The Adolescent Years
Nothing can fully prepare someone for becoming a parent. The responsibility, early morning feedings and tasks involved in being a parent can be daunting and overwhelming. So, too, is adolescence.
Adolescence marks a transition in a child’s life from depending solely on the parents to becoming more individualistic and peer-driven. While this may be a difficult time for Mom and Dad, all parents should want their child’s transition to be as seamless as possible.
The following are key issues that family’s can work on to forge a solid bond that extends from infancy, to adolescence and well into adulthood.
Parents should always provide a safe environment and evoke the reassurance of unconditional love.
Create an atmosphere that revolves around mutual trust, honesty and respect.
Parents should establish age appropriate limits on assertiveness and independence. Too little or too much independence can damage a child.
Forge a close-knit bond tha...
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Communication: The Vital Key to Relationships
When two people become devoted to sharing one life together, a variety of communication styles merge. These styles depend on a range of factors, including each person’s family background. While one partner’s family may practice open communication, the other partner’s family may feel this is foreign. Understanding, acceptance and acknowledging the difference in each person’s communication style, is vital to forging a healthy relationship. It is also important the couple develop their own communication style.
It is essential for a couple to communicate without placing blame on either party. Five important communication guidelines are:
Always listen. Do not listen to just the words, but try to understand the true emotion and feelings that are being conveyed.
Speak matter-of-factly without blame. For example, tell your partner “I feel bad when we don’t sit down for dinner together.” This sentence stresses two factual statements: someone feels bad (fact) for not ea...
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What is depression?
Depression is a combination of feelings, including intense, overwhelming sadness, helplessness, hopelessness and worthlessness. When someone is clinically depressed these feelings keep him/her from functioning normally, and often span for days, if not weeks.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, clinical depression is the diagnosis when at least five of the following nine symptoms are present at the same time:
A depressed, down mood most of the day, especially in the mornings
Fatigue or extreme loss of energy
Continual feelings of worthlessness or guilt
Difficulty concentrating and marked indecisiveness
Insomnia or excessive sleeping
A diminished interest in activities
Restlessness
Significant weight loss or weight gain
Recurring thoughts that surround death or suicide
There are several different types of depression, including, b...
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What is addiction?
Addiction is the habitual, frequent and uncontrollable act that involves the use of alcohol, drugs and/or centers around a certain behavior. Typically, two symptoms must be present to constitute an addiction.
The behavior is counterproductive and harmful.
The behavior is a constant.
Addiction differs from obsessive-compulsive traits in that an addiction centers on deriving and anticipating pleasure. An obsessive-compulsive disorder stems from compulsion and relief. There may be a fine line between the two and only a licensed therapist is able to make a diagnosis.
Addiction affects not only the person who suffers from the addiction, but also the people that surround him/her. An addict may blame other people or outside circumstances for his/her detrimental behavior. Often time’s addiction is the result of a person feeling there is no escape or better way to cope with the issues he/she is experiencing. When someone feels that addiction is the best me...
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Are you a Sexually Healthy Couple?
“What do I know about sex? I’m a married man.” Tom Clancy
In many ways, a lot of married couples feel that way. There is an adage that a couple’s sexual life goes downhill in the course of their married life. Indeed, there are times when your, “Not tonight dear, I have a headache.” becomes the standard answer, rather than the exception.
A fulfilling sex life is an integral part of marriage – it is one way to establish and maintain intimacy between the husband and wife. Although the passage of time may diminish that excitement you might have felt when you were in your “honeymoon period”, your sexual relationship can still be fulfilling and enjoyable. One key to maintaining intimacy and a satisfying sex life is to ensure your sexual health as a couple.
Couples may lack sexual desire or suffer from poor sexual health due to these issues:
- Painful sex. There are times when a woman experiences pain during sex. This may be because of inadequate foreplay...
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Bipolar Disorder: Understanding Manic Depression
Life, they say, is a journey that has its peaks and low points. But these ups and downs are more pronounced, more emotionally damaging with a person who has bipolar disorder or manic depression.
Bipolar disorder can be likened to a ball that is continuously bouncing – times of high energy (or mania) and times of feeling extremely low, times where one feels he can do anything and times where one can’t find the energy to lift even a finger. There are also some cases where those with bipolar disorder dwell longer on the depressed “phase” rather than in the manic phase.
The intensity of these highs and lows are so high that one’s ability to function normally everyday are seriously impaired. Bipolar disorder will also wreak damage on one’s relationships with family and friends and to one’s professional life.
When left untreated, bipolar disorder can only worsen and produce obvious negative effects not just on emotions, but also in the physical aspect such as heart disease, high blo...
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Blended Love: Smooth relationships for blended families
The wicked stepmother… We have the fairy tales to thank for stories where stepmothers (and stepsisters) are viewed in a negative light. But with the increased number of divorces and single parents who marry again, 6 out of 10 remarriages usually have children from previous marriages or relationships. Also, according to Pew Research Center, in 2011, there are 13% of adults who are stepparents in a blended family.
Marriage (or the blending of two individuals) is hard enough to manage. Imagine the situation if you try to blend two families with various members having different personalities. It’s only a matter of time before there will be clashes between a stepparent and child and between stepsiblings. There may be feelings of disappointment or frustration when the “new” family does not seem to gel the way one wants it to. It may be challenging, but living (and loving) together in harmony as one happy family can be done.
When You Say “I do” the second time around
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Does Your Teen Need Counseling? Red Flags to Watch Out For
“All my life I've felt like there was something wrong with me. Something missing or damaged."
"Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants.” So says Cassandra Clare in her book City of Bones.
The teenage years are fraught with drama, pressures and challenges. It is a time of confusion – where the child transitions into adulthood and is coming into terms with it. There is pressure from inside (as a teen tries to discover his identity and adjusts to changes in his body), from peers (as a teen desires to be accepted by friends) and from parents.
The teen starts to learn more about himself and his environment. The teen may to discover boundaries and new ideas and try to test them. The pressures may further be compounded by events that are beyond the teen’s or his family’s control.
This time may also be a time of growth, where the teen learns to deal with these pre...
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Eating Disorders and How Counseling can Help
Who doesn’t want to be body beautiful? We want to be racing a la Katy Perry in our skin tight jeans, and we want to answer “yes!” to The Pussy Cat Dolls’ question: “Doncha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?” Every day, we are bombarded by images of models and celebrities in their form-fitting clothes and hunks with six pack abs.
There is this constant pressure to look good – which includes having those curves at the right places. This is a time when gyms, fitness trainers, diet programs and the entire fitness industry are doing good business. Indeed, we tend to go on a diet or take on a physical fitness program to look the best we can.
However, this search for the perfect body may leave us vulnerable to an insidious problem – eating disorders. To be sure, eating disorders are rooted in a number of factors, not just the search for body beautiful. These factors include a poor self and body image, the family environment, life events and many more. There are also instances where f...
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Domestic Violence: Breaking Free of the Cycle
All is quiet at the home front, or so it seems. The house is well-kept, the children are well-behaved and the couple looks happy. But like an iceberg, there is something more below the surface – there may be domestic violence.
A marriage is a partnership that ought to provide a place of safety, comfort and love to both partners. But sadly, this is not the case all the time. Domestic violence may not be easy to spot, especially if the ones being abused feel the need to cover it up. Also, one may not be even aware or recognize that he or she is in an abusive relationship. The abuse may start subtly and then get worse as the cycle of abuse goes on and on.
Domestic abuse is about the abuser aiming to exercise control and power over the partner. The abuse may come in different forms:
- Emotional: The abuser heaps insults and criticisms, making the victim feel helpless and have a bad image about himself or herself. This is designed to undermine the victim’s...
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