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Counselling for Adults
Adults need to feel competent, free of past pain and whole in order to be joyful, fun loving adults. Come for counselling. Find solutions and a more peaceful way of living.
Sandra Webb has offered counselling for women and men, as well as adolescents and young adults for 20 years for:
Self esteem
Life transitions
Stress
Anxiety
Relationship difficulties
Parenting concerns
Family & interpersonal conflicts
Early childhood trauma
Grief
Trauma
Physical and sexual abuse
Depression
Infertility
Below is a collection of Articles on Adult Counselling that you may find interesting and useful.
A group of leading American addiction experts recently released a sweeping new definition of addiction, sending the the powerful psychiatric lobby into a tail-spinbrain. But how should it be treated? Photo via By Jennifer Matesa with Jed Bickman
If you think addiction is all about booze, drugs, sex, gambling, food and other irresistible vices, think again. And if you believe that a person has a choice whether or not to indulge in an addictive behavior, get over it. The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) blew the whistle on these deeply held notions with its official release of a new document defining addiction as a chronic neurological disorder involving many brain functions, most notably a devastating imbalance in the so-called reward circuitry. This fundamental impairment in the experience of pleasure literally compels the addict to chase the chemical highs produced by substances like drugs and alcohol and obsessive behaviors like sex, food and gambling.
Read more: A New View of Addiction Stirs up a Scientific Storm
Child Category: Secure:
- Have mother/caregiver who is consistently available, meets needs of child and has pleasurable interaction with child
- Child trusts caregivers, turns to them for comfort and safety
- Perceives self as lovable and has positive self-perception
Adult Category: Autonomous:
- Coherent, believable narrative about childhood experiences
- Value relationships & turn to intimate others for comfort and security
- Are self-reflective, accept that others have different perceptions
- Adaptable, open, self-regulated
- Positive and realistic view of self
Wow! This sounds so simple. Find joy. Be joyful. Enjoy. It is much harder than it sounds - or so it seems. We have all experienced moments of joy, times of joy, periods of joy and the joy with others but how many of us live a joyful life MOST of the time? How many of us live a joyful life half of the time? The answer "should" be - all of us, most of the time!
In about 2004, I bought a little book called The Joy Diet by Martha Beck. Along the way, I lost it twice and found it (once I left it a friend's home and the other time I found it in a box of books that I was giving away). Finally, I lost it completely and had to purchase a new one. I found that finding joy was more difficult than I had thought. I also realized that I was quite resistant to doing what I needed to do to have joy be a part of my life on a daily basis.
1. Words of Affirmation
“If this is your love language, you feel most cared for when your partner is open and expressive in telling you how wonderful they think you are, how much they appreciate you, etc.”
2. Acts of Service
“If your partner offering to watch the kids so you can go to the gym (or relieving you of some other task) gets your heart going, then this is your love language.”
July 21, 2013/ 57 Comments/ in Living & Wellness /by Martha Beck
So here's the story: After a lifetime of hand-copying ancient texts, an elderly monk became abbot of his monastery. Realizing that for centuries his order had been making copies of copies, he decided to examine some of the monastery's original documents. Days later, the other monks found him in the cellar, weeping over a crumbling manuscript and moaning, "It says 'celebrate,' not 'celibate!'"
Ah, regret. The forehead-slap of hindsight, the woeful fuel of country ballads, the self-recrimination I feel for eating a quart of pudding in a crafty but unsuccessful attempt to avoid writing this column. If you've ever made a bad decision or suffered an accident, regret has been your roommate, if not your conjoined twin. It's a difficult companion, prone to accusatory comments and dark moods, and it changes you, leaving you both tougher and more tender. You get to decide, however, whether your toughness will look like unreachable bitterness or unstoppable resilience; your tenderness the raw vulnerability of a never-healing wound, or a kindness so deep it heals every wound it touches. Regret can be your worst enemy or your best friend. You get to decide which.
Incomplete closure prevents new beginnings!
Wow! That is quite a thought. Liz White, a psychodramatist and an amazing woman who leads our professional supervision group in Oshawa, introduced me to that thought. I like it. It's helpful. Incomplete closure prevents new beginnings. What does that mean? I think it means that we become STUCK if we do not have closure on events in our lives! How do we get UNSTUCK? That is a tougher question. How do we get UNSTUCK?
I am writing about appreciation. Our lives are enhanced when we can appreciate who and what is in our lives. As we practice, it becomes an unconscious competence. We feel joy, peace, love and gratitude more often when we can live in appreciation.
Sometimes feeling grateful is difficult when you live with children who have experienced trauma and who have attachment issues. Summer is meant to be joyful, refreshing and a time to create good memories. Hopefully some of my suggestions will help so you can feel appreciation for your life and your children this summer.