This day and age, many therapists are offering online therapy help. This means that the therapist will work with you over software like Skype, Zoom or the like and conduct a session just like you would if you met the therapist in his or her office.

The challenges remain to find the right therapist for you. This is an equal difficulty when it comes to face to face searching or online. For a start, the therapist should be well-trained and have expertise within your specific challenge. In addition, does the therapist practice a research-based model of therapy. This is important for you to know. You see, just like in medicine there is FDA approved medication and there is what we call alternative healing, the same is true for psychotherapy. Research-based and those not proven in research to date. There might be tons of anecdotal evidence but that is not the same as proper research. Some therapies that are research based are;...

 

 

Anger outbursts are extremely unpleasant. That is for the one experiencing and for the one that is observing it. It is for that reason that many sufferers seek tips for anger management in an attempt to help them manage and control these seemingly uncontrollable raging outbursts.

 

In this article I will define the problem, provide coping tools and offer more resources for those that wish to learn more about anger management.For some people anger is a very ingrained type of emotion. It is interesting to note that if you watch a newborn baby, you might conclude that anger is perhaps the very first emotion we are exposed to as humans.

 

For some people though, anger is part of their lifestyle in which, both, expressing it and suppressing it, is problematic. What lies beneath the anger? For a start, people with anger issues, often have very rigid views about people and the world. Here are some examples:

• All people...

Therapy for borderline personality disorder is something that many people are looking for. For a start, let’s establish what borderline personality disorder (BPD) is and then what can be done.

 

Most people that live with someone that has BPD – will agree to the term ‘walking on eggshells‘. They are continuously afraid of triggering the person with BPD, precisely because:

• They get easily triggered
• They can switch mood from one moment to the next. From extreme calm to an absolute storm

 

Here are some other symptoms of BPD:

1. One of their main triggers, is if they fear that they will be abandoned and left alone. This is very difficult for them
2. Given their ongoing emotional turbulence, their relationships are often very unstable. It is very difficult to have a ‘normal’ relationship with them
3. If you have a conversation with them about their sense of self, you will notice that they have a fluctuating...

If you are asking yourself whether you should divorce your spouse, you are not in an easy spot. It means you got married with your spouse whilst you were probably in love and felt that you could be spending the rest of your life with him/her.

 

Now, you find yourself in a completely different reality, so much must have happened, so many emotional turbulences occurred and so much effort has probably taken place to save the situation and yet you are not sure whether you should stay married or get divorced.

 

So what is the real answer to ‘should I divorce my husband/wife’?No simple answerOf course you have probably gone over the pros and cons in your head. If you’ve tried marriage counseling and it didn’t help that much, then you are perhaps even clearer that there is little hope left.

 

You also know that general answers won’t suffice as every situation is unique. Some couples choose to stay together...

If you suspect that you have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) or you have been diagnosed with OCD – then you will probably want to know what that means and what available treatments exist for OCD.

 

In short, the most common obsessive compulsive disorder treatments are SSRIs (medication) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). In this post I will explain both.

 

For a start, in the video below you can see how those two forms of treatment will help you live a life despite the OCD and will sooth both, the obsessions as well as the compulsions.

Should you take medication?

 

Essentially, nobody can answer that for you but here is an idea. I have seen many OCD sufferers, including those with incredibly paralysing OCDs, get incredible relief to the point of remission without medication. The reason for that is because the CBT treatment for OCD is absolutely excellent. However, I’d like to make a distinction within OCD...

One of the key symptoms of depression and anxiety is having ruminating thoughts. This basically means that you spend your time;

• Thinking a lot
• Rethinking the same content over and over – usually about upsetting events

In psychological terminology, rumination is defined as having the tendency to repetitively ponder about the causes, situational factors, and consequences of one’s negative emotional experience. 

 

The difficulty with rumination is the fact that nothing good actually comes off it. It generally doesn’t produce new thoughts or solutions. Instead, you keep getting the old thoughts again like a well trodden path and on top of it, the same old feelings associated as well which is usually a lower mood in comparison to before you ruminated and overplayed the same thoughts again.

 

So the main question that I’d like to address is, how to stop ruminating thoughts, and offer...

Up until recent, most studies regarding childhood neglect, focused on abuse. These could be different types of abuse such as physical and sexual abuse. However, recently more research has been focusing on the absence of being provided with the needs that a child must get in order to develop properly. For a child to develop emotionally, the child must receive what it can only get from parents and caregivers. If you wonder whether you might be suffering from childhood emotional neglect, take this free test.What types of children don’t get their needs met?Here are some examples of parents that are not able to provide for their children properly:

• A narcissistic parent – focuses mostly on themselves and their education is not geared towards the need of the child
• A very permissive parent – lacks the ability to set necessary boundaries that a child requires
• A bereaved parent -internally focused on their pain and sorrow and...

 

I don’t know about you but this lock-down has had some very interesting results. As a psychotherapist, I’ve watched the timeline from the moment that the lock-down rules and regulations were announced, the ensuing panic and the reality.

Many people panicked about the social distancing rules. That is besides the panic buying that resulted. But in this post, I’m more interested in highlighting the social distancing panic which I observed.

Whenever a need is threatened to be taken away from you, you will tend to panic. This is a natural response to a threat. But the real question is, was it a real need in the first place?

I am not suggesting that you are not missing any parts of normal regular pre- Covid-19 life. But are there parts that you are not missing that much? Have you found a certain element of inner peace in this ‘time of being’ which you haven’t felt in ‘time of doing’?

The current...

 

Essentially, all psychiatric and psychological distress manifest themselves in emotional dysregulation. This means that there is an upheaval of emotion (anger, stress, fear, anxiety etc.) that comes along with the challenge. There could also be a down- regulation of emotion (depression, dysthymia, dissociation). The question that is often raised is, now that we know so much about where challenging emotions originate from, what can we do to control them and normalize them? Do we have the power to take an intense emotion and self-sooth? And if so, how? The answer lies in practicing emotional regulation activities.

Talk-therapy is not sufficient

For many, talking alone is not sufficient. Acquiring tools and skills how to manage their intense emotions is that they wish for. Over the years, I have found various methods that are a) easily to learn and b) easy to apply. Those that practiced these techniques for some time, experienced...

 

Why am I always so sad?

When you get an ongoing sense and feeling of sadness on a regular basis, you could start asking yourself why you are so sad much of the time. You think to yourself that it would make some sense if you were sad some of the time or if there was a clear reason (trigger), but why would you be sad so much of the time and at times without a clear and obvious reason?

Could the reasons be subconscious?

Well, the truth of the matter is that there probably is a reason why you are sad much of the time but these reasons aren’t conscious. What that means is that they are ‘out of your awareness’ but they are still there regulating your emotions and how you feel.

Childhood….

As you know or perhaps have read in my previous blog posts, your childhood is your software to life. During the childhood years, you’re program is being written and in later life much less so. In adulthood, you...