Family therapy is an effective way to deal with problems regarding adolescents, parenting, addiction, depression, anxiety and much more. When a mother and father bring in their 15-year-old son because he is drinking, using drugs, has a bad attitude, is failing out of school and is involved in risky behavior – I ask the parents to participate in counseling with him to be a part of the solution. The relationship between mom and dad, the relationship between mom and son and the relationship between dad and son matter in regard to this young man’s healthy life style choices. As a therapist of adolescents for over a decade now, I have found that more often than not, when success happens for adolescents in therapy it is accompanied with a mom and dad who are involved and willing.

Most adolescents don’t want to do counseling. They often make excuses and say that they don’t want to follow the rules and that f their parents loved them that they wouldn’t give them a curfew. The ironic thing is that children push back against boundaries and rules, but thrive within them. They need them to feel safe and loved. They often test the boundaries to see if mom and dad are there and if they care. Its hard to tell, however, because they say that they don’t want their parents to tell them what to do.

One of the developmental tasks of adolescence is to learn how to become your own individual while still remaining a part of a group (i.e., a family, church or school). It often feels like trying to mix oil and water for teenagers in this position. Learning that they don’t have to do the opposite of what their parents say in order to be independent or their own individual is key. Rather, following the family rules and making choices on their own that are complimentary help them develop their sense of being their own person.

One of the developmental tasks of parenthood is learning how to parent a child differently as they grow. Parenting a 5 year old is different than parenting a 15 year old. I see, however, many parents not making this transition and feeling stuck with their adolescent. They hover over their teenager, for example, in an effort to not let them make mistakes. Its ok for teenagers to make mistakes. Parents don’t have to (and can’t!) protect them from all of life misfortunes. Teenagers need space to make mistakes and have an open relationship with their parents to talk about them.

So, if you are a parent struggling with a teenager remember that changing your parenting style to match their age matters. Engaging in therapy, when needed, can help you and your child become healthy and happy.

Couples counseling, if done right, is ‘husband friendly’. Most couples come into therapy because the wife seeks help, sets up an appointment and convinces her husband to go with her. He often feels as if he is forced into the session and as if he is the bad guy. He might think that the therapist is going to be on his wife’s side and that together, his wife and the therapist, are going to tell him what he needs to change.

Effective couples counseling couldn’t be further from this scenario. In couple’s therapy, a therapist will see the problem as something the husband and wife can fight together. The problem isn’t the wife and it’s not the husband – it’s the way that they have been going about their relationship. This is something the couple can work on changing without blaming each other. Couples often fall into the trap of thinking that their spouse is to blame for their relationship issues. They believe that if their spouse would just stop (fill in the blank) that they would be happy and have no problems. Thinking this way leads to frustration and disappointment. It takes courage and honesty to look at yourself and what you can change to make your marriage work.

In couples therapy a seasoned therapist will ask questions about the couple’s relationship patterns, not about who’s fault it is that they are there. They will talk about how they are talking with each other, what they are talking about, what they are not talking about, etc. Understanding these relationship patterns is one of the first steps to effective counseling. As soon as the coupe can get on the same team to fight against these unhealthy patterns that they have slipped into as a partnership, then they can work on identifying their underlying emotional needs and potential injuries. This is where great work happens as partners identify and express their emotional need and positions in a way that invites healing, connection and safety.

 

 

Depression is something that everyone experiences in their life time. There are a few different types of depression that are important to understand. Depression can be situational or more chronic and long lasting. Depression can come after the birth of a child for both the mother and the father. Depression that lasts for longer than a certain situation and is debilitating in life is often treated with traditional talk therapy and medication. Using both medication and counseling together will help you deal and cope in a healthy manner. I often have clients who come to therapy who refuse to use medications. I have a nurse practitioner colleague who tells me that she has clients come to use medications but often don’t want to participate in counseling.

When dealing with depression know that there is a way to make it better and to cope. Know that just because you are experiencing sadness or loneliness it doesn’t mean that you are bad or that you have done something wrong. Reach out to loved ones and possibly (if warranted) reach out to trained professionals. They can assess your situation and help you find the solutions that fit for you.

Couples come into therapy years too late – according to research. I often hear of couples going to therapy after they have done so much damage to their relationship that it is difficult to repair. When couples call me to make an appointment for therapy they often tell me about their sad story about the last 10 years of a loveless, passionate-less, disconnected relationship. They long to get back to what they had when they first met. But after years of learning unhealthy habits to deal with relationship stress, it is a very long and steep road back.

There are several signs that you and your partner might need counseling. I will offer a few here:

• You are fighting more than usual
• Your fights are not being resolved and are just ignored or purposefully set aside
• Arguments last longer than before
• Your sex life has become passionate-less
• You feel like you are living with a stranger
• There is a start to or increase in addictive behavior (i.e., pornography, substances, problematic eating)
• Depression or anxiety seem more present for you or for your spouse
• Your ability to perform daily tasks is weakening (as is your desire to do them)

Getting help from a professional, reading a book, talking with someone who has your best interest at heart can start you on the road back. Most couples, however, wait too long and do too much damage along the way. Start by reaching out to a professional or picking up a book such as Dr. John Gottman’s Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

My wife and I had our first child 8 months ago. He’s awesome…and difficult. The adjustment to having children can be a major struggle for parents. Changing routines, sleep deprivation, life style alterations and the loss of certain coping strategies are among the difficulties during this time. As a testimony to this, its 1:55am as I’m writing this blog because our little one is awake! – It’s my wife’s turn to try and get him down.

Many in our community have suffered devastating consequences from this adjustment. You have probably heard of The Emily Effect. Postpartum Depression is a real and often unseen reality for many. Knowing how powerful it can be, understanding how to recognize it and respond is crucial. Withdrawal, anger, weight gain/loss, anxiety, guild, loss of interest, loss of appetite, difficulty bonding with baby, crying or irritability, insomnia, depression, fear, mood swings, panic attacks, lack of concentration or unwanted thoughts – to name several.

If you suspect that this might be happening to you or a loved one, remember that you are not alone. Speak out and speak up. There is no shame in feeling these things. Loving family and sometimes professional help will get you though.

Pornography has been called the ‘New Drug’, and rightfully so. Groups like Fight the New Drug have been working tirelessly to education people about the harmful effects of pornography. You might not need to read up on the latest research to know how damaging and painful it can be – whether it’s a personal struggle with pornography or your loved one who is using it.

 

Pornography use is often accompanied by shame. Shame is damaging. Guilt, on the other hand, is healthy. We need guilt, but don’t have to seek it out – it finds us. Guilt lets us know that we are doing something that is damaging to our body or soul. Guilt would say that, “I made a mistake, but I am still a good person’, Shame would say, “I made a mistake and therefore I am a bad person’. As a shame-based experience, pornography use goes beyond the physical act of using. It impacts our relationships, our ability to experience emotions in a healthy manner, our view and empathy towards others, and so much more.

 

What if you know that its unhealthy, but can’t seem to stop? Know that there is help. There are those around you that want to be there for you and would do anything to help. Depending on the severity of the pornography use, treatment is recommended. Without the aid of a professional, the road to recovery is difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible. My colleagues at the Center for Couples and Families often work with cases such as these.

 

At one point or another anxiety will impact you. Most of us have an experience with anxiety that makes us feel scared and stressed. Anxiety is the body’s emotional and physical response to a stressful situation or anticipation of a real or perceived difficult circumstance.

 

It’s important to understand that anxiety is largely a physical reaction to a real or perceived stressor. Calming your body down when anxious allows you to engage the coping skills you have at your disposal. When working with clients presenting with anxiety one of the first things we do is focus on techniques to cope through physical exercises such as diaphragmatic breathing or progressive muscle relaxation. After clients possess the skills to calm their bodies down when anxious, we are able to work on the emotional, relational and intellectual aspects of this difficult emotion.

 

Anxiety can often take the role of a secondary emotion – an emotion that presents itself as an attachment to your primary emotion. For example, if you are feeling sad, lonely, stressed overwhelmed you might get a general sense of anxiety. Knowing that anxiety is sometimes a secondary emotion helps you to know dig deeper to see what is really going on. Addressing the previous emotions in a specific and deliberate manner helps anxiety lessen.

I recently wrote this for the Utah Valley Health and Wellness Magazine.

Enjoy –

Whether in my role as a therapist, friend, business associate, or family member, I’ve been lucky to meet and associate with a wide assortment of personalities in Utah County and around the world. Though we may have different backgrounds and stories, I’ve noticed a troubling commonality that impacts most of us. We unknowingly send ourselves a subtle and potentially dangerous message – that of should and supposed to.

We tell ourselves, I should be nicer to my kids or I’m supposed to serve and help others. Many of us experience shame as we struggle with feeling that we should be doing more. It’s easy to feel like we are bad if we don’t measure up to the shoulds and supposed tos in our lives.

As a therapist, I often teach my clients to let go of this attitude by replacing should with want to. This helps us live a life we choose rather than one which is chosen for us. Helping another person because we want to feels different than helping them because we are supposed to. I counsel many to consider this idea: If you don’t want to do it then don’t do it.

What if, however, we don’t want to do something, but we still feel that it is healthy to do? Does this mean we don’t drive our kids to and from activities because we don’t want to? No! Our children can’t drive themselves. When facing tasks we don’t want to do that must be done, let’s embrace an attitude of wanting to want to.

The next time we hear ourselves say I should or I’m supposed to, let’s pause, take a step back and refocus on doing things because we want to do them, not because we feel obligated and forced.

I love that we can turn shoulds into want tos – let’s choose the life we live.

 

Dr. Triston Morgan

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Executive Editor – Utah Valley Health and Wellness 

It might seize you in the middle of the night, or perhaps at the beginning of a work meeting, or maybe while driving your kids to soccer practice. Wherever it happens, it can overwhelm you. Your mind won’t stop running. Your body is tense. Your heart is racing. You can’t breathe! You can’t relax and enjoy yourself. If you have ever felt a combination of these sensations, you have probably felt anxiety—a common experience among adults and adolescents. Whether you accept it or not, anxiety is part of a normal, healthy life. Diagnosable anxiety disorders, however, are different than normal, everyday anxieties. A hallmark characteristic of an anxiety disorder is excessive fear or anxiety about a real or perceived threat (DSM-V).

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), nearly 40 million people in the United States suffer from an anxiety disorder in a given year. That’s 18 percent of the population! Specific anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, selective mutism (failure to speak in social situations even when able to speak in other situations), specific phobias (fear of animals, objects, etc.), social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or agoraphobia (fear of having a panic attack or other embarrassing symptoms in locations such as public transportation, standing in a line, etc.). Some anxiety disorders, such as phobias and generalized anxiety disorder, most often begin in childhood around 11 years old and can continue into adulthood if left untreated. These two disorders are the most common anxiety disorders in adulthood according to SAMHSA.

Because of their belief that things will not change, or that they just need to get over it, many suffering with an anxiety disorder do not seek treatment. The good news is that anxiety is treatable! Your biology has a lot to do with an anxiety disorder; therefore, a first step in reducing anxiety includes dealing with the body’s physical response to stress.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Your body’s internal organ regulator, your autonomic nervous system (ANS), has two applicable parts of the solution. First is the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is in charge of your fight-or-flight responses. This part, for example, pumps up the mailman’s body so she can outrun that dog hiding in the bushes. Second is the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which aids in calming your body. This part helps her body deescalate after she has escaped that dog so she can return to delivering the mail as usual.

When you feel anxious, your SNS is engaged. To help calm your body in these moments, the key is to activate your PNS. The exercise outlined below (partially adopted from The Anxious Brain: The Neurobiological Basis of Anxiety Disorders and How to Effectively Treat Them) triggers this part of your ANS.

How to do it:

1. Lie down, stand, or sit in a comfortable position. Make sure you are “grounded” by creating an open posture with both feet on the floor and your back against a chair or bed. If you are crying, in the fetal position, or hunched over, this technique is difficult to do.
2. Breathe in deeply. Picture a water balloon being filled with water as you first fill up your abdomen with air and then your chest. Feel the warmth and the weight of the air as you breathe in.
3. Breathe out with an elongated breath—longer than it took you to breathe in. Purse your lips as you breathe out. This will slow your breathing. Breathing out slowly will help activate the PNS, which helps calm your body—the whole purpose of this breathing technique.
4. As you breathe in and out, focus on the physical sensations you experience. Focus on your feet touching the ground, your abdomen and lungs expanding and contracting, the feel of air rushing over your tongue and through your pursed lips. Notice how your head, arms and hands feel. Doing this will help you be present and in-the-moment.
5. Practice! This is a skill that must be developed. Try doing it while you are at work, stopped at a traffic light, or at home. Do each cycle (breathing in and breathing out) ten times or more, as you learn to engage your PNS.
6. If you feel dizzy, light headed or out of breath, do not continue this technique. If your breathing is restricted or obstructed there may be other issues to consider. Speak with a therapist or doctor about the appropriateness of this exercise for you. This technique is a good start to help reduce anxiety in the moment, but is most successful when done in conjunction with therapy.

Anxiety disorders affect millions. Those who suffer with anxiety often feel there is no solution. But basic biology tells us differently. Activating our PNS through breathing techniques really does work—give it a try next time you feel anxiety creeping in. You might be surprised at how effective these simple breathing techniques can be!

Originally published on Utah Valley Health and Wellness Magazine

Written by Dr. Triston Morgan

All of us, from cradle to grave, are happiest when life is organized as a series of excursions, long or short, from the secure base provided by our attachment figures. – Dr. John Bowlby

Have we really cracked the code on love and romantic bonding? Perhaps. Scientists, poets, and lovers have long grappled with the question: “What makes romantic love work?” Through the work of Dr. Sue Johnson and the development of Emotionally Focused Therapy, it looks like we have an answer.

Through decades of research on the importance of emotional bonding and what it is like to feel disconnected, isolated, and alone, relationship researchers are starting to unravel the mystery of love and adult romantic bonding and how to mend loving ties. The truth is, we are all hard-wired to connect to one another. This drive to connect is infinitely stronger in family and romantic relationships. To be emotionally isolated is harsh on our brains. Loving connections offer us a safe haven to go to where we can maintain our emotional balance, deal with stress, and respond more lovingly to our romantic partners. Essentially, when those connections are secure and strong, love is safe; love flourishes.

Unfortunately, disconnections between couples do happen and frustration, sadness, and anger are all too common in marital relationships. When those secure and loving bonds are threatened, emotional “primal panic” and a cycle of negative interactions ensues. These wounds can be difficult to repair for couples when left to their own abilities, and therapy is often the last step before looking to end the relationship. Unfortunately, many well-meaning therapists utilize their individual-based, time-tested techniques and attempt to apply them to relational interactions, which usually has little effect in restoring their loving bonds. In addition, many therapeutic techniques focus on helping partners change behaviors or thoughts, or teaching them communication skills. The common result from these approaches and techniques is that they usually struggle to gain traction, and the couple leaves therapy with less hope than before.

But there is hope. Within the last 25 years, a substantial amount of research has emerged that gives hope to couples on the brink and helps them tune in to their underlying emotions, identify their negative patterns of interaction, repair their attachment, and eventually create new patterns of bonding and positive interactions. This model is Emotionally Focused Therapy.

Grounded in the theory of attachment, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is an experiential, short term, structured, and tested model of therapy designed to help couples identify their negative communication patterns, interrupt this pattern, and create more positive, bonding, and secure emotional patterns. EFT does not see individuals as “sick” or unskilled, but rather “stuck in habitual ways of dealing with emotions with others in key moments.” As the title reflects, priority is given to emotion as a key organizer of inner experiences. EFT looks within the emotional experience of the couples and how they navigate their emotional connectedness. Dr. Sue Johnson has said, “The EFT therapist has a map. A map to relationships and how they work. A map to how they go wrong. And map to what is needed to put them right.”

A substantial body of research has shown promising results of the effectiveness of EFT. Research studies find that 70-75 percent of couples move from distress to recovery and approximately 90% show significant improvements. EFT is being used with many different kinds of couples in private practice, university training centers and hospital clinics, and many different cultural groups throughout the world. These distressed couples include partners suffering from disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorders and chronic illness.

In my work with couples, EFT has resonated with them on many levels. No longer are couples focused on fights and long-standing disagreements about specific content or trying to change the other person. When couples go through the process of EFT, perpetual problems are framed as negative disconnections that are about protests by each partner for a more loving connection and emotional safety. EFT takes the blame out of conflict and resentment and moves to fighting together against a common enemy—the negative pattern. As couples progress through the stages and steps of EFT and begin to accesses deeper emotions that underlie their struggle for connection, a new interaction emerges as individual partners see and experience each other differently. When partners experience each other as more accessible, responsive, and engaged, old wounds and negative patterns are healed, and love and emotional safety thrives.

Originally published by Utah Valley Health and Wellness Magazine

Written by Dr. Jeremy Boden