At some point in our cultural history, the relationship of one person helping another evolved to a point at which one person was officially designated as a helper. Helpers developed particular expertise, whether it be in fixing a broken wagon wheel, tracking game, healing illness, offering spiritual or emotional guidance. In the latter case the mental health helper was likely an individual particularly blessed or gifted in his or her ability to assist others through trying times. Reliable research demonstrates that psychotherapy, or the guidance offered by mental health professionals, is neither unproven nor a luxury, but in fact a viable, empirically supported intervention.
Category: Blog
What is anxiety?
Let’s begin with a simple graphic explanation of anxiety. First, consider the concept of fear, which must be distinguished from anxiety. If you were sitting in a room and suddenly a large rattlesnake crawled through the door, you would have good reason to be afraid. That’s fear because it refers to an actual threat. Fear, in some cases, can be healthy because it often keeps us alive.
But if you were always worried that a rattlesnake might crawl into the room, even if no rattlesnakes were anywhere in sight, that’s anxiety. Anxiety is most often not helpful because the threat is imaginary, and a lot of time and energy can be wasted worrying about things that might—but not necessarily will—happen.
The psychological basis for anxiety can usually be located in childhood experiences that lack clear explanations and guidance from parents who tend to be disinterested, critical, or abusive. Hence the children grow to dread circumstances that have unknown or unpredictable aspects.
Some individuals live with a constant, general sense of worry and anxiety, as in Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Typical symptoms are tension, restlessness, fatigue, irritability, sleep disturbance, and difficulty concentrating.
Other persons feel a more focused anxiety, as in a Panic Attack, where their heart beats faster and faster, and there is a sudden onset of apprehension, terror, or impending doom, to such an extent that they might feel they are going crazy—or having a heart attack. In fact, it’s quite common for patients to appear in hospital emergency rooms complaining of having a heart attack when they are really experiencing a panic attack.
Source: http://www.guidetopsychology.com/reasons.htm#Anxiety
What is family therapy?
Family Therapy – or to give it its full title, Family and Systemic Psychotherapy – helps people in a close relationship help each other.
It enables family members, couples and others who care about each other to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely, to understand each other’s experiences and views, appreciate each other’s needs, build on strengths and make useful changes in their relationships and their lives. Individuals can find Family Therapy helpful, as an opportunity to reflect on important relationships and find ways forward.
Steps to Addiction Treatment
Successful treatment has several steps:
- detoxification (the process by which the body rids itself of a drug)
- behavioral counseling.
- medication (for opioid, tobacco, or alcohol addiction)
- evaluation and treatment for co-occurring mental health issues such as
- depression and anxiety.
- long-term follow-up to prevent relapse.
Information obtained from: https://www.drugabuse.gov
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a therapeutic treatment for mental health issues, involving techniques like talk therapy to help individuals understand and manage their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
All of us have bundled within us simple and complex Storage centers holding mental and emotional memories of every event down to the most finite and/or obscure piece of our “puzzle” of which our lifetime is comprised. We may find ourselves urged to “forget it and move on” and sometimes that may be all we need to deal with a minor matter. At other times though it is most profitable for us to look into and study ourselves deeply in a thorough life context if we are to be able to gain insight, understand ourselves and others at a fundamental causal level from which we are able to quite rework our personal behavioral, mental and emotional operations, get “unstuck” as it were from early less clearly understood self-limiting, even damaging, beliefs about ourselves and others affecting our life expectancies and actions.
Continue reading PsychotherapyAddiction Treatment
There are a variety of components in the treatment of any type of addiction process and may include counseling, addiction treatment therapy, education, group meetings, secular and religious based models such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery, Inpatient (full residency, day treatment), Individual and family participation, intervention, and so forth. Continue reading Addiction Treatment
Life Coaching
Coaching, guiding, mentoring may all be considered to be interactive efforts on the part of a client with a trained professional for the purpose of achieving successful responses, solutions, improvements in business operations, interpersonal communications and relationships, balancing career, educational, personal needs, educational performance, etc. Information sharing, collaborative exchanging of life experience, exploring options, creating planfulness, studying options and fine tuning strategies in response to needs, personnel issues, challenges of all sorts, resolving problems, all in relationship to achieving optimal career experience, personal development and success in whatever domain of operations is involved. Continue reading Life Coaching