In this Post I will briefly share some helpful observations pertaining to Teenagers and anxiety. I will be offering some themes – and some easy to use solutions. What is Anxiety? Psychological Fear: Anxiety is essentially psychological fear (fear that comes from thoughts) – ex.fear of possible rejection, fear of failing, fear or being […]
Category Archives: Techniques
Attunement Exercise
In building an empathetic ability it is very important that people first advance their ability to attune to another person. I will briefly explain attunement, then I will offer a practical – easy to use – intervention.
Feelings are important in growing consciousness – Existential and Mindfulness Based Emotional Reflection Therapy
Accepting your emotional reality and holding an awareness of those feelings helps us to be conscious of how we are currently being influenced … understanding this influence opens up the possibility to use reflection to guide your actions towards your best interests and towards the most ideal interaction patterns.
The thoughts, emotions, and behaviors triangle
The Diagram below can be used to understand the interconnectedness of thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Additionally the diagram gives an easy to understand explanation of the many different means of offering a psychotherapy intervention. I use this Diagram to offer a visual depiction of all the different options which are available to help the client in achieving a desired change. I use this diagram to unify all theories… personally I am an eclectic therapist… I believe in all the various interventions and I would propose that perhaps being open to offering any of a diverse array of interventions is a sure way of increasing your ability to assist a diverse array of people (multi-cultural competence).
Relationship feel stuck? Try pretending that you don’t know everything about your partner
So what is the solution… pretend that you don’t know your partner at all… the more that you can honestly engage in this suggestion the more you will find that you actually don’t know your partner as well as you thought (in a good way).
Weight loss – what does that food mean to you? Insight, reflection, and replacement in achieving weight loss goals.
Quick summary: I will discuss why certain foods seem or feel impossible to give up and offer a brief suggestion as to what you can do to overcome such an obstacle. Food (as with many other things in life) often has a symbolic importance which is more influential or otherwise important that the simple tangible object that it seems to be.
Addiction Intervention Debate | Increasing Freedom by fostering an increase in consciousness, reflective ability, and emotional availability | Is there always a choice or are certain stimuli too controlling?
This post will talk about the different views on treating substance abuse by looking at the themes of determinism, reflective ability, mindfulness, self-awareness of a person’s emotional self, moral compass, freedom, disassociation, empathy, and addiction.
I will propose the controversial suggestion that some addiction interventions might be unintentionally decreasing a person’s ability to freely make a choice in the space between a stimulus and a response. I will suggest that telling a person that they lack control might be encouraging and/or enabling a lacking of consciousness or growth of a person’s reflective ability.
Support group for teens with type 1 diabetes
Quick summary: Research has shown that support groups for teens with type one diabetes are extremely beneficial to the participants overall well-being. In fact, people who have diabetes tend to have lower incidences of mental health concerns as compared to the general population – this is thought to be because of the amount of familial, social and individual supports that are made available. I starting a support group (May 2010) in both Longmont and Denver Colorado… as I have already done quite a bit of research I thought that I might offer my group template to any psychotherapist that might want to start such a group in their own area. If you know some one who might be interested in this group (or other therapy services) – please send them to my web page – www.whbtherapy.com – for more information. To clarify this is a support group and not a psycho education group – this means that the therapist will be there to support you, to link themes, to create a feeling of safety, and to offer topics… they are not necessarily there to teach you in a directive fashion.
Compassionately Assertive – Maintaining Boundaries without Aggression – using empathy and clarity to get your needs met
Quick summary: This post will explain how to use empathy, self-awareness, and assertiveness to ensure that your personal boundaries are respected by others. Often we have a difficult time when an instance calls for decisive action in order to help the environment to respect our individual boundaries. Some react with aggressiveness that protects a person’s own boundaries yet often violates another person’s boundaries in the process. Other people are wary of engaging with conflict and therefore choose to not defend themselves or they choose to use an avoidance strategy. I am going to suggest that it is possible to be both assertive and compassionate when helping another person to stop violating your boundaries.
Parenting questions for couples – Questionnaire to increase synergy, collaboration, empathy, and overall understanding for couples who are co-parenting a child.
The intention of this exercise is to foster an open dialog surrounding the different parenting philosophies and different desires/dreams that each individual has for their children. As a person gains a greater insight into their partner’s philosophies along with a greater understanding or the emotional significance of those philosophies, they become better able to meet their partner’s parental and spousal, and individual needs.
Empathy building exercise – learning to be empathetic – increasing emotional understanding
Quick summary: In difficult times often we really want someone to ‘just be there for us’ and to ‘show compassion and understanding for what we are dealing with’ as opposed to offering pragmatic solutions or taking initiative to ‘fix it.’ In short people very often simply want empathy and they can feel worse, alone, or misunderstood if their confidant goes into problem solving mode. In this post I will give you a methodology as to how to offer empathy to a person. The process might not feel genuine at first, but by understanding and utilizing this technique you will eventually grow a more sincere empathetic ability.
Vengeance and the Ego
Quick summary: Vengeance is a tool which creates instability in an attempt to create a stable ego.
Past goals driving current choices? – Overcoming your inner teenager
Quick summary: What drives your choices, ambitions and behaviors? I am going to suggest that many (if not most) of us still carry values, goals, wants, wishes, desires etc that we forgot to let go of when we grew into adults. Being a teenager is truly difficult… you believe that you are an adult though you are not as biologically and emotionally developed as you think, you desire independence though you don’t truly even know what it is, you have the goal of being unique and different or the same and accepted… either way it is very important for you to have a uniquely identifiable identity, you want to be right and you believe that you are as life has not taught you that being right is subjective and relative, and you wish things to be fair but fairness was a judgment that required only your input. These teenage goals still encourage many of our behaviors as adults. In this post I will help you explore which goals you may still be carrying that you can let go of after you have gained a degree of insight.
Who are you? How to stop conforming to expectations and to start presenting the self you would like to present
Quick summary: Most people both consciously and unconsciously and both intentionally and unintentionally present themselves with different characteristics, beliefs, opinions, dispositions, emotionality, and behaviors etc in different settings. Who is the real you? How are different settings encouraging you to present your self in a certain way? If you closely examine the expectations of your different settings you can gain a degree of insight into why you act, think, and emote differently in different situations. For some, with insight comes a degree of freedom… freedom to present your self the way you wish to, as opposed to offering the self which your setting encourages you to be. Sometimes your setting encourages you to be the self which you would like to be… sometimes you feel uncomfortable with the self that you present… by examining your many selves and the different expectations of your different setting you can gain more control of the self you present in different situations.
Problems sleeping? 10 Tips to help you sleep
Quick summary: I am giving you 10 tips that will lead you to create and maintain a healthy sleep cycle. Sleep is vital for optimal health… you owe it to yourself to dedicate yourself to a good night of sleep. If you can stay dedicated you should be able to create a stable sleep cycle with these 10 tips in just under a month with improvements surfacing in about 10 days. This is not solely based on the sleep studies that are widely circulated… this worked for me when nothing else did. Change often requires a degree of sacrifice… try this for a month and then do a cost benefit analysis… I would suggest that the benefits will greatly surpass your expectations.
Overcoming addiction to substance – find a replacement behavior that offers a comparable result – hope involves you being both reasonable and honest with yourself
Quick summary: Overcoming a substance addiction can be truly difficult as the majority of substances that people become addicted to offer: significant results, consistent results, fast onset, and results with little to no effort. The reasonable way to overcome an addiction is to isolate what emotional state (happy, uninhibited, spiritual, relaxed, euphoric, carefree, distracted etc) you are trying to achieve with the substance and then isolate and engage in an alternative or a replacement behavior(s) that can lead to the desired emotional disposition (example: if you are trying to feel uninhibited what else can you do to attain such a feeling with less consequences?). Let me be very honest with you… it is rare to find a replacement behavior that will match the ‘quick onset’ and ‘lack of effort’ characteristics of a substance… In short, your replacement behavior will likely require more effort and the emotional disposition that you are trying to achieve will likely take a bit longer to achieve. For most people it is subjectively “more difficult” to attain a desired emotional disposition with a healthy replacement behavior than it is to ingest a substance. Being hopeful involves being both reasonable and honest… many substance abuse programs are therefore selling false hope in my opinion. There seems to be a belief that being honest about the effectiveness of substances impedes recovery… I am suggesting an alternative view… this is my view: substances are incredibly effective and there is no easier way of achieving a desired emotional disposition than to ingest something… healthier behaviors that can elicit the same emotional dispositions have far fewer consequences, often have other wellness benefits (to your physical, emotional, relational and social health), they can have more long lasting results (the emotional doesn’t always leave when the substance leaves your body), and they can help you achieve the desired emotional disposition without a disruptive dependence (you can embrace freedom)… in short the replacement is better for you, and the substance will be easier for you.
Premarital counseling questions | life long commitment questionnaire | questions for a long & happy relationship
Quick summary: This is a premarital or a life long commitment questionnaire that I developed to encourage partners to talk openly about subjects that tend to have a significant impact on the success of a marriage or other long-term relationships. This questionnaire is suitable for people of all different cultures and religions and for any two people who desire a lasting relationship. It is often very helpful to seek out the assistance of a therapist for such an exercise as some of the questions can be rather difficult; a therapist can help a couple to process their answers in a safe and constructive fashion. To therapists I would suggest that you read the questions and have the couples answer the questions to each other (have them face each other and not you the therapist). A therapist should tell the clients that they can ask for assistance in a future session if any subjects need more therapeutic attention… without this disclaimer it could be rather difficult to finish the questionnaire in a single session (if you have no such time constraints than you can decide with your clients what the ideal process would look like).
Understanding how your Values impact the choices that you make
In this context I will use the word ‘values’ as having the following definition – a ‘value’ is an emotional state or character attribute that you desire to live within or to be defined by; If you value feeling in control you will make behavioral choices that you believe will lead you to acquiring the relevant emotional disposition… if you value being defined as independent you will make decisions that you believe will assist you in displaying that attribute. By understanding our values we can get a better understanding of what is driving us to engage in certain behavioral patterns. As we gain a greater understanding of our values we can free ourselves to either change an ‘outdated’ or otherwise unwanted value, or we can come up with new behaviors that will help us to arrive at the desired value with fewer consequences. Often times we find that we are stuck in a pattern of behaviors that are not helping us to achieve a desired value.
Narrative therapy summary
Quick summary: My intention is to tell you what techniques can be used in narrative therapy, and why you would use them.
Creating Motivation for the Change Process – Why creating a mental image of the ‘new you’ works
Quick summary: I am going to explain a theory as to why visualizing the ‘changed’ or ‘new’ you can have a positive impact on your motivation and therefore a positive impact on your ability to meet your goals. Pop psychology and positive psychology have been telling the public to ‘think positive” and to “tell the world what you want instead of what you do not want” for years. The strategy can be effective for some, but it seems that the concepts have been so oversold that skepticism has arrived. I am going to offer a very simple visualization technique with a new reason as to why I believe this technique is effective (I have been using this technique for myself quite a lot lately with awesome results). Visualizing yourself as having achieved your goal can give you a positive feeling that may counter the impact of the negative feelings you consciously or unconsciously associate with the process of changing.