The Lifeworks Group, Inc.

By: Nancy Tikunoff, IMH Ah, the holiday season is upon us. The celebrations of life and love with family and friends are ushered in from the harried pace of life with the Thanksgiving respite and much feasting. Close on its heels the attention turns to the Christmas season which, again, is closely associated with family, community and relationships. The merrymaking continues till the end of the year with one last hoorah for closing out the year and ringing in a new one. Again, times replete with gatherings of those we love who are an integral part of our lives. But then something so unexpected (or maybe expected but nevertheless dreaded) occurs, an event that seems so out of keeping with the laughter, joy, activities and traditions that define the holiday season for us. The accident no one saw coming. The sudden, unexpected illness or a long-term battle with aging finally ends  omeone we love dies or it’s the anniversary of the death of someone that we love and miss dearly. Th...

By: Nancy Tikunoff, IMH What is EMDR? The EMDR acronym stands for E ye M ovement D esensitization R eprocessing. It is a psychological treatment based on a scientific model of adaptive information processing (AIP). The theoretical basis for it was formulated by the founder Dr. Francine Shapiro who found that traumatic or problematic events and their later memories sometimes are processed maladaptively by our brains. The EMDR process allows for those events/memories to be reprocessed in an adaptive manner thus relieving the client's distressing symptoms. How does it work? After ensuring that the client feels safe through the creation of resources to assist them in accessing a place of safety, the actual eye movement reprocessing is started. Hand movements initiated by the therapist & followed by the client's eyes are designed to cause the eyes to move in such a way that allows the brain to correct the way the memory was processed. Other methods such ...

By: Nancy Tikunoff, IMH We’ve all seen them - at the doctor’s office, at the grocery store, crossing the street... They may have been pushing a wheelchair, feeding an Alzheimer’s patient who had forgotten to eat or holding the hand of a differently abled person while crossing the street. These everyday examples that cross our paths are people giving care to others in a physical, tangible way and are classified “caregivers”. They may be the last ones to eat and five minutes of quiet alone to prop up their feet may feel live a slice of heaven. They have accepted and committed to a daunting task – taking care of the physical, oftentimes emotional and additional needs of someone they love or care about. It can be a thankless job and requires sacrifices of things they would rather be doing or money they would like to have to spend elsewhere or time spent on hobbies or other interests. No wonder November has been designated as a month to recognize these awesome people and THEIR nee...