“If opening your eyes, or getting out of bed, or holding a spoon, or combing your hair is the daunting Mount Everest you climb today, that is okay.” – Carmen Ambrosio Tara, 36, wakes up and rolls out of bed. Her pain factor is a five out of 10.
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Relieving the heavy burden of survivor guilt
Patience Carter took a bullet in the leg during the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida — the second deadliest mass shooting in the United States — and survived. In a poem she wrote while recovering, Carter captured the devastating effects of survivor guilt: “The guilt of
Addressing intimate partner violence with clients
Licensed mental health counselor Ryan G. Carlson had just earned his master’s degree when he began working on a grant-funded project to provide relationship education to couples in the Orlando, Florida, area. Overseeing the intake process as local couples came into the university-based research center to participate, he quickly learned
Stepping up to the challenge
Stepfamilies are complex and feature unique differences, yet on the surface, there may be little to distinguish them from “traditional” families. In fact, as Joshua Gold, a professor in the counseling education program at the University of South Carolina, points out, some counselors don’t necessarily think to ask if they
Learning to love (or at least leverage) technology
A client suffers from one of the oldest and most common fears: arachnophobia. The mere thought of a spider causes her anxiety, and she often has a friend check a room for spiders before she enters. She wants to get help, but she lives in a remote area without access
Culturally competent end-of-life counseling
End-of-life counseling is an important area of our profession. Unfortunately, it is also an area of the profession that is underdeveloped and seldom researched. Consequently, few resources are available to professional counselors that specifically address multicultural competence in end-of-life counseling. I first became interested in end-of-life counseling while working as
Grieving everyday losses
As a society, we think we know what loss is: the death of a parent, partner or child; the destruction of a home through disaster; the shattering of finances through bankruptcy. These are tangible, recognized — sanctioned, if you will — losses. But counselors know that in reality, life brings
How can we truly help clients in a relationship?
Couples therapy has been around for years, so it is easy to believe that we know everything we need to know about its underlying principles. Assumptions can lead to an overly narrow perspective, however, so I’d like to offer 10 ideas on which to reflect when it comes to couples
Interventions for attachment and traumatic stress issues in young children
Although mental health professionals acknowledge that clinical issues often look different in young children, treatment practices continue to rely heavily on adult literature. These mostly miniaturized forms of adult treatment are often scaled down using more basic language and vocabulary, but they still depend on discovering ways to encourage the
Bundle of joy?
What day of the week is it?” “Why can’t I get my baby to stop crying?” “Did I take a shower this morning, or was that yesterday … or the day before?” These are the types of questions that parents — and especially mothers — often find themselves asking in