a
Welcome to the Taproot Therapy Collective Blog, your deep‑dive space into trauma‑informed therapy, depth psychology, and the cultural forces shaping mental health today. Authored by our licensed clinicians in Birmingham, Alabama, our posts span from Jungian insights and somatic healing to evidence‑based modalities like EMDR and neuromodulation, as well as explorations of micro‑nutrition and media psychology. Each article aims to illuminate how psyche, body, and society intertwine—whether we’re unpacking the weaponization of collective trauma in our digital era or investigating how somatic trauma mapping helps track pain that lives inside the body.
Our blog extends beyond Birmingham’s office walls, offering trusted guides on practices like dream analysis through a Jungian lens and methods for shadow work and intergenerational healing. We also highlight local pulse by sharing resources for therapists and mental health seekers in Alabama, from expressive‑arts workshops to CEU‑accredited community trainings. Designed for both mental health professionals and curious individuals, our writing bridges clinical depth with cultural relevance—engaging with everything from architecture’s psychological impact and mythology’s role in identity to design, film, ritual, and the intricate psychology underpinning conspiracy and belief systems.
If you seek a mental health conversation that honors both the interior journey and the social context we inhabit, explore our categorized sections—such as Neuroscience and the Brain, Mythology and Therapy, and Psychology of Media and Culture—to find articles that resonate. Join us as we map the roots of psychic distress while cultivating possibilities for growth, resilience, and meaningful connection.
Understanding the Psychology Behind Deception and Emotional Manipulation Have you ever wondered if your business partner is a con artist? Perhaps you've noticed a pattern where their stories don't quite add up, where their accomplishments seem to exist only in...
Explore how digital technology is revolutionizing human language evolution, creating unprecedented linguistic phenomena while threatening traditional diversity. From platform dialects to emoji grammar, discover what’s next for communication.Retry
The intersection of psychology and economics reveals territories that neither discipline alone can adequately map. While behavioral economics has made strides in recognizing that humans are not purely rational economic actors, it barely scratches the surface of how...
The body keeps score not only of personal trauma but of economic violence, carrying in its tissues and nervous system the accumulated impact of life under various forms of capitalism. Each economic system inscribes itself somatically, creating characteristic holding...
Economic systems are never merely mechanical arrangements of exchange and production; they are theological structures that embody and activate specific archetypal patterns in the collective psyche. Each economic theory and practice constellates around archetypal cores...
The archetype of the wounded healer, first articulated by Jung and later elaborated by scholars like Henri Nouwen, finds peculiar expression in the modern entrepreneurial landscape where personal trauma increasingly becomes the seedbed for business ventures. Across...
The marketplace has always been a site of transformation, but under capitalism, it has become an alchemical laboratory where base matter undergoes psychological transmutation into objects of desire. Jung's lifelong fascination with alchemy was not mere historical...
The relationship between individuals and economic systems under capitalism exhibits patterns disturbingly reminiscent of trauma bonding, that psychological phenomenon where victims develop emotional attachments to their abusers. This is not metaphorical flourish but...
The architecture of our economic systems reveals far more than the movement of capital and commodities. Beneath the rational veneer of market mechanics lies a profound psychological infrastructure, one that Jung would recognize as the manifestation of collective...
Discover how Jung’s Jester archetype and the 12 archetypal patterns transform brand identity, from therapy practices to Fortune 500 companies. Learn practical strategies for authentic archetypal branding that bridges ancient wisdom with modern neuroscience.
Liberty Park Alabama, Vestavia Hills, master-planned community, psychological engineering, achievement culture, HOA governance, The Bray development, suburban psychology, architectural control, public-private partnership, Vestavia Hills schools, controlled environments, suburban anxiety, corporate headquarters, community planning
An in-depth exploration of Homewood, Alabama’s psychological evolution from disease-driven suburban flight to modern struggles with excellence versus equity, examining how fear, aspiration, and fierce autonomy shaped this Birmingham suburb’s identity and ongoing challenges with diversity and inclusion.
An in-depth psychological examination of Mountain Brook, Alabama—America’s most deliberately exclusive suburb—exploring how calculated planning, policy decisions, and social engineering created extraordinary wealth while generating a youth mental health crisis, environmental degradation, and regional inequality. A comprehensive analysis of the costs and contradictions of engineered perfection.
An in-depth psychological analysis of Vestavia Hills, Alabama, exploring how this affluent Birmingham suburb transformed from a Roman-inspired sanctuary into a high-pressure achievement culture, examining the material and psychological forces that shaped its development and the mental health crisis emerging from its success.
An exploration of how Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle and Eugene Gendlin’s Process Model provide mathematical and philosophical validation for Carl Jung’s analytical psychology, revealing that Jung’s supposedly mystical insights actually captured fundamental principles of consciousness architecture that modern neuroscience is only now beginning to understand.
Eugene Gendlin’s revolutionary work on the felt sense reveals how trauma disrupts the body’s natural flow of experiencing and how political oppression shapes what we can feel and think. His Focusing method offers both a powerful trauma therapy approach and a framework for understanding liberation as the restoration of our capacity to carry life forward.
Where Art Meets Life in the American Landscape In an era where social media algorithms and political narratives seem determined to divide us, actor and visual artist Toby Huss offers a radically different perspective on American identity. Through his photography book...
Postpartum Depression: Understanding the Symptoms and Finding Support Bringing a child into the world is a life-altering experience, filled with moments of profound joy and, just as often, overwhelming challenges. It’s common to hear about the "baby...
Moving Beyond Myth to Understand a Complex Reality For decades, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, has been subject to sensationalized portrayals in media, often depicted as a rare and bizarre curiosity.1 This has...
Navigating the Modern Landscape of Healing The journey to finding the right therapy is no longer about choosing a single, named modality from a static list. It has evolved into an act of informed self-discovery, a process that can lead to a personalized, integrated...
Do I Have Adult ADHD? An Evidence-Based Guide & Informal Screener The Unseen Struggle of Adult ADHD For many adults, life can feel like a constant, unseen struggle. You might have a persistent feeling of being "off" or fundamentally out of sync with the world...
Explore the signs of Bipolar Disorder with our comprehensive guide. Learn about Bipolar I, Bipolar II, and mood episodes, and use our informal 30-question screener as a tool for self-reflection before speaking with a professional.
Struggling with intrusive thoughts and hidden mental rituals? Our expert guide demystifies Purely Obsessional OCD (Pure O), offering an informal screener and hope for recovery.
The Question You've Been Asking: "Could I Be Autistic?" For many adults, the question arrives quietly at first, a gentle whisper that grows louder over time. It may surface after a conversation with a friend, after reading an article, or perhaps after a child or loved...
When Trauma Is Not a Single Event For many, the word "trauma" conjures images of a single, devastating event: a car accident, a natural disaster, a combat experience. While these are undoubtedly traumatic, there is another form of suffering, one that is often less...
An in-depth analysis of the paradigm shift in psychotherapy. Discover why the market, driven by trauma survivors, is moving beyond CBT to embrace faster-growing somatic and neuro-experiential therapies like Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, and Lifespan Integration. A comprehensive report for therapists and clients.
An expert review for psychotherapists on technology integration in therapy. Covers AI’s role, neuro-tech like QEEG, VR for trauma, Polyvagal Theory, and an evidence-based review of the Alpha-Stim device for anxiety, insomnia, and depression.
For decades, many forms of therapy have approached neurodivergence—like Autism (ASD) or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)—as a "disorder" to be "fixed" or "managed." The goal was often to help the neurodivergent person adopt neurotypical behaviors in...
In the landscape of contemporary psychotherapy, a quiet revolution has been unfolding—one that moves us away from the primacy of thoughts and verbal processing toward the wisdom held in the body's deeper knowing. At the heart of this shift stands Eugene Gendlin, a...
An expert review for psychotherapists on technology integration in therapy. Covers AI’s role, neuro-tech like QEEG, VR for trauma, Polyvagal Theory, and an evidence-based review of the Alpha-Stim device for anxiety, insomnia, and depression.
This article was written by the clinical team at Taproot Therapy Collective in Birmingham, AL. We are a group of specialized therapists dedicated to providing the most advanced, effective, and neuroscientifically-backed treatments for trauma, anxiety, and depression.
The Paradox of the Egoless Egoist James Hillman spent decades railing against the ego and the ego-Self axis, calling it a "monotheistic ideal" that stifled psychic life. Yet as many Jungians have pointed out, by throwing away this fundamental structural principle,...
When Andrew Samuels published "Jung and the Post-Jungians" in 1985, he gave the Jungian world something it desperately needed: a map of its own territory. Like many fields that emerge from a singular founding figure, analytical psychology had fractured into different...
A Review of Into the Abyss by Werner Herzog Trigger Warning: This essay discusses capital punishment, murder, violence, death, and contains descriptions of violent acts including attempted murder. The film and essay examine traumatic events and their psychological...
An in-depth psychotherapeutic exploration of the Myst series’ architectural language, examining how each Age’s design reflects psychological states from Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired organic architecture to Byzantine constructivism. Discover how the Miller brothers transformed environmental storytelling into therapeutic landscapes where internal worlds become navigable territories.
She's sitting there holding the baby, but she's gone. The person you love has disappeared into a hollow shell going through the motions of motherhood. She smiles for photos, but her eyes are empty. She says she's fine, but you watch her hands shake as she prepares...
You're grieving, but there's no funeral. No sympathy cards. No casserole dishes from concerned neighbors. No one asking how you're doing. Because according to society, what you lost doesn't count. Your pain isn't real grief. You should be over it by now. It was "just"...
Your heart is racing at 3 AM again. You've tried the breathing exercises – in for four, hold for four, out for four. You've downloaded the meditation apps. You've done the yoga, cut the caffeine, exercised regularly. Hell, you could probably teach a masterclass on...
You've been in therapy for six months. Every week, you sit across from a perfectly nice therapist who nods sympathetically as you describe your symptoms. They teach you breathing exercises for your panic attacks. They help you identify cognitive distortions. They...
You're sitting in your car after another sleepless night, phone in hand, typing "counselor near me" into Google for the fifth time this week. The results are overwhelming – dozens of smiling faces, all promising to help, most with 4.8 stars or higher. You click on the...
For over a century, neuroscientists believed that once memories consolidated into long-term storage, they became essentially permanent. Sure, you might forget details over time, and new learning could interfere with old memories, but the original memory trace itself...
Back in the 1970s, the founders of NLP claimed they'd discovered something remarkable: that you could tell what someone was thinking by watching where their eyes moved. Look up and to the right? Creating a visual image. Down and to the left? Accessing feelings. It was...
There's this exercise in DBT with a name that makes people laugh nervously when they first hear it: "Nobody Wants Your Whiny Baby." The name is perfect because it captures something we all know but rarely talk about directly. Here's what happens in a lot of therapy,...
Have you ever worked with a client who seems absolutely unable to see things any other way than their own? Someone who follows the same routines religiously and falls apart when something unexpected happens? Or maybe someone who insists there's only one right way to...
The Moment Reality Refuses to Cooperate We've all been there. That moment when our carefully constructed understanding of how things should work collides head-on with how they actually work. The project that should have succeeded fails spectacularly. The person who...
The Wizard Behind the Curtain: The Horseshoe Theory of Consciousness Think about the end of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy has traveled the Yellow Brick Road, survived the Wicked Witch, and finally reached the great and powerful Oz, only to discover he's a fraud, a little...
The Sacred Species and Their Archetypal Meanings In the depths of the human psyche, trees stand as primordial witnesses to our spiritual evolution. They are the axis mundi, the world pillars that connect heaven, earth, and the underworld in virtually every...
Therapists across all modalities have observed a puzzling phenomenon that challenges our understanding of therapeutic progress: given similar presentations, symptom severity, and treatment approaches, some clients demonstrate remarkable improvement while others remain...
Research in psychology and relationship science has consistently demonstrated that the emotional process of divorce mirrors the grieving patterns we experience after a death. Studies from the Journal of Divorce & Remarriage and work by researchers like Dr....
The human psyche operates like a complex orchestra, with different psychological functions playing distinct roles in how we perceive, process, and respond to the world around us. While many are familiar with basic personality typing systems, few understand the...
The Psychological Revolution of Writing: How Scratches on Clay Rewired the Human Mind The First Writer's Dilemma: A Technology Without Users Picture this scene: Somewhere in ancient Mesopotamia, around 3200 BCE, a person has just made marks on wet clay that represent...
A comprehensive exploration of psychology topics spanning the breadth of human experience, from fundamental concepts like memory and emotion to specialized areas like forensic psychology and environmental mental health.
Explore the fascinating world of psychology, from depth psychology and symbolism to cognitive, social, and developmental theories. Uncover the mysteries of the human mind and behavior.
Explore Jungian concepts such as archetypes, the collective unconscious, and individuation. Learn how dream analysis and symbolism facilitate self-awareness and personal growth through the insights of Carl Jung.
Explore the significance of dreams in depth psychology, from Freud’s dream interpretation to Jungian archetypes. Learn how dreams provide insights into the unconscious mind, personal growth, and trauma healing.
Uncover the profound language of symbolism and meaning-making in the human psyche. Explore universal archetypes, myths, and metaphors through depth psychology and the symbolic dimensions of trauma.
Journey into the captivating world of classical mythology, focusing on the rich traditions of ancient Greece and Rome. Explore how myths offer profound insights into the human condition and universal themes.
Explores the frontier of evidence-based practice in psychotherapy, taking a fresh look at the scientific foundations of mental health treatment through the integrative lenses of depth psychology and trauma neurology.
Examines the complex landscape of research-informed therapy while critically evaluating the limitations, biases, and cultural considerations that shape how we apply research findings to real-world clinical practice.
Explore existentialism, metaphysics, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. Discover insights from renowned thinkers and engage in thought-provoking discussions.
Explore phenomenological and existential approaches to understanding human experience and psychological healing, focusing on lived experience, authenticity, freedom, and meaning-making.
Examine how post-postmodern frameworks illuminate contemporary mental health challenges including cultural displacement, narrative fragmentation, authenticity struggles, and the oscillation between hope and despair.
Explore the psychological dimensions of cultural paradigms and their impact on identity, meaning-making, and therapeutic practice.
Delve into the intricate relationship between brain function, trauma, and mental health treatment. Discover insights into innovative therapeutic approaches, neuroplasticity, and the role of emotions in healing.
Explore the hidden dimensions of film and TV through the lenses of depth psychology and trauma neurology. Discover how the moving image reflects and shapes the psyche, both individually and collectively.
Explore the profound psychological and symbolic impact of media and culture on our individual and collective psyche. Uncover the hidden meanings and archetypal themes woven into the fabric of our cultural landscape.
Explore Industrial-Organizational Psychology, focusing on workplace performance, employee well-being, leadership development, and organizational culture.
Explore the psychology of design and architecture, from the emotional impact of spaces to human-centered design. Learn how architecture influences mental health, well-being, and behavior.
Explore how colors influence psychological experience, from the neurological mechanisms behind color perception to practical applications in therapeutic environments and creative healing approaches.
Explore the symbolic significance and psychological undercurrents of historical events through the lens of depth psychology, symbolism, and design psychology.
Examine the psychological dynamics behind conspiracy thinking, critical thinking, and the appeal of alternative narratives in contemporary culture.
Embark on a fascinating journey into the deep history of the human psyche, exploring how anthropology and evolutionary psychology shed light on ancient origins of modern minds, behaviors, and cultures.
Discover the transformative power of Christian mysticism and contemplative spirituality, exploring how practices like centering prayer and lectio divina can heal trauma and facilitate encounters with the deep Self.
Explore the intersection of spirituality and depth psychology to uncover the role of spiritual practices in trauma healing, consciousness, and personal transformation.
Discover the universal quest for meaning, transcendence, and healing across spiritual traditions, exploring key practices and insights from world religions through depth psychology and trauma neurology.
Examine the psychological dimensions of mystical experience and spiritual teaching across various traditions and historical periods.
Explore the shadowy psychodynamics of coercive control, from cults to abusive relationships. Learn to recognize red flags of undue influence and support recovery processes.
Trace the evolution of psychotherapy through the lens of depth psychology and symbolism, from Freudian psychoanalysis to contemporary approaches.
Explore the lives and contributions of influential figures who shaped the field of psychology and psychotherapy.
Explore depth psychology, CBT, humanistic therapies, and more. Discover how various therapeutic approaches promote healing and personal growth.
Discover a deeper approach to health and healing by exploring alternative medicine practices and holistic wellbeing through the lenses of depth psychology and trauma neurology.
Comprehensive collection of guided meditations designed to support mental health, emotional regulation, and spiritual well-being.