As I have mentioned before, I am a nerd. My love of Star Wars inspires the title of this article. Yoda said, “Hate leads to suffering.” Following Yoda’s lead, I’ll go with, “Worry leads to suffering.” While I don’t keep stats, I’m fairly confident the #1 thing which brings people to my office is anxiety.…
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Last week I wrote about thoughts, feelings and sensations which can be inaccurate, irrational, or plain old wrong; and cause us problems. Here’s the thing. While misleading; they are not trivial. Trivial stressful thoughts and feelings do happen, of course, and we shrug them off and go about our day. It’s the un-shruggable ones that…
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I think it’s about time that I shift from writing about counselling and psychotherapy — which I’ve been yammering about for weeks now — and start talking about the stuff that bugs people enough to want to try it. One common denominator for problems which drive people into therapy involves lies and deceptions. Many problems…
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I’m a nerd. I couldn’t resist that title. Anyhoo. Last week, I wrote about the perils of ego. Ego undermines effectiveness as a therapist. I want to be as effective as I can be; but what’s a poor therapist to do about defeating such a powerful monster? Well, according to Dr. David Burns and psychologist…
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For years, I pinned up a quote on the corkboard of whatever office I occupied. The quote moves me and helps to remind me of the importance of humility. I’ve blogged before about research indicating therapists with a bit of self-doubt are more effective; and experts of any kind can succumb to the mistake of…
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Happy New Year! I know New Year’s resolutions don’t really work. Oh well. I have a resolution anyway: growing as a therapist with “deliberate practice.” Deliberate practice comes from the study of top performers; athletes, musicians… I even heard that the people who roll cigars by hand in Cuba have been studied. Guess what? Innate…
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Note: Conventional wisdom (aka my wife, who knows much more about blogging than I do) says that blog posts should be no longer than 500 words. This one is double that, and then some. My apologies; I just don’t want to split this one in two. Hopefully it is interesting enough to make it worth…
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Last week, I complained about how hard it was to find a short and to-the-point article explaining that, yes indeed, psychotherapy works. This week, while searching for something else, I found it in a few short minutes. Tsk. Anyway, here it is. Better late than never. This week, I’d like to continue the theme by…
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While I have never personally been asked this question, it’s a hot topic in the field. Or at least lukewarm. It’s a pretty good question. After all, when I consider devoting some of my time, effort and money into something, the thought of dumping all of those things down a deep, dark hole is not…
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In my first two blog posts, I explained that psychotherapy is provided by a lot of different, official and regulated people. Including me. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Back in the day, anybody (in Ontario) could be a psychotherapist. Seriously. My grandmother — who never went to high school, as she had…
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