Counseling Influences: Part 2 - Biblical Counseling

This is the second in a series outlining my major counseling influences.  Last week I outlined Adlerian Theory (check it out HERE) and this week I will explore the basics of Biblical Counseling and how it has impacted my counseling theory and practice.

Biblical Counseling addresses clients from a holistic perspective of body, mind, and soul.  It affirms that the gospel Jesus Christ as represented in the Bible is the only way to full and lasting life and joy.  The counselor, guided by the Holy Spirit and prayer and instructed by scripture, must attempt to speak truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) and admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all (1 Thessalonians 5:14).  Biblical counseling lovingly focuses on repentance and reconciliation with God regarding heart issues, rather than symptoms, for true restoration.

My counseling degree from Dallas Theological Seminary is a Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling, reflecting that the focus of my education and training in graduate school centered on integrating a Biblical worldview into the counseling profession.

I believe spirituality is a basic part of every person and I love to engage at that level as much as the client feels comfortable.  I pray for my clients and seek wisdom from the Holy Spirit to guide and direct treatment planning, themes of conversations, and specific questions.  It is my hope to help each client that comes through my door to love Jesus more and to rely on Scripture, Biblical theology, the Holy Spirit more and more each day.

For additional resources about Biblical Counseling, check out The Association of Biblical Counseling, The Biblical Counseling Coalition, and The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation.

The next couple blogs in this series will cover Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Family Systems Theory.

Counseling Influences: Part 1 - Adlerian Theory

I'm starting a new blog series about the counseling influences that shaped my training in the counseling field and inform my style of therapy.  I hope it is helpful to shed light on what to expect from me as a person and as a counselor.  The first influence I'll discuss is Adlerian Theory.

Adlerian Theory is based on the work of Alfred Alder, an Austrian psychotherapist and researcher in the early 20th century.  His theory focuses primarily on personality - specifically how it develops and how it can change over time.  The basic model for counseling can be broken down into four phases:

1. Engagement: The building of a therapeutic relationship between therapist and client to be able to work together to achieve the client's goals.

2. Assessment: The telling of a client's life story including personal history, family history, values, emotions, behaviors, and current relationships and situations.

3. Insight: Dialogue (primarily through asking questions) to explore new ways of thinking or feeling about the current situations or issues that brought the client to counseling.

4. Reorientation:  Encouragement from the therapist to reinforce new insights, beliefs, emotional responses, and behavioral changes the client may display.

Alder understood that every person is one of a kind and possesses a unique mix of private beliefs and strategies to achieve their goals.  Therapy can help clarify these differences, help clients overcome feelings of insecurity, develop deeper levels of connectedness, and strive toward their goals in more socially beneficial directions.

This outlines my underlying framework for my work with clients.  I try to go through the four stages listed above to first understand and connect with clients, then work to reframe the current problems to promote a healthy resolution and finally, to encourage and reinforce progress toward the client's goals.

For more information on Alfred Adler and Adlerian Therapy, here is a great resource.

Coming soon are Biblical Counseling, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Family Systems Theory!

The Sweet Spot

I saw this image on a friend's FB page and thought it was so simple and so profound.  I stopped to think through some important ideas this graphic shows:

• The larger circles on the outside describe motivation - what is driving action.  Different individuals may have different levels of interest in what drives them.  They may be motivated by what they are good at and know they can do well.  Or they may be motivated by what they can be paid for and how they can make more money.  It's important to recognize how our values impact what we choose to be involved in.
• The words in the intersecting circles describe the foundations of purpose in work.  Profession is work that involves a skill or area of knowledge that you get paid to perform.  Vocation is work that provides necessary goods and services to the community and earns an income for the provider.  Mission is work that is focuses on others' needs and allows you do help by doing something you already love.  Passion is work that is a joy to perform, pairing what you love to do with what you are good at doing.  Each of these areas are essential to a well functioning society, community, and family.
• The ultimate goal for finding purpose in life is the star in the very center: the sweet spot.  It balances each of the motivations and keeps profession, vocation, mission, and passion in tension leading to fulfilling work.  The challenge is to find how can we achieve this harmony in our life.

This image also prompted a few questions for me:

• If I could only choose 1 or 2 or 3 of the foundations of purpose, which would I choose?
• Which motivations do I notice driving my decisions about purpose and work?
• How could I make more strategic choices to be closer to the sweet spot on the diagram?
• Who do I know that has hit the sweet spot, and how can I learn from their example?
• In what ways can I encourage others to pursue their purpose?

Hope this makes you think as much as it did for me.  I'd love to hear your observations and implications.

Book Review: Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age - Sherry Turkle

I recently read Reclaiming Conversation and was fascinated by how technology and advancements in science impact how we interact with ourselves, others, and the larger society.  The author, Sherry Turkle, a professor of Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, easily breaks down the research in this field and presents the information with a good blend of antidote, commentary, and insight.

First, the book covers solitude and shows that we are spending increasing time with the distraction of a device which has the potential for constant contact through social media and texting.  This decreases our abilities to process through our own problems and feel appropriate emotion, self reflection, and thoughtfulness.

Next, it explains how our interactions with others in our families, friend groups, and romantic relationships are effected by smartphone distracts and communicating via text. Conflicts and misunderstandings can occur when the tone or nuance of spoken conversation doesn't translate to written communication, often resulting in decreased empathy.  Also, the ability to "edit" yourself or check with others before responding creates the burden of being perfect or always having the correct response.

The book then address how society as a whole, in our educational system, the workplace, and the public square, is changing due to our increasing reliance on technology.  The allure of multitasking leading to more productivity (not true), connecting via email as preferable to face to face meetings (not true), and that the internet being a safe and neutral place to discuss ideas (not true) is changing how we interact in our spheres of influence. 

Lastly, Turkle evaluates the risk of humanity evolving from talking through machines (to one another) and instead talking to the machine itself.  As scientific gains are made in the areas virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, and factoring in our tendency to lose ourselves in the latest technology; this may not be too far off.  One counseling application of talking to machines instead of people is the potential for a robot programed with empathic responses, reframing techniques, and common questions to take the place of a human therapist.  There are many possible positives for this scenario, but in my opinion, the best therapy happens when two humans can connect over their shared humanity and work together toward healing.

Exercise and Mental Health: Part 4 - Intangibles

We've explored in the previous three blogs that exercise helps stabilize brain chemistry (Part 1), improves mood (Part 2), and positively effects daily habits (Part 3).  This final installment of this series will focus on the intangible factors of physical activity described below:

• confidence - establishing a pattern of exercising several times a week will naturally lead to your body and mind adapting to the higher demands.  When you see these gains (running faster, lifting more, longer workouts, etc.), they will reinforce your belief in yourself and you abilities.  This confidence will inevitably spill over to other areas of your life as well.
   
• body image/self esteem - exercise helps improve how you think and feel about your body as you becoming stronger, healthier, fitter, and as you lose weight or put on muscle.  This is a positive feedback loop in that you are also more likely to continue exercising if you enjoy the effects.
   
• clarity - sometimes the best time to think is during a repetitive cardiovascular exercise (like walking, swimming, running, cycling, rowing, etc.).  By giving you body a productive task, you mind is free to process emotions and solve problems.
   
• distraction - stepping away from a problem or conflict to be physically active can be the perfect way to make sure to avoid overreaction or a negative in-the-moment reaction.  Having some time away from the issue could give the necessary perspective to come back and address the problem in a healthy and helpful way.
   
• community - genuine, supportive friendships can form around a common activity.  Meeting a group of similar minded, motivated people can be great accountability when you're not feeling it on a given day and for building friendship.
   
• FUN! - last of all, exercise can be playful, exciting, and fun.  There are so many creative ways to get your heart rate up that every exerciser should be able to find a way to make it fun and sustainable in their life.  A great way to do this is to exercise as a family and with your kids or nieces and nephews - kids instinctively know how to make active play fun!

These positive effects of exercise improve overall wellness, including healthy body, mind, and soul.  Hopefully, this information will help you get out there and move!

Exercise and Mental Health: Part 3 - Daily Patterns

We all know that regular exercise is important and can yield all sorts of healthy effects - decreasing risk of heart disease and stroke, losing weight, lowering blood pressure and resting heart rate, improving immune system functioning, and regulating hormonal balance just to name a few.  In addition to these physical changes, exercise also improves mental health as discussed in parts 1 and 2 of this series:  positive brain chemistry effects (HERE) and helpful mood effects (HERE).   This blog will explore several areas of daily functioning that improve as a result of exercise.  

Regular exercise leads to increased feelings of energy and decreased feelings of fatigue.  It may seem counterintuitive that spending energy on exercise actually leads to feeling more energized, but that is exactly what studies show.  On days participants took more steps, they felt 20% more energy at the end of the day and reported 65% less fatigue.  The trick is that exercise signals your cells to start making more energy for the increased demands being put on your body and those effects last hours after the exercise session is over.  

Exercise is also shown to help a person cope with stress.  The body reacts to the physical stress effects (such as encountering a bear on a hike in the woods) in the same way it reacts to mental stress (such as a big presentation at work or school) by flooding the body with a hormone called cortisol.  Research shows regular exercise protects the body from the harmful effects of cortisol providing a resiliency to the stress response.

Regular physical activity is also correlated with improved sleep, both quality and quantity.  Studies show that a regular exerciser goes to sleep faster, wakes up less during the night, feels more refreshed when waking up, and feels less tired throughout the day.  Since those who suffer from a mental health disorder usually report less sleep and poorer sleep quality, it is especially important to engage in some physical activity to help regulate sleep.  

Check back next week for the fourth and final installment of this series!

(Research summaries here:  Energy  Stress  Sleep 1  Sleep 2)

Exercise and Mental Health: Part 2 - Mood Effects

Researchers have investigated the positive effects of physical activity on many different aspects of mental health and I am a believer that exercise can make a major difference in most people's mental wellbeing.  The first blog in this series (HERE) explained the effect that exercise has on brain chemistry; this blog focuses on beneficial mood effects of regular physical activity. 

Mood is a general term that describes a state of mind or particular feeling at a given time.  There are many moods a person can experience, but three moods that I see very often in my counseling practice are anger, depression, and anxiety.  Mood disorders explain when a particular mood permeates most days, interfering with daily tasks and relationships for 6 months or longer.  Research on exercise has a proven effect on minimizing negative moods and regulating against mood disorders as outlined below.

One study shows that regular exercise directly correlates with anger.  Participants self-reported that exercising 2-3 times a week led to significantly less anger as opposed to those who did not exercise at all.  This effect hold for both state and trait expressions of anger. State deals with moment to moment responses - those times that you blow up when cut off in traffic, for example.  Whereas trait anger explains persistent underlying personality tendencies - the low grade simmering of frustration, annoyance, and outright anger.  

A meta-analysis of many respected research studies show exercise is statistically equal to antidepressant in its effect on depression and low mood as well as statically higher rates of preventing relapse of depression and depressive symptoms compared to placebo groups.  These studies covered low to moderate physical activity, such as walking, to more intense cardiovascular and weight training exercise.  This indicates that any type of regular physical exercise helps just as much as the best medication in the field.

Lastly, physical activity is also shown to have a positive effect on anxiety.  One researchers described it in this way, "Exercise in many ways is like exposure treatment," says Smits. "People learn to associate the symptoms with safety instead of danger." The more instances your body has to overcome the symptoms of anxiety - even if they occur to due exercise rather than a perceived threat or worry - the better adapted it becomes to handling the process.  Minds and bodies have are very adaptable to learning the most efficient way to do things, which thankfully applies to dealing with anxiety as well.

Keep reading our next several blogs for more on the positive mental and emotional health benefits of exercise.

(Study summaries here: Anger  Depression  Anxiety)

Exercise and Mental Health: Part 1 - Brain Chemistry

Everyone has heard about the positive health effects of exercise: decreases cardiovascular disease, decrease body weight, increases circulation, improves immune system functioning, regulates hormonal balance, and on and on.  You may have heard that exercise helps mental health, but have you heard any evidence as to how?   Many researchers have investigated that exact question and I am a believer that exercise can make a major difference in most mental health conditions.  This blog is the first in a series outlining the many benefits of exercise on mental health, focusing first on brain chemistry effects.

Exercise increases serotonin, which is the same brain neurotransmitter that is increased by certain types of antidepressant medications called SSRI, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors.  These medications increase the amount of serotonin in the brain by slowing its absorption, which allows for a more positive and stabilized mood.  Exercise naturally accomplishes this same effect, which is great for those who are not comfortable taking medication or not wanting to rely solely on medication to address depressive symptoms.

Regular exercise, especially cardiovascular activity that keeps heart rate elevated for an extended period of time, also releases endorphins, which some have described as a “runners high."  It is also the neurotransmitter that is influenced when a person consumes opiates (a class of drugs including many pain management pills and heroin).  Endorphins inhibit the transmission of pain and produce a feeling of euphoria.  Some of the mental effects are a sense of well-being, pain relief (physical or emotional), improved immune system functioning, and an impression of stress reduction.

Cardiovascular exercise also increases norepinephrin which has a primary effect on memory, learning, and physical arousal.  Norepinephrin also has a secondary effect on the brain by elevating mood, much like serotonin.  This can happen through medication (SNRI type antidepressants) or by regular physical activity.  When the reuptake of norepinephrin is inhibited, more stays available in the brain, which reinforces positive mood.

Stay tuned for our next couple blogs that will explore other factors that show a link between exercise and mental health benefits.

(Here are study summaries showing these effects for each neurotransmitter:  Serotonin/Norephinephrin  Endorphin)

Welcome to Waxahachie!

Photo: Belton Lake, March 26 , Sunrise

I rarely see the sunrise, but when I am able to witness one, I am always struck by the beauty and awe of dawn.  Light slowly illuminating more and more of the landscape, revealing more and more of the details of the surroundings.  To me, it's a picture of hope and possibility.  

It reminds me of the words of Jeremiah in Lamentations, reflecting on God's faithfulness and daily provisions in times of uncertainty and hope for new beginnings:

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
His mercies never come to an end;
They are new every morning;
Great is your faithfulness;
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore, I will hope in Him.””

— Lamentations 3:22-24 (ESV)

This is where I find myself these days - waiting on the Lord's mercies each day while I navigate new things in this season of my life.  Moving to Waxahachie 6 months ago.  Becoming a small business owner of my own counseling practice 5 months ago.  Building a client base for the last 4 months. 

It's all been new and challenging and exciting and overwhelming.  The thing that grounds me as a hope and dream for Rachel Payne Counseling to be a success is that even though this is a beginning for me, God knows exactly how everything will turn out.  I can trust in his character and provision and I'm excited to see what he has in store for me, for Rachel Payne Counseling, and for the clients that I'm lucky enough to serve.