Growth – Basic Steps Mental Health

The Number One Healing Tool

Scott Alpert — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 17:02:11 +0000

As an advocate of Spiritual Psychology, sometimes I feel like a lone wolf in the wilderness. In a world where CBT and DBT get much of the attention, I’ve seen each approach not get the results that are desired, giving psychotherapy a bad rap. If you are in acute distress, behaving a certain way, thinking […]

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Assessments for the Courts – My Battle

Scott Alpert — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 15:00:08 +0000

It was inevitable that I’d write about the legal system. Doing Mental Health and Substance Use Evaluations for court proceedings pits one genre against another. The courts try to decide what is right or wrong, but according to Spiritual Psychology, there is no right or wrong—only learning. How do I survive my interactions with the […]

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Is Boredom a Problem?

Scott Alpert — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 15:36:02 +0000

We do a fun exercise in our Intensive Outpatient Program called “The Wall.” Taken from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, our participants are asked to tell the group what stops them from living a happy and prosperous life. After each participant tells us their problem, we have them bring their chair to the front of the […]

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Feelings of Frustration

Scott Alpert — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 15:00:45 +0000

I am beyond frustrated. I just had my computer wipe out the article I was preparing, and “frustrated” doesn’t begin to describe the feelings shooting through me. It was going to be the greatest paper ever created, but no—my computer had another agenda of its own. So now I am faced with a decision: either […]

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Top 10 Relationship Mistakes

Scott Alpert — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 15:47:17 +0000

Relationships take work and if you don’t know the proper skills, it can be easy to fall into the usual pitfalls that I have fallen into so many times in my life. I guess through all my mistakes I am well aware of the most common mistakes people make. Now, this is not the full […]

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Give and Take

Scott Alpert — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 16:30:55 +0000

It finally happened, Basic Steps Mental Health now has a waiting list. All I can say is that I am honored by your testimonies and your recommending us to family and friends. Because of this, the way that we have been providing time during the sessions will need to change. From the beginning, we have […]

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A Fond Farewell – Charity

Scott Alpert — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:23:20 +0000

With a heavy heart, one of my staff members is leaving the nest and moving to Florida with her family in a few days. We have been together for six years and after supervising her during her college years and while she was working to obtain her counseling license we had grown very close. I […]

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A Heart Felt Thank You

Scott Alpert — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 17:29:21 +0000

12 years ago I moved up to this area to open up a residential treatment facility unlike any other. No, not another 12-step facility, mine was using clinical psychology with a smattering of spirituality which had incredible success at the first Mental Health Urgent Care Center in the country. The residential facility had a pretty […]

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Special Memory #5

Scott Alpert — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 17:00:34 +0000

The most humbling experience I have ever had in my career was with an 18-year-old woman who attended my residential treatment program and we just did not connect. It happens, not every person is going to get along with me. She was there, not of her own choice but her family insisted that she clean […]

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The Spirituality of Psychology

Scott Alpert — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 15:00:47 +0000

I’ve hesitated for years on presenting this topic due to the fact that when I entered this industry my coworkers looked down on my approach. In graduate school, we all spoke the same language and had one thing in common – a belief that there was a higher purpose in life than eating, getting married, […]

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