Caring Psychological Counseling

Most lay people have heard of Sigmund Freud and his Psychoanalytical method. It is the quintessential man-on-the-couch method mocked in so many New Yorker cartoons. Adlerian Psychology on the other hand is almost unknown beyond the professional world of Counseling Psychology. However Adler’s concepts are every bit, if not more, a part of mainstream life as are Freud’s theories of the Id, Ego and Super Ego. “Adler's style of treatment was warm, gentle, and creative, not cool, aggressive, and systematic,” (http://www.adlerian.us/) Individual Psychology is the name Alfred Adler gave to his theory of personality and his system of therapy . By individual he meant that the individual is indivisible (the original Latin meaning) w hich was in contrast to Freud's division of the personality into segments. The 5 basic principles of Adlerian Psychology (formulated by Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs) are as follows. 1. SOCIALLY EMBEDDED : We are social beings who want to "belong" –...

Older generations of men, notably our post WWII males, come to therapy reluctantly, if at all. Many men today are not so standoffish when it comes to therapy. However, men still tend to wait longer to seek help and guidance for their emotional issues than do women. At times, when men seek counseling, they are looking for and often need quick results. Frequently, men come to counseling after being persuaded by a spouse or employer to seek help for a lack of emotional connection, anger management or substance abuse. Opening up to a therapist does not always come naturally and often men prefer instead to rely on stoicism. Why do so many men close down when the situation calls for an emotional response? For an answer to that we have to go back to that older WWII and post-war generation of men, the generations who set the example for today’s middle aged males, who in turn are setting the example for younger men. The last World War changed the landscape for men in this country for all time...

The biased nature of our memories is a well-discussed phenomenon when and wherever siblings or old friends gather together; the main events of shared experiences often coincide, however, the finer points of remembered experience often differ widely. Why is this? Are memories recorded differently from the start or is there another force at work? The answer is “Yes,” there are at least two forces at work making our memories uniquely ours. Firstly, the part of the brain that is involved in memory forming, organizing, and storing is the hippocampus . It’s here that new memories are associated with existing memories and content from dominant memories are overlaid onto less dominate, less immediate memories. In this way current events consistently overwrite and rewrite portions of our remembered past updating our recollections with new experiences.  Secondly, the brain works on a sort of trade-off model of memory storage; where the most emotionally impactful content of a memory is ...

  When the grieving process feels like betrayal, we are lost in a limbo of what could have been By now we have all heard of the airliner that has done missing in the southern ocean. With all the conflicting information released by different governments and story lines being floated by the news media, how are the family members of the missing supposed to carry on? Parallels can be drawn to military families when their loved ones are declared missing in action. Grieving is a process that is personal, without a set time limit, or road map. Though it is generally accepted that there are five stages of grief.   Those stages are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. For the loved ones of these individuals, giving in to the grieving process can feel like a form of betrayal, giving up on the hope of the life of the individual. Families and loved ones left in a state of limbo are unable to move through the grieving process. When there is no closure it can be one ...

When self-promotion is called for, how do we push ourselves to communicate our own worth? Creating this new website has reminded me of a problem I often see. Many of us have a problem tooting our own horns. Writing about oneself can have the feel of bragging, but why so? When our occupational and education skills are so hard won, shouldn’t we want everyone to know about them? It’s a business fact that if you don’t promote your relevant accomplishments no one will know you have the experience to do the job. This is very simpler to the issues of being able to ask for what we want. In a recent professional development seminar, a successful businesswoman stated that about 70 percent of those she hires fail to negotiate with her over the opening compensation offer. Why is it that many of us don’t make at least some effort to strike a better deal? Spend any time at the water cooler at work and you’ll notice the recurring theme of “how poorly this outfit pays.”   People generally know...

Parents and educators often think of wintertime as given over to academic learning, chauffeuring to and from after-school activities and, as often as not, punctuated with cases of cabin fever leading to frustrations as family members react to long months indoors together. But winter is a prime time to fine tune parenting skills and build relationships with children; a time to put an end to the culture of discipline, where the parent does all the work, for one of socially-oriented consequences and encouragement; a time to exchange the disengagement of timeouts for engagement with our children’s sense of social interest and self-worth. As an example, the next time you witness a parent giving a child a timeout, stop and notice who the timeout is designed to benefit. Is it the child or the parent? In many instances, a timeout will be administered by a parent close to their “wits’ end” and often not in the gentlest of tones. For a child seeking attention, the timeout will be experienced a...