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Showing posts from April, 2016

Free CEU Training Friday, April 22nd

Join me for a Free CEU Training Friday- “How to find new Energy to help others, when you are Exhausted – Strategies for Professionals facing Dysfunctional clients and Stressful circumstances” Compassionate professions like counseling have an exceptionally high burnout rate which hampers their ability to achieve long-term career success. Is it possible for a kind-hearted person to set healthy limits with demanding people to prevent job-burnout? There are multiple hidden factors leading to counselor fatigue and professional self-care is usually never taught, rarely discussed and often not practiced. How can today’s busy therapists learn a proven process to use in protecting themselves emotionally to prolong their career while helping as many people as possible? Learning to create a daily process to recharge energy, while preventing exhaustion is essential for long-term career success in the helping fields. Few professionals have been given any training on how to increase their level o

Parent's Guide to Overcome Childhood Fears

By: Dwight Bain, LMHC Fear is a normal part of childhood – learning how to manage it is an important part of growing up. Everyone feels fear. From six years old to sixty people worry and feel afraid. There are classic symptoms all children face, ( listed below),  which are indicators of the levels of anxiety a child may be facing. And did you know fear is such a common theme that the Bible has over 300 verses dedicated to facing fear and not staying afraid? Emotional maturity takes place when a child learns to face their fears by managing these negative emotions through talking, praying, writing them out in words, drawings or other expressive arts. The more a child can learn to  ‘replace’  their fears with facts or faith, the more confidence she will gain, and when she can learn the power of deep truth, like,  “ Be strong and courageous. Do not fear... for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you”.(Deuteronomy 31:6 )   When anxiety an

Before Marrying Again...Ask These Questions

By: Christine Hammond, LMHC The first marriage ended in divorce. The second one is going to be different. But how can a person be sure that they are not making another mistake of a different caliber? This is a checklist that I use with clients during premarital counseling. It has been developed over the last 15 years spent counseling thousands of couples prior to marriage. Ask clients to look through the following checklist and check all that apply. _____ 1.    Are there frequent arguments over nothing with little resolution? _____ 2.   Do you or your partner use biting sarcasm to confront issues? _____ 3.   Are you staying in the relationship out of fear or worry? _____ 4.   Do you have few areas of common interest? _____ 5.   Are you or is your partner overly dependent on parents or children? _____ 6.   Are there any signs of physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, mental, spiritual, or financial abuse both present and in the past? _____ 7.   Do you avoid discus

What To Do with Past Promiscuity?

By Matt W. Sandford, LMHC Sometimes folks come to me and we are working on something and inevitably their past comes up. It could be about some kind of mistreatment or abuse or of some dysfunction in their past environment. And there is of course the “stuff” inside us that relates to our experience of our parents and family. And pretty often we end up landing on a person’s young adult life choices, including sexual promiscuousness. Most feel a sense of shame and guilt about those choices and don’t want to talk about it. So, I thought maybe it would help if I were to write about it and provide some insight into how to approach these past issues. I was reading recently about the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament of the Bible. There is a section in which he observes a potter working on making a pot. He forms a pot, but it collapses due to some weakness in the structure. But instead of the potter throwing it away and starting with new clay, he picks up the pieces and mashes them