My approach to couples counseling combines basic counseling principles with the work of John M. Gottman who wrote an excellent and practical guide: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Since Gottman’s book is a “guide”, he has developed 7 principles that are expressed in the form of exercises. I recommend that any couple interested [...]

Anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion, and a very complex one at that. But first, what do we mean by emotion? I use the work of Clore (1994) and think of emotion as a mental state. According to Clore, an emotion is a mental state in which “a situation is perceived as positive or negative for one’s [...]

Many thousands of people suffer from depression. Anti-depressants are, of course, an effective way to treat the symptoms of depression. Psychotherapy (one of the things counselors do) is also an effective treatment for depression, and is directed toward resolving the cause as well as the symptoms of depression.

A group of research psychologist and neuroscientists were asked twelve questions that were then formed into a book called The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, edited by Paul Ekman and Richard Davidson (1994). Of course they covered a lot more than 10 things and each author had a different theory. Here are 10 ideas that [...]

One way of looking at counseling is to think of it as a three phase process for solving a problem. The three phases described by Hill in her book Helping Skills, are exploration, insight, and action. Interestingly, any of us who routinely solve problems, meaning all of us, are well aware of these three phases [...]

I brought a new kitten home a few weeks ago. Now she is more an adolescent. Her name, by the way, is Mimi. She reminded me that people (and sometimes kittens) are an “independent center of initiative.”

Emotion as Information has been a theme in several of my recent posts. I read a nice article called Feelings on Steve Pavlina’s personal development blog that describes a very similar idea.
Steve says
“Our feelings are a feedback mechanism.”
and
“Simply put… we feel good when we’re moving towards what we want, and we feel bad when [...]

At the center of understanding the interaction between two people is a four part interpersonal model described by both Binder (2004) and Levenson (1995). I have used this model extensively with clients who have anger issues. In this post I will explore using the model for gathering information in any situation between two people.
The basic [...]

I assume that emotion provides information (Clore, 1994) that is essential to understanding what is going on in any interpersonal situation.
When I wrote my OODA article, I was thinking in general of describing the need to evaluate what is going on in a situation. In quick review, OODA stands for: observe; orient; decide; act. Observe [...]

If Professional Counseling is my niche, then Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy is my micro-niche as well as my theoretical orientation. I expect to write extensively about the application of this approach. For now, a short post on the long journey to finding my theoretical orientation.