Category: Psychotherapy
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Time to Find a New Therapist
Time for a change. When I last saw my psychologist, she equated allowing my son to play video games to allowing him to smoke marijuana. She said that the two did the same neurological and psychological damage, that video games produce emotional cripples unable to make intimate relationships. She was quite incensed about it. I do not…
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My Answers to Marya Hornbacher’s Questions
I love lazily copying and pasting content I’ve written elsewhere and repurposing it as a blog post. Once again, I post my answers to Marya Hornbacher‘s follow-up survey questions about whether I see mental illness as a physical disease: Do you consider mental illness a chronic physical disease? Please explain your response. It depends on the diagnosis.…
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Excited or Overstimulated?
Volunteer training shadowing a Hearing Advocate last Friday either excited or overstimulated me. There can be a fine line between the two. Since then I’ve had trouble slowing down and turning off, and found myself glued to laptop, tablet, or iPhone until past my bedtime. I’ve resorted to taking clonazepam to turn off my brain and fall asleep.…
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Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
The idea behind DBT, which I have never done as a therapist nor as a patient until I attended NAMI Peer-to-Peer Recovery Education Program ©, is to hold opposing ideas together to learn acceptance and more nuanced thinking as opposed to black and white thinking. Marsha Linehan, PhD developed DBT. According to The Linehan Institute: The…
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Denial Fails Me Now, or F*ck Cancer!!!
In group yesterday afternoon, my psychiatrist recommended genetic testing for hereditary cancer syndromes (of which there are 50). He advocated doing so to guide future medical care, rather than living in denial or in fear. I am not at risk, but my son and husband may be. They are private, as is my large extended family. My husband is one of…
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As a Child
As a child I wanted to be a doctor To cure people of disease As a teen I wanted to be a neurosurgeon To fix brains with a scalpel As a young woman I became a psychotherapist To fix troubled youth with broken lives With the exchange of spoken words I kept falling apart My…
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Thought Wisps
F*ck what was I thinking? Cannot recall. Had a thought or perhaps even more than one. Something to write for my blog. Now I’m drawing a blank. My mind cannot hold onto thoughts for very long. They slip away. Slip away. Wisps. The thought had to do with removing my MFT license from my description for…
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Where Am I Going From Here?
Went to group therapy Tuesday, and attended my first Toastmasters meeting earlier that day. Toastmasters was very structured, probably too structured for my tastes, though worked well in that they covered a lot of ground in one hour. Mentioned in group that I completed my continuing education units to renew my Marriage and Family Therapist…