Mental Health

Mental Health

Anxiety disorders – whether its generalized, OCD, social anxiety, panic attacks, phobias or reaction to a stressful event, treatment works towards eradication of anxiety symptoms. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is used to identify and change anxiety-producing beliefs and thoughts. Stress management and assertiveness training are often utilized to reduce anxiety as well.

Depression – therapy focuses on changing the client’s experience of emotional exhaustion to emotional fulfillment. Thoughts and beliefs that generate depression are explored and appropriately challenged. Behavioral strategies are utilized to change the client’s frame of mind and his or her daily experience.

Bi-polar – working collaboratively with a client’s psychiatrist or other physician, therapy focuses on maintaining emotional stability. Stress management and self-awareness are often utilized.

Grief and loss – therapy provides affirmation and guidance through the experience of loss so that the loss becomes a significant, but not overwhelming, part of the person’s whole life experience.

Self-esteem, identity issues – therapy collaborates with the client in exploring his or her life experiences, identifying how and where messages about the Self were formed, and challenging the validity of certain problematic self-messages. The client’s spiritual as well as psychological experiences are explored.

We live lives mostly in a routine. We get up relatively close to the same time every day, eat meals at the same time every day, follow our weekly schedules year after year. There is comfort and security to be found in routine. There is also a danger lurking there in our routine – the danger of going on autopilot. Its the danger of becoming closed off from others, even from ourselves and ultimately from God. Our routines are pathways externally as well as internally – pathways of thought and emotion as well as behavior.

The usual reaction when our routine is disrupted is frustration, dismay, and resentment. The disruption is seen as inherently “bad” and label the cause of the disruption as such; whether it be a person or a situation. A fact of the matter, however, is that only when our routine is disrupted can we have new experiences. These new experiences have the potential to provide growth opportunities. People experience God in these sideline moments of their lives more often than at any other time. So my challenge to you is to set aside your frustration at the disruption and choose to remain open to life when things aren’t going your way. Its my challenge to myself. “Life is what happens while you are making plans.”

A mother told me an amazing God story today. She has a 7 year-old Down Syndrome son who functions at the level of a 1 yr-old. She was in a hospital waiting room with him when an older gentleman remarked to her “I don’t know why God allows kids like him to be born.” Nobody has ever said this to her before, though she knows many wonder the same thing. She said what happened next was something he…r son never does – her son crawled out of her lap, toddled over to the man and raised his arms to be picked up. The man picked him up. The boy laughed, looked in the man’s eyes, laid his head on the man’s shoulder, and continued to giggle. When her son’s name was called, she went over and picked him up off the man’s lap and replied to him “God allows kids like this to be born so we can experience His love.” The mother doesn’t know how this impacted the old man, but the story has impact.

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