Tis’ the Season for Depression
Welcome to the holiday season. If you’ve had issues in the past, they tend to surface this period of time. Remembrances of family, relationships, friends can stir up a lot of difficult emotions and memories. In school, they would say, “If you think you are enlightened, wait till you go home for Thanksgiving.” Using the holiday season as a healing journey can be empowering. Avoiding these...Learn More
Fix Me Doc – The Basics of Change
When I went to therapy for the first time I was petrified. Having an anxiety disorder had me nervous about everything. I mustered up all the courage that I had and went into the counselor’s office to get that thing that would make me better in that instant! Fortunately, it didn’t happen that way, nor does it. In repeatedly showing up for sessions, I let my guard down, discovered who I was...Learn More
Coping with Anxiety
At the University of Santa Monica, where I studied Spiritual Psychology, they believed that applying love to anxiety made it fade away and we would truly heal. On paper and in real life it has been a difficult task. I entered therapy to tackle my problems with anxiety and the mere task of addressing anxiety – which was something I had avoided like the plague, has caused me even more anxiety....Learn More
Getting Socially Healthy
In Graduate School we were taught to take care of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs simultaneously in order for the change to stick. If we only focused on improving ourselves physically, for example, weight loss, then it will also impact the underlying mental and emotional levels causing us to be unstable and usually, we’d slide back into the same physical condition. This is...Learn More
Violence in the Community
Coming from Los Angeles, we knew that when the weather got hot, the violence increased. In this area, it seems like the heat has the same effect. At my housing complex, we have had a sudden increase in violence that has unnerved a lot of people, including myself. What can a person do about it? There are a few psychological models that are perfect to turn to when violence is taking place. As...Learn More
Why Can’t I Just Fix This On My Own?
The answer to the question above is you can, given the know-how. When I graduated from High School, I was depressed, anxious, and didn’t know a thing about life. I did pretty well in school, with what was taught there, but nobody taught me about what was really important – how to keep myself emotionally stable. At that time, my family didn’t deal with my emotions. If you acted out you were...Learn More
Crisis Management
A crisis takes place when problems are too much for you to handle. Often people experience panic attacks at this time where the heart races, you feel short of breath, and think you will faint. There are a special set of tools you can use at this time to calm yourself down. At times of crisis, our brains don’t have access to logical thought so please keep things simple. Here are the top ten...Learn More
Getting Out of the Shadows
When I write mental health articles, I try to stay as neutral as possible. For therapists, we treat people that often have opposing viewpoints to our own, and for me personally, I learn so much from the other person’s point of view, which makes each day rich and an opportunity to search my own self for my rationale in taking certain positions. Often, I post the first draft of something I’ve...Learn More
Teaching the Old Dog New Tricks
When I was in graduate school, they asked us to create our own theory of healing. With 200 plus students, you can only imagine the responses. I didn’t take it seriously, wanted to be my silly self and took in my life-sized stuffed bear as a prop. Luckily my fellow students were kind as I sang out The Bear Necessities of Healing. Twenty-some odd years later I have thought in depth about this...Learn More