April 25, 2014
by Casey Truffo, LMFT
You've done everything you can think of, including selling some of your belongings, to make an effort to make ends meet and get the bills paid. But no matter what you do and how much you try to pay everything, it just isn't enough. You're only making the minimum payments on your bills, but every month a few unpaid bills remain. You feel as though you have nobody to turn to; nobody to lend a hand or give you a loan…and it’s taking its toll on your mental health and the health of your relationship.
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April 13, 2014
by Caleen Martin
We've been told that stress is harmful to our health, that it increases our pain levels but what if that was a misconception? What if there was a way of making stress work for us rather than against us. It's all about perception. Stress is only harmful to us when we believe it is.
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Women tend to strive more for excellence; to prove themselves. Not that men don't feel they need to prove themselves, but women have an extra push to show that they are smart, knowledgeable, capable, and able to handle just about anything and everything. Research shows that women are still not as "committed" as men. Women are often referred to as bossy when they are actually being assertive.
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March 19, 2014
by Christie Hunter
Despite the many ill effects of chronic stress, the most obvious symptom is an omnipresent anxiety and agitation, depression, or other emotional shift that drains the joy from your daily life. While these effects play out in our daily lives- increased moodiness, anger, short attention span and low patience- the physical effects of stress can be equally draining and detrimental to overall health and vitality. Long term stress has the capacity to catalyze perilous health concerns, including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, insomnia, panic attacks, depression, anxiety, and other emotional and psychological disorders.
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What is reflection? Reflection means taking time to think in a relaxed, unhurried way about ourselves, our lives and important issues. So often we do our thinking in circumstances where we feel pressured to find instant solutions and conclusions. Reflection is a slower, deeper, less structured form of thinking that is not aimed at providing quick answers. Thus, it is one good way to increase our self-awareness.
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It is my belief that awareness is one of the key parts of creating the life you want and empowering you to do so. In the following writing I will attempt to elaborate and expand on these three points of awareness to give another perspective on how to assess for personally defined happiness.
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February 22, 2014
by Christie Hunter
Try to identify what causes you stress and as much as possible eliminate it from your life. Of course this is not always realistic. If the stress cannot be entirely eliminated, maintaining a positive attitude and a healthy perspective on the situation is helpful in reducing stress.
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In the last blog, “Trauma Informed Care; The Details of Care”, the risk and protective factors were named and highlighted closing with the statement that Trauma informed care involves the closely interrelated triad of; understanding, commitment, and practice.
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Whether you are working with people who have experienced trauma or you have experienced it yourself, it is helpful to understand some of the changes that you might witness.
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Emotionally focused therapy proposes that emotions themselves have an innately adaptive potential that, if activated, can help clients change problematic emotional states or unwanted self-experiences. Emotions themselves do not inhibit the therapeutic process, but people’s perception is seen as the challenge that creates stuck-ness.
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