We've gathered Psychotherapy Networkers most popular posts and arranged them here by topic.
When the Pursuit of Happiness Backfires
Beware of What You Wish For
Happy people are more likely to be social, exploratory, inventive, and healthy. It’s a short logical jump from there to the idea that happiness provides an evolutionary advantage. It’s no wonder that happiness is often touted as a panacea. In fact, happiness seems so valuable that it’s sometimes difficult to imagine that it has any downsides. But the pursuit of happiness often backfires, ending in unhappiness.
Satori in the Bedroom
Tantra and the Dilemma of Western Sexuality
Many of us enter the bedroom now as if we have been told we are about to play a high-stakes game. There is no rule book, or else it's been hidden. Everyone else, we think, knows how to play. We charge down the field. We pass the ball. A whistle blows. The rules have changed. We are given five different rule books and told to choose one that suits us. (We have no idea what book the other team is playing from.) Bleeding from the shin, we strap on our battered equipment again and once more run down the field.
The Evolution of Modern Sex Therapy
Twenty years after the sexual revolution, in the most sexually explicit culture in the world, a surprisingly large number of people continue to have difficulties with the sexual basics. Psychoanalytic therapy had little to offer them beyond symbolic explorations of their upbringings and "Oedipal" conflicts. But modern sex therapy consists mainly of counseling and "homework" in which new experiences are tried and new skills practiced.
VIDEO: When Meds Pave the Way for Successful Therapy
Reducing Arousal with Meds
Have you ever had a new client come to a first session and announce—with a formality that seems right out of the DSM—exactly what his diagnosis is? Perhaps this client is also certain about what symptoms are the result of a “chemical imbalance” and thus can be immediately treated with medication, not therapy. He may be willing to talk about some things in therapy, like his job or his marriage—but in terms of his anxiety, that’s what the pills are for.
The Divided Self
Inside the World of 21st Century Teens
While at first glance, 21st-century adolescents appear impossibly cool--cooler than we could have ever been ourselves--teens today are running hot. They're not just hormonally hot, but hot with cultural forces that have redefined the nature of their consciousness and experience of selfhood. Millennium kids live in a context that spawns fragmentation, what I call a "divided-self" experience: cool and often cruel on the surface, they hide surprisingly healthy passions beneath.
Bad Couples Therapy
Betting Past the Myth of Therapist Neutrality
Most therapists learn couples therapy after they get licensed--through workshops and by trial and error. Most specialize in individual therapy, and work with couples on the side. So it's not surprising that the only form of therapy that received low ratings in a famous national survey of therapy clients, published in 1996 by Consumer Reports, was couples therapy. The state of the art in couples therapy isn't very artful. I'll start with beginners' mistakes and then describe how couples therapy can go south, even in the hands of experienced therapists.
VIDEO: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Your Practice
Exploring Sensations with Mindfulness Techniques
Clients who struggle with PTSD, depression, and other stress-related conditions may have a tough time staying engaged in the consulting room. No matter how lively your approach may be, their minds are likely to wander.
Getting Unhooked
Connecting with Traumatized Kids who Push Your Buttons
By the end of the hour, even when we begin with her raging and sobbing, Jenna usually leaves more cheerfully. She’s much less reactive than when she entered, and, best of all, we’re more in sync. When I’m able to be present in this way, my cooler, more regulated brain lowers the emotional temperature of her hot head. Over the year or so that we’ve been meeting regularly, she’s allowing me to comfort her more and more, using me more effectively for soothing. This is the wonder of what I call Time In.
VIDEO: Incorporating Energy Psychology in Your Practice
Getting Clients Comfortable with Energy Psychology
It’s not within the standard protocol of talk therapy to tap on clients’ acupuncture points as they focus on a problem or goal. Even therapists convinced of the purported benefits of Energy Psychology may not know how best to present it to their clients without seeming too “out there.”
Bubble-Wrapping Our Children
The Perils of Overprotective Parenting
While not all overprotective parents are as extreme in their behaviors as Shyam (indeed, few experience themselves as being obsessive at all), many middle-class families are struggling to decide how much protection is the right amount, even when their children are showing signs of anxiety and rebellion as a result. Whether these families are my clients or my neighbors, overprotective parenting appears to have become the rule, rather than the exception, in today’s world.
