The Start of a New Year
With the start of a new year our thoughts can go one of two ways: To grow, adapt, and be a better person, or to drag the familiar past with us. How do you envision your new year? Are you hopeless or hopeful? To me, life has always been a battle to remain positive. It seems as if there are so many forces in the world, trying to bring us down. It isn’t that hard to see the suffering, the anger,...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
Holiday Memories
What do you think about Christmas? For many, it fosters great memories, for others only pain. Our wish is for you to see this holiday with new eyes, letting go of the past, so you can make of it what you like. This letting go of the past takes some effort. Processing through our pain is the key to experiencing a happy holiday. To do so, it may be as simple as putting pen to paper. If you find...Learn More
An Illusion – External Locus of Control
Locus of control is a fancy term for who we believe is in control of us. If you are the type of person who focuses all of your attention on what other people are doing now, what they have done in the past, and what you think that they will do, you have an “External Locus of Control”. In our practice, probably 90% of those we treat are focused on the external or what we also refer to as – “The...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
Getting Over Loss
Getting over the loss of somebody special is not an easy task. In graduate school, they taught us people have to feel their feelings during this period. Feeling your feelings for somebody that is not used to feeling emotions can be a difficult process. The intention of this article is to assist people who are struggling with loss to get through it. Loss can be as simple as the loss of a pet or...Learn More
Healing Through Compassion
Twenty-seven years in the industry and I am still learning that heart-centered listening is the best way to treat people. After thousands upon thousands of sessions, I often hear the same things, but I feel it is ultimately important to simply listen with a full heart. I teach my interns how important it is to not fix people. If we were to do this, they would be dependent on us. When you help...Learn More
Scheduling Alone Time
For many people, life is but a blur. Activity, activity, and then the big crash – or is there one? Often when we are too busy it becomes difficult to unwind. Did you know that relaxation is a necessity in life? So is time away from the electronics. Do you give yourself time to simply let your mind go to where it wants to go? It’s true that Psychology is the study of relationships, but have we...Learn More
Three Foot Tosses for Mindfulness
We play a basketball game in our program where people are asked to take three shots from a marker that is three, six, nine, twelve, or fifteen feet away from the basketball hoop. When you sink a basket, you make positive points, if you miss, you make negative points. The point of the game is to make the most positive points you can. Each marker is equivalent to the number of points you make....Learn More