Banner image with "Helping you gain self-acceptance to transform your personality, improve relationships, reduce anxiety and depression, and gain contentment" and pottery bowl

About Harper West, Psychotherapist

Harper West is a licensed psychotherapist and expert in improving relationships with yourself and others through self-acceptance. She is an expert in recovery from relationships with narcissistic or abusive partners or parents. Providing relationship therapy using Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy and attachment-focused child and family therapy. Trained in both Mindful Self-Compassion and Compassion-Focused Therapy.

Harper West is a contributing author of #1 Amazon and #4 New York Times bestselling “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” and award-winning “Pack Leader Psychology.” Appointed to the Michigan Board of Psychology.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, resulting in something more beautiful than the original. In celebrating a history of imperfections, the art form reminds us to embrace our own flaws, perhaps even finding the shining beauty and value in our healed scars.

Peter Mayer’s song Japanese Bowl (on YouTube) explains this philosophy beautifully.

Photo courtesy www.lakesidepottery.com

The ability to handle shame, imperfection and failure with equanimity is self-actualization and enlightenment.

Hands making a heart shape in front of a sunset

The Power of Self-Acceptance

Do you want to feel more calm, contented and fulfilled? Be truly self-confident? Learn how achieving self-acceptance permanently frees the mind from low self-worth and self-blaming thoughts that lie at the heart of many experiences with anxiety, depression, relationship problems, and other struggles.

Improve Your Relationships

What emotion is most harmful to relationships? The answer may surprise you. Read a real life example of a rocky marriage and learn the root cause of most relationship difficulties, including high-conflict marriages and family relationships, domestic violence, abusive parenting, substance abuse and more.

Contemplative man looking at city skyline, words "Stop Stigma" stamped over image

An Outraged Psychologist Speaks Out

Why are normal human reactions — fear, shame, self-criticism — incorrectly labeled as “mental disorders?” The “disease” model promoted by pharmaceutical manufacturers and our mental health system discourages people from seeking therapy that can lead to solutions to anxiety, depression and more.

Recent Blog Posts

How Does a Narcissistic Sibling Affect the Personality of a Brother or Sister?

It is so very sad that the wounded and traumatized narcissistic child inadvertently harms and traumatizes his or her siblings. We can be understanding that they do this in an attempt to get their own emotional needs met, but, as all narcs do, they sow emotional destruction in the relationships around them. It is sad, too, that the victims are left without the close, loving, supportive relationship of a brother or sister — a deep, relational trauma and loss that can affect their sense of self and safety in relationships throughout their life.

How to Break Free From a Narcissist and Set Emotional Boundaries

Learn how to break free from a narcissist and set emotional boundaries by first recognizing their insecurities and fear of shame. Gain power in toxic relationships by understanding the narcissistic wound.

Facts on Psychiatric Drugs

Psychiatrists have tried for decades to find a biological cause for human behavior, such as a deficiency in serotonin that supposedly causes depression or an excess of dopamine that supposedly causes schizophrenia. Despite what the advertising and marketing campaigns...

I write often on topics related to human behavior including self-acceptance, anxiety, depression, shame, trauma, relationships, parenting, mindfulness, and more.

Read my Blog