Quick summary: When it comes to weight loss the tortoise wins and the rabbit ends up going the wrong way. Unrealistic eating plans get in the way of your weight loss goals (some even make things worse). If you are using too much personal restraint you may be setting yourself up to fail. This questionnaire will help you to create a reasonable plan to achieve an eating pattern that can be maintained for a lifetime. Moderation, Balance, and Realistic Expectations will help you find hope and wellness.
Euphoria and gratitude… a runners high at 9,000 feet
Quick summary: If you can teach yourself to feel gratitude for a greater diversity of things… then you can add a positive association to any experience that you want.
Forming Secure Attachments – Handout for parents and caregivers
Handout concerning helping a child to form a secure attachment – an alternative to behavioral intervention and other parenting strategies that might not have worked for your child
Components of the Obesity and Nutrition Problem in our Shared Country
Quick summary: I am providing a list of themes with very brief explanation of how they are related to obesity and other nutritional concerns in our country. Some of the themes are more related to the individual while others are more related to society as a whole.
Why some fail to lose Weight – Restraint theory
Quick Summary: Restraint theory suggests that restrictive diets lead to failure and in some cases actually increase weight gain. The theory was developed after research was showing that people on restrictive (don’t eat any of these ‘bad’ foods diets) had almost an 80% rate of failure and people were often gaining back more weight than they had when they started the diet. This post will look at how restraint theory can explain some of the failures of weight loss programs and will finish with a more reasonable solution for people trying to lose weight.
Synchronicity – The rattlesnake’s message of change and balance
Quick summary: This is a story about synchronicity and the collective unconscious… this message was given to me from the collective to help the manifestation of my destiny… Carl Jung brought synchronicity to the western world (though the ideas have been alive in Taoism and forms of shamanism for a very long time). The idea is that there are meaningful coincidences in life that can be very beneficial to you if you pay attention. There are symbols that can help direct you towards your destiny. The whole idea of dream interpretation stems from Jung and this theory… the lesser-known part of the theory is that there are symbols in life as well as in dreams.
Jung’s Theory of Synchronicity, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
Quick summary: I have been reading a great book titled the ‘Tao of Psychology’ which spends a good deal of time explaining Jung’s theory of archetypes, the collective unconscious and synchronicity. My intention is to make these very abstract concepts more accessible so that more people can receive guidance by paying attention to the subjective meaning that they might assign to synchronistic events. In simple terms – life gives you signs… if you pay attention the signs can help you.
Placebo effect – an underrated healer
Quick summary: I am going to suggest that we might be able to use mindfulness to gain control over the ‘placebo effect’ thereby positively influencing recovery of physical and mental disturbances. In scientific investigation it is always important to rule out the placebo effect when studying the effects of an intervention. To do so, researchers will commonly give one group a sugar pill or some other benign intervention, and the other group will be given the medicine or the treatment. In most case those who were given the sugar pill show health improvements… let me explain, if a person is told that they are receiving a pill that will help cure an illness and they are given a sugar pill instead of the actual medicine, they will generally show signs of improvement related to the illness. What does this mean? Do we human’s have an untapped ability to heal ourselves? What abstraction does a sugar pill represent… hope, belief? If we believed or held hope that we could cure our own illnesses, could we learn to mentally heal ourselves? I would suggest that the answer is yes… the placebo effect is too consistent to ignore… in short, people in control groups across the planet that are experiencing recovery without medical intervention are healing themselves. How can we learn to increase the effect of the ‘placebo effect’?
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.
An example of ‘Auras’ and ‘Energy’ for our left brained friends
Quick clarification - When someone says “I can see your energy” they are stating - “I can see the boundary of you personal space and that boundary is implying how you desire to be interacted with at this moment… this gives me insight into your emotional disposition.”
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.
‘not -talked-about’ themes in Human Sexuality – normalizing
Quick summary – the topic of ‘normal’ or ‘day to day’ sex is perhaps not always given as much attention as could be helpful to the masses. As sexual education slowly decreases while pornography and celebrity gossip increases we find ourselves in a society that does not always know if they are more different or more the same as every one else. I will not pretend to tell you what normal sex is (though I could use a bell curve and list a bunch of stats), instead I am using this space to write about topics with brevity that happen in most people’s sex lives… to normalize events that people might go through.
Play therapy explained | How to use play therapy | Attuning to your child | how and why it works
Quick Summary: Play therapy is an effective and developmentally accommodating way for a child to communicate emotional or otherwise ‘complex’ information to an adult. A child will often tell you about what they are currently feeling or thinking about with their toys or drawing etc… If an adult can pay attention to the story line or scenario that the child is enacting with their toys (puppets, action figures, dolls, cars etc) the adult can gain an understanding of something that the child is unable to communicate with verbal language (be careful not to over analyze; often children are simply re-enacting something they saw on a TV show etc.) When a child feels as though an adult can understand them they feel secure and validated in who they are… they also feel secure that the adult can meet their basic needs and their attachment needs. The security which arises from empathy and understanding promotes healthy relational, emotional, cognitive and physical growth for humans of all ages.
Balanced Boundaries – a metaphor about giving and taking for the health of yourself and others
I am a wooden vase filled with healing water gently replenished by the collective love… as I pour too little, I overflow and my wood becomes oversaturated and less aware of its own makeup and contents… bloated and blinded with excess… as I pour too much my wood becomes dry and cracked… delicate and injured.
Alcohol use and marital satisfaction
Quick summary – I did some brief research (based on two scientific articles) on what the effect of alcohol use has on marital satisfaction. I am including my more thorough investigation below, but I will describe some of the finding here. One study accented the importance of commonality… this means that marital satisfaction was correlated with the degree to which partners engaged in substance use at relatively equal amounts (both drink a lot = more satisfaction than only one drinking a lot ). Divergence in substance intake was associated with decreased marital satisfaction… this does suggest that offering rehabilitation counseling to only one partner in a relationship could have negative effects on the marital satisfaction (so offering counseling to both would be more ideal and arguably more ethical). Moderate substance use (couples who did not abuse substances) was correlated to higher levels of marital satisfaction. In short the research found that marital satisfaction was highest when the couple’s intake was both moderate and relatively the same for each partner.
What is empathy? How do I know if I am experiencing empathy?
Quick summary - Empathy is when a person opens up their emotional boundaries and allows another person’s feeling to be cradled and nurtured within the loving hands of his/her understanding. Empathy is holding a narrative of another person and allowing yourself to feel the person’s emotions related to his or her storyline while understanding that these are not your own emotions.
Existentialism in Psychotherapy
Existentialism is used in Psychotherapy to allow clients to explore their freedom in creating their own meaning. When a client finds his/her freedom to create meaning they greatly reduce their anxiety. The new meaning that a client creates can greatly reduce their suffering and can aid in a person’s recovery from a difficult lived experience.
pathologizing, labels, dichotomies, existentialism and acceptance
Quick summary: I am offering a discussion concerning the drive to label and how labeling impacts suffering. There is a heated debate in the field of psychotherapy as to whether psychiatric (DSM) labels help or hurt the client’s recovery. I am commenting on what encourages our emotional reactions and behavior related to the topic.