While the polemical debates over the new DSM have received widespread coverage, the reactions of ordinary clinicians have yet to receive much scrutiny.

When it comes to understanding your clients’ inner world, words can only go so far. Clients can use words to tell you what they’re conscious of (“My panic attacks come from nowhere!”), but they can’t tell you what they aren’t conscious of (“My panic attacks come from a preconscious desire to avoid embarrassment.”) The unconscious, where the origins of panic and anxiety reside, isn’t easily accessed through traditional talk therapy.

We’re living longer and longer, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’d choose to live through a painful terminal illnesses. Do we have the right to choose? Should we?

 

When we trust ourselves to follow the signals of life that the patient emits in seemingly casual conversation, we increase our chances of stepping outside the confines of our theoretical models to enjoy an unexpected encounter.

 

Wave frequencies in the brain underlie every thought and feeling we have, as well as the behaviors they give rise to. Typically, for example, when we make more alpha waves (the frequency of 8--11 Hz), we feel more relaxed and, with time and training, can learn to spend more time in relaxation states as our default mode of brain activity.

Most of us see anxiety as the “enemy.” But Danie Beaulieu, author of Impact Techniques for Therapists, sees anxiety in a different light. “I was tired of looking at anxiety as a pathology,” she says in this brief video clip. “And I wanted to find a way to look at anxiety as a help, as co-therapist, to help clients understand themselves better, feel better about their choices, their decisions, what they do with their lives—and I found it.”

It wasn’t their research results or bestselling books that set apart Freud, Rogers, Minuchin, and Satir. They seemed to have a sense of what really mattered. Today have conceptions about clinical wisdom become obsolete?

 

As therapists, we typically assume that a person suffering from severe anxiety is eager and motivated to receive the help we offer. But we should never naively underestimate clients’ hidden antipathy to change, despite their discomfort.

 

Perhaps you’re seeing a kid in therapy who’s overcome with anxiety or depression. You may have tried to engage him with games and casual conversation about the latest X-men movie. But what about talking to him about the latest neuroscience and the way his brain works? Would that do any good? According to interpersonal neurobiologist Dan Siegel, author of Brainstorm: The Power and the Purpose of the Teenage Brain, kids can actually find this information pretty cool when it’s articulated the right way.