Untangled Mind™, LLC hosted by Piper Harris

In this episode of the Untangled Mind Podcast, Piper Harris explores a common but often unnoticed cognitive sequence: predictions, presumptions, and assumptions. Rather than treating these as personal flaws, this episode examines them as core functions of how the brain manages uncertainty.Drawing from neuroscience and data-driven CBT, Piper breaks down how the brain uses prediction to reduce cognitive load, how presumptions harden into certainty, and how assumptions quietly replace curiosity and learning. The episode focuses on what happens when the mind prioritizes efficiency over understanding and how this can stall insight, integration, and change.Listeners are guided to recognize when their thinking has moved ahead of evidence, how silence and certainty can feel protective while limiting growth, and what it looks like to reintroduce curiosity in a way that works with the brain rather than against it.This episode is part of the Bearing Reality: Thinking About Thinking series and is designed for those who want to understand how the mind organizes experience and how awareness can interrupt unhelpful patterns.#untangledmindllc #premiercounseling #integrativeCBT #traumatherapist #anxietycounseling #EMDR #prolongedexposure #PTSD #GAD #therapythatworks #datadriven #Georgiacounselor

Part II of Bearing Reality: Thinking About Thinking examines what my highlights revealed about how I tend to think. Reading is never passive; what we attend to discloses our values, fears, and assumptions long before we put them into words. In this podcast, I explore patterns of attention around responsibility, coherence, suffering, sentimentality, and the search for meaning. This isn’t about self-analysis for its own sake, but about modeling a discipline of orientation; learning to observe how thinking forms over time.#untangledmindllc #premiercounseling #integrativeCBT #traumatherapist #anxietycounseling #EMDR #prolongedexposure #PTSD #GAD #therapythatworks #datadriven #Georgiacounselor

As the year comes to a close, many people rush toward New Year’s resolutions without ever pausing to reflect on what actually happened and how they responded to it.In this year-end episode of Untangled Mind, Piper Harris reflects on why honest review matters more than goal-setting and why meaningful growth requires clarity rather than motivation. This conversation explores the balance between self-congratulation and self-flagellation, the value of examining painful or uncomfortable moments, and how reflection can become a formative practice rather than a judgment exercise.Piper also shares a brief year-end review of Untangled Mind and offers a grounded framework for conducting your own reflection with honesty, restraint, and purpose.This episode marks the close of Season 6, landing on Episode 72.If you’d like a structured way to reflect on the year, you can download a complimentary Year-End Reflection Packet here:https://www.untangledmind.net/the-untangled-life#untangledmindllc #integrativecbt #traumatherapist #anxietycounseling #endof2025

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.

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

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

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

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