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Each week, we post the latest articles and new blog content across a variety of categories. Browse our latest.
Understanding Your Role in Shaping Your Child’s Behavior, part 2
by Amy Churchill, LPC In Part 1 of this article, I defined 4 important ways that parent can help shape their children’s behaviors: Validation, Reinforcement, Modeling, and Punishment. Now we will explore how these techniques can be used in real life examples. When parents come in and express difficulty in dealing with a child’s behavior or expression of emotion, I often find myself often telling parents to, “validate the feeling, [...]
Understanding Your Role in Shaping your Child’s Behavior, Part 1.
by: Amy Churchill, LPC There are several defined ways that parents can help shape their children’s behavioral responses, as well as help their children feel understood. I'd like to take a look at those with you in this article, with a second section that will further explain these reinforcement methods through common real life examples, in order to help you be prepared to implement these techniques with your own children. [...]
Identifying the Three Fundamental Fears: Death, Abandonment and Failure.
by Jen DuBos, MA LPC People can be afraid of literally anything: Snakes. Sleep. Germs. Airplanes. Malls. Relationships. Pogo sticks. Even a toothbrush going through the back of your head. But as varied as one’s external, concrete fear may be, they can all be melted down to one primal fear: Xenophobia – Fear of the unknown. We don’t know if the snake will bite or we’ll have bad dreams. [...]
How Does Guilt and Shame Impact Relapse?
by Steve Wright, LPC As a substance abuse counselor and now a supervisor of counselors treating both substance abuse and mental illness, I hear about many different reasons clients relapse back into drinking and using drugs. Triggers that pull someone back into the life of abuse and addiction are as varied and numerous as there are people. However, the most common reason I see is an inability to cope with [...]
A Stereotype Smashed: Women Struggle With Sex Addiction Too.
by Priscilla Dean, LPC When someone says the words, “sexual addiction,” most people automatically think of men who seek out prostitutes or men who have continuous affairs—certainly not women and particularly not Christian women. However, this stereotypical assumption is completely false. According to Crystal Renaud, author of the book "Dirty Girls Come Clean," more than 30% of pornography site visitors are Christian women. If a Pastor or Christian ministry leader [...]
Defining Dissociation and Reconnecting With Reality
What is Dissociation? When people hear me say the word “dissociation”, they look at me like they should respond with “gesundheit!” When I go on to explain what it means, they often look steadily more disturbed until I get to the end. Dissociation is a phenomenon that all people use to varying degrees at one time or another to cope with stress. The clinical definition of psychological dissociation is: a [...]