Popular Psychology – Page 24 – Licensed Mental Health Counselor

Motivating Your Unmotivated Teen Part One: Understanding Motivation

11 Mar 201312 Mar 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

The other day while counseling a fifteen year old boy with very little motivation, failing grades and a poor attitude that is driving his mother crazy, I found myself thinking, how can I motivate him to care about his life and future.

I realized immediately after I had that thought that I was making a critical error in my thinking, one that millions of parents make every single day. I was trying to figure out a way to motivate this young man, to make him want to change, when in actuality, we can’t make anyone change.

The subject of change is a very interesting one, as we all change multiple times throughout our lives and usually know when change is needed, but when it comes to working with adolescents, they often seem unwilling to change even when we as adults know that making a change for the better would be beneficial to them.

This young man’s mother had tried many different things to make him change, including giving him incentives like allowances or extra time playing his video games, to punishments such as taking away privileges and scolding him.

She has made the same mistakes that many parents make.

External Consequences Rarely Work

Applying external consequences works on some adolescents, but not on all, and even when they don’t work, parents continue to try them and are frustrated when they don’t work.

Think about the high recidivism rate among criminals or the way countries like Cuba and North Korea seem to thumb their noses at the world even in the face of increased sanctions. External consequences, positive or negative, rarely work.

If you have been trying punishments or rewards with your adolescent and aren’t getting the results you were hoping for, it’s time to start thinking about doing something different.

Talking Sense Into Them

Another thing parents often do that can backfire is that they hound their adolescent, trying to lecture them into change. Usually it’s with good intent, but lectures can actually have the opposite effect of what they were intended to do.

When parents lecture their teens, they tell them how smart they are, how talented they are, etc., yet if the teen doesn’t believe this about him or herself, they are usually going to think that their parents either:

don’t really know them, which means that their parents will lose some credibility with their teen, or
the teen will feel even worse for wasting their talents or intelligence and become even less encouraged and motivated.

Think about listening to a motivational speech. They usually motivate you for a short while or they demotivate you, making you feel incapable of accomplishing what you are being told you can.

These external influences work even less if the teen is already unmotivated, overwhelmed, disheartened, demoralized or anxious in the first place when it comes to school and/or their future.

Instead of lecturing, it’s good to listen more to what your adolescent values, feels and thinks about themselves and what they want. By listening more, you will learn and understand your teenager better so that when you do talk to them, you won’t come off as patronizing.

You Can’t Motivate Anyone or Make Anyone Change

Over the years I’ve helped many adolescents change, stop using drugs, start making better grades and even graduate and go off to college, but I can’t say I motivated or changed any of them.

I know that what is going to motivate the young man I am working with, just like the teens I’ve helped in the past, isn’t going to come from me. I know that I can only help to facilitate change and motivation, but I can not make him change or to become motivated.

Like most parents, his mom thought that she could motivate him to change. That if he got motivated, he would do the work, but that is not how motivation tends to work.

We rarely get motivated and then do something, but instead start doing something, like the outcome of what we are doing and then get motivated to continue doing it.

Think about when you are cleaning your house or trying to lose weight.

You may “feel” motivated to clean or lose weight, but usually once you see the house start looking a little cleaner, or the weight falling off, you get motivated to continue. That’s where the bulk of the motivation comes from. We do something and then get motivated.

For instance, if I waited until I was motivated to workout, I would rarely workout. More than half the time I don’t feel like working out, but I force myself to go to the gym and once there, I usually find motivation from seeing other people working out, or once I start my work out I just feel motivated to workout harder.

Your teenager may not be motivated to study, but if he or she sees their grades go up from studying, they will probably become motivated to continue studying.

Doing Something Different

So I know that I can’t motivate this young man and his mom had been trying unsuccessfully for years to motivate him. What we can do however is to try getting him to do something different that will hopefully inspire motivation from within.

Intrinsic motivation is far more powerful and long lasting than extrinsic motivation.

Parents often waste a lot of time trying to get their teenagers to change the way they think, and I too often do the same as part of cognitive behavioral therapy, but when it comes to motivation, this isn’t usually the most effective way to bring about change. Instead, what we want to do is try to change their behavior, at least to get the desired behavior started in hopes that doing something different will elicit motivation and thus change the way they think.

You never know where motivation is going to come from.

I once asked a teenager to try to study for one hour a day and one hour only (he had been studying none at all). By studying one hour a day, he managed to get a “C” on an exam when he had gotten “D’s” and “F’s” on all previous exams. His teacher then complimented him on his “C” and so did a girl he liked. He then started studying more than an hour a week and his grades rose to “A’s” and “B’s”.

His parents were elated at my “ability to motivate” their son, but I knew that all I did was move him in the direction of the desired behavior and the motivation came from himself and his world. Once he saw the results of his behavior, the motivation followed.

It’s important to have the type of relationship with your teen that encourages motivation. We’ll discuss more of that in part two as well as understanding change and the conditions that facilitate change in teenagers.

note: when I discuss the topic of teens, I often say parents, but this applies to anyone who has a teen in their life, no matter if they are family members, students or if you are a mentor in anyway.

Popular Psychology

My Week In Review: 3.4-3.8.13

8 Mar 20138 Mar 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

I haven’t blogged as much this week as I would have liked to.

I usually start a blog post sometime early in my workday and work on it periodically throughout the day when I have time, but this week has been extremely busy making finding time to write a post even more difficult than normal.

There’s been the usual teenage drama coupled with dealing with a student who had been jumped by about 15 other students after school and then his grandmother and mother tried to break it up. Somehow one of the students who was engaged in attacking the mother’s child was stabbed with a box cutter by either the mother or the grandmother. He’s okay, but it made the news and they did their usual 60 second segment about bullying and violence.

The whole incident was caught on a residence’s security camera and you can clearly see two students being attacked, pushed down, punched and kicked by a mob of other teens. I am not condoning someone being stabbed, but in that instant, I can see why a parent or grandparent would resort to stabbing someone in order to keep their child from being beat to death. The whole incident is still under investigation, but as far as I know, all of the students are still currently on campus because the incident happened in the community and not at school.

I wish the news would have said more about bullying as it seems like these kids had been targeted by this group for one reason or another. I am also worried about the psychological affects this is having on the two students who got jumped and still have to come to school with the people who jumped them. The student that got stabbed was apparently the main instigator and from what I am hearing is a pretty big bully. His wounds are very superficial and I have little remorse for him. I am in the process of trying to work with both the bullies and the victims in this case, but until the investigation is complete I don’t have full access to them.

On top of that, I had another young girl sent to my office after she took a pregnancy test that came back positive. She’s 17 and a junior in high school. She wasn’t distraught and scared about being pregnant or becoming a mother, she was rather calm about that aspect leading me to think that she wanted to become a mom in the first place, although she denied that. She was more afraid of how her mother would react because her own sister, an 18 year old high school student, got pregnant and had a baby at 13, when she was just in middle school.

Her mother also gave birth as a teenager, so this is a cycle that her mom was hoping to break by not allowing her 17 year old daughter to date. She wanted her to focus on school, go to college and be different than her, her sister and other women in their family and community.

This however seemed to have backfired since her 17 year old daughter dated anyway, hiding her boyfriend from her mom and sneaking around. Because she was afraid to tell her mom that she had a boyfriend, this may have prevented them from having conversations about safe-sex and pregnancy prevention.

On top of that, psychologically speaking asking someone, especially a young girl, to be different from the people she loves and spends the most time with is very difficult. Most of the time, if even subconsciously, young girls want to feel connected with and similar to their female family members and peers. If they are all raising children, it’s hard for her to want to be different as being different would set her apart and perhaps away from the people she loves and identifies with the most. Which psychological makes sense that although this young girl had an opportunity to be “different”, she has chosen not to.

Also, this young girl has babysat her sister’s son, who she adores, for the past five years, since she herself was only 12, which according to Judith Musick, author of Young, Poor and Pregnant, may push some young girls into having their own child since they feel like they are already taking care of someone else’s kid.

The bottom line is, this young girl is pregnant by a 20 year old man who’s family she has never met and he has never met her family. Her family is extremely poor, her mother’s unemployed and trying to take care of not only this student, but this students sister and her sister’s son. Now there will be another child to include in an already struggling household.

The most time consuming and touching case I had this week was a young girl who started telling me she believed her sister’s husband, who lives with her family, had touched her while she was sleeping. She went on to tell me about several occasions over the past five years where he had molested or raped her, but she was too afraid to say anything. She was only now talking because her younger sister had recently confessed to her that had had been molesting and raping her as well, which broke her heart and made her feel guilty about not telling someone earlier.

I always take sexual abuse cases seriously, but also with a grain of salt because I’ve worked in this field long enough to know that people will lie about being molested in order to seek revenge or for other gains.

However, the level of detail and emotion in this young girl’s accounts made me believe that she was absolutely telling the truth.

I immediately walked her over to the school resource officer’s office so she could make a police report, and I also contacted child protection services. Her case is now under investigation and her sister’s husband is no longer allowed to be in the same house or near her during the investigation.

This same young girl I had been dealing with before for anxiety issues that at the time seemed generalized, but as she told me about the molestation and rape, her anxiety issues made more sense and dealing with this issue and the emotional scars that come with it is likely to help reduce her anxiety also.

I have no ideal what’s going to happen with her case. I’m anticipating being contacted by child protection service investigators and sheriff detectives any day now, but more importantly, I’m looking forward to helping this young lady get through this the best way she can so that she comes out of it psychologically healthy and stronger.

Popular Psychology

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs And Why Some Students And Schools Are Failing

26 Feb 20138 Mar 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC6 Comments

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is based on Dr. Abraham Mallow’s research and hypothesis. It describes the stages we all need in order to become fully functioning and responsible adults moving towards reaching the highest possible achievements humans can accomplish.

Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

The hierarchy is broken down into five needs:

Self-Actualization
Esteem
Love/Belonging
Safety
Physiological

The physiological needs is all the basic needs someone needs to survive such as food, water, air, homeostasis, excretion, and health.

The safety and security needs include security of: body, resources, morality, family, health, stability and protection. At this level, all of the child’s physiological needs have been taking care of and they are interested in finding safety, such as from strangers. At this stage, a child develops a need for limits, order and structure. This is also the stage were fears and worries develop. The child may start fearing the dark, strange noises in their bedroom, or being kidnapped.

At the love and belonging level, the child needs others to love and support them, including family and friends. They need a sense of family stability in order to invest emotionally in others. If at this stage, it appears that no one loves or is stable enough to show a lasting commitment to the child, they may find it difficult to build future relationships or to even love themselves. This is also the stage where loneliness and social anxieties can develop.

At the esteem level, the child is searching for feelings of self-worth, confidence, achievement, mastery, respect of others and respect by others. One one level, they may want status, a reputation and appreciation, and on a higher level they will need respect for their self, which is believed to be more important than respect for others. This is where some sense of independence and freedom start setting in, as well as potential issues with self-esteem and inferiority.

The four levels thus far mentioned were considered by Maslow to be deficiency or instinctual needs, meaning that if a child was deficits in any of these four needs they will be highly compelled to fulfill those needs. If however, all of a child’s needs are fulfilled at this level, they are free to move on to what are considered growth needs.

The growth needs are grouped under the level of self-actualization. They include needing to know and understand. This is what develops a child’s cognitive potential and is the level schools want each child to operate on. At this level, the child is able to listen, participate actively in discussion, attune, explore their thoughts and make meaning of the world around them.

At this level, the child appreciates symmetry, order and beauty. As they continue to grow, they become a fully functioning individual able to accept responsibility for their own life. They are well on their way to achieving their full potential and becoming the person they were meant to be. In the educational system, this is the main goal, to help children develop this part of their selves and nurture further growth in these areas.

The problem is, while schools in good areas with students from good neighborhoods usually function at this level, this is not the reality for many inner-city and impoverished students and communities. At good schools, students usually have had all of their four basic needs have met, while at poor, under-performing schools, many students haven’t had their basic needs completely met.

Often times the failing of many inner-city schools and students is blamed on teachers, when this is not always the case. I’ve been working in inner-city schools long enough to know that the teachers that work there are usually some of the most dedicated, educated and caring professionals you could ever hope for, but students still fail in large numbers.

When you look at the students, especially when you get to know them, you can see why failing schools are not always about teachers or the administration, but about the four basic needs that are not being fully met. These four basic needs have to be fully met in order for a child to even begin to truly gain benefits from being in school and a standardized educational system.

Many of these kids come to school starving or hopped up on foods that are full of sugar, but lack nourishment. They live in inconsistent homes and frequently either move or are bounced between relatives, and many live in dangerous environments from the home itself to the surrounding neighborhood. How then can we expect them to free their minds and focus on school when their basic needs aren’t even met?

Imagine a student starving becasue they didn’t get enough to eat the night before and didn’t get breakfast, yet they are supposed to focus and concentrate on an exam. When they do poorly, they are considered either a bad test taker, or the teacher is accused of being an inadequate educator.

Many of the kids in the inner-city high school I work at are simply surviving. They are trying not to get shot, attacked by people in their neighborhoods, kicked out of their home or help their parent pay the rent anyway they can.

One girl I spoke to came to school everyday with a knife because many girls in her neighborhood had been attacked by men and she was terrified she would get kidnapped, raped and killed walking home from school. It’s easy to think that this should motivate her to do well in school so she can get herself out of this type of neighborhood, but because her basic needs aren’t being met, she’s hyper-vigilante and anxious throughout the day with her mind pretty much on any and everything else except education.

I feel the frustration myself many times when I am trying to give a client the information and skills needed to overcome obstacles put in their way either by themselves or someone else, and they can’t truly grasp, let alone use the tools I am giving them because their basic needs haven’t been met and they are still stuck and starving for esteem, love and belonging, safety or physiological needs. I have to realize that much of what I am saying may be lost until they are able to attune and function on the higher levels of self-actualization.

Students and schools in these inner-city neighborhoods are compared to and expected to perform as well as students from schools and communities where their every basic needs are already met and they are free to focus on to the higher levels of self-actualization.

This is not to say that students can’t achieve some level of self-actualization although their basic needs aren’t fully met. I see that everyday, levels of extreme resilience where a homeless student who’s parents are in and out of jail is excelling in school, yet this is rare and one could only imagine how much more that student would be able to achieve if their basic needs were met and they were free to focus more energy on self-actualization, morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, etc.

These inner-city schools are usually the ones that need funding the most, but because they are often under-performing, they usually lose funding. This is something I never understood. “Failing” schools lose funding and “A” schools get more money. When funding is cut, social workers, counselors and psychologist are usually the first to be let go, even though they are the ones in the trenches helping these children work through their deficiency needs.

This goes to show that many people, especially those higher up who make the big decisions on education and legislation, are clueless about the realities facing many school children in our country. It becomes far too easy to blame failing students and schools on teachers and administrations, who are often working harder and under difficult situations compared to teachers from better performing schools with better funding and support.

To effectively make changes, it’s not about moving under-performing students to better performing schools, or putting different, “better” teachers and administration in under-performing schools, but investing more in rebuilding poorer neighborhoods and families with psychological, social, emotional and educational supports. This of course takes more work and takes longer, but I truly believe the benefits are far more reaching and lasting.

Abnormal Psychology, Popular Psychology

Childhood PTSD AND Trauma: Part 1

22 Feb 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

Imagine a four-year-old child found covered in blood, lying over her mother’s naked, dead body, whimpering incoherently. She’s witnessed her mother being raped and murdered, and her own throat had been cut, twice in an attempt to leave behind no witnesses. She’s alone with her mother for approximately eleven hours before she is discovered.

After being hospitalized she is released as a ward of the state and put into foster care with no follow up treatment for the trauma she experienced.

How will she go on through life with those images etched in her mind? How will she survive psychologically? How will her mind protect her from such traumatic experiences?

This story is unfortunately a very true story, one of several stories of childhood trauma that can be found in the book, The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavaitz.

Tragedies like this occur across our nation and the world everyday, leaving behind sometimes physical, but always emotional and psychological scars.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition that 30 or so years ago was reserved only for soldiers who had experienced traumatic events at war. It was later recognized that rape survivors, people who had been through terrible accidents or natural disaster, also exhibited symptoms of PTSD including flashback, hyper-vigilance and avoidance behaviors.

When it came to children however, the mental health and medical fields were slow to realize the impact of trauma on their lives.

Children were thought to be naturally resilient and would “bounce back” without the aid of any type of support or treatment. Those same children who had experienced trauma would often later develop psychiatric problems, depression and attention issues that would sometimes led to medication.

We know now that children who have live through tragedies, are just as affected as adults, perhaps even more so. This is evident in the great way the mental health community around the nation responded to the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.

What Causes PTSD?

PTSD can occur in anyone who has lived through an event in which they could have been killed or severely hurt or where they witnessed someone else getting killed or severely hurt. These can include violent crimes, physical or sexual abuse, someone close to them committing suicide, car crashes, shootings, war and natural disasters just to name a few.

Approximately 40% of children by the age of 18 will experience a traumatic event, which includes the loss of a parent or sibling and domestic violence. In the United States, child protective services receives an estimated 3 million reports of abuse and neglect yearly, involving approximately 5.5 million kids. About 30% of all those cases show proof of abuse:

65% neglect
18% physical abuse
10% sexual abuse
7% psychological (mental) abuse

This of course doesn’t include the estimate 66% of child abuse cases that are never reported.

The Likely Hood Of PTSD Developing

Girls are more likely than boys to develop PTSD symptoms. Approximately 3-15% of girls and 1-6% of boys who experience a trauma will develop PTSD. The chances of developing PTSD are higher depending on the type of trauma experienced. Some of the risk factors for PTSD include:

How severe the trauma was
How the parents react to the trauma
How close or far away that child is from the trauma

Of course children who go through the most severe traumas have the highest level and severity of PTSD symptoms. Incidents where people are hurting other people such as assault and rape, tend to result in PTSD more frequently. Children who have healthy support systems tend to have less severe symptoms.

The age of the child during the traumatic experience doesn’t seem to effect rather PTSD symptoms will develop, however PTSD looks different in children of different ages.

What Does PTSD Look Like In Children Ages 5-12?

children may not have flashbacks or problems remembering parts of the trauma like adults with PTSD often do.
Children might, however put the events of the trauma in the wrong order.
They might also think there were signs that the trauma was going to happen and thus they think that they will see these signs again before another trauma happens.
They think that if they pay attention, they can avoid future traumas which can lead to hyper-vigilance.

Children around this age may also show signs of PTSD during their play. They may keep reenacting part of the trauma. For instance, a child who has seen a shooting may want to play video games involving shootings or carry a gun to school.

Teens (ages 12-18)

In teens, some of the PTSD symptoms may be similar to those of adults including flashbacks, reoccurring nightmares about the event, hyper-vigilance and exaggerated startle responses. Teens are more likely than children or adults to show aggressive and impulsive behavior.

What are the other effects of trauma on children?

Other effects of trauma on children from PTSD comes from research done with children who have been through sexual abuse. They include:

fear
worry
sadness
anger
feeling alone and apart from others
feeling as if people are looking down on them
low self-worth
not being able to trust others
undesired behaviors such as aggression, out-of-place sexual behavior, self-harm, and abuse of drugs or alcohol

For many children, PTSD symptoms go away on their own after a few months. Yet some children show symptoms for years and possibly a lifetime if they do not get treatment.

How Is PTSD Treated In Children?

For some children, the symptoms of PTSD will go away on their own with healthy supports and when they aren’t being re-traumatized by anxious parents or the media. For others, they may need professional help including:

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy such as Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Psychological first aid/crisis management
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
Play therapy
Special treatments may be necessary for children who show out-of-place sexual behaviors, extreme behavior problems, or problems with drugs or alcohol.

What Can You Do To Help?

Educated yourself on PTSD and pay attention to your child for signs such as anger, avoidance of certain places and people, problems with friends, academic changes and sleep problems. If you need professional help, find a therapist in your area that treats PTSD and that your child feels comfortable with. Where to Get Help .

Sources: The National Center for PTSD

Popular Psychology

My New Client: Coincidence or Predestination

19 Feb 201317 Feb 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment

How is this for coincidence or predestination? The other night when I was going to the gym (which is located in a community center), I saw a girl I had seen around the high school campus I work at, sitting in a chair, drenched in sweat, struggling to breath.

I waved at her, and she didn’t respond. I watched as who later turned out to be her father and cousin helped her to her feet and out the door to their car.

I turned to one of the workers and asked what her name was and what had happened. They gave me her name and said she had just had an asthma attack. Although that should have been the end of it, the expression on her face when I saw her told me that it wasn’t just an asthma attack and I made a mental note to check on her the next day.

The next day, as soon as I got to work at the school, I got a phone call from a friend and fellow counselor referring a young girl to me who had been brought to the psychiatric hospital she works at the night before, but was released after a few hours. The young girl she was talking about happened to be the same young girl I saw the night before at the community center.

As I had suspected, her asthma attack was no asthma attack, but a panic attack and her family had taken her to the nearby psychiatric hospital for help. Apparently, the girl was dealing with a handful of stressful issues that the counselor making the referral thought I would be able to help her with.

That day I had a full schedule with students who had made appointments to see me, as well as two anger management groups to facilitate and the usual chaos that comes with working in an inner-city high school, so unfortunately seeing this young lady fell down my list to the end of the day.

When I finally got to call her out of class, her teacher informed me that she had already sent the girl to my office because she didn’t “look good” and had been acting “strange”. When I hung up the phone with the teacher, the young girl was already standing at my door.

To me, these were all signs that I was meant to work with this young lady; from seeing her at the community center, to the phone call that morning, to the the fact that as I was calling her out of class, she was already being sent to my office.

We spent the next fifty minutes discussing the issues that had her feeling anxious and stressed. They were mostly a bunch of family and relationship issues and she almost had a panic attack right there in my office, but I was able to teach her a quick and easy breathing technique that helped prevent a full blown attack. I also walked with her down to the clinic, just to make sure she was medically okay. I gave her a homework assignment that will help her start recognizing the thoughts that are causing her to have anxiety and the triggers for her panic attacks.

That was our first session and we will have many more to go, but I feel good about the therapeutic relationship we are building and the progress we will be making. In the brief time we spent together, I learned that a lot of her anxiety and stress comes from faulty and irrational thinking which I hope to help her undo over the next few weeks.

I find it amazing how this has all come together, and maybe it’s just a coincidence, but it almost feels predestined. I’m just glad to be in a position to try to give her the help she needs.

Popular Psychology

Mindy McCready: Addiction, Mental Illness And Suicide

18 Feb 201318 Feb 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC5 Comments

Suicide is such a tragic occurrence in life, something that always surprises me a little, even when it’s expected, such as in the case of Chris Domer.

Even more shocking are the instances when it’s not expected, even if the person has had a troubling past, such as Mindy McCready.

Mindy McCready was a 37 year old country music star who apparently committed suicide this past Sunday afternoon by shooting herself in the head on her front porch. Besides being a country music star, more importantly, McCready was the mother of two boys, including a ten month old infant.

It’s hard to imagine the stress/circumstances that would cause a mother of two to want to take her own life, so I thought it would be a good idea to examine some of the stressors McCready was under.

Recently, her fiance and the father of her ten month old infant, record producer David Wilson died of an apparent suicide. This tragedy in itself could have been enough to push McCready into a suicidal state. Here is the father of her infant child, now dead, someone she had planned to spend the rest of her life with, and now he’s abandoned her.

On top of that, whenever someone close to someone commits suicide (and often they don’t even have to be that close personally), it makes it easier for that person to think about and even commit suicide themselves if they are already in a fragile state. That’s why having a family member who has committed suicide makes a person more at risk for committing suicide and why communities and schools often experience clusters of suicide after someone in that community or school has killed themselves. Perhaps the death of her infant’s baby’s father made it easier for McCready to end her own life.

On top of that traumatic experience, McCready also suffered from addiction and mental illness, both of which increases a persons likelihood of attempting suicide.

McCready had two previous suicide attempts in 2005, including attempting to overdose on drugs and alcohol. She was found unconscious in her hotel room and hospitalized. Then later that September while pregnant with her first son, she attempted suicide again by overdosing on anti-depressants. In 2008 McCready was also treated for an apparent suicide attempt after slashing her wrists. She was hospitalized at least once more after an overdose, or what may have been a bad reaction to some Darvocet apparently given to her by her mother.

Her battle with addiction and mental illness was often public. She appeared on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Pinsky and on The View. She spoke with Dr. Drew about the stigma she felt from the media and her fans about being in rehab, a topic he discussed on CNN after her suicide:

“Her biggest fear was the stigma of doing so and what people would think if she, God forbid, took care of herself. And this to me is the most distressing part of this story. She is a lovely woman, we have lost her, and it didn’t have to go down like this.”

McCready was also dealing with an ongoing custody battle that was often nasty and very public. Her ex-husband who is her first son’s father, Billy McKnight, wanted primary custody of their son and filed motions in court to have McCready submit to drug and alcohol testing and also undergo a psychological evaluation.

Despite her struggles with addiction, mental illness and an often rocky personal life, McCready still tried to remain positive. On her fan page in January 2012 she wrote:

“I haven’t had a hit in almost a decade. I’ve spent my fortune, tarnished my public view and made myself the brunt of punch line after punch line. I’ve been beaten, sued, robbed, arrested, jailed, and evicted. But I’m still here. With a handful of people that I know and trust, a revived determination, and both middle fingers up in the air, I’m ready. I’ve been here before. I’m a fighter. I’m down, but I’ll never be out.”

Perhaps the death of her infant’s father, a man she called (after his dead), her soulmate and life partner, was the final straw that broke the fighter in her. They both apparently killed themselves by shooting themselves in the head.

It could have been her addiction. After all, she had left treatment for substance abuse early and was reluctant to re-enter treatment due to the stigma she had faced in the media and with fans.

Chances are, it was a combination of everything: addiction, mental illness, dealing with the recent death of her fiance, a custody battle and having an overall bleak outlook on her future.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a usually temporary problem.

It hurts when we lose anyone to suicide and addiction and it’s sad that we have lost yet another bright star. Like Dr. Drew said, it didn’t have to go down like this.

Popular Psychology

17 Feb 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

Great post filled with many ideas I try to apply to my life and teach others daily.

The Truth Warrior

Are you living your life full of excitement, enthusiasm and energy and really making the most of every single moment your have?

Are you just putting in the hours and going through the motions in your life with a feeling of boredom and lack of enthusiasm for your life?

Many people, myself included can be caught in the loop of just going through the motions in our lives, coming to a place that this is just it and this is my lot in life and that we just need to get on with it. We can get caught in the trap of being in a rut and never really thinking outside the box that we could be doing much more with our lives, living more passionately and more fully.

Some of the reason of why we are not living our lives more passionately, is because of the beliefs we have…

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Popular Psychology

The School To Prison Pipeline

15 Feb 201313 Feb 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

The school-to-prison pipeline is a widespread pattern across the United States that pushes students, particularly disadvantaged students, out of schools and into the criminal justice system.

This is largely due to public institutions not properly addressing the needs of individual students who may need extra help educationally and socially. This is often because of financial and staffing shortages.

This results in students being poorly educated, dropping out or getting kicked out of school, often resulting in arrests that develop into a cycle of continued arrests and crime which plaque not only that individual, but their community and ultimately, our society as a whole.

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Students Arrested At School Yearly

Each year across the nation, thousands of students are handcuffed in front of their classmates and taken to jail for behavioral problems that used to just result in a student being sent to the principal’s office or suspended.

A large majority of the students being arrested aren’t committing criminal acts, but displaying bad behavior. They are being arrested for misdemeanors such as “disorderly conduct”, which includes infractions such as refusing to give up their cellphone in schools with no cellphone policies and classroom disruptions. A relatively small percentage are arrests for weapons charges.

I personally have seen students arrested who had been suspended or put into an alternative school program, but came back to school either thinking their suspension was up or without truly understanding the terms and conditions of their suspension. Granted, when asked to leave campus these kids were defiant and thus arrested for trespassing, and while some were given warnings to leave campus, others weren’t given a warning at all and were simply arrested in front of their classmates.

There are definitely times and instances when students need to be arrested and detained for their own safety and/or the safety of others, but I think far too often, students are needlessly being arrested, taken down to the juvenile detention center and exposed to the criminal justice system.

An arrest record can stay with these students for the rest of their lives, even when the charges are dropped. When applying for jobs or to colleges and asked, “Have you ever been arrested”, they will will have to check “yes”.

Last week I watched as a group of girls had a verbal altercation on campus, that looked like it may erupt into something physical. As far as I could see, no one was physically being assaulted, but one of the school resource officers responding to the disruption, grabbed a girl, threw her to the ground and placed handcuffs on her. Despite everyone screaming that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was still detained. I believe she was eventually released to the custody of her parents and suspended, but it was obvious by the look on her face and everyone around her, that it was a traumatizing experience.

Not only is being arrested traumatizing and embarrassing, it interrupts a students educational process and can create distrust in the school system and the law. I think far too often, arrests are made in cases such as a petty fight, minor vandalism, trespassing and minor theft, things that used to send a kid home for ten days, but now may get them arrested. I’ve even seen students tazed by officers during school fights, when they used to be broken up by teachers.

Granted, often students who get arrested have ignored warnings and instructions given by the police officer.

I wouldn’t dare want to interfere with law enforcement’s ability to do their job, especially in light of the Sandy Hook shootings, but when police officers are on campus, the number of student arrests for minor infractions increases, many of which seem petty and unproductive.

For example, here in Florida a teen was arrested for trespassing because during her suspension she returned to school to take her final exams, and students involved in fights are often charged with battery against each other.

Disabled and Black Students Are Disproportionately Arrested

Students with various disabilities and black students are arrested more compared to their percentage of the student population. Even in schools for students with severe emotional problems, students are getting arrested for things like hitting, kicking and throwing objects, behavior that seems more related to their disabilities than to criminal acts.

While black students are more likely to be arrested than white students, it’s not because black students are misbehaving more, but historically and presently they seem to be punished more severely for less serious infractions, according to a study done by The Equity Project at Indiana University. Black males tend to be arrested more for “disorderly conduct” while white males are more likely to be arrested for drug charges. Black students are also more likely to have their cases dismissed than white students.

We can’t criminalize children for being and acting like children. Most of the students who get arrested already have had discipline or absenteeism problems before the arrest and could have benefited from an in school psychologically based program, such as the one I work for. It helps students with anger, academic, emotional, substance and behavior problems, and we even advocate for them during times when they are on the verge of getting arrested or expelled.

Unfortunately, many schools don’t have this type of program, nor the funds and staff to conduct the social services needed.

Popular Psychology

The Preschool Oral Sex Scandal

10 Feb 201310 Feb 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC6 Comments

Some things we just shouldn’t have to talk about, and this is definitely one of those things. Apparently during last June and last September, a five year old preschool girl initiated sexual contact with approximately six other preschool boys at the First Lutheran Church of Carson School, in California. And by sexual contact I am talking about oral sex.

These disturbing sexual behaviors apparently went unnoticed until last October when another preschool girl was caught with her mouth on the genitals of a four year old boy at the school. That incident was then dealt with internally.

The school is now closing after these disturbing allegations and legal complaints have been filed on the behalf of the six parents of the children for negligence and “intentional infliction of emotional stress.” California’s social-services department cited the school for supervision “deficiencies” during their evaluation of the school last Thursday.

The community of course is outraged and want answers, from where were the teachers during these times, to how did this five year old girl who initiated the “oral sex scandal” become so sexualized.

While I understand these parents outrage and the need to blame someone, I also know that it is important that they handle this in a way that doesn’t dramatize the event and traumatize their children.

Chances are, if they don’t make it a huge deal, these children are likely to move on from this situation as normal, well-adjusted kids, but if the parents make this a traumatic event, these kids are likely to develop psychological and sexual issues that may follow them throughout their life.

As far as the little girl who initiated the behavior goes, the county of Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services interviewed her family and the family of each child involved and found no evidence of abuse. This in my opinion doesn’t mean that somehow, this young girl wasn’t exposed to adult sexual activity somehow, someway, even if unintentional.

Any parent or person who spends time with preschool kids can tell you that sometimes they do things such as play with their genitals, exposed themselves, dry hump the arm chair of a sofa, a favorite teddy bear or even masturbate.

These are all natural and innocent behaviors that aren’t sexualized at all, until we as adults make it so. Children can’t comprehend what they are doing at this age, all they know is that they are playing with parts of themselves they were told to keep private.

These type of behavior can be discouraged by simply letting the child know that this isn’t something you do in public. If you traumatize the event or make the kid feel bad about it, they can develop a complex about themselves and sex that they take into adulthood.

However, mouth to genital contact certainly is not a natural act for any child, which to me says she was exposed to this adult behavior somewhere, somehow.

Perhaps someone in her house keeps adult magazines or movies around, thinking, she’s only five, she has no idea what this is. Perhaps she’s seen adults engaged in this behavior or worst case scenario, maybe she has been sexually molested by an adult or older child and she is just modeling this behavior.

In the book The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, child psychologist Bruce Perry talks about a seven year old patient named “Tina” who, during their first session, attempted to touch his penis. This girl had been sexually abused for two years, from the ages of four to six by a sixteen-year-old boy, her babysitter’s son. Despite the improvements she made in therapy, at the age of ten she was caught performing fellatio on an older boy at school.

The girl in the book had been traumatized and was responding to her trauma in the way she had been traumatized, which is very possibly the same thing the five year old preschooler is doing.

While I think all the children involved will benefit better if the situation is not over dramatized and if distressful signs, behaviors and situations are addressed appropriately if they come up. I do think this young girl needs some professional help to figure out the source of her sexualized behavior or she is likely to grow up into another “Tina” who doesn’t learn how to control her impulses and deal with her trauma (if there is any) in a healthy way.

I think the take away from all of this is that we need to protect our children. As they say, “hurt people, hurt people”, the same goes for traumatized adults and children. If they are not helped, they go on to traumatize other adults and children.

Making Peace With The Worst Case Scenario

5 Feb 20136 Feb 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment

Fear is a powerful emotion that keeps many of us from living life fully. It holds many of us hostage, too afraid to leave relationships, to start new careers or simply to try something new. Many people stay stagnant in life because they are afraid that if they reach for something different than what what they have, and fail, then they will lose more than they already have.

Maybe you are in a relationship that is emotionally abusive and you want to leave, but are afraid that by leaving you will be lonely and alone forever, so instead you stay in this relationship that is killing you emotionally.

That fear of what may happen can be so real and intense, that it keeps you from ever reaching out and seeking something that could be much more fulfilling and fruitful.

Because fear can rob us of precious time and experiences, it’s important that we learn how to control it the best we can and one way of doing that is by making peace with the worst case scenario. By making peace with the worst case scenario, it’s possible to take much of the fear out of fear itself.

Going back to our example, let’s say that the worst case scenario is being alone. When you make peace with the worst case scenario, you take some of the bite out of that fear. So what if you are alone forever, that will give you plenty of time do whatever you want to do, to get to know who you are without the complexities of another person molding you into the person they want you to be. It gives you plenty of time to become a self-actualized person, to give back to the community, the world, to become a philanthropist, a leader, or whatever you want to be because you don’t have to answer to anyone. And, when given the opportunity, loneliness can give way to solitude (please see my post Loneliness versus Solitude for more information).

The thing is, the likelihood of never dating again after the break up is extremely low and most of the time, our fears are largely irrational or over exaggerated .

How many times have you feared something, and once you actually experienced that fearful thing, it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be and you felt much better afterwards? Maybe you grew from the experienced in one way or the other. Making peace with the worst case scenario can help us realize that without having to go through the actual fearful situation.

On top of that, making peace with the worse case scenario can help bring clarity to a situation.

Just today I got an email from a student during the final minutes of school saying she was having dreams about killing herself and hasn’t been able to sleep. She ended her email “Please Help”. Immediately I responded to her email asking her where was she, and for her to come see me. I immediately contacted the class she was supposed to be in only to find out she hadn’t made it to class and had possibly left campus. It was the end of the school day and I wasn’t sure what else to do. This student has a history of suicide attempts and while she didn’t explicitly say she was thinking about killing herself in the email, the worst case scenario would be that she ended up committing suicide.

Looking at the worst case scenario in this way forces clarity. It made me ask myself, if that tragedy were to happen, can I say that I have done everything I was supposed to do in order to save this student. Did I do due diligence? Did I do the best I could to locate that student and make sure she was safe despite the fact classes were now over? Would I at least have some comfort in saying that I did everything I could have possibly done to save this child?

While processing this case with a coworker, I realized I hadn’t done all I could have done in the worst case scenario. I immediately went back and tried to contact both of her parents to no avail, then I called the sheriffs office and asked them to do a well-being check on her at home. It was only then that I felt I had done everything I could have reasonably have done, in the worst case scenario.

When you look at it this way, when you make peace with the worst case scenario, it is more likely that you have done everything in your power to prevent it, so that if it does come to pass, you can at least have solace in knowing that.

Fear doesn’t have to hold us hostage, it can actually free us if we learn how to embrace it and make it work for us, not against us.