Mental Models

Keeping Care Alive, part 2: Practices for Working with Being

In everyday language, care is often treated as an emotion. We speak of caring as a feeling we have toward people, causes, or outcomes. Sometimes it is framed morally—as kindness or concern—and other times therapeutically, as empathy or emotional availability.

In Part 1 of this series, I argued that something essential is lost when care is reduced to sentiment. I also distinguished between two different ways of understanding care: psychology and ontology. Psychology interprets experience—explaining feelings, motivations, and patterns of behavior. Ontology, by contrast, discloses the structures that shape how experience is possible in the first place.

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By |2026-06-03T14:31:16-04:00February 17th, 2026|Blog, Mental Models|0 Comments

Care Beyond Emotion, part 1: Toward the Structure of Being

A client once told me they were exhausted because they “cared too much.”

They had tried caring less. They set boundaries, reduced commitments, and even stepped back from a role they loved. Nothing changed. The exhaustion returned, now accompanied by confusion and quiet self-doubt.

What shifted the conversation was not a discussion about balance or priorities but a different kind of listening. I stopped asking what they wanted and began noticing what they were protecting. Again and again, they stepped in when others hesitated. Again and again, they made themselves indispensable at the expense of their own coherence.

It wasn’t a failure of DOWNLOAD PDF

By |2026-06-03T14:31:24-04:00February 2nd, 2026|Blog, Mental Models|0 Comments

Rethinking Boundaries: An Ontological View from Protective to Presence

Over the last decade, the subject of boundaries in coaching, management, and leadership development has become increasingly necessary, given distractions, fragmented attention, and demands on our time.

However, boundaries are often discussed in a way that feels narrow, emphasizing a cordoning off or separation, not connection or creation. In several of my previous writings, I referred to boundaries (here, here, and here) as essential for creating the space to become whole. In a recent series on compassion, I suggested that boundaries are one DOWNLOAD PDF

By |2026-06-03T14:33:36-04:00July 14th, 2025|Blog, Mental Models|0 Comments
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