The Lifeworks Group, Inc.

By Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC After watching her best friend self-destruct yet again, Emily could no longer stay silent. Their 5-year friendship was on the verge of ending with Emily heading in a positive direction and her best friend destroying her life. Emily confronted her bestie a couple of months ago addressing the excessive drinking, illegal use of pain pills, and her rapidly deteriorating work ethic. But Emily was met with high resistance, so she backed off. Now, Emily was ready to try a different approach in hopes their friendship could last. But what does that look like? How does a person change for the better? One of the roles of a friend is to encourage healthy change. In psychology, the concept of unconditional positive regard is regarded as an effective method of transformation. The basic principle lies in accepting and supporting a person without judgment regardless of what they say or do. This provides an environment of trust, understanding, and...

By: Megan Muñoz IMH Some find it difficult to understand the struggle many have with suicidal thoughts. Part of this struggle has to do with how we sometimes categorize things we don’t understand. Suicidal thoughts and suicide are often thought of in black and white terms. For example: either someone is terribly depressed and suicidal or the thought has never entered their mind. But suicide and suicidal thoughts have a much longer and broader spectrum than we often realize. There is a long and difficult road of gray hues that fill in the gap between the starting point of never having had a suicidal thought and the end point where the act of suicide takes place. We are not born with suicidal thoughts. However, we are born with the capacity to become overwhelmed by stress, adversity and pain that can threaten our ability to cope and lead towards thoughts of suicide as a solution. No one is completely exempt from the possibility of developing suicidal thoughts, however, ...

Identifying Emotional Warning Signs and Trauma Symptoms A community crisis can terrorize an entire community in just a few minutes, while the recovery process to rebuild from a major critical incident may take weeks or months to sort through. The more you know about how to survive and rebuild after the crisis, the faster you can take positive action to get your personal and professional life back on track. Since community crisis events like school, mall or church shootings, bombing or terrorism are unpredictable, it requires a different course of action from natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires and floods. What can you do right now to cope with the psychological impact of a major community crisis brought on through violence? 1. Deal Directly with Your Emotions This will reduce the tension and stress on you, which allows you to have more energy to deal with a difficult situation. However, if you stuff your fears and frustrations in a major commun...

  By Matt W Sandford Mother’s Day is a wonderful time to honor mothers. For the most part, mothers have impacted us all in the most profound ways that last a lifetime. Our Moms fed us and clothed us, wiped our butts and noses and kissed away our boo-boos. Our Moms believed in us, cheered us on, helped with our homework, drove us all over creation, taught us right from wrong, forgave us when we did wrong, and supported so many of our crazy ideas - or at least pretended to. Sure, we should honor the Moms. But… What if you don’t have only pleasant, uplifting memories of your relationship with your Mom? What if your Mom wasn’t always supportive, didn’t always very magnanimously forgive you, didn’t show support, or wasn’t very available? Maybe your Mom was critical or a nag or sort of the tough “knock-it-off-of-I’ll-give-you-something-to-cry-about” type? Maybe your Mom was well-meaning but for some reason wasn’t able to be very emotionally engaged? Maybe y...

By Aaron Welch, LMHC, NCC, CSOTS I know what it’s like to be bullied. Before I grew into my body I remember what it was like to be shamed and humiliated; to feel alone and powerless; to feel afraid to go to school every day, knowing I might be pushed down or punched or verbally berated. It’s not a good feeling. In fact, it was awful. I felt lonely, depressed and powerless to stop it. Until I was 14. I remember that day vividly in my mind. It was winter so I was wearing a toboggan hat, heavy blue coat and extremely thick blue gloves. I don’t know why, really, but something clicked. One of the guys who regularly pushed me around threw me into my school locker for no good reason. That’s when it happened. Something in my brain suddenly told me that it would be better to get beat up that day than to be shamed; to know that I cowered before him and was humiliated in front of everyone in the hall. I pushed him back. At first he was shocked and then he raised his fist to ra...

By Chris Hammond, MS, IMH Do you get enjoyment out of anticipating someone’s need which you think will make them happy and then investing time meeting that need without being asked? Do you often feel drained of your energy but keep working anyway because they need you to help? Do you spend countless moments replaying conversations and rehearsing new ones trying desperately to figure out what someone else wants? If so, you may have an unhealthy need to please others. There is a difference between a healthy need to please others and an unhealthy need to please others. A healthy need is not dependant on a particular response. For instance, if you clean the garage because you know it will be helpful to the family but are not expecting any help or compliments in response, then you have a healthy need to please others. On the other hand, if while you are cleaning the garage you are thinking about how your teenage son should be helping you and looking forward to your wife praising your ...