This blog post is a bit different from all the others. Rather than targeting your own mental health, it is meant to help you help others. I’ve realized in my counseling work that this is one of the greatest mental health gaps in society: we often want to help those who are hurting, but we don’t know what to do.

Your worst nightmare comes to life. You’ve heard about stories like these, but you never thought it would happen to you. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and now your whole world has turned upside-down. It’s a terrifying feeling. Grasping in the dark chaos, many people turn to denial, justification, and minimizing. But research shows those with the best outcomes are those who are able to formulate a cohesive narrative of what happened and why. And that is the heart of thi