Viktor Frankl – Therapist, Survivor, Hero

“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~ Viktor Frankl

Life – Do You Have A Purpose, A Why?

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I feel this statement is entirely profound and supports what I do in my practice as a clinician. If you do not have a purpose and a vision to why you are living and where you are doing you are merely drifting in this life, bumping in to people and opportunities. Stop now, create an aim, a purpose and start living your life connect to that purpose. You’ll then be able to battle any how as Nietzsche states in his statement above.

Change – Are You Living Or Just Surviving?

“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” – Gail Sheehy

Loosing Yourself In Others – Key To Peace and Independence

Hope your Independence Day is liberating! Choose to frame your mind and heart, embrace peace and your own passion. Here’s the gem thought for today. One that I created as a tribute to my mother who passed away on this day twenty-four years ago today, my hero, my champion, my icon.

“Liberation and freedom comes not from selfish indulgence in your personal agenda, but in loosing yourself in the building up and service of others.” ~ Blog Author, Justin S.

Victor Frankl – Therapist and Survivor

“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ~ Viktor Frankl

Life – Are Your Living?

“Every man dies. Not every man really lives.” – William Wallace

Are you truly living or just getting by? If not what will you do today to let go of the old and remove yourself from the rut of compulsive thought and embrace the liberation you deserve?

Change – Takes Your “Breaking Out” Of Your Egg

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” ~ C.S. Lewis

Humor – Cure To Sullen Thoughts

“A sense of humor… is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.”
Hugh Sidey

Happy Hour, … Really? ~ Part 2 of 2

I’d like to conclude this two-part blog post with a vignette from a past client I saw years ago. He was a hard working husband with a great wife. He was a fair husband and she a decent wife and spouse. Both seemed pretty happy with one another but in time had a mountain of marital stress due to his increasing demands at work.

He’d come home and drink a little after a hard day of car sales. Now, he did not get intoxicated or violent and did  not have a history of major marital conflict with his wife. The difficulty was that he felt buried at work and seemed to be unable to communicate it to his wife. They had their common debates and upsets. She was experiencing some low levels of depression due to her fears that he was not completely committed to her. She felt he may not be happy and they didn’t have kids and had always feared that since they didn’t have any kids he could up and leave her more easily.

He arrives home one day from work, has a beer and ends up falling asleep on the couch. She also had a beer and neither as far as I can tell, were intoxicated. While asleep she started going through his phone and felt she found numbers that brought suspicion to her fears about his being committed to her. She ended up throwing his briefcase at him asleep and he then pushed her down on the couch. The local police were called and complexity ensued.

They key here is you have an overworked husband, a fearful wife (who did have some legitimate reason to question his fidelity) and then you mix that with alcohol. It blew up and the fact of the matter is the alcohol didn’t make that happen it was the catalyst to fueling reactivity, less inhibition, and eventually a huge incident and the couple landed in my office for help.

If your struggling with depression and or marriage problems adding alcohol to it usually doesn’t help. I’d say most of the couples I have treated that have had major blowups and incidents, including infidelity happened because they were less socially inhibited and made choices that damaged and caused chaos in their relationship. It was their struggle before and then the alcohol that pushed one or both of them into more conflict, more trouble.

If you do drink, think about what you are doing.

NOTE: thinking after you are drinking does not count as your senses are dulled.

Happy Hour, … Really? ~ Part 1 of 2

So, I was recently at a conference for psychologists and mental health clinicians getting some CEUs and extra clinical training. My mind has been spinning with so many thoughts. Can you imagine it, scores and scores of therapists all in large ballrooms listening, thinking, considering? Yes, it is a different dynamic to have that many therapists in the same room at the same time. Anyway, as part of the conference a speaker spoke about perception and the media related to unity and emotional liberation. As part of this she shared some thoughts about alcohol use connected to these tenets. This got me thinking.

So here is the deal. Is happy hour really happy? Really, think about it. People entering in a restaurant or bar mid-day to drink alcohol which is a downer and it is called happy hour? So happy it appears is not a construct of ones mood or presented affect but rather a conceptual construct connected to their wallet, how much the alcohol costs.

Here is my bone with this idea or social construct. It has been labeled happy hour and in fact does not make one happy. It does in fact provide a setting for socializing and having lunch, as well as having a drink. The paradox here is that alcohol is a in fact a downer. So what is a downer, let me tell you.

Alcohol is a depressant, depressants slow down the central nervous system. Alcohol actually cumbers and blocks the information laden messages that are headed to the brain. The messages that are not fully received by the brain become mixed up and otherwise dysfunctional. What ends up happening is the individuals perceptions, emotions, movement, vision, and hearing become temporarily retarded.

No doubt about it, alcohol can help a person feel more relaxed and more socially able. Difficulty is though, most individuals engage in alcohol use and complicate their mood and mental wellbeing. Those battling depression can’t afford to dumb down and numb out their minds. This only numbs you to the thoughts and instead ‘freezes’ you in a ‘no pain zone’ but in fact when you are sober again you’ll find the problems are still there.

More alcohol causes greater changes in the brain. Now you do not have to be drunk and intoxicated but if you are depressed and or battle with depression you better watch the alcohol intake. It is a sinister fluid, on that on some level does mediate anxiety and take the edge off after a tough day at work or loosen you up at a company dinner party … but if you struggle with depression beware.

I consistently counsel my patients to curb or stop drinking all together due to the influence of alcohol on the brain what I call the ’spin cycle’ in other blog posts. Alcohol on the brain is like gasoline on a fire, it fuels faulty thinking and only complicates healing from depression as it is counterfeit healing, an agent that numbs the mind/heart thus the healing too. It will not upset you per se but does help slowly lure you into solving a problem by creating a problem. So, upon embracing alcohol as a solution, it actually becomes THE problem! Now you’ve got an issue with depression yet also have the fallout emotionally, relationally, and physically from the alcohol.