, why depletion is not proof of devotion, and how ethical, data-driven compassion offers a sustainable path forward.

The Industry Mirror challenges counselors and anyone devoted to helping others. to trade performance for precision, sentiment for structure, and to finally pick up the spoon.

In this pivotal fourth episode of the Empathy Series, Piper Harris takes the conversation beyond emotion into the arena of moral reasoning. From Empathy to Ethics challenges the assumption that feeling deeply is the same as being good and asks what happens when conviction outruns discernment.

Through clinical insight, philosophy, and faith, Piper examines how empathy must mature into disciplined ethics, the capacity to act rightly even when it’s uncomfortable. She exposes how moral reasoning forces tension, demands humility, and calls every clinician to test their own biases.

This episode explores:

• Why many therapists conflate passion with ethics—and how bias hides behind conviction.

• Real moral-reasoning dilemmas that reveal the clash between empathy and discernment.

• The neuroscience of ethical decision-making and the “moral muscles” that strengthen integrity.

• How faith and philosophy converge: Marcus Aurelius, Gandhi, C.S. Lewis, and Scripture all urging us to test everything; hold fast to what is good.

From Empathy to Ethics : Reclaiming Discernment invites listeners to replace emotional certainty with moral clarity, to choose truth over comfort, and to rebuild integrity where empathy once ruled alone.

#untangledmindllc #ethics #empathy #integrativecbt

Therapy isn’t always solemn faces and breakthrough moments. Sometimes it’s awkward silences, accidental “love you’s,” and yes… questionable telehealth decisions.

In this episode, Piper Harris, integrative CBT clinician and founder of Untangled Mind, explores the humor and humanity of therapy: what clients say, what therapists hear, and why honesty (even the messy kind) always matters.

It’s a candid, funny, and deeply human reminder that growth doesn’t always look graceful; sometimes it just looks real.

#untangledmindllc #integrativecbt #umpdcast #umpathway #traumatherapist #anxietycounseling

What does it really mean to be seen?

In this episode, Piper Harris explores the tension between recognition and transformation, what the Greeks called anagnorisis and epignosis. Drawing from her love of studying Greek and Hebrew (and the words she’s literally tattooed on her body at pivotal points of change), Piper shares how understanding these concepts can reshape the way we think about therapy, faith, and personal growth.

Through stories from her own life and insights from her Untangled Mind Pathway, she unpacks how we uncover the D.I.B., the Deepest Irrational Belief, that quietly shapes our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

As she says, “Transformation doesn’t have an endpoint. It’s a way of life. It begins, always, with the courage to be seen.”

Stay until the end for her announcement about Transformation Week, a lighthearted, meaningful Halloween tradition for clients to celebrate what they’re becoming.

Want to learn more about being Seen? Read below:

https://www.untangledmind.net/post/_seen

#untangledmindllc #UMPodcast #anxiety #trauma #faith #Greek #exposed #therapy #deepestirrationalbelief #dansiegel

In Episode 3 of the Empathy Series, I move beyond the emotional and physiological effects of empathy to examine its cognitive distortions, the ways empathy can quietly reshape how we think, reason, and define morality.

Empathy feels virtuous, but when it becomes a cognitive reflex, it can lead to emotional reasoning, bias, and identity fusion. In this episode, I unpack how empathy functions like a mental shortcut, a heuristic that tells us we’re “good” simply because we feel, while quietly eroding discernment, accountability, and boundaries.

Drawing from neuroscience, CBT, and social psychology, I explore:

*How empathy activates cognitive distortions such as personalization and catastrophizing.

*The role of the prefrontal cortex in regulating emotional reasoning.

*Why over-identifying with others’ suffering reinforces ego and moral confusion.

*What to do when you find yourself trapped in someone else’s cognitive loop.

*How to climb the empathy ladder toward compassion and clear thinking.

Empathy as a Cognitive Trap challenges the assumption that feeling deeply is always virtuous and invites listeners to move from reflexive empathy to disciplined compassion, where emotion and reason finally work together.

#untangledmindllc #empathy #empathyseries #UMpodcast

www.untangledmind.net

In this episode of the Untangled Mind Podcast, Piper Harris unpacks Carl Jung’s famous quote: “The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.”

Drawing from a recent dialogue on LinkedIn, Piper explores how projection shows up in the therapy profession itself through defensiveness, appeals to authority, and circular reasoning that protect therapists but fail clients.

The conversation examines why modern therapy has drifted toward validation over transformation, how this drift leaves clients turning to AI for answers, and why the profession must confront its own shadow if it wants to remain relevant.

This is a call to action for therapists to stop projecting, start owning their blind spots, and return to the real work of psychotherapy: lasting change.

#untangledmindllc www.untangledmind.net

This is Episode 2 in my Empathy Series. In this conversation, I explore what happens when empathy doesn’t just drain us emotionally, but actually hurts the brain and body.

We’ll look at what neuroscience reveals about empathic distress: the way empathy lights up pain circuits, activates the stress response, and, when left unchanneled, leads to burnout and exhaustion. I unpack why the phrase “compassion fatigue” is misleading, and how what many in counseling, medicine, and caregiving actually experience is empathic distress fatigue.

I also examine how our fields too often wear this exhaustion as a badge of honor, and the severe consequences of staying stuck in empathy-only modes, including dissociation and even group-level hysteria.

Most importantly, this episode offers a way forward: moving from empathy to sympathy, and ultimately into compassion—the place where resilience and real change live.

#untangledmindllc #empathy #trauma #anxiety #compassionfatigue

This is Episode 1 in my new Empathy Series. In this opening conversation, I explore what I call the empathy trap: how unchanneled empathy can paralyze us, reinforce hidden payoffs, and keep both clients and clinicians stuck.We’ll look at where the concept of empathy came from, why it’s been elevated as the highest virtue in therapy and culture, and how it differs from sympathy and compassion. I share composite client stories that reveal how empathy often serves unseen purposes, like giving us identity, attention, or a sense of purpose, while holding us back from real growth.If you’ve ever wondered why “just feeling” doesn’t bring change, this episode will challenge you to climb the ladder: from empathy, to sympathy, and ultimately to compassion.#untangledmindllc #traumatherapist #anxietycounseling #umpodcast #empathy #compassion #carlrogers #psychology #empathytrap

Too many choices don’t just overwhelm us; they expose hidden patterns that keep us stuck. In this episode, Piper Harris explores the darker side of choice: how blame, ego protection, and even subtle manipulation distort our decision-making. Learn how to spot these biases in yourself, what to do when others use them against you, and practical steps to reclaim clarity and agency. If you’ve ever felt paralyzed by “what ifs” or drained by someone else’s avoidance, this episode will give you tools to break free and move forward.

Read more:

https://www.untangledmind.net/post/the-tyranny-of-choice

#untangledmindllc