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Each week, we post the latest articles and new blog content across a variety of categories. Browse our latest.
Healing Trauma Memories – The Effects of Trauma (Part II)
Please read Part 1 here. Overcoming negative thoughts and emotions of a trauma narrative are linked to deliberately, repeatedly, and gradually revisiting the painful, upsetting, and oftentimes distressing memories associated with the trauma. A new conceptual framework for the study of stress and its related effects upon the human body emerged in the last three decades called allostasis. This stress-response process is when the brain exerts control over the [...]
Have You Tried the James 1:19 Challenge?
James 1:19 says “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” As a counselor and former pastor, I speak to a lot of churches and groups and I come back to this verse often. I use it in everything from marriage to parenting talks. It’s a practical verse that can apply to almost any topic I speak on. I am putting forth what I call [...]
Cannabis and the Adolescent Brain
Granville Stanley Hall, American psychologist and the founder of the child study movement in his era, wrote in 1904 about the exhilarating turbulence of adolescence: These years are the best decade of life. No age is so responsive to all the best and wisest adult endeavor. In no psychic soil, too, does seed, bad as well as good, strike such deep root, grow so rankly or bear fruit so [...]
Seasonal Affective Disorder
As we move into fall and winter the days are getting shorter, the temperature is getting colder and people find themselves spending more time inside. Ask yourself a few questions; do you start to feel more tired around this time? Do you find yourself feeling depressed, numb and less interested in activities? Do you find your mood changing drastically from fall and winter to spring and summer? Do you [...]
NF Is a Rapper Counselors Can Get Behind
As parents, you might find yourself frequently worrying about the way popular media affects the mental health of your children as they move into their teenage years. Negative messaging isn’t hard to find, but it can be specifically concerning in music. The popular tunes of today’s younger generation are heavily saturated with rap music that doesn’t always express the kinds of thoughts and goals we want our children to [...]
Understanding And Facing Our Emotions
Often when I have new people coming into therapy, their goal is to get rid of their emotions because they make them uncomfortable. When I see clients dealing with anger, grief, anxiety or fear, they often search for ways to avoid the emotions as much as possible. For some reason, society has portrayed this vision that the person who shows no emotion is strong, and that those who show [...]