Category: Uncategorized
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It is only fear
Fear used to be super useful on a day to day basis… it kept us from allowing our curiosity to pick up deadly reptiles and such… it kept us in caves when big things were growling… and lurking sure, I guess fear is actually still pretty useful in that it keeps us from walking out…
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Wind Blown Hair (Music Post)
Quick Summary: This is a song that I wrote in 2006ish (can’t honestly remember) that playfully uses sounds and images to paint a feeling. The theme surrounds the wisdom that can be faintly experienced by mindfully holding attention on nature and the seasons while trying to put perception in a space of timelessness. There is…
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Shed Your Old Skin (Music)
Quick summary: This is a song that I wrote in 2008 about the need to change… fundamentally. I was in a time of extremely heavy stress do mostly to my job placement working with children who had (and often still were) experiencing unthinkable trauma. After a period of time of intense burnout/vicarious trauma I started…
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Come to Carry us Home (music)
Quick summary: This is a song I wrote in 2010 as I sat in a rocking chair nervously waiting for the first phone call from my biological parents. The song is about the confusion surrounding identity that results from one’s (my) contemplation about adoption. The first section is the emotional roller-coaster and the second is…
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Parenting Teens with Diabetes
Quick Summary: I will offer two super easy techniques that I use in family therapy to assist a family in structuring itself to best meet the diabetes management needs of a teen. My wife is a senior research coordinator for diabetes and because of such I chose to specialize in assisting families who have a…
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Stopping unwanted thoughts and daydreams
Quick summary: you have quite a large degree of control over where you keep your attention but often there is an exceedingly appealing reward for keeping our attention on the thoughts and imaginary scenarios, which are the source of our dis-ease and stress. The other day in Colorado I had three hours to myself…
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Is Depression the Result of Self-Centeredness?
In this post I will be laying out a hypothesis for how the US’s value of freedom and individualism may be affecting our national depression rates.
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Systemics in Psychotherapy
Systems therapists are interested in helping a family, couple, community, school system, country etc. to function with dynamics and structures which best support the well being and potential of the pieces which make up the system. Systems theory taken to a radical (and dichotomous) position would state that problems do not exist within individuals; instead,…
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Hope affects outcome… why?
If I were to tell you that hope affected outcome most of you would have no difficulty accepting this statement as truth. What we might all have a bit of difficulty agreeing on is why… why does hope affect outcome? I asked this question to a very intelligent person the other day and that person…
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Overcoming feelings of Shame | Shame avoided will stay quite the same…
Guilt is mixture of melancholic anxiety that steps from a remorse held for an action engaged in… shame is a deeper depression accompanied by a degree of restless self-hatred which arrives when we cannot accept and forgive our self – when we essentially feel uncomfortable with who we are as opposed to feeling unrest for…
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The Sex vs. Emotional Intimacy debate | how to make both partners feel loved in a relationship
Whether a person feels loved by receiving sex or by receiving emotional availability the simple truth is that these are simply activities that require very little time and effort if done with consistency, open-mindedness, humility, unconditional love, and complete undivided attention to your partner in the moment of engagement.
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Relationship feel stuck? Try pretending that you don’t know everything about your partner
So what is the solution… pretend that you don’t know your partner at all… the more that you can honestly engage in this suggestion the more you will find that you actually don’t know your partner as well as you thought (in a good way).
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Mind won’t stop ruminating? Take your shoes off to encourage a state of mindfulness
A state of mindfulness is when you are entirely in the present moment… this means that 100% of your attention is on your sensory, cognitive, and emotional ‘unconditionally accepting’ observations of the moment that is happening (as opposed to being distracted by focusing your attention on the past or the future). To encourage a state…
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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,…
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Vengeance and the Ego
Quick summary: Vengeance is a tool which creates instability in an attempt to create a stable ego.
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Logical Reason to Change – The Inevitability of Anxiety Whether You Change or Not
Quick summary: Most people have something about themselves or their life situation that they desire to change. Unconsciously and consciously we avoid change because there is anxiety and perceived difficulty inherent in the process of changing. My purpose here is to point out a very common misconception – the misconception is that you can avoid…
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Why Feeling Questions? – Emotional Expression Enhances Bonding
Quick summary: Exciting new research done by therapists such as Dr. Sue Johnson (the pioneer of emotionally focused therapy) have added efficacy to therapeutic interventions which help clients to express emotions. By sharing your most intimate feelings to your partner you can increase the overall intimacy and relational strength of your union. This makes common…