What is the key to choosing the right therapist for yourself?
You know, therapy is not for everyone.
Sometimes a walk with a trusted confidant, or dinner with our friends is just what we need. But if you have an ongoing issue that you have struggled with and it is affecting your daily life, your relationships, or your ability to work, therapy or counseling can be the best investment you will ever make in yourself.
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How do you tolerate the mismatch?
How do you tolerate the mismatch of differing communication styles? That feeling that the person in front of you has no idea what you are taking about? Well that’s the $64K question, now isn’t it? In trying to answer this question for myself, I find it helps to remember that there are many different ways that people respond to others.
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How does one “Know thyself?”
Commonly attributed to Socrates is the phrase “Know thyself.” Well there are a lot of ways to accomplish that goal. In that context, today I’ll discuss one way today that can help you attain a goal or stick to a new habit you wish to maintain. Gretchen Rubin writes about this in her highly usable book Better Than Before, and it is a construct she created. That is why if it is useful to you, go for it, but if not, then just realize there are other categories out there you may find more applicable to your situation. If there is one thing our brains are designed for, it is categorizing!
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Why don’t we just ask?
I was reading an excerpt from an interview given by Dr. Atul Gawande on his book Being Mortal: What Matters in the End, and he commented that:
“People have priorities in their lives besides just living longer and they matter a great deal. The most reliable way to learn what those priorities are is to ask and we don’t ask. The result is that when you don’t ask, the care and treatment that people get is often increasingly out of alignment with their priorities and what really matters most to them.”
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Distress or eustress?
This time of year there is a lot going on with end-of-summer vacations, children going back to school, some leaving for college, and the gears that must shift as we head into late summer/early fall.
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How much can you absorb?
I read an article recently on how Everything Old is New Again when marketing to boomers. In it, the author talks about rekindling their nostalgia for products by taking them and making the products relevant again (such as milk in glass bottles, Detroit’s muscle cars, or the original food trucks like Good Humor).
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Trolling for trouble in the past?
Recently I found myself in a discussion with a friend who has a background in psychology. She was arguing that past life events and troubles need to be “processed” and “worked through” in order to alleviate current problems. She felt that all past actions would dictate future actions, therefore to understand present problems, the past has to be fully explored. Interestingly, she expressed, with a deep, heaving sigh, that having to do so was a complete drag. She said if you were starting out with a new counselor, you had to “catch them up” with all of your past significant life events. She expressed how exhausting this can be.
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How do I know if I am normal?
I don’t know. No tin foil hat? You don’t live in LA? You wear matching socks? Most of the time? Maybe you can define normal. It’s really tough, but I’ll give it a try.
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How do you get rid of a habit?
Short answer: you can’t.
But don’t give up yet!
If you read last week’s post, you know this is Part II of “Why do we have habits?” If not, you can access it here. Having the back story helps in this case.
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Why do we have habits?
Why do we have habits?
Are they necessarily bad?
So what if you had to get up every day and consciously note the steps it takes to get ready for work? Your steps may be different from these, but humor me for a moment.
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What is the key?
What is the key to choosing the right therapist for yourself?
You know, therapy is not for everyone.
Sometimes a walk with a trusted confidant, or dinner with our friends is just what we need. But if you have an ongoing issue that you have struggled with and it is affecting your daily life, your relationships, or your ability to work, therapy or counseling can be the best investment you will ever make in yourself.
Read more