Suppose you’ve become concerned about some of your child’s behaviors, and you decide it’s time they see a therapist. Maybe your son is “gaming” too much, and his grades are dipping. Perhaps your daughter isolates herself in her room, and rejects social opportunities. Your first response is to tell your son what he should be doing, or insist your daughter talks to you. As a parent, it makes sense that you would become anxious to the point of agitation. Parents are always terrified about the short and long term impacts of problematic behaviors. Your child ignores your efforts, which causes you to amp up your pursuit of solutions, only to…
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Excerpt from the Therapy Room: Stephen and His Anxious Focus
“I don’t understand what she’s doing with him. He doesn’t work, and he has zero motivation”! Stephen had never spoken about his “baby sister”, Alicia, with such urgency. In past sessions, He’d proudly referenced their shared sardonic sense of humor, and bragged about her keen common sense. This differed from his relationship with his older brother, Bill, which he characterized as critical and competitive. Stephen and Bill were connected only by fandom of the same football team, and affinity for fatherhood. Stephen’s distance from Bill made Alicia more of a focal point in his life, which shed some light on his exasperation with her new boyfriend, the “doofus.” At first,…
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Our Parents’ “Mistakes” Through a Wider Lens
For many of us, by the time we reach adulthood we’ve harbored blame toward at least one parent for wounds inflicted upon us in childhood. We incurred these wounds at a time when we most needed the world to be a safe place, and we were relied on our parents to provide that safety. Divorce, infidelity, withholding of warmth, or other trauma, rocks our foundation, and leads to resentment with long lasting effects. Several of my clients have divulged grudges against their parents, and are unwilling to let them go. Unfortunately, these grudges impact current relationships, as they are often used as shields to protect from risk of additional emotional…
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4 Qualities You Want in Your Next Therapist
Finding a therapist who is the right fit can be as daunting a challenge as finding the right mate. Amplifying the challenge is that most people wait until crisis strikes before they decide to search for a therapist. Rather than being proactive and preventative, we tend to be reactive to symptoms or relationship stress, then hope our therapist can fix us. Urgency often dictates we settle on a therapist who isn’t the best fit, but by the time we realize this, we choose to not terminate because starting over is exhausting. Because “fit” is essential to successful therapy, I’m highlighting four characteristics less obvious than empathy or universal positive regard. These…
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Accepting Responsibility for “Self” Is a Precursor for Change
We Cannot Change Negative Behaviors if We Ascribe Blame to Outside Entities
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How Parents Can Respond to Kids Who Self-Harm
When Parents Overreact to Their Child's Thoughts and Behaviors, the Child Feels Isolated and Unsafe.
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The Affair “Bubble” Is A Place of Deception and Delusion
When relationship crises strike, some people sneak away into a secret fantasy world that is all sty;e, and no substance.
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The Little Known OCD Subtype that Could Kill
Obsession with thoughts of one's own death does not always constitute suicidality.
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How Infidelity Transforms Death Anxiety Into Death Denial
Many of us are in a life stage characterized more by “lasts” than “firsts.” We are working at our last jobs before retirement, occupy the last homes in which we will ever live, and might be in the last romantic relationships of our lives. It’s not so much that there are no remaining “firsts”, but there is little thrill in first social security check, or first colonoscopy. When we sense Winter is coming, and Spring has passed, awareness of mortality triggers anxiety we didn’t experience in our youth. As we age, awareness of death increases in many ways, most powerful being the death of our parents who we once perceived as immortal. Aging also…
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Dear Parents, Stop Scapegoating Your Kids
When Children Are Scapegoated as Identfied Problems, Their Self-Esteem Takes a Hit
