Articles
Welcome to SWEET’s blog, where co-founders Mardoche Sidor, MD, Quadruple Board Certified Psychiatrist, and Karen Dubin-McKnight, PhD, LCSW, write about the most important topics in the field, from psychology to science to self fulfillment.
Why Teamwork Breaks Down Even When Everyone Cares
Most agency leaders don’t have a “teamwork problem.”
You have:
Accountability Without Fear: What Agencies Get Wrong
Accountability has become one of the most misunderstood and most feared words in organizational life.
The Truth Leaders Feel but Rarely Say Out Loud
Most agency leaders carry a private burden: “We’re doing everything we’re supposed to do, and it still feels unsustainable.”
Evaluating the Impact: How to Measure Healing Without Losing the Magic
Healing Circles often create deep, personal, and systemic transformation—but capturing that impact in measurable terms can be challenging.
The Healing Circle as Supervision: Embedding Reflection into Clinical and Administrative Coaching
Supervision is one of the most powerful yet underutilized tools for culture change in any organization.
What If the Circle Never Happens? Making Space When Time, Stress, and Culture Push Back
Many facilitators have the intention, training, and vision to implement Healing Circles—but find that time pressure, culture resistance, or logistical breakdowns prevent Circles from taking place.
The Facilitator’s First Step: How to Prepare Yourself Before You Lead a Circle
Healing Circles do not begin when the group enters the room. They begin within the facilitator.
Holding Space When There’s Resistance: What to Do When a Circle Gets Hard
Even the best-designed Healing Circles will eventually meet resistance—eye rolls, shutdowns, power plays, silence, sarcasm, or emotional escalation.
Beyond the Team: Spreading the Circle to Systems, Stakeholders, and Society
Healing doesn’t stop with staff. To fully transform organizations, the reflective principles of the SWEET Healing Circle are to reach stakeholders across all levels—executive boards, funders, government agencies, community partners, and clients themselves. This article explores how healing-centered practices and Four-Layer Thinking can shape decision
Why Healing Is the Future of Organizational Strategy
In an era of burnout, disengagement, workforce crises, and cultural reckoning, healing is no longer a soft skill—it is a core strategy.
Conflict as Catalyst: How to Use Tension as a Team Growth Tool
Conflict in teams is inevitable—but unresolved conflict corrodes trust and performance.
The Rituals That Sustain Us: Designing a Healing Infrastructure
Healing isn’t sustained through passion—it’s sustained through ritual.
The Mirror Principle: What We Judge in Others Is What We Are to Heal in Ourselves
Team conflict is often perceived as a problem of the other—difficult personalities, poor communication, or incompatible values.
Interdisciplinary Teams, One Shared Language: Bridging Silos Through the Four Layers
Interdisciplinary teams are essential to high-impact care—but often function in silos, fragmented by training, professional identity, and communication styles. This article explores how the SWEET Healing Circle provides a common language and structure that honors diverse expertise while unifying teams across disciplines.
Healing Is the Culture: What Happens When the Work Becomes the Way
Healing Circles are not a curriculum. They are a culture. This final article in the series describes what happens when healing becomes not a separate space in the organization—but the space the organization is rooted in.
The Leadership Lens: Inside-Out Culture Starts at the Top
No organizational healing is sustainable without leadership transformation. This article explores how the SWEET Healing Circle model equips leaders to lead from self-awareness, emotional clarity, and value-based presence.
High-Acuity Systems Need High-Depth Healing: Applying the Four Layers Where the Pressure Is Highest
Human service agencies that serve populations with high-acuity needs face the paradox of needing the most emotionally present staff—while offering the least support for their emotional sustainability.
From Reflection to Responsibility: A Manifesto for Team Transformation
True accountability is the capacity to respond—not from fear, but from alignment.
Scaling Healing: Making Reflective Culture Sustainable and Replicable Across the Organization
Building reflective culture within one team is powerful—but insufficient in complex organizations.
From Integration to Implementation: Making Healing Circles Sustainable and Scalable
Even the most insightful organizational interventions often fail to lead to lasting change because they lack structure for integration.