There are times when something works, but isn’t a sustainable realistic solution. Think about that. One of my favorite questions, which usually gets a good chuckle in therapy, is: So…how’s that workin’for ya? I was at Costco a few weeks ago, when a Good Samaritan passing by let me know that the passenger side rear …
Learning what Vulnerability is
It’s not easy going to a therapist.Sometimes us therapists need to really feel what that is like. Being vulnerable and doing some strange in an unfamiliar environment. That’s a tall order and therapists really need to “get it”. Last week I finished off the fall teaching with my students at the University of Manitoba. The …
Discovering Your Own Strength
Adversity brings out the best in many. One of the privileges of counselling clients is that I regularly have the honor of watching men and women triumph over challenges: refusing to let a marriage that is on life support die. A spouse digs deep and breathes deep and with hesitation and even a healthy dose …
A Painful Permission
Mackenzie Phillips dropped a bombshell that has horrified her family, shocked a lot of people, and given childhood incest survivors an ability to hear their own experience and story through the story of another. On the ‘Early Show’, she said: “I was hoping to help incest survivors and find some redemption and freedom,” she …
Change
If change did not exist, a flower would be just a seed hidden in the ground. This on a beautiful card I received this week, encapsulating better than I ever could about what Bergen and Associates Counseling is all about. Our logo has a seed planted in dirt, recognizing that it is at …
Therapy as a Biological Treatment
I was reading on the Psychology Today website about a recent study that measured the effectiveness of therapy with clients. PET (positive emission tomography) scans can differentiate the alterations in brain function between clients struggling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and control subjects, who do not have OCD. Scientists measured the changes in PET scans …
Grab hope!
I snapped this photo late last summer–I’m a complete pushover for a rainbow…the camera (at least when I hold it) doesn’t begin to capture the beauty or the enormity of a rainbow. People stopped in awe to stare at the magnificence of this rainbow. Total strangers gathered and stood together in wonder looking at …
Sometimes a fresh idea makes all the difference!
Allison the turtle was a turtle in trouble. Allison, you see, only had one flipper. A shark attack had left her with three stumps. When a turtle has one flipper, there is only one option, really–circles, and more circles. The guy, Jeff George, at the turtle refuge at South Padre Island was clear- turtles with …
Water water everywhere-musings of a therapist
Like much of the rest of the city, I have become one of those people who rushes to the basement on first entering my house. I feel just slightly closer to my ancestors who were farmers…I grew up hearing people talk about going to take a walk around the land, or check out the crops…as …
Brokenness, not Selfishness
This post might not make sense unless you read yesterday’s post. In it, I talked about how a person can see that they are “giving” to people in a self destructive way and don’t understand it. I suggested that underneath that there is another level in which the giving behavior really serves a purpose to …