A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Cedar Barstow, M.Ed., C.H.T.

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

A comment from Todd in response my most recent GoodTherapy.org Ethics Column, touched me. How brave and sincere. And what an important question! I tend to focus on right use of power as any use of personal and professional power to heal harm, repair harm, reduce harm, and facilitate the common good. Inspiring, yes. But given our personal history with power and our dominant cultural frame for power (force), how do we get there? How really do we change historic and embedded habits, beliefs, and patterns?

Here’s what Todd says: “I grew up in a forceful household and that caused me to be the same way in my own home. I do not like it but that was how I was trained and even why I try to do things differently I always find myself back in that forceful position and way of handling things. It is the only way that I know. My kids I know hate me for that. How do I make that change to be a more collaborative person instead of what I am?”

Again, thanks for asking this question. As a psychotherapist and teacher, here’s my take on the process of changing at the level you are seeking. Notice which one or ones appeal to you and experiment with them as tools to help you shift into a more effective and satisfying set of responses.

Notice Something Isn’t the Way You’d Like it to Be
You’ve already taken the first and biggest step. Using your situation, Todd, as an example: You can see how you want to use your power with your kids (and, I assume in other areas of your life); and you can see the negative impact of the way you have been using your power. (Your kids hate you for it.) How painful that must be. Trying is important, but as you notice, not quite sufficient for change.
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A GoodTherapy.org News Update

It’s no secret that a good night’s rest is a key ingredient of a happy and healthy waking life. In modern societies where time is often seen as a commodity and stress prevails among much of the population, getting a night of quality, undisturbed sleep is often seen as a luxury. But the need for adequate rest is clear, as it affects everything from mood to productivity to physical health. Recently, a study was performed to understand the impact of sleep on romantic relationships, and as you might have guessed, there is a clear correlation between the quality of sleep a couple receives and the perceived quality of their interactions.

The study followed twenty nine couples over the course of a week; each individual was asked to record their thoughts on the quality of interactions during the day, as well as information about their sleep during the night. While the information recorded about interactions was necessarily subjective to a certain degree, the trend was clear: those couples who received a poor night of sleep experienced a decrease in the quality of interactions the following day. To make matters more difficult, women who recorded poor experiences during the day subsequently received a lower quality in sleep that night, as did their partners.

This “vicious cycle” of sleep and social interaction may have important implications for therapists and counselors, especially those who work with couples. While there are a range of methods involved in working out differences and creating a positive, rewarding relationship, the benefits of working out any differences before heading off to bed can be included as a valuable tool in the arsenal of healthy relationships. And getting quality sleep may become a more pressing prescription.

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Mountain View Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

A GoodTherapy.org News Update

Over the past several decades, the emergence of powerful new drugs has made recovery possible for many people who had previously struggled with other methods. While there are advocates of medication for use in mental health treatments as well as fervent opponents, however, the prevalence of these drugs tends to be collectively understood as inordinately high, especially in wealthy Western societies. Stressing the need for quality, comprehensive therapy for clients intent on resolving their issues, many professionals have jumped on the bandwagon of educating the public about their range of choices when it comes to seeking mental health treatment. Recently, famed writer/psychologist Richard Bentall, who has previously published award-winning books on the mental health fields, has released a tome which underscores the need for a collective makeover of the psychiatric landscape, a book which has firmly ensconced itself in the effort to bring about more therapy and less drug dependency. Read the rest of this entry

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Los Gatos Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Sarah Jenkins, MC, LPC

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

I am writing this article as the plane I’m on rises to join a sky that clamors to support and embrace it. And as I struggle to wrestle my unruly, petulant judgments about air travel, I find myself reflecting on the actual journey that I have taken. Not a vacation, but my return to from where I lived most of my years as a young adult. I had returned to Virginia to help my mother, and all of her memories packed in unassuming boxes, as they travel to their new home in Arizona.

The process of moving my mother, and our history in Virginia also comes on the heels of a dear friend’s request to write a letter for his parents as part of a scrapbook in celebration of their anniversary. And as both of these experiences ask for my reflection upon “the past,” I find that they also make me consider the idea of “attachment” and “impermanence.” Maybe you can relate.

The classic saying about change is that change is the only thing that is truly predictable; nevertheless, and as my trip to Virginia serves to remind me, no matter what one is attached to, it is not “permanent.” Thought it may be uncomfortable, and illicit strong reactions as you consider it, impermanence is what is permanent. Everything, and anything in life, is temporary, even this very moment. For while we may seek to get attached to things, people, events, substances, emotions, money, objects, beliefs, perceptions of others, even memories of the past, and ourselves, it is predictable that things do end. We just do all that we can to avoid it. Read the rest of this entry

A GoodTherapy.org News Update

For many therapists and other mental health professionals, the symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, are fairly clear. But for parents of children who suffer from related difficulties, it’s not always a straightforward matter to distinguish between positive and unhelpful behaviors, and sometimes parents’ efforts to help their children can have the opposite effect. Validating the behaviors associated with OCD is a common, and often unintentional, result of parents’ reactions to their children’s symptoms. But through consultation with a mental health professional and a better understanding of how OCD tends to work, parents can provide the care they seek to bestow upon their children without worsening symptoms.

A study recently published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology has revealed that a large number of families engage in what the study terms as “accommodations,” which typically take place when parents wish to soothe upset over a particular worry or concern experienced by a child. Such accommodations can include assistance in carrying out obsessive rituals, or the verbal assurance of certain conditions about which the child is worried. Read the rest of this entry

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Sacramento Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

A GoodTherapy.org News Update

Though there have been many positive trends in the worlds of therapy and mental health treatments over the past few years, not all areas have been improving. Amidst a chaotic and stressful society with increasingly tight demands on youth, eating disorders have become a more prominent issue in the United States and around the world than many had imagined, touching the lives of children –especially adolescent girls– with alarming frequency. A great deal of treatments and programs have been developed in an effort to help curb the development and pervasiveness of anorexia, bulimia, and other sufferances, but one approach proposed by Houston psychotherapist Mary Jo Rapini takes an angle that’s close to home.

Specifically, Rapini’s focus is on the relationship between girls and their fathers. While it’s well known that healthy relationships between children and their parents are essential for positive childhoods and the creation of many proactive behaviors, the specific interactions of fathers and daughters as they relate to issues of body image are less often discussed. Rapini notes that fathers can help their daughters achieve a more positive body image by participating in healthy family activities and being open about the paternal love a father feels for his child. Read the rest of this entry

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Culver City Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

The GoodTherapy.org Team is pleased to announce the release of GoodTherapy.org Version 3.0, our updated and highly improved website and therapist directory. The Team has been working on GoodTherapy.org V.3.0 for over a year and is excited to introduce all the upgraded features of the new system. It’s taken much longer than anticipated to finalize V.3.0 and we appreciate all the patience our members have shown in waiting for its release. GT 3.0 includes:

• More appealing and attractive design
• Updated Member’s Area
• Easier to register and cancel participation in Free CEU events
• Downloadable CEU certificates
• Archives of all past recorded events for your listening pleasure
• A more powerful search function for potential clients
• Optional “Verified Credentials Seal” added to your profile
• Redesigned Membership Seal for your promotional material or website
• Redesigned Search Results Page
• Redesigned Profile Page complete with maps to your office, optional video and audio clips, and other goodies
• Secure Online Messaging Center to view emails from Potential Clients
• Online Profile Stats Tracking, to track how potential clients are finding and contacting you

The best part about GoodTherapy.org V.3.0 is that it is designed with search engine optimization in mind and includes the latest technology which will enable GoodTherapy.org to rise even higher in the search engine results.

We hope you love the new website as much as we do. Enjoy!

The GoodTherapy.org Team

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Naperville Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

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

Chances are good that someone you know suffered or will suffer from a major depressive episode (MDE), according to a nationwide study by the US government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA’s 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)). An estimated 16.5 million people in the US, one in 13 adults aged 18 or over (7.5 percent), experienced major depression during the study’s one-year time-frame. While their May, 2009 news release reports that approximately two-thirds of people suffering from a major depressive episode sought help initially, less than half followed up with the recommended mental health professional counseling, took medication for the disorder or both. The research reveals why one-third did not seek even initial help, the rate of people who followed up with counseling or medication, the rates of depression among certain age groups and a significant general health association with the occurrence of a major depressive episode (MDE).

“The most frequently reported reasons for not receiving mental health services among these adults was not being able to afford the cost (43.2 percent), feeling they could handle the problem on their own (29.3 percent), not knowing where to go for services (18.1 percent), not having the time (16.7 percent), having health insurance that did not cover enough treatment (11.3 percent), and concerns about confidentiality (11.1 percent),” according to the SAMHSA news release.

Almost 45,000 civilian, non-institutionalized adults participated in the study. The research found that young people, aged 18 to 25, were slightly more likely to experience a major depressive episode (8.9 percent) as compared to people in the age group of 26 to 49 years (8.5), and that people aged 50 or over were less likely to experience it than both groups (5.8 percent). Almost a quarter (24 percent) of the people who experienced major depression and saw a doctor or mental health professional did not use a prescription medication for the disorder. The rate of MDE among people who reported poor or fair health was greater than three times as many as those who reported excellent health. Read the rest of this entry

A GoodTherapy.org News Update

We’ve all seen the occasional Dear Abby article or glanced at the column of a local love “expert,” in which writers send in their romance woes and are served a paragraph or two of opinion, sense, prejudice, or any number of slanted answers (with, of course, the occasional honest piece of advice). The dilemmas described in these pieces are often not so far removed from trials experienced by most people during the course of their love lives; concerns may include a suspected affair, feelings of guilt or inadequacy, disappointments in intimacy, and beyond, spanning the common conflicts that arise in romantic relationships. But while we might be able to relate to these concerns on a personal level, a new study shows that we tend to avoid such columns and articles when we’re feeling unlucky in love.

The study, a joint effort between researchers at the Ohio State University in the American Midwest, and the University of Erfurt and the Dresden University of Technology in Germany, sought to understand the ways in which people use and interact with media in times of personal distress. The idea that we tend to avoid touchy subjects may not seem very surprising, but the study uncovered a tendency to seek out advice selectively; while scorned lovers avoided romance advice, those enduring difficult financial periods embraced the help of related columns and articles. Read the rest of this entry

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist San Francisco Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

A GoodTherapy.org News Update

It’s no secret that a lot of modern insurance companies harbor a preference for what they view as the most cost-effective measures when it comes to addressing emotional well-being and health in general. In relation to therapy, this attitude has often lead to a hasty endorsement of short-term therapies, especially in conjunction with various medicines. But Falk Leichsenring, a professor of Psychotherapy Research at the University of Giessen in Germany, has long suspected that this hasty endorsement is a departure from understanding which types of therapy are most effective.

Based on the extensive review of a collection of twenty three in-depth studies involving over a thousand participants, Leichsenring set out to pinpoint the therapies that clients found most beneficial, and with which therapists themselves were most satisfied. What he found was that while short term therapies usually had some degree of impact on the lives and prosperity of clients, in-depth courses of therapy involving psychodynamic elements and techniques were responsible for greater rates of achievement. Over the course of several months or even a few years, long term therapy embracing the person as a whole and taking the time to look at their backgrounds, memories, relationships, and personal observations is capable of serving as the foundation for profound change, the study suggests, while less involved treatments can fail to address deep-rooted feelings and ideas. Read the rest of this entry

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Portland Bureau - All Rights Reserved.