You’re going about your day when suddenly – and for no apparent reason – a sense of overwhelming fear kicks in. Your heart rate spikes, breathing becomes difficult, you feel like you might faint, you’re sort of detached from yourself, and there’s a sense that you’ve lost control. “What’s wrong with me?”, you might be thinking. “Am I having a heart attack? Am I going to die?” Your fears about what’s happening only make things …
We can all identify certain things we are afraid of. Public speaking, snakes, heights, spiders, social situations, enclosed spaces, flying, clowns, and injections (think flu shot) are among some of the most commonly reported fears. When it comes to these fears, there’s a spectrum of fright intensity that ranges from intense dislike to total avoidance of anything that has to do with the thing or the situation that causes the fearful emotional response. In the …
A few months ago, something I had been dreading for years happened. Our 14 year old dog, Pierre, died. Despite his age, it was something that was relatively unexpected. Over the course of a few days his health quickly deteriorated and my wife and I sat by his side in the emergency vet and painfully watched him go into cardiac arrest and die after a procedure that we hoped might buy him a little bit …
People decide to start therapy for a wide variety of reasons. Whatever the reason, though, it usually boils down to wanting better – or at least wanting to feel better. Therapy can be very effective in helping people accomplish just that. Therapy can be a place to learn about yourself, to gain perspective, and to learn new ways of thinking about and interacting with the world. Because of this, therapy isn’t generally thought of as …
I remember being corrected very quickly on the first day of my first graduate-level Intro to Counseling Course – back when I was a wee-little aspiring Therapist – when I used the word “advice” to refer to something that might be offered to a client during a therapy session. “We don’t give advice”, I was told by my professor. She then went on to explain all of the reasons why…I got it…but it prompted a …