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© Copyright 2007 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Minneapolis Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

Written by Julienne B. Derichs, LCPC

Why is it there are some couples who always butt heads…and other couples who get along with little friction? From early childhood we learn about conflict from our interactions with others. Our conflict management style begins to evolve through our unique experiences with others based on wants, needs, likes, and dislikes. Tension or conflict arises when we expect others to be like us and judge and blame each other for our differences.

No matter what we call it—conflict, fighting, arguing, quarreling or disagreeing, in most relationships, differences eventually arise and for many of us it creates some uneasiness. But having the Good Fight, if handled well, can transform relationships and improve our understanding of each other. When managed badly, conflict can result in damaged friendships, severed relationships, and long-lasting hostility.

Understanding Conflict

Terry Real, in his book, “How Can I Get Through To You?” describes the essential rhythm of a relationship as going from Harmony to Disharmony to Restoration. In relationships it isn’t a matter of IF there is going to be conflict (disharmony) but HOW you are going to handle that conflict so that you can restore (restoration) it back to a harmonious (harmony) state… Read the rest of this entry

GoodTherapy.org maintains a list of psychotherapy & counseling approaches for the purpose of informing people about different forms of therapy. We’re currently updating this list of therapy models and we’ve just finished our update to Transpersonal Psychotherapy. Transpersonal Psychotherapy is the extension of psychological studies into consciousness studies, spiritual inquiry, body-mind relationships and transformation. Transpersonal Psychotherapy encompasses the study of the full range of human experience, from abnormal behavior to healthy normal functioning, to spiritually embodied, and transcendent consciousness. You can view the update to our section on Transpersonal Psychotherapy and/or view our entire list of psychotherapy & counseling models . Enjoy :)

© Copyright 2007 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Miami Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by John Rhead, Ph.D.

Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile
There are three basic models for conceptualizing the process of psychotherapy: implanting something new in the client that is missing (deficiency model), changing or removing something problematic that is already present (pathology model), or nurturing the unfolding of some potential wholeness that is inherent in each human (spiritual model). While each model captures some of what might need to go on in psychotherapy at any given moment, the spiritual model is for me the most interesting and comprehensive.

Each of these three models of psychotherapy also suggests a particular role for the therapist. In the deficiency model the therapist is something like a dietary supplement for the psyche, providing something not already present and not readily available in the usually daily intake of psychological experience. The pathology model makes the therapist something between a mechanic and a surgeon, removing something dysfunctional and possibly replacing it with something new that can be expected to function better. In the spiritual model the therapist works in manner of a midwife, seeking to eliminate obstacles to a natural process of the birthing of new awareness without claiming to create or control what emerges.

Each of these three models of psychotherapy has parallels in religious and spiritual traditions. The deficiency model corresponds to the belief that a person cannot be whole, spiritually mature, or loved by God unless he or she adopts a particular set of beliefs or joins a particular religious or spiritual group. The pathology model corresponds to the concept of original sin. The spiritual model addresses that Matthew Fox has lately been calling Original Blessing, and what Buddhists have for a long time referred to as Buddha Nature.

While any person’s psychotherapy might legitimately work from any one of these three models at a given point in time, the deficiency and pathology models must eventually yield to the spiritual model in any long-term therapy. It is not a question of nature versus nurture, but rather a question of how we nurture our clients’ inherent nature. The most fundamental way in which we do this is through the ongoing nurturing of our own nature, through our own psychotherapy, spiritual practices, and anything else we can find.

©Copyright 2007 John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

GoodTherapy.org maintains a list of psychotherapy & counseling approaches for the purpose of informing people about different forms of therapy. We’re currently updating this list of therapy models and we’ve just finished our update to Family Attachment Narrative Therapy. Family Attachment Narrative Therapy was developed to help resolve difficulties experienced by behaviorally disturbed children and their adoptive or foster parents. You can view the update to our section on Family Attachment Narrative Therapy and/or view our entire list of psychotherapy & counseling models . Enjoy :)

© Copyright 2007 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Tampa Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

Written by Mary Ellen Barnes, Ph.D.

Click here to contact Mary Ellen and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

It’s a common, if quiet, complaint heard over lunch, or at breaks in meetings, at the Chamber of Commerce mixer, or the League of Women Voters retreat. “My husband finally quit drinking, attends AA, and life is certainly calmer, but…” The “buts” are varied, but essentially come down to the fact that while one’s spouse is no longer actively drinking little else has changed.
An unfortunate side effect of AA and other 12-Step based programs is that while they may help a man stop drinking, they actually encourage him to maintain, and even expand, his focus on alcohol. So he continues to neglect his family and remain emotionally distant from his wife and she doesn’t even get to complain about it because he is “working his program.” For her, precious little has changed.

“I’m truly glad that he isn’t drinking,” one said. “I don’t miss the late night worrying, the calls for bail or a ride home. I don’t miss wondering about our debts, credit rating, or whether he’s going to get fired. But he’s still got his head in a bottle and we don’t even fight anymore. There seems to be so much less of him now than when he was drinking, even. I probably sound selfish and ungrateful, but I miss him.”

It’s a common and heart-breaking story. Another failure of the American system of alcohol treatment – a system that even when it works merely substitutes one form of alcohol obsession for another. Read the rest of this entry

Written by Tanya Vallianos MA, LPC, ATR

Click here to contact Tanya and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

The holiday season can be a challenging time for most anyone as the stresses of finances, increased demands of time and tasks, and unrealistic expectations show themselves in a grand way. Furthermore, if you are a person that is working through feelings of grief at this time, everything can become compounded.

The holidays can create feelings of depression, loneliness, and anxiety for the bereaved as they remember past events. Holidays by nature are filled with nostalgia, tradition and ritual, but for those grieving, this can bring up conflicted feelings of both comfort and distress as the absence of the deceased becomes more apparent. As the rest of the world is celebrating, it’s important for grieving individuals to acknowledge their emotional pain and get through the season with a minimum amount of stress. Being able to express ones grief verbally can be difficult. Art expression, as a non-verbal modality, can be an effective way of working through and containing grief when words fall short.

Throughout history, art making has been a means by which humans have expressed their grief. Whether through burial ceremonies, shrines, or memorials, the symbols that represent loss have been important for coping and relieving emotional distress.

Creativity can be a way to feel the sadness, anger and loss as well as the remembrance of times past in all their imperfections and grace, while taking time to understand oneself in the context of the whole. Overwhelming thoughts and feelings can be captured in the images thereby creating a new sense of control, organization, and containment. Focusing on the images or symbols enables a person to express stressful emotions without having to refer directly to details surrounding the loss. Read the rest of this entry

GoodTherapy.org maintains a list of psychotherapy & counseling approaches for the purpose of informing people about different forms of therapy. We’re currently updating this list of therapy models and we’ve just finished our update to Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), which is specialized form of therapy for people with a Borderline personality constellation. You can view the update to our section on Dialectical Behavior Therapy and/or view our entire list of psychotherapy & counseling models . Enjoy :)

© Copyright 2007 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Fresno Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

Written by Connie Miller MS, LPC, NCC, TEP

Today there is a universal spiritual movement in the field of psychology that cannot be ignored. The awareness of mystical experiences is becoming more and more common. As various holistic healing practices become more accepted, the trend is to integrate psychology with other methods of healing.

In twelve-step programs, people heal through the telling and sharing of their own stories. It is through the sharing of the trauma and pain and the subsequent healing that people form common bonds that unite them. Then, to get beyond that connection of pain, they need to go further by sharing their soulful moments, their hopes, and their dreams. This requires re-establishing a relationship with their creativity and, through their higher awareness, connecting with others on a spiritual level.

During my practice, which has focused on co-dependency and addictive family systems, I have found that one of the most difficult tasks for a counselor during a client’s healing process is to break the bond of abuse. It is difficult to teach a client to open his heart to experience love so that he might be able to move on to live in a loving, healthy relationships, doing meaningful creative work. Souldrama® provides a technique to move these clients past resistance. Read the rest of this entry

Written by David Pierce

Click here to contact David Pierce and see his website: Friends Along the Road

Hollywood – in the tradition of classic mythopoeia – tends to use bereaved parents and spouses in pivotal roles. They are often examples of those who’ve been through life’s worst extremes, and play lunatics, killers, shamans, and heroes. Because they have been eaten raw by the universe and regurgitated into something new, unpredictable, and powerful, the severely bereaved are regarded in classic high literature with more than pity, with a mixture of fear and awe. This attitude is rendered clearly in “Lady in the Water,” a film by the director of “The Village” that left Judy and me in grateful astonishment, because it lay bare the path of our souls and rallied us to keep on going.

The protagonist is the stuttering caretaker/handyman of an apartment complex in Philadelphia, who discovers a sea-nymph in his quarters. She has been living underneath the swimming pool but has been sent to the surface by her people in order to impart inspiration into the life of one young man, an apartment resident who is a writer and whose book is destined to positively change the world. It turns out that the caretaker was once a doctor, but his wife and children were murdered, and ever since he has sought anonymity in his terrible grief. Yet he is chosen for a heroic role as a facilitator between the nymph and the person she must contact. To accomplish this goal, he follows the patterns of the great myth and draws upon the unique archetypal strengths of each of the residents, seemingly ordinary and disparate individuals who come together in a profound whole. With the help of everyone in the complex, the caretaker becomes The Healer, uniting the powers of The Interpreter, The Guardian, The Guild, and The Seven Sisters.

This is the story I have always dreamed of – of common people united in a great purpose. This movie has everything to say to those having lived for years with deep grief, who have risen, been crushed, risen again, foundered, and kept on going. It shows that even those from whom almost all has been taken may have an important purpose…something that can unite us all.

©Copyright 2007 David Pierce. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact David Pierce and see his website: Friends Along the Road