Getting Sober
What "sobering up" means to you depends on your situation. Sometimes it means decreasing the frequency or quantity of use. Called "harm reduction" in treatment terms, many people naturally do this when they notice a problem with drugs and alcohol but are unsure of its severity. For example, if you find that you binge drink (more than 4 drinks at a time for women and more than 5 for men) when you're out with friends at bars, you might decide to ask your friends to meet you at a movie instead of a bar. Shifting the environment in which problematic behaviors occur is a way to reduce harm. Likewise, you may try to limit the amount you are drinking or using, or you may make deals with yourself not to use at certain times of day or in certain places. All of these methods of control are common once a problematic pattern is recognized. Whether these methods of control work or not depends on your individual circumstances. Here's a guideline for the safe consumption of alcohol, by the way. Great graphic from the CDC. by Megan Kennedy Bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness and permanent condition. When left untreated, it’s highs and lows can be erratic and the disorder can be overwhelming. The cyclical manic and depressive phases that distinguish bipolar disorder can cause poor performance at work or school, fragmented relationships, and sometimes suicide. However, with treatment, people with bipolar disorder can lead very full lives.
by Megan Kennedy The mental health community is buzzing with talk about stigma. As a social work student, my mental health classrooms were filled with dialogue about the ongoing consequences of shaming individuals with mental health problems. As a professional, the effects of stigma are often detailed in the stories and everyday lives of my clients, and as an individual with a lengthy history of anxiety, I have personally felt the effects of stigma and witnessed stigma through others close to me. Considering roughly 18.6% of adults and 13.1% of children (ages 8-15) suffer from diagnosable mental health problems, chances are you have too. Most of us agree that stigma is harmful, but where does it come from and what can we do about it?
John Gottman, marital therapist and researcher, identified four patterns of communication that are most disruptive in intimate relationships, so disruptive in fact, that they are predictors of divorce in married couples. I've found that describing these patterns to couples in counseling has been helpful in resolving communication problems. Gottman wrote about them in his book called The Marriage Clinic, calling them the "Four Horseman of the Apocalypse." (I'm on the fence about that name, but it is kind of amusing and easy to remember.) Here's a summary:
Sleep is so important that almost every single diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Health Disorders (or DSM) has a disrupted sleep component to it. That's why I ask every client about sleep on the initial paperwork when entering counseling. I have conversations about sleep so frequently in counseling sessions, I decided I needed to gain more information and new ways to explain what happens while we are sleeping. There happened to be a great article about this topic in the November issue Counseling Today, a periodical published by the American Counseling Association.
The healing power of setting foot in a counselor's office...it's a thing.
A client and I were recently wondering "Is there a name for this?" I don't recall learning about it in school, or reading research about it. I don't recall a textbook definition of one word that sums it up. Yoga is an ancient practice that originated far away. It has made its way around the globe in a wave of both physical healing and spiritual awakening, while simultaneously becoming a multi-billion dollar industry in the US. Some of the yoga teaching in the west has been simplified to a mostly physical practice by this commercialization and popularization, however yoga's philosophical foundation as a way to live a good life endures as well. These days, yoga is practiced not just in affluent studios, but also in schools, prisons, hospitals, and apparently on aircraft carriers (love this picture.)
Thanks to modern science and research, we also know much more about how yoga impacts physical and mental health than ever before. Let's explore some things we know about how yoga helps, and then describe how this knowledge can be incorporated into a traditional talk therapy session.
Last month, I was in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, learning from the experts of The Trauma Center, founded by Bessel Van der Kolk, and home to some of today's foremost research on trauma and the brain. I attended seminars on the complexity of adaptation to trauma, how to work with dissociation through component based psychotherapy, and trauma sensitive yoga. Here are a few takeaways:
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AuthorKambria Kennedy-Dominguez, LPC-S |