By Jennifer Lehr, MA, MFT

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

How do we change the direction of our lives? Despite our histories, why do some people create fulfilling lives for themselves while others do not? As a therapist, and as a person who has made her life about self-transformation and then later, the transformation of others, this is easy to see. But for many people, especially those who do not know much about “therapy,” and the process it entails, this is more of a mystery.

Have you ever said to yourself, “I will do whatever it takes to reach my full potential in this lifetime – no matter what”? This statement to ourselves, to our god, to the universe, is powerful and can open us up to change. There are several main ingredients in change: a desire to improve one’s sense of well-being, and a willingness to do whatever it takes. These qualities could be put together and called emotional courage. Read the rest of this entry

By Sherry Gaba, LCSW

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As the holiday season un-folds with busy malls hustling and bustling with couples holding hands and buying special gifts for one another, there are many single people out there feeling left out from the holiday cheer. The season brings out that doom and gloom that there are no future dates on the horizon and New Years Eve will spent again alone watching time square drop the ball with your pet, although that doesn’t sound too bad. For starters, remember those mushy couples you see holding hands, they are the same couple that bicker, scream, and throw candy canes at each other, but it is your perception that is out of whack. With Santa almost down your chimney, you need to have a shift in perspective. Everything you have believed about the holidays can be viewed in a whole new light including your thoughts about dating, attending holiday gatherings, your self image, spiritual beliefs, and even patterns of behavior that might be contributing to your being a singleton. Read the rest of this entry

By Ron Soderquist, PhD

Click here to contact Ron and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

This is what we hear from people who call our clinic:

“I am exhausted. It takes me hours to fall asleep, and then I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. I can’t shut down my racing mind. I am so groggy the next day, I’m afraid I’ll mess up at work. I am miserable to live with. I am desperate! Then I see those ads for Ambien and Lunesta and I get e-mail coupon offers to take to my doctor. The couple in the ad sleeps 8 hours and wakes up feeling wonderful. I don’t like being dependent on drugs, but what other choice do I have? I can’t go on like this. Besides they assure me it’s safe and there’s a one-week free trial.”

It’s not surprising doctors wrote some 49 million prescriptions for sleep drugs last year. The trend has been for doctors to prescribe more and more drugs for sleeplessness every year.

Are you desperate to get some sleep? What are the three issues drug companies don’t want you to think about?

The first issue drug companies don’t want you to think about is that through their massive spending on advertising, they have programmed you to think that the only way you will solve sleeplessness is by taking drugs. Over a two-year period (2005-2006) Sanofi-Aventis spent $350 million to advertise Ambien and AmbienCR, Sepracor spent more than $500 million to market Lunesta and Takeda (which makes Rozerem) spent $100 million. Is it any wonder so many people and doctors are convinced drugs are the only solution for insomnia? University of Minnesota’s Dr. Mahowald said, “I personally think the extent of advertising [for sleep drugs] has just been unconscionable.” Read the rest of this entry

By Lee Kotsalis-Thulin, MA, RCC

As the holiday season shifts into high gear, here’s a plea for a different kind of moderation: let’s all hear it (softly please) for moderate hosting. Moderate hosting means fighting the urge to measure your success as a host by the amount of food and alcohol and sociability your guests consume. It means not pressing the matter when a guest turns down an alcoholic drink, or a second helping of pie, or a third pass under the mistletoe, and keeping in mind the golden rule of being a great host: always make your guests feel comfortable.

A number of years ago I was facilitating a therapy group for women addressing their addiction to alcohol. As part of the group, participants committed to abstaining from alcohol for the 8-week duration of the program. Although alcohol misuse is not an issue for me, I decided that I would support the women’s commitment by also refraining from alcohol use for the length of the group. That proved to be a lot more challenging than I’d anticipated. I thought having an alcohol-free life for 8 weeks would be pretty straightforward; if I chose not to seek out alcohol, alcohol wouldn’t seek me out. What I found instead was that abstaining from alcohol also required active – and often persistent – turning down of alcoholic offerings made by active, persistent, and no doubt well-intentioned hosts. Read the rest of this entry

By Ronald G. Nathan, Ph.D.

Click here to contact Ronald and/or see hisGoodTherapy.org Profile

Your husband drinks more, laughs less and has lost interest in hobbies and sports. On edge and irritable, he yells at you and the kids. Or maybe your boyfriend constantly checks up on you and his jealousy frightens you. He needs professional help. What can you do?

The Marlboro Man In Therapy?

Your husband or boyfriend may not be the Marlboro man or come from Mars, but he may believe that therapy is for wusses. After all, men are taught to be tough, self-reliant and never ask for help. This may explain why only one of three outpatient visits to therapists are made by men.

So what’s a loving woman to do? There are no easy answers or one liners you can use. But as a psychologist who has limited his practice to men for the last ten years, I have learned how many women succeed and I think I can guess why others fail.

Ultimatums and Other Strategies

Some men call me in response to an ultimatum: “You get six sessions of therapy or I’m getting a divorce.” Other women have made appointments with marriage counselors that their husbands canceled in favor of a lesser evil. Maybe you’ve tried these approaches. Are you starting to feel that you can lead a horse to water, but you’d better be ready to drown him?

There are probably fifty ways to lead your lover into therapy. You know your man best. Think about what has worked most successfully in the past when you wanted him to do something he didn’t want to do. How do you influence him?

Watch Your Language

You may be comfortable with the terms “therapy,” “psychotherapy,” and “personal growth,” but most men aren’t. Going for “a consultation,” “counseling” or “coaching” to “get back on track,” “find a way to control anger” or “learn some new skills” often work well.

Plant the seed and nurture it. This is not a sprint; it’s more like a marathon. Even when physicians refer a man to me, it takes an average of about three months before I get a call. Read the rest of this entry

A GoodTherapy.org News Update Presented by Jolyn Wells-Moran, PhD, MSW

Hurricane Katrina has left a disturbing percentage of children from the most at-risk and poorest families with mental health, behavioral and physical disorders, according to a white paper entitled, ” The Legacy of Shame: The On-Going Public Health Disaster of Children Struggling in Post-Katrina Louisiana.” The paper was published in November by The Children’s Health Fund and the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. It states that those children have the highest levels of mental and physical health problems of any group of children in the US.

According to the paper, “55% of elementary school age children had a behavior or learning problem. 42% of children three years and older needed developmental or mental health services.” They list other very high percentages of physical health disorders. The white paper was based on 261 medical chart reviews from the Children’s Health Fund (CHF)/ Louisiana State University (LSU) Baton Rouge Children’s Health Project which was under the direction of FEMA to provide services to the largest of the trailer parks set up to house displaced families. The parks were dismantled last May, but the paper points to an estimated 20,000 children still displaced by the hurricanes. Read the rest of this entry

By Jim Hutt, Ph.D., MFT

Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Don’t you hate to approach your spouse/partner with questions that can elicit the answer “NO!”? For example: “Honey, is it OK if I …(fill in the blank)?” Or, “Can I …(fill in the blank)?” Some of you guys out there, more than once, have implored your partner/spouse: “Can I go bowling tonight?” And then there’s the all-time favorite guy question—“Sweetie, I can go to the (name of favorite sports bar) and watch the football game tonight, right?”

This isn’t reserved for men only. A wife/partner may ask: “Dear, is it OK if I go shopping?” Or, “Can I go with the girls to Vegas this weekend?” “It’s OK if I go to the movies tonight and leave the kids with you, right?” Permission-seeking opportunities among couples are endless. But are they necessary, and is it healthy to seek permission? Read the rest of this entry

A GoodTherapy.org News Update Presented by Jolyn Wells-Moran, PhD, MSW

We’ve become accustomed to reading about campus alcohol and drug use. Yet, the rates of both substance use and non-substance use psychiatric disorders pointed out by a new study sponsored by NIH (National Institutes of Health), are alarming. That only about one-quarter of those with disorders in the study group had received treatment is further cause for concern. Some interesting comparisons were also found between these groups.

This research looked at sociodemographic factors and DSM-IV disorders, substance use and treatment requests among 5,000 college students and young adults who were not in college (Blanco, Okuda, Wright, et al 2008). All participants were between the ages of 19 and 25. The rate of all included disorders didn’t differ between the groups, but researchers found that the non-student group was significantly more likely to; have tried nicotine, be nicotine dependent, have bipolar disorder and have drug abuse disorders than the college group. Alcohol use disorders were higher among college students, but about equal when sociodemographic factors were adjusted for empirical comparison purposes. Read the rest of this entry

By Judith Gusky, MSEd, NCC

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

The Challenges and Hopes of Aging

The population is aging. I am aging. Yet here I am starting a new career as a counselor. One of my interests is in end-of-life issues. I am not the Grim Reaper. I don’t have a morbid fascination with death, even as I find myself on the far side of middle age. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t quite been able to let go of Erik Erikson’s eight-stage model of human development and the hope that it offers.

When I was younger, I often would wonder how it was possible that elderly people weren’t consumed with fear of the inevitable. Erikson seemed to have a “good enough” theory to settle my inner turmoil.

As an undergraduate, back in the early 1970s, I surmised from Erikson’s theory that as we successfully move through each stage of development, our “reward” is our inauguration into the next stage. Each success offers the next opportunity to successfully negotiate life’s challenges and conflicts, until we reach the penultimate—an old age of peaceful integrity, not one of despair and fear of death. Read the rest of this entry

Dear Members and Visitors to GoodTherapy.org,

Today a virtual gathering over 100 GoodTherapy.org Members enjoyed the fifth teleconference in our Fall Teleconference Series: Good Boundaries: Centerpiece of Successful Relationships presented by Cedar Barstow, M.Ed. Big ‘thank yous’ to Cedar for presenting on boundaries and leading us through the exploration of our own boundary styles.

Cedar is a consultant and teacher on ethics issues. She has been designing, developing, and teaching the Right Use of Power, an Attachment based approach to Ethics since 1994. Her background includes 20+ years as a psychotherapist and 15 years as a teacher. She is the author of books and articles on ethics, counseling with elders, women and independence, and psychotherapy and spirituality. Cedar is also a Hakomi Experiential Psychology Trainer, a member of the Naropa University Adjunct Faculty and maintains a private psychotherapy and ethics consulting practice in the Boulder/Denver area, and teaches both Right Use of Power Ethics and Hakomi nationally and internationally.
We encourage all of you to visit Cedar’s website http://www.rightuseofpower.com On Cedar’s website you can find more information about RUOP, view her extensive workshop calendar, take continuing education mini-courses, and purchase her excellent book on Attachment Based Ethics called: Right Use of Power: The Heart of Ethics—A Resource for the Helping Professional.

Thanks to all of you who attended today’s event,
Noah :)

Noah Rubinstein, LMFT
Executive Director
http://www.GoodTherapy.org

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