VM Psychological PLLC

11/14/2025

Creating Safety for Ourselves This Holiday Season
VM Psychological, PLLC

As we move into the holiday season, many people imagine warmth, togetherness, and celebration. And while those can be real experiences, this time of year can also stir up loneliness, grief, overwhelm, complicated family dynamics, or the quiet pressure to appear “fine.”

One of the most meaningful commitments we can make, especially now, is to create emotional safety for ourselves, whatever that looks like for you.

In clinical work, safety is the foundation of healing. It is the space where our nervous systems soften enough to let us feel, reflect, and breathe. Outside the therapy room, we can build that same kind of safety through intentional choices:

• Setting boundaries that honor your energy
Even small limits: time, space, or emotional bandwidth, can protect your well-being.

•Allowing yourself to step away when needed
A brief pause can be an act of self-preservation, not avoidance.

•Choosing rituals that feel grounding
Tea, music, quiet mornings, lighting a candle—simple practices can steady us.

•Saying “no” without apology
Your peace is reason enough.
Especially important if it feels too dangerous to communicate.

•Letting yourself feel what arises
Joy, grief, fatigue, longing… all of it is human. None of it requires performance.

For some, safety may look like connection; for others, solitude. For many, it’s a blend of both. There is no one “right” way to move through the holidays, just like in grief…

If this season brings up more than you expected, or if you’re navigating grief, change, or emotional heaviness, please know you’re not alone. You deserve a pace that honors you, a space that grounds you, and a season that doesn’t ask you to abandon yourself.

Be gentle with you…
You are worth the safety you’re building.

— VM Psychological, PLLC

11/14/2025

The Michigan School Psychological Clinic is dedicated to making sure quality mental health care is available to everyone. Now more than ever, people need high-quality, compassionate, and affordable care. The clinic's Compassion Fund helps with our mission to make sure that no one is turned away from the MSP clinic for an inability to pay. This year, we're working to raise funds to pay for 150 therapy sessions by Giving Tuesday, which takes place on December 2. Donate now: https://ow.ly/MkCm50Xo0K6

11/14/2025

11/06/2025

https://youtu.be/YNWy1ksxIDo?si=HbVJvQH0IWpr0nxs

Jonathan Shedler, PhD is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), faculty member at the San Francisco Center...

10/11/2025

Important Details for the 5th Annual National Wave of Light – Washington, D.C.

We are so honored to gather with you for The TEARS Foundation’s 5th Annual National Wave of Light Remembrance Walk & Candle Lighting Ceremony on Wednesday, October 15th, as we come together to remember and celebrate the precious babies gone too soon.

Here’s what you need to know for this meaningful evening:

Parking

Parking near the National Mall is limited. We recommend using Uber, Lyft, or other ride-sharing options if possible.
If you plan to drive, please allow extra time to find parking and walk to the Lincoln Memorial Reflection Pool area.

Check-In

Check-in begins at 5:00 PM near the Lincoln Memorial Reflection Pool. Look for the TEARS Foundation tables.
Please note: Due to the government shutdown, a few parts of the event will be simplified, but most elements will remain the same.

T-Shirts

If you pre-ordered a National Wave of Light T-shirt, you can pick it up at check-in.
Virtual participants — your shirts have already been mailed.
A limited number of shirts and remembrance bracelets will also be available for a donation.

Food & Refreshments

We’ll have pizza, donuts, and bottled water available for a donation.
Donations can be made through Venmo or cash at the event.
All proceeds support grieving families through The TEARS Foundation.

Event Timeline

5:00 PM – Check-in opens
5:30 PM – Opening Ceremony & Walk around the Reflection Pool and National Mall
The top fundraising team will be announced and will lead the walk carrying the HOPE banner, and will also light the National Candle to begin the Wave of Light ceremony.
6:45 PM – Walk concludes; gather back at the Reflection Pool
7:00 PM – International Wave of Light Candle Lighting Ceremony

Every participant will receive a taper candle to light in honor of their baby(ies).
Each state will be represented with a candle-lit luminary bag surrounding the Reflection Pool.

Virtual Participants

If you’re joining us virtually, please join via Zoom at 5:30 PM (EST) for the Opening Ceremony and again at 7:00 PM (EST) for the International Wave of Light.
{Zoom Link will be emailed to registered attendees}

We look forward to sharing this sacred and meaningful evening with you in our Nation’s Capital as we honor and remember all beloved babies during Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month.

Registration closes 12pm EST on October 14th. Register here: https://give.thetearsfoundation.org/event/2025-national-walk-or-washington-dc/e658881

10/11/2025

Grief has taught me to listen in new languages…
those spoken not in words, but in the soft gestures of wings, the shimmer of dragonflies, and the quiet movements that remind us that life still stirs tenderly around what has been lost.

In these encounters, I’ve come to understand that the natural world holds its own grammar of mourning. Butterflies, dragonflies, birds, and other winged messengers seem to translate love across dimensions unseen. They remind us that the bond between the living and the dead is not severed, only transformed, continuing in patterns, colors, and whispers that the heart learns to recognize before the mind does.

Each visitation…a butterfly’s pause, a dragonfly’s hover, a sudden breezee.. it feels like a conversation between worlds. In the stillness, I listen, and sometimes I swear I can hear Them speaking back.

09/26/2025

Grief and beauty often live side by side.
When someone we love dies, it can feel as though pieces of us are carried away with them. Yet, love also leaves a lasting imprint—parts of them remain within us, shaping who we are and how we move through the world.

This reflection by Joanne Cacciatore reminds us that grief and beauty are not opposites—they coexist. The ache of absence and the gift of presence both hold truth.

If you are grieving, may you honor both: the parts of you that feel missing, and the parts of them that live on within you.

09/18/2025

Seeing this chart today made me pause and reflect on how layered our inner world really is. Emotions rarely arrive alone. They braid together in ways that can feel confusing, overwhelming, or even contradictory. This visual reminds me that naming what we feel is not about boxing ourselves in, but about opening space for deeper self-awareness.

Think about how often we say “I feel bad” or “I’m upset” when really what’s moving through us might be dread, betrayal, or nostalgia. When we can recognize these more precise combinations, we also begin to understand ourselves with greater compassion. It becomes easier to tend to our needs, to express ourselves honestly to others, and to sit with the complexity of being human.

I love how this chart invites us to notice the places where joy mixes with fear, where sadness blends into anger, or where disgust pairs with anxiety. It gives language to experiences that otherwise can feel unspeakable. For me, this is a gentle reminder that awareness is the first step toward healing and connection.

If you look at this, what word or combination speaks most to where you are today?

09/06/2025

Grounding is a set of techniques designed to help bring our attention back to the present moment. For people experiencing stress, anxiety, or trauma related distress, grounding offers a way to interrupt spiraling thoughts, calm the body, and restore a sense of safety.

Grounding works because it anchors us in what is real and immediate. When our nervous system becomes overwhelmed, whether by painful memories, panic, or strong emotions, our mind can drift into the past or future in ways that intensify distress. Grounding redirects awareness to the here and now. This can:

Promote regulation. By focusing on sensory details in the present moment, grounding helps slow racing thoughts and calm physiological arousal.

Increase safety. Survivors of trauma, in particular, may feel pulled back into the past. Grounding helps create a sense of distance from overwhelming memories, reminding us that we are safe in the present. Support functioning. In moments of acute stress, grounding can help people regain the focus needed to work, parent, study, or engage in daily life.

Grounding can be especially helpful:

• During moments of panic, flashbacks, or overwhelming anxiety
• When emotions feel too intense to manage
• Before or after engaging in difficult conversations or therapy sessions
• As part of a daily practice to strengthen emotional resilience

Grounding does not make painful feelings disappear, but it allows people to hold distress in more manageable ways until they are ready to process it further. Grounding techniques, such as naming five things you can see or focusing on the feeling of your feet on the floor, are not quick fixes. They are acts of self compassion, tools that respect the body’s need for stability. They remind us that healing requires gentleness, presence, and patience.

09/06/2025

Are you feeling stuck, confused, or weighed down by the challenges of life? Psychotherapy can offer a compassionate path through everyday struggles. I'd love to connect with you and hear what you need at this time.

Vincent Mangiapane (Vinnie) is a temporary limited licensed psychologist with a wealth of experience across various mental health settings, including inpatient care, community mental health, university counseling services, and private practice. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Oakland University and his Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology from the Michigan School of Psychology, where he is now a fifth-year doctoral student in Clinical Psychology.

In addition to his clinical work, Vinnie is actively involved in psychological research. Studying cultural responsibility in mental health professionals, traumatic grief, and depathologizing grief.
Vinnie has worked extensively with clients of all ages but works specifically with adults. While he practices general psychotherapy, his clinical specialties encompass: grief and traumatic loss, trauma, complex trauma, depth work, ADHD, identity work, palliative psychology, and end-of-life therapy. His approach is deeply individualized, drawing on humanistic-existential, and psychodynamic theories.

As a clinician, Vinnie aims to help clients uncover their true, authentic potential by gaining insight into the patterns that may be holding them back. He believes in the power of a genuine therapeutic relationship and respects each individual as the expert of their own life. Vinnie believes that by leading with fierce ompassion to the self, to all others, and the entire universe, we can change our inner world and the world at large.

Client population:
Grief
Traumatic grief
Trauma
Complex trauma
Personality disorder
Relationship issues
ADHD
End of life
Infidelity
S*x therapy
S*xually acting out

Types of therapy:
Psychodynamic
Person centered
Compassion focused
Humanistic Existential
Interpersonal
IFS

08/08/2025

In 1999, Dr. Guillermo Gutierrez, one of our board members and Nico's dad, keynoted at a MISS Foundation event, sharing with a room filled with 400 grieving parents about fetal microchimerism. I knew about it from recent studies; but hearing it again, so comprehensively explained, brought tears to my eyes (and the eyes of many in the room).

During pregnancy, a quiet biological miracle occurs: cells from the unborn baby pass through the placenta and take root in the mother’s body. This phenomenon, called fetal microchimerism, means that a mother often carries small populations of all her children's cells—cells that are genetically distinct from her own—for decades after birth, or even if her child/children have died.

These cells are not inert. They migrate like pilgrims through her bloodstream, embedding themselves in her bone marrow, skin, lungs, liver, and even the sacred folds of her heart and her brain. Some of these cells appear to aid in healing tissue. Others act as sentinels of memory, marking the body with a cellular fingerprint of the children who once grew inside her.

In the context of grief, fetal microchimerism offers profound implications. When a child dies—whether in utero, infancy, childhood, or adulthood—the mother remains, biologically, a mosaic of that child. The boundary between self and other dissolves: her body carries not just the memory but the material presence of the one she mourns.

This intertwining defies reduction. It means that grief is not only psychological, not only spiritual—it is cellular. The child is not only remembered; the child is, in some small yet enduring way, still within.

What science confirms, poets have long intuited: that is, we carry them in our bones, in every heartbeat, in the blood that flows through us, and in every wound that eventually closes, even when scarred.

This unique microchimerism is a quiet truth—one that affirms the depth of the maternal bond and the embodied nature of mourning. In a world that so often pathologizes grief, this phenomenon offers a sacred reminder: to grieve is not to be broken—it is to remain connected at the deepest biological level.

We carry them still. In so many ways, we carry them still.

With loving compassion,
Dr Joanne Cacciatore

06/19/2025