Mental Health Archives - Chris Lindsay Counselling

Working with Parts, Part. 2

OK, well over a year-and-a-half has passed since I wrote Part 1 of Working with Parts! What happened?! So many times I said to myself, “Hey, Self! Write Part 2!” I started several times, and had the outline of a post ready to go; but that’s as far as I got. Sure, I could say

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Working With Parts, Part 1

Mental Health / Chris Lindsay

After introducing the idea that we all have internal parts, let's move on to consider working with parts, shall we? To this end, a classic Star Trek TNG episode - The Chase - offers some curiously helpful insight. During the episode, Captain Picard receives the gift of a rare alien artifact. The abstract humanoid-shaped outer

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How To Do Progressive Muscle Relaxation (I Lost My Textbook)

Anxiety, Counselling and Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Mindfulness / Chris Lindsay

How To Do Progressive Muscle Relaxation... I Lost My Textbook I lost my textbook. The one from which I learned how to do progressive muscle relaxation back in grad school. I went to grab it in preparation for this blog post, and nada. Tsk. Ah well. I mean, after teaching PMR approximately 56 kajillion times

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Resistance Is A Good Thing

Counselling and Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Neuroscience / Chris Lindsay

I promised in my last post to talk about the idea of "resistance" in more detail. We therapists often feel things like frustration, confusion and even helplessness when we run into it. We have been known to label resistance as bad. Worse, we have at times turned to criticizing and blaming "resistant" people. Not only

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Not Improving Has Advantages

Anxiety, Counselling and Psychotherapy, Depression, Mental Health / Chris Lindsay

Time to finally pick up on the cryptic statement I dropped at the end of my last post. As it's been awhile, let me re-cap: most of the problems which bring people to psychotherapy are not all negative. Oh sure, they are unpleasant or nobody would come for therapy. But they also have real benefits.

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Dodging A Nuclear Blast

Mental Health / Chris Lindsay

My last few posts contemplated psychotherapy itself. It's probably time to switch over to the stuff which brings people into therapy. That which is loosely known as "mental health." Here's something which is obviously good for your mental health (and physical health, and any other kind health): dodging a nuclear blast. Image by Please Don't

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Practice Does Not Make Perfect

Counselling and Psychotherapy, Mental Health / Chris Lindsay

As described in a previous blog skiing was an ultimately disappointing experiment for me. I taught myself and didn't do a particularly good job, learning some bad habits which limited my ability to ski well. Over several winters, these became entrenched in muscle memory and difficult to un-learn. Practice does not make perfect after all.

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They’re Not That Important

Counselling and Psychotherapy, Mental Health / Chris Lindsay

As discussed last time, I provide Chris Therapy. Chris Therapy is unique, but it does involve the use of various well known models of therapy. Some therapists announce: "I'm a CBT therapist!" or "I'm a Trauma-Informed therapist!" I downplay the types of therapy I use, because while models are important, they're not that important. Image

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My Poor Blog Has Languished

Counselling and Psychotherapy, Mental Health / Chris Lindsay

It has been a long and exceptionally busy winter and spring. I've been pleased to play my part as the pandemic has messed with people's mental health. Unfortunately, my poor blog has languished in a sorry state of neglect. With the return of the sun, and the incremental reduction of lockdown orders, the frantic pace

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Emotions Are Social Critters

Counselling and Psychotherapy, Interpersonal and Relationships, Mental Health / Chris Lindsay

Last time I (hopefully) explained a couple of things. One: avoiding emotions is bad for us. Two: not avoiding them is tremendously difficult. This poses a wee problem. One thing which can help deal with this wee problem is the fact that emotions are social critters. Simply put, emotions happen (mostly) in relation to other

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