FORT LAUDERDALE COUNSELING AND THERAPY BLOG

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From Maesk Counseling in Fort Lauderdale - Getting the Most Out of Therapy

No matter if you are coming to Maesk Group Counseling for depression help, anxiety help, marriage counseling, or other issues, many factors determine the depth of relief and satisfaction a client experiences from their counseling.  Here are some suggestions for making your therapeutic experience the best possible:

1) Be totally honest.  Believe me, I've heard every story.  The human condition contains basic elements that exist in all problems presented, and you're not going to shock me, nor am I going to disapprove of you!

2) Be open to new ways of thinking.  Although you are free to examine, use, or discard any suggestions I make, remember that behavior change is required for growth.  "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten."

3) Understand the difference in professional therapy and "talking to a friend."  A minimum of seven years of college is required to legally practice as a counselor.  We are also required to get several thousand hours of internship experience and supervision before being licensed.

4) Expect some resistance from family or friends.  Change, even good change, can be threatening, and comes with a price.  Your relationships will change because your world changes when YOU change.  There will be people in your life who resist this, who want you to "stay in your box."  It is indeed necessary to rock the boat for things to ultimately improve. 

5) Do your homework.  The true change of the therapy experience only takes place outside of the office, as you test the new ideas I give you and report the results back to me. 

6) Journal, journal, and journal some more.  The research is compelling: journaling continues the therapeutic progress outside of the session, releases tension, and moves you forward faster.

7) Attend as regularly and as often as possible.  For most people, that means a commitment to weekly therapy.  It’s also smart to come in occasionally after therapy has ended if you sense a downturn in mood or thinking. 

8) Be patient with yourself.  It took you a lifetime to develop these thinking patterns; it will take more than a session or two to change them!

9) Make notes after the session.  Ideally, schedule enough free time after your therapy to go somewhere and process what came up.

10) Take responsibility for the session.  Notice during the week what bothers you, excites you, what insights come up in your journaling that need to be explored further.  Bring this information to session.

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From Maesk Group Counseling in Fort Lauderdale - Things Happy People Do

This is a great article from The Power of Happy:

11 Things That Genuinely Happy People Do

Have you ever wondered what makes genuinely happy people happy? It’s not that their lives are less stressful or that they have more money or friends. No those do not have a bearing on happiness. There are several things, however, that really happy people do and 11 of them are listed below. These habits, ways of being and rituals are keys to what makes happy people happy.

1.  They Rest

Happy people cultivate rest. They know when it is time to take a break and slow down. They are great at getting things done, but it is only because they are well-rested. Incorporating rest and relaxation as a mandatory part of the lives of truly happy people. They take the necessary time to rejuvenate.

2. They Think

Happy people use their brains. They know this is one of their biggest assets. Happy people know that thinking is important to making good decisions and having fruitful relationships. They think through what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Likewise, happy people consciously think about choosing happiness, what that means to them and how to do create true joy in their lives.

3. They Turn Off Their Devices

Happy people love technology just as much as the rest of us, but they are not addicted to it. They know when it is time to set down their phones, tablets and laptops. They make the effort to engage with the people around them face-to-face and without distraction. Similarly, they also take time to soak up the world around them, not just through technology, but with their actual senses in the present moment.

4. They Move

Happy people know that our bodies were made to move and they move their bodies. The human body needs to move to maintain health. Likewise, it helps people to feel good and happy when we move regularly. From walking to stretching to high intensity interval training to yoga – if you want to feel happier, start moving your body. See also Spark by John J. Ratey for more information about how moving improves mood.

5. They Do Things They Love to Do

An essential component to being happy is taking time to create time to engage in doing the things you enjoy. Happy people know that it is crucial to make the time to do the things they love and then they do it, happily and without guilt. To figure out how to do more of the things you enjoy, read Take the Leap by Heather McCloskey Beck.

6. They Eat Well

Do you ever see truly happy people downing junk food or fast food? No, you don’t. You just don’t. Truly happy people are also health people fueling their bodies with nourishment. Science is now linking mood to food with sugar being a major culprit in depression and anxiety. Happy people take care of their bodies. It’s not to say they don’t indulge occasionally, but for the most part, eating well is important to them and contributes to their happiness.

7. They are Deeply Grateful

This is one of the most common characteristics amongst the happiest of people – they are deeply grateful. Happy people recognize what they have. They also see the silver lining in all situations, no matter how grim. Further, they express their gratitude openly. They are thankful for the things they have, the people in their lives and their experiences.

A great way to get started on cultivating more gratitude is to keep a journal and write down a few things each day that you are grateful for. At first it might seem trivial or even difficult for you, but over time, it becomes part of who you are.

8. They Plan

Happy people love the present moment, but they also plan ahead so that they are prepared in life situations. They are good with their money too. This keeps their stress lower and allows them to enjoy the present moment without the worry that so many people feel on a constant basis. Happy people have a flexible plan in place all the time.

9. They Read Stuff

Happy people are learners and are known to read things that develop them as humans, increase their skills or that simply inspire them. Whether it is fiction or non, happy people are quite often also readers. They like to constantly learn, better themselves and be entertained through reading.

10. They Play

Happy people know that play is a huge part of happiness. Play is defined by Brene Brown as time spent without a purpose. It is just being. Goofing off and fooling around. Tied down to nothing and with no expectations, happy people incorporate regular play into their lives.

11. They Purposefully Choose Happiness

Not all experiences in life are happy ones. Likewise, people are not just automatically happy. It takes effort and one of the most common traits among really happy people is that they purposefully choose happiness. They make the most out of all experiences and choose to find joy in all points of the journey. If this is new to you, try this – just tell yourself you’re going to choose to be happy. Try it out for even just a day and you will see the difference it can make.

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From Maesk Group Counseling in Fort Lauderdale - An Attitude of Gratitude: Tips for Tough Times

“In the depth of winter, I finally realized that deep within me there lay an invincible summer.” A. Camus

Let’s face it, life in Fort Lauderdale can throw us curves sometimes. We all experience the ups and downs that lead some of us to seek a counselor’s help: relationship issues, money problems, job struggles, grief and loss. Add any of those stressors to our current economy and it becomes even more challenging to stay positive and thankful! And yet, an optimistic focus is an essential quality for mental health and happiness. What do we do?

The Practice of Optimism

The alarming thing about tough times is that negativity feeds on itself. As we “talk fear” to others, we contribute to THEIR anxiety. They then spread that talk to more people, keeping us all in a state of uneasiness. Negativity is truly contagious, a “mental virus” spread by thoughtless conversation, news stories, and emails. Before you know it, a whole nation is panicking, which helps cause the very hard times we fear.

What we Focus On, Grows…

An ‘attitude of gratitude’ simply means that we make a conscious choice to put our attention on what we like about our lives. One easy exercise is to list the three best things that happened to us today, and then note why they happened. The “why” is usually because we chose to make an effort to improve our lives, whether it’s the good feelings we get from working out, or the pleasure of calling a friend. This helps us see that we are not victims and we are not powerless. There is always one small thing we can do to improve our present circumstance and ease our anxiety. Some ideas:

  • Lay the problem down. Take a break from trying to solve the situation. Put aside the divorce papers and take a walk. Leave the resume writing behind and watch a funny movie. Let your mind rest.

  • Limit the time spent dwelling on and talking about the problem. Just as not talking about it at all makes it worse by suppressing it into the body, so talking about your problem obsessively can keep you panicked. Your discussions should be brief and you should only confide in a positive, non-advising friend, family member, and your counselor.

  • Give yourself healthy treats. A nap, a novel, or signing up for a class can be a little lift to help you get through a hard time.

  • Examine the problem on paper. Write down how you feel for a few minutes to release the problem. Things look different on paper than in your head!

  • Let yourself grieve. Grief is a natural and necessary process when facing a loss, whether you have lost a job, a person, a lifestyle, or a marriage. Crying is important for release of cortisol, a damaging hormone that builds in the body during stress.

  • Avoid negative people. There will always be those who are determined to “spread the virus” of negativity. Some people get a sense of importance from repeating bad news and the media depends on bad news for ratings! Be wise about who gets your attention.

There is always something hopeful to say, something to be grateful for. Fix your attention on what you appreciate, and more good things will come along!  And if you need us, Maesk Group Counseling is here to help!

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From Maesk Group Counseling in Fort Lauderdale - Sleep and Yawning

Ever wonder why you yawn not only when you're tired, but when you're nervous or excited?  And why do others tend to yawn when you do?  This article, from The Wall Street Journal, discusses this.  And remember, if you're not getting the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep per night (for most adults), Maesk Group Counseling can help with your "sleep hygiene."  Just call or email and you'll be on your way to a better night's sleep!

The real reason we yawn

Yawning can be a problem at the office for Lindsay Eierman.

"I've explained, 'I'm sorry, I didn't get much sleep last night,' " says Ms. Eierman, a 26-year-old social worker from Durham, N.C.

But a lack of sleep may not be the problem.

Researchers are starting to unravel the mystery surrounding the yawn, one of the most common and often embarrassing behaviors. Yawning, they have discovered, is much more complicated than previously thought. Although all yawns look the same, they appear to have many different causes and to serve a variety of functions.

Yawning is believed to be a means to keep our brains alert in times of stress. Contagious yawning appears to have evolved in many animal species as a way to protect family and friends, by keeping everyone in the group vigilant. Changes in brain chemistry trigger yawns, which typically last about six seconds and often occur in clusters.

"What this tells us is it's a very complicated system, and there are probably many different roles for yawning," says Gregory Collins, a researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio who has identified some of the chemical processes at work in the brain.

There are many misconceptions about yawning, which was long believed to be the body's way of correcting for a dearth of oxygen. Our tendency to yawn when other people yawn has long been incorrectly explained as primarily an expression of a person's empathy.

To unravel the mystery of yawning, scientists built upon early, observed clues. Yawning tends to occur more in summer. Most people yawn upon seeing someone else do it, but infants and people with autism or schizophrenia aren't so affected by this contagion effect. And certain people yawn at surprising times, like parachutists who are about to jump out of a plane or Olympic athletes getting ready to compete.

"There was probably some yawning soccer players in Brazil" before World Cup games, says Robert R. Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, in Baltimore County.

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From Maesk Group Counseling in Fort Lauderdale - Drug Counseling

In the wake of the Roseburg tragedy, Patrick Kennedy wrote a brilliant piece on the need for treatment for mental illness and addiction.  He talks about his own personal experiences, and how he "found the light."  Well worth a read.  This piece appeared in USA today:

Patrick Kennedy: After Roseburg, face up to mental illness, addiction

Mental illness and substance abuse haunts every family. We must recognize that reality before we can overcome it.

Nearly 10 years ago, I crashed my car into a barrier at the U.S. Capitol at 3 in the morning. The very next day, I began the process of trying to have a conversation about what it’s like to suffer from mental illness and addiction.

Not everyone was in favor of me being open about all of this. Even my father, Sen. Ted Kennedy, didn’t really get it — at least not when it came to our own family, which shows that even the most committed, informed leaders on health care can still have old-school, unprocessed ideas about diseases of the brain.

I keep hearing that the 2016 presidential campaign is about big ideas and authenticity. Here’s a big idea that every person suffering from a mental illness or an addiction, and every American affected by those illnesses (so, everybody), knows is authentic.

Let’s start talking about every problem we have in this country in terms of how it can be addressed through improving diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental illness and addiction. For more problems than you think — health care, criminal justice, employment, homelessness, even the endless cycle of tragic school shootings — it is the only reasonable, evidence-based approach we have never tried.

Every candidate for president in next year’s election should have a detailed and realistic platform for how he or she would dramatically improve diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental illness and addiction. This proposal can’t just be part of an overall health plan — in reality, your health plan should be built around progressive changes in inpatient and outpatient care for mental illness and addiction care. Experts agree these illnesses provide perhaps the greatest opportunity to save lives and health care dollars if we do things differently: integrate care, be pro-active and stop pretending these aren’t chronic illnesses. One third of all hospitalizations in America involve mental illness and/or addiction, and many people who have these diagnosable medical conditions do not get the gold standard of care — either because they can’t afford it or because they are too stigmatized that the illnesses they have are chronic to stay on it.

Doing this is more than a political decision. It also means doing the personal work to challenge discrimination against these diseases, and the people who have them, at a very private level. I can attest to the challenges of living with these illnesses and how they are made worse by our fear of talking about them openly. Even after you get up the courage to admit you have one of these illnesses, you reach a whole new level of silence, laced with brain disease denial. And that silence is so damn loud.

That is partly because these illnesses are difficult to explain simply, and since they are in the brain, they can affect perception and communication. Hardly anyone, including those of us who have the illnesses, understands them as well as we would like, because they are chronic and debilitating but not always consistent. We can be in some of the same denial about them as our friends and family and work colleagues.

In my family, we almost never discussed these issues, even though my mother and both of my siblings and I were treated for substance use disorders (and my mother and I for mental illness) — and my father, who in today’s diagnostic world would probably have been seen as self-medicating against the PTSD of watching his brothers be killed, certainly would have benefited from medical care. Instead, we treated these issues like they were big secrets, even though there were entire sections in bookstores devoted to our family’s “secrets.”

If that sounds like a really specific Kennedy problem, it isn’t. It is a national struggle. In too many American families, these diseases are the worst-kept secret.

Our problems talking about these illnesses with our family and friends is a huge part of the reason our country does not have a consistent policy on their care. We all contribute to stigmatizing and discriminating against each other. Just as we have tried to work through racial and gender prejudice in this country, it is time to stop the discrimination against these brain diseases and those whose brains are affected by them.

There are still too many people whose family members don’t “believe in” mental illness or addiction, which is why, as a country, we haven’t “believed in” the treatment of these diseases. I urge you in this upcoming election to believe that change is possible.

Kennedy is a former member of the House of Representatives and the author of a new book, A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey through the Past and Future of Mental Health and Addiction, with Stephen Fried.

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