Stand Your Ground

I agree with the right to own guns and even carry them. I see problems with carrying guns for many people. People who are too impulsive or don't do well under stress should probably not be allowed to carry a gun since they are so deadly. However I know there is no good way to monitor that. And I know that gun fanatics would say that maybe people who are impulsive shouldn't drive cars or use other deadly things as well and to a point, they are right. So the chaos continues.

What I don't agree with are "stand your ground" laws. How can it possibly be moral or humane to shoot someone and kill them when you could have ran away or gotten out of the situation? Especially, as is the case with Zimmerman, since the shooter actually started the altercation. As a counselor, I always think about children and their upbringing since this is what I do day in and out at my job. So much of my work is helping parents improve the quality of their discipline. So to me, this would mean that if you live in a state with a "stand your ground" law, you better teach your children while they are young that if they get bullied, they better run away because if they fight back, even with their fists, they might get shot and killed. In these states, there is no more teaching to not take it when someone harasses you or intimidates you because then they could shoot you. Obviously I don't mean kids will be shot but it starts when they are young. If you teach them to fight back and not take crap now, they could end up like Trayvon Martin when they are 17. Dead.

And I am embarrassed to call myself a Christian when so many Christians I know seem to think that this is an okay decision. I believe that the most important thing about being a Christian is trying to live your life like Christ. It is what I have been taught and what the bible says. 1 John 2:6 "Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked."

I am not one to get on verse citing kicks because I am sure the other side can always come up with their own verses that say it is okay to kill others. Although theirs will probably come from the Old Testament and I believe that when I accepted Christ, I decided to live by the New Testament, not the Old. Although I want to mention one more verse that I try to live by the most. I am not perfect and can admit that I fail on a daily basis when it comes to the Fruits of the Spirit but I believe that when I try my best to live by these principles that I am working towards being like my Saviour.
Galatians 5:22-23 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

Christians should see no reason for a "stand your ground" law because they would be willing to turn the other cheek when there is no weapon involved or they know their life is not in danger OR there is a way to escape the situation. Christians following the fruits of the spirit would GLADLY flee the situation. So I can't judge Zimmerman because I don't know if he runs around calling himself a Christian or not and besides, it is not my place to judge. That is for God and he will have his judgement when his day comes.

So if you publicly claim to be a Christian and also publicly claim to support laws such as this, you may want to ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?"

Nanowrimo

For those of you who do not know this, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. Which is November and begins in 2 hours and 18 minutes. This is a month where we who participate are challenged to write 50000 words in the month of November. This usually is not a complete novel but is a great start!!! They are supposed to be fiction works. Unfortunately the book I have been longing to write for the past 5 or 6 years is my own autobiography from my preteen and early teen years and the horrors of suicide and psychiatric hospitalization. I could still write it because no one really grades you on that. You just "win" if you hit the 50000 word mark.

However, I decided to write a book with short stories about the mentally ill. Loosely based on real encounters in my work as well as colleagues but fictitious characters and embellishing scenarios to make them either outlandish or comical or horrorish. I'm not even sure that is "legal" since it's lots of short stories rather than on long story with a plot.

I have met some awesome people here in my area who participate and they help motivate both online and in person. I am excited and feeling psyched that I can hit that 50000 word mark!

Technology and the iGeneration

Does it seem like your child has their phone attached to them at all times? Or that Facebook has taken over your computer? Then you are probably living with someone from the iGeneration. The iGeneration is anyone born since 2000 , but realistically, anyone from 1990 on fits the description.

Looking at the last ten years, there is an obvious trend in technology increase among teenagers. In 2000, time spent online was approximately 2.5 hours a week but in 2010 that number jumped to 18 hours per week. In 2000, 400,000 text messages were sent a day and in 2010 that number skyrocketed to over four million. Video game revenue has increased from 7 million dollars in 2000 to almost 20 million in 2010. And the latter piece mentioned above….Facebook? Users have skyrocketed to almost 5 million users since the site’s conception in 2004.

So are our kids headed for disaster? Will all the violent video games cause more violence in the world and desensitize them? Surprisingly, there has been a statistical decline in youth violence since 1993. However, this does not mean that it is perfectly acceptable to allow a child to spend endless hours on video games a day. Regardless of violence, video games can keep children from healthy activities such as proper exercise, social interaction, homework, and chores. As a therapist, I often advise parents to ration the child’s video game time. Give a set amount of time and if it’s an incentive for your child, allow them to reasonably earn more for positive behaviors such as homework and chores.

Is all the communication through phone and computer rather than face to face unhealthy for children? No, but each child needs an individual approach. If your child is not involved in any outside activities and you find they spend all their time in their room either texting or instant messaging rather than face to face interaction, encourage them to go out and get involved in something. There is also nothing wrong with monitoring their use or amount of communication. Some parents put the phones in the house up at a certain time at night to keep children from losing sleep and talking or texting on the phone all night. A limited amount of computer time, or even specifically internet time, can also be given just like video games. Keep the computer in a central area where you can monitor what they are doing. Allow them so much time to use social networking sites like Facebook or instant messaging and then stick to that limit. If they are in a monitored area, you can be sure they are using the computer to write that paper for English rather than IMing their friends.

There is no magic amount of time that children should spend on the television, computer, or their phones. Each parent needs to use an individual approach based on their child’s needs and behaviors. If you think you may need extra guidance with this, talk to other parents in your community to see what they are doing that is reasonable or see a counselor who specializes with children and parenting issues.

Christians need to do more self-evaluation

Church service was interesting today and eye opening for me in a lot of ways. Ways I don't even think the pastor meant for it to be. Our pastor today was Hispanic and he spoke the sermon in Spanish and his wife translated into English. They are going to begin a service on Saturday nights like that in hopes to bring more Spanish speaking people to the House of the Lord!

He spoke on Isaiah 56:6-7, which you will find at the end of this post.

I realize that many people in this country claim to be Christians and claim that they love "everybody" but out the other side of their mouth come things like keep the mexicans out and talk about our president like he is subhuman. Besides Isaiah 56 I thought of the great commandment "Love thy neighbor as yourself". Ummm, are all you Christians loving your neighboring country, Mexico, or are you hellbent on keeping them away from you and YOUR country? And who says it is OUR country? Didn't God give us everything we have anyway? Oh but wait....

I also find it sad that our ancestors came to this country and practically wiped out the ACTUAL people who owned this land and now call it their own and want to keep others out. Nobody kept your ancestors out. In fact they just forced their way in, killing anyone they had to to get what they wanted!!! Who do the people in this country think they are? NOT Christians in my book. Just like so many of our ancestors who were killing innocent indigenous people were proclaiming to be Christians.

I have made a conscious decision today. I am an American. BUT I am a Christian first. That is where everything that I think and do should be based on. If that makes me unpatriotic, then so be it. I don't really care what others think because God is the only One I have to please. When this life is over, God is not going to care from what nation I came as this scripture indicates. He accepts all foreigners in His house and His house will be a house of prayer for ALL nations.

The next time you want to complain about everyone else in the world, maybe you should stop first and think about what Jesus would do with those people. I think Jesus would say to let them all in!!!! I don't know what would happen economically or geographically if we made it free to come here but I would trust the Lord that He would take care of it. And when you are done thinking about that, maybe you should stop and think about yourself and why you choose to think this way.

And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD
to minister to him,
to love the name of the LORD,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.”

The Oppositional Child

How to Deal with an Oppositional Child


Does it seem like you are always arguing with your child or adolescent? Do they seem to purposely annoy you as well as be easily annoyed by others? Are they angry, resentful and possibly spiteful or vindictive? Do they intentionally defy or refuse to comply with you or other adult’s requests or rules? If so, your child may have Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). Unlike many mental disorders, this one can be fixed without medication usually if parents are willing to work with a therapist on changing the communication style in the home as well as setting up a structured 2 Tier system for negative consequences.
How often are you having a disagreement with your child about something as simple as doing their chores and before you know it, you’re arguing with them about something that happened a year ago. These types of children are master minds at twisting conversations and changing the subject to keep an argument going. To understand how to change them, you first have to understand how they operate. Many times, they see the argument as the power, whereas you as parents are much more focused on the outcome. This is why they change the subject and attempt (usually successfully) to get you worked up emotionally.
So how do you fix this problem? Be aware of your own emotions when talking with your son or daughter and keep the conversation where you want it to be. Do not allow them to change the subject. And when either of you begin to get angry or upset, end the conversation. Remember, it takes two to argue. Children with ODD usually try to start arguments on their terms. For example, you just got home from work with bags of groceries. You’re tired from a long day and trying to put all the food away when your teenage daughter comes up to you and asks if she can go to a dance Friday night even though she is grounded. Are you ready for this conversation? Probably not, and she knows it. It is perfectly alright to tell her that this is not a good time and that you will talk to her about it after dinner. Set a time for them. That does tend to help. If they continue to go on, ignoring them can also work. Remember, it takes two to argue.
Setting up a 2 Tier system for consequences and rewards is also useful for controlling their behavior. This system is not only useful for children with ODD but all children and adolescents. Instead of automatically giving them one consequence for negative behavior, which usually involves the loss of a privilege or item, the first consequence is to DO something. Give them an extra chore or tell them they must write an essay based on the behavior and what they could do differently next time. If they don’t complete the task in the time frame you have given them, then they lose something. This way they feel like they have a choice in the matter AND it can help you with tasks around the house!
There is much more involved in a 2 Tier system including rewards and setting up expectations and rules that you have for them. There is also much more involved in the communication aspect of working with a child with ODD. Counselors can help in this area by teaching you the styles of communication needed and role playing with you so you will be at your best when you go home and face your child. Remember, you can be in control of a conversation and where it is headed. Don’t give them the power. Remind them who the parent is and who the child is just by the way you interact with them.

Nice quote-talk more later

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."-
Generally attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813), though unverified

Cover story

I made it into a professional periodical!!! I interviewed for a cover story about working with children and adolescents and my name is in it. It's nice to get some recognition that I know what I am doing and am good at it. Check it out

http://ct.counseling.org/2010/03/growing-pains/

Forgiveness and Your Health

Do you suffer from high blood pressure or cholesterol? What about chronic headaches, shoulder, neck, and/or other muscle pain? Are you struggling emotionally with signs of depression, anxiety, anger management, or sleep problems? Forgiveness has the power to change all these ailments without one step to a physician’s office or any medications. Mayo Clinic has been doing research that indicates lower levels of blood pressure, muscle pains, and decreased dysfunctional emotional symptoms from finding forgiveness in their lives.
Most of us suffer from anger either towards others or ourselves about some negative event that has happened in our lifetime. Some of us hold on to that anger and resentment for decades. Imagine what all that hardened emotion is doing to you from the inside. It can develop into a chronic state of depression, an ulcer, or a tumor.
Morter Health Systems has developed a five step guide to working on forgiveness. This holistic approach with the help of a mental health counselor can get you on the road to recovery from physical and emotional ailments. The first step is to forgive you. It can be extremely challenging to forgive others if you can’t even forgive yourself. This can be difficult, depending on the severity of the wrongdoing. Some of us simply need to forgive ourselves for being angry at another and some of us struggle with issues as heavy as abortion. Seek a trained counselor if you need to talk through sensitive issues with a non-judgmental, confidential, and professional person.
The second step is to forgive others. It is not necessary for you to tell them they are forgiven. There may even be cases where a person believes they have done nothing wrong and will laugh at the idea of being forgiven, which may start the whole process over for you. The important aspect to remember is your feeling of peace and forgiveness about that person.
Third, be able to allow others to forgive you. If you have honestly done step number one, step three will not be as complicated. Knowing you deserve that forgiveness and have done so for yourself makes it easier to accept from someone else. Remember that this does not always mean they will forgive you or that you even need to ask for their forgiveness. The deeper meaning here is that you be open and free of anger and resentment.
Step number four involves wishing the other person well. This does not mean that you are condoning any behavior they may have wrongfully done to you. You use step four to help envelop a freedom from the burdens of anger and resentment you have beyond simple forgiveness. Although step number four appears to be about the other person, it is inevitably about you, your health, and happiness.
Lastly, step five is to learn the lesson. So often in life we make a mistake and become angry with ourselves but then later we are making the same mistake again. Whether that be to get involved with someone who is unhealthy for us or our own personal mistakes towards others, we need to be aware of the mistake and stop the cycle. So work the steps and learn the lesson so you are not reliving the pain over and over.
Mental health counselors, physicians, and even chiropractors like Dr. Rose Melvin of Peoria Heights are using an approach to forgiveness to help battle people’s physical and emotional problems. There is light, peace, and serenity at the end of the tunnel.

Counseling Burn Out

Burn out is high in my field. Turn over rates are high at counseling agencies as well. Dealing with people with issues, especially those with severe issues such as suicide, major aggression, antisocials, and sex offenders, can be extremely exhausting. It is so important to care but not to take responsiblity for the clients and their actions. I see way too many counselors and social workers in this field believing it is their fault that a client did not get better, when in fact, the client did not want to change or was not willing to make any effort.
I was taught that a counselor should do the majority of the work the first 2-3 sessions but after that, the work is up to the client and you should never be working harder than your client. Especially when working with criminals and adolescents, it is important because they are so guarded and usually do not want the help anyway. However, I personally am willing to put in more effort when dealing with adolescents because they are extremely guarded and usually enter counseling against their will. So I am willing to spend more time and effort to build a relationship with them and be patient to bring them to a point where they want to change. HOWEVER, I do not neglect myself in the process.
Taking care of oneself is highly underrated in this field. Whether it be spending time with friends, reading a good book, watching a movie, or working out, a person must have a release so not to hold on to all that tension. So to all you social workers and counselors out there, make sure to take care of YOU! You can't help others if you are so tired and worn out you can't think straight. That goes for teachers, day care workers, and anyone else who works with people!!!

Pain is NOT Suffering

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or ayear,
but eventually it will subside and something else will take it's place. If I
quit, however, it will last forever."
Lance Armstrong
Cancer survivor and cyclist

Suffering is the avoidance of pain. So many of us avoid pain like it is the plague. This is why I have a job and deal with clients on a daily basis who say they want therapy but them become resistant and guarded. It is why our society is so full of anger and hostility. Most of us mask our hurt and pain with anger because it doesn't hurt as much. At least on the outside. Ultimately, this is what causes so much suffering and misery in the world and why I have a job! I try to tell my clients that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional and that they can move forward in life if they can find a way to grasp and hold on and experience the pain they are feeling fully and embrace it, but more often than not, they refuse. They are young (although many adults still have this level of emotional maturity as well) and can't see the growth that could come from their grief and hurt in the long run.

I went to this workshop yeterday on a new (well, it's been around for 20 years but only been out of the experimental zone for health insurances for 5) technique used with trauma patients, people with depression, grief, and other ailments of the sort called EMDR. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It has been proven to have long lasting effects on the abovementioned disorders longer than any other other treatment out there! It's so effective you have to be specially trained and certified (which is not cheap!) to use it and bill insurance for it because they don't want every clinican out there that isn't trained using it incorrectly and bringing the stats down.

So the way this works has to do with rewiring the brain to store the traumatic or depressing thoughts they have in a different way so that it is not so sad or traumatic or anxiety provoking for them. The person watches your fingers or a light move back and forth very quickly (there are also tones that you can hear back and forth through headphones or vibrating mechanisms you hold in either hand) while you think of a specific memory and the relaxing chemicals that are released when your eyes move back and forth helps restore the memories in a different place. There was a lot of talk about the amygdala and the hippocampus and the corpus callosum (which is the band of nerve fibers that connects both sides of the brain) and how they work in all this but I can't remember all the details.

A person might hear this and think it sounds all hokey but I just think about what we know about sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) and how that is the most resting part of the sleep where the brain rejuvenates and it makes sense that something that makes your eyes move back and forth (just like they do under your eyelids during this cycle of sleep) would relax you and rewire the brain! Just think of hypnosis. Same kind of concept yet not as deep of a mind state.

I am excited to learn more about this and possibly get certified in it. With all of the people coming back from Iraq and the insurance companies eating this therapy up (including the Department of Defense), it's a sure way to help those coming back with PTSD and for me to have a big clientele base. :)

Forgiveness

I am exploring the idea of forgiveness in my therapeutic techniques to lower my stress level. Did you know that places like Mayo Clinic have proven studies that show that forgiveness lowers blood pressure and heart rate as well as diminishes headaches, TMJ, and other ailments. Forgiveness can be such a difficult thing to do but stop and think about how angry you are right now about things that have happened or are happening in your life. How you have been treated unjustly and still hold that anger. Think about how many people walk around so angry all the time and critical of how they have been wronged or angry with themselves about things they have done. I believe that one of the first steps to happiness and healthiness (physically, mentally, and spiritually) is to forgive ourselves and others for the wrongs we have done or felt others have done to us.
Who is the one hurting by staying angry? Definitely not your old boss or co-worker or old friend. You are. Stop hurting and begin searching your mind and heart to find a way to forgive so you can be on a better path to living!

Mind and Body Connection

I am a counselor so I am obviously aware of the conscious vs subconscious mind. So it was surprising to hear from my chiropractor (of all people!) that my neck and shoulder pain is more of a stress issue than it is of a vertebrae issue. He (Dr. Melvin Rose) has turned me on to some state of the art research and practices they are now using at Mayo Clinic and other prestige places to help people with stress management among other things.
I spent my last chiropractor visit doing much more than getting an adjustment. Through some meditative exercises, he helped me see that I am struggling with things that shame me. Anger, forgiveness, judgment, and the one that ties that all together, sincerity. I call myself a Christian and I believe in the Lord your God with all my might. (Which is why I probably passed the exercises related to faith and love.) However, these other issues that are stemming in my subsconscious towards people in my life and past experiences I have had helped me realize that on a SUBCONSCIOUS level, I do not feel sincere in my walk with Christ because I am struggling with these areas that are keeping me from being as close to Christ as I could be.
Luckily, there is a cure! These meditative exercises Dr. Rose taught me use both the body and the mind to clear these issues in my subconscious and I have begun practicing them morning and night. I am anxious to see how they work and if I begin to not only feel better physically but mentally and spiritually as well!
And one last thought.....have you ever known a chiropractor who sincerely wanted to help you get well and keep you out of his office! Dr. Rose is an amazing man!!!!