Learn to Walk

Stand with your feet comfortably together. Take one foot and stick it out in the direction you want to go until you throw yourself off balance. Then, at the last instant, when you’re about to fall on your face, bring the other foot forward to stop yourself from falling. Repeat this dangerous operation as long as it takes to get where you’re going.

When you think about walking this way, it’s a wonder anyone would try it. Why would you throw yourself off balance and risk injury when you could stand in one spot?

Because you want to get somewhere. Continue reading →

If You Can’t Find Help

Let’s face it, it is a whole lot easier to acquire a Problem than it is to get help in eradicating it. In many localities, there are drug dealers at every corner, but to get your loved one to a clinic, takes two buses. Intake coordinators will make him wait in a room with old magazines and ask him a million questions; but bartenders will serve him right away and leave him alone if he doesn’t want to talk. Insurance companies will seek to deny him coverage, but he can play the horses with his credit card. He can get narcotics from every doctor, but it’s tough to find one who prescribe a medication that can assist him in getting off narcotics. There’s even an Act of Congress that limits doctors from prescribing it. Like I said, it’s a lot easier to get a Problem, than it is to get help getting rid of it. However, that’s not the same as saying that help is far away. Continue reading “If You Can’t Find Help”

Why I can’t take Medicare

old-womanI would love to take Medicare, but I, and every other licensed mental health counselor and marriage and family therapist are not permitted to do so, because of an arcane regulation that needs an act of Congress to change. It just so happens that there is a bill before Congress that aims to change that: the Seniors Mental Health Improvement Act S1879/HR3032.

Today is the day that advocates for this bill have chosen to blitz members of Congress to pass that bill. As a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, local representative, Tom Reed, is one of those members.

If you care about seniors, and who doesn’t care about sweet little old ladies and cute little old men, then contact Tom Reed, and other Congressmen and Senators and tell them that #SeniorsNeedMHCounselors, too.

Click here for more information.

Simulate Dawn   

Bringing you the best of mental health   

You’re not a morning person. If you were, you wouldn’t be hitting the snooze alarm so much and be late for work so many times. When you do succeed in hauling yourself upright, you wouldn’t feel quite so grumpy, and so unable to do the very things that banish grumpiness, like exercise, having a good breakfast, and looking forward to the day.    

All this could be because you’re not a morning person, or it could be because your morning doesn’t simulate dawn.    

At dawn, the world slowly wakes up. A dim light precedes the luminous blast of the sun. Sounds start off quiet before they become loud. When dawn is simulated, you are nudged gently out of deep sleep into not so deep sleep and, from there, into being awake. You get a chance to get your bearings before you arise, then, when you do, you’re ready for the day.  

Your morning doesn’t simulate dawn because you live in a good house, protected from the elements and shielded from the sun by light blocking shades. No roosters crow in your neighborhood. You can’t even hear the birds through your well insulated walls. You may also not be getting up at dawn, which, after all, changes throughout the year. You might be setting your alarm for long after dawn part of the year, and long before the other part. You might be depending on a loud alarm clock to jolt you out of sleep, rather than being soothed out of sleep by a natural process.    

There is something you can do about this. You could raise your blinds, open your windows, and let nature’s dawn wake you up, or you can buy your dawn in a box and program it to begin when you need it.  

There are currently many apps and alarm clocks available to simulate dawn for you. 

 Click here to learn more.   

 

 

Team Up with the Person Against the Problem

If you get the opportunity to work with your loved one to vanquish the Problem, don’t mistake this opportunity for the Problem, itself. You could blow your chance because of the presence of your own Problem.

Let’s say your husband has not been able to keep it in his pants. He’s flirted with others, cheated on you, and generally made a mess of things. Now, you’re sitting in a restaurant, having a nice meal, he leans over to you, and says, “See that woman over there, I’m going to have a hard time keeping my eyes off her.” Continue reading →

The Uses of Uncertainty

Bringing you the best of mental health

In 1900, for eleven weeks, Sigmund Freud met with a teenage girl stricken by hysterical mutism. We know this woman by the name Freud gave her, Dora. It wasn’t her real name. Precipitating the symptoms, she had accused an older family friend of making sexual advances to her. The family friend denied it and her father didn’t believe her.Continue reading “The Uses of Uncertainty”

GoodTherapy

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

If you’re in the Rochester area and need a therapist, give me a call. If you live somewhere else, I’m sorry, but I probably don’t know anyone there to recommend. But I can recommend a website to go to find someone: GoodTherapy.org.

There are a few websites where therapists can advertise, but GoodTherapy seems to be the only one that makes an attempt to only have good therapists on it, in that they will investigate their claims of experience, competence, and training and make them sign a pledge. Most sites will include any therapist who can pay the fee.

If you’re a therapist, I’m sorry to say that GoodTherapy.org is not the most trafficked website. You won’t get the most calls through them, but they do offer great continuing education webinars every Friday for free if you’re a member.

Click here to go to GoodTherapy.

How Caretaking Can Be A Problem

The Road to ReconciliationYou may have actually said it, and it’s true. Taking care of a person with a Problem gives meaning and purpose to your life.

Your life needs meaning and purpose. It makes your life worthwhile; it indicates your existence matters. That’s important. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps you going. It’s something you can be proud of.
Meaning and purpose will organize your life. You know what you have to do when you wake up in the morning. It dictates the things you do during the day. It determines the choices you make and makes those choices easy.

So, where do you find meaning and purpose?Continue reading “How Caretaking Can Be A Problem”