Ten things to do today in order to break out of your depression and start feeling better.

You can break your depression and feel better.  Here’s a list of things to do today to improve your mood: 1. Exercise 2. Read a book 3. Watch your favorite funny movie 4. Make a list of five things you are grateful for 5. Pay it forward 6. Call a friend 7. Treat yourself to a spa day at your house 8. Sing in the car 9. Reframe your experience 10. Use positive affirmations Overcoming depression takes the usage of coping skills.  You can make your own list of coping skills that works for you.  Coping skills are things you… Continue Reading This Article

How To Survive The Holidays

You can survive the holidays.  The holidays are often cited as having highest incidences of suicides per year. The holidays are meant to be a celebration and a joyous event. Many times the holidays bring on emotional and financial stress. Going into these holidays, you may be thinking to yourself, “How am I going to be able to get through them?”. Below is a list of things to do in order to have a more fulfilling holiday experience. 1. Increase your holiday activities It may seem counterproductive that you would throw yourself into more activities; however when working with clients… Continue Reading This Article

How To Bring Sexy Back To Your Relationship

In a long-term relationship, sometimes we forget how to keep it new and fresh. Couples stop wearing their sexy pajamas to bed and start wearing their old college t-shirt with a hole in it. Women lessen up on their make-up and primping. Men start watching football every Sunday and stop making Sunday Funday about the relationship. So when you find yourself in a rut, where you realize you still love your significant other but you’ve lost that proverbial “loving feeling”, how can you bring sexy back into your relationship? Take care of yourself together After all, you both still want… Continue Reading This Article

Nourish your relationships and it will flourish

How to start over in your relationships? When something happens in a relationship I’ve heard people ask about starting over. And when you think about it, it seems like a hard proposition. How do you start something over that is almost to the end? If you look at it like having a plant, then you can learn how to revitalize your relationship. 1. Accept that your relationship is dying out and make a conscious decision to deal with the cause. Maybe you haven’t been nurturing your relationship. Maybe you’ve completely ignored your spouse. Maybe there was a third party that… Continue Reading This Article

Is Your Partner Willing To Be Intimate With You?

Being intimate with your partner is about having a partner who is willing to be intimate with you. So before you go looking for solutions on how to find intimacy in your relationship, ask yourself this: “Is my partner willing to be intimate with me?”. If the answer is yes, then by all means proceed with the research, effort and time it will take to increase intimacy in your relationship. If the answer is no, then it’s important to take a look at why you stay and what options you have in your relationship. So, your spouse wants to become… Continue Reading This Article

Take Your Inner Child With You!

This upcoming weekend, I have a trip to Disney World planned and I’m bringing my inner child with me. Disney is one of those places where it’s perfectly acceptable and normal for adults to be kids.  What if the rest of the world was like that? Sometimes, people forget what it’s like to be little.  Inside of each of us lives the innocent and adventurous child we once were.  When you dig deep down inside, you are able to fully embrace that part of your life.   Then you can let your inner child out to play. What if you could take your inner child… Continue Reading This Article

Dealing With Emotional Baggage

For anyone who has tried to start a relationship or is in one can attest that their emotional baggage has come up and impacted the beginning of a relationship. People attract their perfect match in terms of emotionally availability. For this reason, it is easy to blame the other person when things don’t work in a relationship. If you find that you are in a place where your emotional baggage or your partner’s emotional baggage is showing up, look no further because this recipe for success may work for you. The first step is to take a hard long look… Continue Reading This Article

One Man’s Journey Through Alcoholics Anonymous

Learn about Alcoholic’s Anonymous and one man’s journey. A guest blogger this week on his experience in AA: “You are not alone”. Those words were carved into a piece of wood hanging on the wall at the very first AA meeting I attended.  I can’t think of a better way to describe my experience with 12 step programs. I spent my life surrounded by my closest friends yet always felt alone. Finally alcohol removed even my friends and I discovered what real loneliness was.  Seeing those words on the wall comforted me and kept me in AA long enough to realize… Continue Reading This Article

Mapping your family tree

The family tree has become popular over the past several years due in part to Ancestory.com. The commercials are very catchy and it sparked interest in many people to look at their family history. In therapy, family trees, called genograms, are used to see patterns in family behavior. Genograms are given as homework assignments for clients to work on and then process in sessions. Patterns can include healthy and unhealthy ones. Some of the types of patterns that can be plotted include mental illness, substance usage, medical issues, marriages/divorces, family roles, sexual and physical abuse, emotional abuse, traumatic events, and… Continue Reading This Article

Nourishing relationships with family members

Nourishing relationships and the family.  Sometimes it’s a blessing and sometimes a burden.  In the world of therapy and personal development, there is a huge focus on family.  In therapy, clients are often encouraged to look at how their family patterns have impacted their current behavior.  Family trees are a popular tool to use to explore how unhealthy patterns are repeated throughout a family.  In personal development, there is also a focus on how problems are passed on from generation to generation.  Often, there is much attention on how families have impacted us in a negative way, the positive is… Continue Reading This Article