Bonnie Healey LCSW

02/02/2026

Want to get a great upper body workout? Here’s how:

Buy a commercial property. Make sure it has a really long double driveway. Then go to the Middle East for 9 months. While you’re gone, move the business into a fully remote status and make sure no one’s there for general maintenance. Then come home right after a major snowstorm, check on the property and…pick up a shovel.

Some people (okay, most people!) will ask why I’m not having a service shovel it all for me - it’s because I like doing it myself. When I do these things myself, it really does feel like it’s my business and my land - and there is so much pride in ownership. I’m really proud that I own a successful company with amazing people at work - I’m proud that we made it past that 5-year mark where about half of all businesses fail, but we didn’t - and I’m proud of all the decisions, hope, hard work, tears, faith and good luck I’ve had since HMC was formed. HMC’s story is a story that I’m extremely proud of. These are seriously the things I think about when I’m shoveling snow at work, and it feels good - these thoughts make me want to do more to take care of HMC. No, I don’t want help - I want that hour or two to myself so I can feel that pride in ownership and gratitude for what I have.

Today I got a start on the shoveling, I’ll chip away at it each day this week, and starting next week, HMC will have in-person availability again for those who request it. If you’re looking for in-person counseling, call our admin folks at 267-528-9037 and they’ll set you up. In-person will be limited to specific daytime hours for now, but we have a lot of telehealth availability morning, afternoon and evenings with our remote-only staff.

02/02/2026

Pregnancy loss impacts more than emotions alone.

It can affect:
• the nervous system
• sense of safety in the body
• emotional regulation
• sleep, concentration, and connection

These responses are not signs of weakness; they are trauma responses.

Our pregnancy loss stabilization group focuses on helping individuals:
• understand their body’s responses
• learn grounding and regulation skills
• feel less overwhelmed by grief waves

Grief does not need to be fixed; it does deserve support.

01/28/2026

Quick reminder of things therapists do NOT personally control, despite what my inbox suggests:

• Gas prices
• Snow totals
• School closings
• Why your ex is still like that
• Why your neighbor parks like that
• Why your kid’s friend Chad Jr. keeps making terrible choices
• What is the meaning of life
• The moon
• Mercury being in retrograde

Things therapists DO control:

• Giving you our availability and being fully present when we’re working with you
• Writing a ton of documentation nobody wants to read
• submitting and resubmitting claims to your insurance company for the 900th time
• Pretending I didn’t hear “can you waive the copay/late cancellation fee/co-insurance”

Just in case anyone was wondering….

Photo is me at a day spa in Kuwait City a few hours before I finally flew out of the Middle East for good. I’ll be back in Pennsylvania by Friday, January 30, and back at work soon after. I’ll figure out my new schedule sometime next week and post it here. In the meantime, if you’re looking for an appointment, email me at bonnieh@hopeandmeaning.com and we can work something out.

- Bonnie

01/24/2026

Hope is a good thing. It keeps us motivated to keep going; it comes with optimism, goals, and it can help prevent/heal from depression. I’ll never say hope is a bad thing.

But when you are trying to heal from things and people that have hurt you, hope can hold you back IF you are hoping for the wrong things. Here’s an example: staying with an abusive partner because you hope they’ll change. In that example, hope can lead to inertia, continued and worsening abuse, and a decline in mental health. People in those situations can lose years of their lives while they hope for something that is impossible, unlikely, or just plain wrong.

Try looking at the situation through a different perspective - put hope to the side and ask yourself, what actions and beliefs can I take on that protect my dignity? You’ll probably come up with a different answer than what you get from being hopeful. You’ll also see that the dignified approach ends up being more practical and proactive, and you’ll feel a greater sense of control when you are proactive and practical. Feeling more in control will reduce depression and anxiety.

01/17/2026

01/11/2026

Food that I like, not DFAC (dining facility) food! When you’ve been deployed for 9 months, you really appreciate eating real food again. I noticed a long time ago that there is a direct connection between the food I eat and my overall mood. If I’m eating well, I’m more likely to feel well also. There’s an enormous amount of research online about the connection between diet and mood.

Although I am out of the Middle East, I’m not back at work yet. I will know more about my availability and scheduling within the next week or so. Right now, I’m just really glad to be back in the US!

01/10/2026

“But the person you’re waiting on, the one who hurt you—is often the least capable of giving you that truth. Maybe they don’t know themselves. Maybe they avoid hard conversations. Maybe they can’t admit the damage they caused because doing so would force them to face their own guilt, shame, or immaturity. Or maybe, and this is difficult to face, they’re fully aware of what they’re doing. They might be deliberately pulling away, using silence as a form of control, or simply unwilling to confront the consequences of their actions.”

Quoted from “Chasing Love That Hurts”

12/28/2025

If you’re a healthcare provider in PA, please consider signing this petition! We hate telling our western/central PA clients we can’t accept UPMC once their EAP sessions run out.

UPMC - Open Your Provider Network

12/28/2025

This is horrible, and unfortunately it’s not the first time I’ve heard of an employee being fired abruptly during a mental health leave of absence. This has happened to multiple HMC clients, and I’ve been doing this work long enough to have seen patterns like this within the HR departments of certain employers.

If an HMC client loses insurance benefits during any leave of absence, we’ll still serve them - worst case scenario, our interns can see them at no cost and we can still continue their leave paperwork. Our interns are closely supervised by an LPC and an LCSW, we have another LCSW who completes all the required forms for leave continuation, so all clients receive a high quality of care regardless of their ability to pay. There will never be a scenario where in which we’ll deny care because someone loses their insurance or can’t pay for any other reason.

A Columbia graduate and former NASA intern was driven to su***de when her tech company cruelly cut off her benefits while she was on mental health leave, then fired her, her parents claim.

11/27/2025

“maybe the problem is poor communication”

You know, one of the things that makes me panic as a therapist is when a good person sits in front of me and says “I don’t know where to find friends” or “I don’t know where to find a partner”. It’s a panicky moment for me because I never really know what to say. I am extremely lucky that I still have friends I’ve known since middle school and high school. But I have such a hard time telling adults who are starting over, adults who just moved to a new area, all really good people – I have a hard time telling them where to just go find friends and where to go find partners. It can be so hard to form lasting connections as an adult.

When we have a chance to form a lasting connection with someone now, whether it is a platonic or romantic relationship – we really need to protect that relationship as long as that person isn’t actually harmful to us. No one says they have to be your forever person or their your best friend, but protect the connections that you have. Go the extra distance to understand them or to let them know when you need clarity. Walking away from people is the easiest thing to do when there’s a conflict, try working it out instead, though. A little extra effort to preserve the relationship will help keep one more connection in your life. What’s the alternative? Let the connection go and then go out into the world and see if you can replace that connection with another one? I hate to say it, but it’s just not that easy. There’s no guarantee that people really are as replaceable as we sometimes assume they are in the moment. There’s a conflict and you let them go in the moment, I get it that in the moment you feel peace. But wait a few weeks or a few months without that person in your life. Do you find yourself wondering what they’re up to? Did you immediately find someone else to text with all day? Is there a bit of regret that a conflict you could have worked through somehow grew into this enormous chasm that you don’t know how to cross now? Think about that last question, that’s exactly what happens when we let poor communication and the ease of letting go become our default reactions to conflict.

I believe that most of us are good people with good intentions. I believe sometimes we can all be misguided, I believe sometimes all of us make mistakes sometimes. I also believe that all of us are valuable people who are worth being protected as friends, peers, and partners. It takes a little extra work to get through a conflict and forgive one another. But it takes so much more work to start all over again, assuming you can find someone to start all over again with. When you choose to give up on someone, you’re also choosing to start over with no guarantee that you’ll have something similar or better later on. It’s a big decision to give some serious thought too.

When you let someone go, that phone doesn’t magically ring all by itself. When you give up on people, you don’t automatically get email invitations to go to all these different events with all these other people. There’s always going to be a hole that person leaves behind, and you have to decide if that’s a hole you want to live with. Sometimes it is, and sometimes you’ll find yourself filling that hole with peace and contentment. But more often than not, we realize later these holes have become absences that we have to carry with us because we’ve lost the person we gave up on in the moment, and it turns out that they’re just not replaceable after all.

11/12/2025

I love how the whole “Let Them” concept has taken off in the self-help arena! I’ve been focusing on it in my personal and professional lives, and I’ve noticed a really nice perspective shift in myself. Letting go of what isn’t good for us, letting people make their own choices, letting people go when it’s time to let them go and letting go of the negative emotions we feel when things don’t go as planned - it feels so peaceful!

I think letting go of people, situations and feelings is hard if we look at it as if letting go of unhelpful things means we’re letting go of everything - the whole experience, including the positive memories. But no, I believe you can definitely separate the good and hold onto that while you let go of the people, situations and feelings that aren’t working for you anymore. And once you do that, you’re going to feel peace like you’ve never known it before.

11/03/2025

Food for thought. Is AI therapy really going to replace the human therapist? Before we say, “of course not”, also remember AI is relatively new, and it’s only going to be improved. I’m not sure how I feel about that, to be honest. The future possibilities are a lot to consider.

For the first time, OpenAI has released mental health findings from its ChatGPT user data.

Publishing a report Monday on what it's doing to address increased scrutiny over its handling of mental health, OpenAI revealed that hundreds of thousands of users appear to be having emergencies each week.

Out of 800 million weekly active users, company data found that 0.07% exhibit signs of mania or psychosis, 0.15% have conversations that include "explicit indicators" of self-harm planning or intent, and 0.15% show "heightened levels" of emotional attachment to the chatbot.

From those percentages, you can estimate that roughly 560,000 to 1.2 million users engage in what OpenAI calls "sensitive conversations" on a weekly basis.

While the company has updated the chatbot to improve user safety, experts remain concerned about "AI psychosis," or users developing paranoia or delusions while using chatbots.

📸 : Getty