Category: Family
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Nova the #TherapyCat October 2024 Edition
I love the name my human parents gave me – “Nova”. It is an astronomical word, describing the sudden brightening of a star. It is an explosion of light. I hope I can bring you a little “light” in these blogs. And as Nova the #TherapyCat, I am glad to get to share with you…
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Humility Goes a Long Way in Marriage
What makes you valuable? I often say in therapy that we all have a unique set of skills, talents, and abilities. When we share an intimate life with our marriage partner, we get the unique vantage point and blessing to see and experience all those skills, talents, and abilities. Yet, for all we bring to…
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30 Day Gratitude Journal
Gratitude is an essential ingredient for personal mental health and relational stability. This month, Dr. DeYoung wants to offer you a 30-day prompt for gratitude in your marriage. Each prompt is meant to generate a thought or feeling of gratitude. Don’t be too alarmed by the word “Journal” because the writing expectations are minimal. Each…
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Therapy in Bare Feet
We have developed a significant comfort level with telehealth options for our medical and mental health care. My private practice has shifted from providing in-home therapy to meeting with clients solely via encrypted and secure video. Following the pandemic, I found this method highly effective, convenient, safe, and practical for couples and families. Doing so…
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Teen Mental Health Crisis
May is mental health awareness month. And to contribute to our collective awareness of mental health, I want to discuss a current crisis. I honestly don’t use those words flippantly. The mental health of our preadolescent and teenage students in our country is in severe decline. I want to share with you some statistics that…
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50 Ways to Say ‘I Love You’
February is the month of Valentine’s Day. You may love this day or have some dislike for the greeting card industry creation, but it is a reality that it can put some tension in even the best of marriages. What are we going to do – eating out or staying home? Are we buying a…
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Mental Health and Technology
The statistics are quite staggering. The rapid rise in depression, anxiety and suicide are evident when we look at changes of mental heaIth in the past 20 years. We need to respond to these changes with careful evaluation and realistic adjustments. Technology is here to stay. We can’t throw out our iPhones and return to…
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Accept vs. Alleviate
The mental health arena is rich with references to the stages of grief that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced us to way back in 1969. The final phase of her model is acceptance. When bad stuff happens, we deny, get angry, bargain, become depressed, and according to the model ideally reach a point of acceptance. Yet increasingly much of our culture…
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Crisis for Children – Texas CPS must Change
The news stories are happening way too often. Children in the protective custody of the state of Texas are placed in foster homes only to be abused by their foster parents. Victims of maltreatment are revictimized by the system that is supposed to keep them safe. The data on this problem is disturbing. From 2010 until…
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Helicopter Parents
It’s time to retire the term “helicopter parents”. Depending on your source, the term was coined by one of two individuals. The psychologist, Haim Ginott, wrote about a child/teen sharing that their parent hovered over them like a helicopter. It then seems that the parenting expert, Jim Fay and Foster Cline wrote about “helicopter parents”…