Creating a Strong Inner Foundation
We are only as strong as our emotional make-up. If it crumbles, we go into a crisis. For eleven years I worked at the first Mental Health Urgent Care Center, seeing over 7,000 people there, before moving up to this area to run a clinic. At the crisis center, problems, too difficult to deal with, caused problems ranging from manic episodes, psychosis, suicidal ideation, and above all –...Learn More
Advise for Budding Counselors
If you have chosen to be a counselor – fasten your seatbelt, because every issue you have ever had will be triggered. This is the good news, because as you process through the wounds of your past, it makes it easier to help others. And here is where we start – taking an honest look at yourself tops the list of the most important items to address when you are starting out in this field. You...Learn More
A Few Basic Steps
Often, people enter treatment looking for quick results. Yes, there is medication that takes the edge off; however, the problem can still remain. This is because there are reasons for depression, anxiety, mood swings, or anything else. According to Spiritual Psychology, your ailments have educational value for the soul. If we process through these issues, they are gone forever. If not,...Learn More
The Dynamics of Change
It takes real commitment to change old habits and familiar ways of looking at life. Our brains hardwire automatic responses—which we often experience as our personality. So often in sessions I hear people say, “That’s just the way I am,” or “I’m just an angry, anxious, or depressed person.” If you continue to convince yourself that this is who you are, how can you possibly change? Life is...Learn More
What to Look for in Counseling
This article is written for people who have never attended counseling or who have tried it and found that it didn’t work. There are many factors that can cause treatment to fail. Let’s look at the obvious ones. You didn’t like the counselor. In counseling, it is important to create a “therapeutic bond.” If people don’t like one another, it makes it difficult to develop trust, which is...Learn More
Ask Your Therapist: How Do We Heal?
If you are looking for a therapist, ask them, “How do we heal?” It is important to find out their theory of healing before you enter their counseling room. Unfortunately, this isn’t the question potential clients ask me—they want to know if their insurance will pay the bill. I ask you to decide one of two things: to do it the cheap way or the proper way. And, in fact, the proper way can...Learn More
The Basic Steps of Counseling
We have a new intern at Basic Steps Mental Health, and I thought it would be helpful to write out the basic steps of being a therapist for them. Then it dawned on me that writing an article on this would be helpful for anybody interested in the healing arts. For those who do not want to go into the field but suffer from mental health and substance-related problems, this article can also be...Learn More
Freeing Your Mind
I realized I have been trying to spread the news of Spiritual Psychology for 32 years. For the past 10 years, I have been writing these articles, now numbering in the hundreds. It is exciting to share something that drastically impacted my life, and because of it, I transformed from a drug addict to owning my own mental health clinic. The tools I present aren’t new to the industry, with...Learn More
What’s the Point?
“What’s the point?” said a client to me the other day. How about you? How many times have you felt like giving up? I have found that people with a history of things not going their way assume that everything in their life will go bad. But this doesn’t have to be the case. What is the point? Life may come down to this question: Do you give up, or do you keep pushing forward? This is what...Learn More