psychology – Page 5 – Licensed Mental Health Counselor

Setting An Intention To Pay Attention: A Crucial Step Of Mindfulness

5 May 2015by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

Earlier today I was sitting in a meeting, but instead of paying attention I found my mind drifting away, thinking about other things I needed to do that day at work, what I wanted to do when I got off work, a co-worker who was in a bad mood this morning and somehow I had allowed her to get me off center.

And then suddenly I came back to the present, back to the sound of our CEO’s voice realizing I didn’t hear anything she had said over the last five minutes. Not a good thing. It was then I realized that I had to set an intention to pay attention.

It’s so easy to get distracted by all the noise in our heads, our phones buzzing with messages or even a co-worker in a sour mood. This can be helpful of course when you are doing something like pumping gas and need to notice the suspicious looking person approaching, but it is not very helpful when we are trying to engage with another person or pay attention in an important meeting.

Mindfulness doesn’t just happen, you actually have to make the decision to pay attention. This can be part of an intentional practice such as paying attention to our breathing during meditation or paying attention to a loved one and ignoring our phone or any other internal or external distractions.

This is even helpful sometimes in the middle of the day when we realize our minds are all over the place, especially when it’s in the future or the past and not in the present. That’s when we need to bring focus back to our loved one that is talking, or our child that wants our attention or like this morning, our CEO who is lecturing. And sometimes we just need to bring our attention back to us, what we are doing in that moment, even if it’s just walking or breathing.

This may sound very small, but it is actually often difficult to do because we aren’t always aware of when our thoughts and attention have gone away from where they need to be.

The other day I was sitting with my future wife watching a movie, but I realized my mind was somewhere else and instead of enjoying that moment with her I was creating anxiety for myself about a situation that I had no control over. When I realize this I brought my mind back to the present, back to that moment and the anxiety I was feeling dissipated.

It’s a powerful thing, that moment when you realized you aren’t focused on the present and then bring your mind and attention back and choose to live in that moment instead of just letting that moment pass you by.

Choosing to pay attention is such an easy thing to do, but at the same time it’s easy to forget and harder to do consistently without practice.

Popular Psychology

8 Things About Your Mind You May Be Unaware Of

13 Apr 2015by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

There are many things I love about psychology and one thing is how much it brings us altogether and yet makes us all unique individuals. There’s so much about our minds that we often aren’t aware of and don’t even know is happening most of the time.

Here I’ve shared 8 things that affect most of us to one agree to another, many of which you are unaware of even when it’s right in front of your face.

We all have a capacity for evil

Most people like to think that they could never be convinced, tricked or manipulated into doing something wrong, but the 1971 Stanford prison study showed how social situations can affect our behavior. In the study led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a mock prison was created in the basement of the Stanford psychology building and 24 undergraduate students were selected to play the roles of prisoners and guards.

Researchers then monitored the prisoners and the guards and watched in dismay as ordinary college students began to do unimaginable things to each other. The guards for instance became physically and psychologically abusive to the inmates who in turn began to exhibit extreme emotional stress and anxiety.

The experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but the researchers ended it in just six days due to the abusive behavior of the students playing the roles of guards.

“The guards escalated their aggression against the prisoners, stripping them naked, putting bags over their heads, and then finally had them engage in increasingly humiliating sexual activities,” Zimbardo said.

These were all thought to be physically and mentally healthy college students who within days had turned into someone else.

This reminds me of the soldiers in Abu Ghraib where seemingly normal American soldiers began to ruthless abuse, humiliate and torture the detainees committing humane rights violations that included rape, sodomy and murder.

We are all susceptible to “change blindness”

In 1998, researchers from Harvard and Kent university did a study where they had an actor ask a stranger on the street for directions. While asking for directions, they had two people carrying a large wooden door walk between the actor and the subject, completely blocking their view of each other. The actor was then replaced with someone else of a different height, build and voice. Half of the subjects in the experiment didn’t even notice the change!

“Change blindness” suggests that we are very selective when it comes to visual cues and that we rely on memory and pattern-recognition more than we realize. The same study has been repeated many times, including changing a main actor on stage with someone of a different build and voice and half of the audience didn’t realize that the actor had been swapped at all.

Some of us are more susceptible to “change blindness” than others.

Delaying gratification is inherently difficult, but is worth it

This one may seem like a no brainer, but researches in a 1960s Stanford experiment gave pre-school age kids one marshmallow and told them that if they could avoid eating it for 15 minutes while the researcher stepped out, they could have two marshmallows when he returned. Most of the students tried to wait, but struggled and eventually ate the marshmallow. Those who were successful in waiting used avoidance tactics such as turning their back to the marshmallow or covering their eyes.

The children who could delay gratification in the study also turned out less likely to use drugs, become obese or have behavioral problems later as teenagers or adults. The good thing is that delaying gratification is something that can be taught.

We can have strong conflicting moral impulses

In a famous study done in 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram showed just how far people would go to obey authority figures, even if it conflicted with their own morals. Part of the study was to try to understand how so many Nazi war criminals were willing to commit unspeakable horrors during the Holocaust.

In the experiment, one participant was called the “teacher” and the other the “learner”. The teacher was instructed to give an electrick show to the learner, who was in another room, every time they got a question wrong. If the teacher was reluctant to give a shock, he was urged on by the researcher. During the experiment, most participants, even though they were visibly uncomfortable and stressed, administered increasingly painful shocks, all the way up to the final 450-volt shock which was labled “XXX”.

This study was originally considered a study of blind obedience to authority, but recently has been thought of as a study in deep moral conflict, suggesting that many of us, in the right conditions, can be pushed to do things we are uncomfortable doing, even if that means hurting others.

We are corrupted by power

We’ve all known someone, most likely a co-worker, who was one person before they got promoted and then a totally different (not usually for the better) person after they got promoted. Research suggests that when we gain authority or power, we tend to change and not always for the better. Those in power sometimes act with a sense of entitlement and/or disrespect.

Many studies show that even implied positions of power can change the way many people act. “When researchers give people power in scientific experiments, they are more likely to physically touch others in potentially inappropriate ways, to flirt in more direct fashion, to make risky choices and gambles, to make first offers in negotiations, to speak their mind, and to eat cookies like the Cookie Monster, with crumbs all over their chins and chests,” say psychologist Dacher Keltner.

We seek out loyalty to social groups

In a social psychology experiment in the 1950s, an experimenter took two groups of 11 boys, all age 11 to a summer camp. He gave one group the name the “Eagles” and the other the “Rattlers”. They spent a week apart, bonding, having fun with neither group knowing the existence of the other. When he finally brought the two groups together they failed to integrate, instead they stayed in their tight knit groups, began calling each other group names, competing against the other group in various competitions, creating conflict and even refusing to eat together. This is only after each group bonded together for only one week!

This is one reason I disbelieve the thought that if everyone were the same race/color, there would be no racism. There will always be some type of prejudices against groups we perceive as different from us, even if the difference is only in name (the “Eagles” versus the “Rattlers”). It’s just the way humans are wired to bond socially. Even if we all looked alike, we would find something to separate “us” from “them”.

Love is all you really need to be happy

That may sound hokey, but a 75 year Harvard grant study that followed over 250 men around for 75 years suggests that love is all you really need to be happy and satisfied long-term. Psychiatrist George Vaillant, The study’s longtime director says, “One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”

That is for many of us the hard part. We want to be loved, are afraid to love, to hurt or be hurt, therefore we find many, often creative ways to push love away and most of it is subconscious. We end up telling ourselves we don’t need love to be happy and that simply isn’t true. Even if it’s not romantic love, we all need to feel loved even if it’s the endless quest for love or passion for something.

We are always trying to justify our experiences so that they make sense to us

One day I’m going to sit down and write a whole post about cognitive dissonance. It’s such a fascinating topic. What cognitive dissonance says is that we are constantly telling ourselves lies to make sense of what is going on around us, especially when what’s going on around us doesn’t make much sense. We want the world to be a logical and harmonious place, which of course often it is not.

An example of cognitive dissonance is someone who smokes, knowing that it is bad for their health, but they justify it by saying that they enjoy it so much that it’s worth the risks, or that it’s not likely they will suffer serious health effects, or that they are going to die of something anyway they might as well enjoy smoking, or that if they quit smoking they will become an irritable, angry person no one wants to be around. So, they continue smoking because it is consistent with their idea about smoking.

Cognitive dissonance is another one of those things that is largely subconscious, but we all do it. We try to make sense of a world that often doesn’t make sense and when we can’t make sense of it we are often put into an uncomfortable, upsetting state of mind. We become unbalance and try to figure out away to become balanced again.

These 8 things are just some of the reasons I love psychology. It unites all of us, while at the same time making each of us different.

Popular Psychology

Beyond Punishment: Taking An Inside Look At Child Abuse

24 Feb 201524 Feb 2015by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

When I first saw this video yesterday it broke my heart. What I saw was not only in my eyes child abuse, but an angry man who probably not only beats his children like they were strangers on the street, but also probably abuses the women in his life. On top of that, what I saw was a culture where this type of physical abuse is not only excepted, but encouraged, hence the person video taping it and most likely the other people in the house who never intervened.

From my understandings, this father was “punishing” his thirteen-year-old daughter for being “rude”, “disrespectful” and talking to grown men. Obviously these are things that no parent would want from their child, but beating a child purposely with a belt on her face is not discipline. I can almost guarantee that this is not the first time that she has been beaten and yet her inappropriate, most likely defiant behavior hasn’t stopped.

Chances are that this parent has no real idea of how to be a parent or raise a child, if he did, there would have never been a need for him to discipline her physically because she would have been raised, taught, guided and disciplined more appropriately over the last thirteen years. If this father had any real ideal of how to raise a child in a loving way, he would have punished her in a way that wasn’t to hurt her necessarily, but to teach her right from wrong.

Most parents punish their children from a place of love. I didn’t see any love for this child during this beating. What I saw is a father who is psychologically disconnected in so many ways.

From a psychological point of view we have a young lady who is acting out for one reason or another and physical punishment isn’t going to stop that. She is acting out and only talking and trying to understand why she is acting out is going to stop that.

Secondly, we have a man in a wheelchair who probably already feels emasculated if not just outright angry at the world for whatever condition put him in a wheelchair and therefore is always a ticking time bomb. He may have been a mean and angry man before whatever put him in a wheelchair, but many people become more angry when they are injured, in pain or handicapped.

Read my article on physical punishment to understand some of the ways it can affect a child’s mental and emotional health. From my experience in working with children who have gotten punished like this, they rarely learn to stop the undesired behavior, but learn how to be more sneaky. The sad part is, a valuable lesson this girl may have learned from this is one many girls who grow up in abusive homes learn which is:

If a man really loves me he will hit me to show it
It’s okay if a man puts his hands on me, it’s all part of being in a relationship
I need a man who knows how to “handle me” and put me back in my place when I step out of line

To most of us those three responses may seem trivial, but I’ve worked with enough abused girls and young girls who ended up in abusive relationships to learn that many of them came from abusive homes where either they themselves were abused or where they witnessed abuse in their homes. They grew up thinking that it was not only okay, but the norm. Some even felt like it was a vital part of being in love because that is what they grew up seeing and thinking love is: Mom and dad fight, but they love each other and I see that. OR, mom fights with her boyfriend and then they go make love afterwards.

One young lady in particular saw her dad not only beat her mom, but he also beat her. Every relationship she got into as a teen and young adult was an abusive one. She didn’t understand it, but she unconsciously would seek out abusive men. She had two kids, each from an abusive man and the last time I met with her in counseling, she was with yet another abusive man. She couldn’t break the cycle. Her young boy and young girl are going to grow up witnessing and maybe even experiencing abuse.

This father in the video, in an attempt to raise a virtuous young lady may be in fact creating a woman who will go through a lifetime of troubled and abusive relationships because of the abuse she receives from her father.

No doubt some people may look at this video and see nothing wrong with the way he is disciplining his daughter and believe that people should mind their own business, but I personally hope that child protective services sees this video and rescues this child while the law punishes this “man”. I wrote this post not only because I am passionate about protecting children from abuse, but also in hopes of increasing the exposure of this video so that maybe someone will recognize the child and the father and contact child protective services in whatever city, state this took place in. It’s a new video so chances are something can be done relatively soon.

***Warning, the video may be hard for most people to watch.***

Being A Psychotherapist: Things School and Books Can’t Really Prepare You For Part Two: Suicidal Clients

3 Feb 2015by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

Another thing school and books can’t really prepare you for are suicidal clients. Sure they cover the subject of suicide in graduate school, but the training of dealing with suicidal patients is usually very brief. There are many great books on working with suicidal clients and I have read a few, but I don’t think anything can really prepare you for sitting face to face with and working with a suicidal patient.

From my experiences, there are many types of suicidal clients and they all have to be taken seriously.

There’s the client who doesn’t really want to commit suicide, but they like to self-injure and that self-injurious behavior may lead to an accidental suicide. These are often the most common types of clients, often called “cutters” and they tend to be the most frustrating since a lot of them have cluster b type personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder.

When I worked in a high school I had a whole group full of students who self-injured and ended up involuntarily hospitalizing at least one every month because while they said they weren’t suicidal, they were definitely at times flirting with death.

This picture was taken of one of my former students who likes to cut. The next day she had twice as many cuts on her arm and I was forced to involuntarily hospitalize her.

There’s also the suicidal client who is extremely depressed or emotionally unstable and talks about death and suicide a lot. They typically don’t self-injure and have never tried to commit suicide and don’t think they ever would, but they talk about it so often and their emotional pain is so deep that when they leave your office you often wonder if this will be the last time you ever see them.

These type of clients can also be very stressful to deal with. Often when I have had clients like this I found myself worrying about them when I wasn’t even at work, when I was on vacation, when they didn’t show up for an appointment and sometimes I even dreamt about them.

One patient in particular was diagnosed with a terminal disease and she didn’t want to die a slow death. She didn’t think she would kill herself, but all she talked about was death and dying and her depression was so deep that it was hard to not be concerned about her when she missed an appointment. Eventually I had to hospitalize her after one particularly draining and emotional session when she couldn’t promise me she wasn’t going to go home and try to kill herself. Everything inside of me was screaming she would. She was angry that I hospitalized her against her will, but told me in later sessions that she had every intent of going home and killing herself that day and thanked me.

Another type of suicidal client is the one who never talks about suicide. Some are impulsive, but many just keep their thoughts and feelings buried deep inside. They may never even tell anyone that they are in pain. They just attempt or commit suicide without any real warning signs. These clients take not only you by surprise, but everyone else in their lives too.

I once worked with a student for two years dealing with the grief of a parent and then one day he gave me a card thanking me for helping him. It was our last session, he was doing great. Less than a week later I got a call from his family telling me he had attempted suicide and was in critical condition at a local hospital. I was stunned. I rushed to the hospital and nearly broke down in tears as I looked down at his lifeless body. I kept replaying our last sessions together, our last interactions, his last words to me, trying to figure out what did I miss. Thank goodness he came out of his comatose state after a few days and I was grateful that he not only lived, but that I had the opportunity to process his suicide attempt with him. I didn’t miss anything. He had suddenly decided he didn’t want to live any more and wanted to be with his deceased parent.

A couple of years before that I had been part of a crisis team that was sent to two different schools after two students had killed themselves apparently out of the blue. One was a popular jock that killed himself and stunned the whole community because no one, not even his closes friends knew that he was in so much emotional and psychological pain. His friends, family and even school staff members were blaming themselves for not seeing signs that weren’t even there.

The other student apparently killed himself on impulse in the midst of an angry dispute with his girlfriend. He told her he was going to hang himself. She didn’t believe him, but that’s exactly what he did. He had no history of being suicidal and no one saw it coming.

In my nearly 8 year career as a psychotherapist I’ve dealt with hundreds of suicidal clients. My main job right now is interacting with inmates who have been flagged as suicidal. Luckily I have not had one client commit suicide although I have had a few who have made serious suicide attempts landing them in the emergency room.

Studies suggest that:

1 in 4 interns/trainees will have a patient who attempts suicide at some point during their training and 1 in 9 will experience a completed patient’s suicide.
25% of psychologists and 50% of psychiatrists will experience a patient’s suicide.
1 in 6 psychiatric patients who die by suicide die in active treatment with a healthcare provider.
Approximately 50% of those who die by suicide in America will have seen a mental health provider at some time in their life.
Work with suicidal patients is considered the most stressful of all clinical endeavors. One third of psychotherapists who experienced a patient’s suicide subsequently suffer from severe emotional distress. Several factors may contribute to such severe distress including failure to hospitalize a suicidal patient who then died; a treatment decision that the therapist may feel contributed to the suicide; negative reactions from the therapist’s institution; and the fear of a lawsuit by the patient’s relatives.
25 % of family members of suicidal patients take legal actions against the patient’s mental health treatment team.

As a coincidence, just as I was finishing this post I was informed that an inmate just purposely swallowed 18 Ativan pills in an attempted suicide and is being rushed to the hospital.

Being A Psychotherapist: Things School and Books Can’t Really Prepare You For Part One: Mental Fatique

25 Jan 201525 Jan 2015by Torey C. Richards, LMHC5 Comments

To be a psychotherapist takes years of school and a lot of reading and writing about various aspects of human behavior. Many students fresh out of school with not much patient contact or real therapeutic hours under their belt, think that they fully know what it is like to be a therapist. They don’t. While school and books definitely prepare you for sounding like a trained therapist, nothing but real experience and hundreds of hours of patient contact, can prepare you for even the basics of what it’s like to be a therapist.

Many people who see me doing my job say, “I want to do that” and I never discourage them. I just tell them that if they are doing it from their hearts then they should pursue it. If they are doing it because they think it pays well, then they should seek another career. If they are doing it because it looks easy, then they should definitely seek another career. Even students who have spent years in undergrad and then graduate school are disillusioned and thus disappointed when they actually start seeing clients of their own. A few, those meant to truly be in the field, will love it, even when it’s frustrating. Others will hate it, but stay because they’ve fooled themselves to believe they are supposed to be therapist, and most end up becoming very bad therapists… or program directors. A large portion will leave the field altogether and seek employment that is more fulfilling and they should.

So what are the things that school and books can’t prepare you for when it comes to being a psychotherapist? Well I will cover one topic every now and then instead of trying to cram a top 10 list, but we’ll start with mental fatigue.

Being a psychotherapist is exhausting. Sure it’s not the same as lifting bricks all day, but it’s a different kind of exhaustion. People will say, all you do is sit and listen all day, how can that be exhausting. Well actively listening, being thoughtful, sustaining alertness, using your memory and paying attention to someone for 50 minute stretches throughout the day is very draining. Not to mention the stories you hear and have to process. Stories that are sometimes so sad that you have to hold yourself back from tears, or stories that trigger counter-transference issues because they remind you of some part of your own life.

There is also other things that make it taxing such as doing notes, scheduling, dealing with insurance companies and billing. There’s also that part about managing risks, having to figure out how much of a risk someone is to themselves or others. My main job right now is assessing suicidality in inmates who have exhibited a risk for suicide. It can become very stressful.

On top of that, sometimes your friends and even strangers who meet you and find out you’re a psychotherapist will treat you differently.

Strangers will either be fascinated and want to tell you about their problems, or a “friends”, or they will not talk much out of fear that you are always analyzing people. We do know how to turn it off, well at least turn it down. Your friends will most likely have you as their default free therapist, yet will not offer you much advice/help since “you’re a therapist, you should be able to figure out your own problems.” Oh, I’ve heard that too many times.

It can be exhausting because being a therapist, once you’ve done it long enough, becomes who you are. You don’t leave it behind at 5pm, even when you think you do. It’s always there with you and if you aren’t careful and don’t take care of yourself, it will drain you.

The link below is to a very well written article that details some of the hardest and most exhausting parts about being a therapist.

The One Thing Every Psychotherapist’s Partner Doesn’t Get.

Popular Psychology

Emotional Vampires: How To Spot Them And How To Deal With Them

12 Jan 2015by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment

I am personally very sensitive to other peoples energy. Meaning, if I am in a room where everyone is sad, I can feel that sadness and even myself start to become sad. The same is true if the energy and emotion are happy or angry. I often get taken out of my element when I get around someone whose energy is different than mine. Meaning, I can come home happy and immediately become down if my partner is down because she had a bad day. It’s something that is my personal challenge to work on, but many of us are like that.

We realize that while some people are very positive and they often help improve our mood and energy, others are just the opposite, they are very negative and suck us dry of any happiness, positivity, peace and joy. A popular term for these type of individuals today is emotional vampires. Some emotional vampires we know right away because they immediately drain us of emotional and physical energy as soon as they come around. Others are much more discreet and make remarks that leave us feeling bad and doubtful about ourselves such as “You’re just not as smart as your brother” or “You’re always taking things personal”.

There are different types of emotional vampires and here I’ll list them and give you some tips on how to deal with each type you may encounter.

The Narcissistic Vampire

This vampire is all about themselves and everything is always about them. They are conceited, grandiose, entitled, want all the attention and admiration and believe that they are ultra-important. They lack empathy and have a very short fuse when it comes to giving love to others. Even when they do show favor to others, they will quickly withdraw it if things aren’t done their way, then they become very hurtful and punishing.

One way to combat this type of vampire is by keeping things in perspective by realizing that these type of people are very limited emotionally. If you expect more from them, you will just be disappointed over and over again. Falling in love with them is just setting you up for heart ache because they do not know how to be selfless or love unconditionally. If you depend on them for your self-worth you will only be crushed.

If you must deal with this type of person, the best way to handle them is by showing them how something will be in their best benefit. They are very selfish people and are happiest when they believe they are benefiting the most out of a situation. This type of person is in my opinion the second most draining.

The Victim Vampire

This type of vampire is always crying “poor me”. They hate to take responsibility for their own actions. They believe that everything and everyone is against them which they believe is why they are unhappy. They fail to see, or want to see, their role in causing their own unhappiness. They will blame everything and everyone but themselves. These type of vampires are most draining when you try to help them, but never can.

For this type of vampire you have to set limits and boundaries for self-care. Tell them you can only listen for a few minutes because you are busy, otherwise they will drain you quickly.

The Controlling Vampire

This vampire is always trying to control others by telling them now only what they should do, but also how they should feel. The way they do this is sometimes obvious, other times it’s less obvious because they try to control you by invalidating your emotions if they don’t believe you should feel that way. These are the type of people who always know what’s best for you and don’t have a problem telling you. In the end you end up not feeling good about yourself, feeling demeaned and belittled.

With this vampire you have to be assertive and confident. Pick your battles wisely with them and don’t try to control or “fix” them, that will only set them off. Be assertive on the things that matter and let some of the smaller things go.

The Splitter or Borderline Personality Vampire

Dealing with someone who has borderline personality disorder in itself is a taunting task. These type of vampires are always in black and white relationships, there is no gray areas. You are either good or bad therefore the relationship you will have with them will always be love and hate relationship. One day they worship you, but do something wrong and the next day you are totally worthless. They are very emotionally damaged people and often feel numb unless they are angry, and that’s when they feel alive. These type of vampire will keep you on a continuous emotional roller-coaster which is not only emotionally draining, but they can make you feel like you’re going to lose your mind trying to deal with them and walking on eggshells to avoid conflict.

With these type of vampire you have to not allow them to suck you in and get as angry and upset as they are. You have to protect your emotions, stay calm, don’t over-react when they come looking for a fight. Believe it or not, these vampires respond best to structure and knowing where the limits are. If they start to get angry and out of control, tell them that you are going to walk away until they calm down. They won’t like it, but in the end this type of response is best for you and them. They will come to know their limits. They are also good at pitting people against each other and dividing friendships and families which is why it’s also important to not take sides when one tries to pit you against others, especially family and friends. These people in my opinion are the most draining because of their unpredictable, yet predictable nature.

We all know some emotional vampires and to be emotionally free, we have to learn how to deal with them.

For more information on emotional vampires check out “Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life.” by Dr. Judith Orloff and “Emotional Vampires: Dealing With People Who Drain You Dry.” by Dr. Albert Bernstein

Taking Control of Your LIfe

Keeping Your Personal Power

22 Oct 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

The other day I was listening to Joel Osteen and he was talking about not giving up your power. It reminded me of a group lesson I used to teach my high school students a couple of years ago about not giving their power away. In this sense, many of the high school kids I was working with were labeled “troubled kids”, and while many of them had various problems, one main issue they had was allowing other people to push their buttons, causing them to react and get into trouble over and over again. They were allowing other students in essence to control them.

What exactly does it mean to not give your power away?

It means to not allow other people or even events that happen throughout the day, to steal your joy, your positivity, your happiness. It also means to not allow other people to control your emotions or cause you to act out.

It’s really easy in life to be reactive. We could be having a good day and all it takes is for someone to make a rude remark or throw some other negative event into our day and then we are no longer having a good day. We are no longer happy and smiling, but instead we are fixated on that one negative event. We have let someone or something take our power away. Our power to be happy, our power to be the master of our emotions, actions and therefore consequences.

Many of us give our power away all the time without even realizing it. We think something or someone else made us mad, sad or ruined our day without realizing that we gave them the power to do so. Our emotions can be so overpowering that we don’t realize the thoughts that actually caused us to have those negative feelings and it’s those thoughts that we have power over if not anything else.

Our thoughts are one of the first places most of us give our power away.

We have negative self-talk that many of us just except as being true when in reality, it’s often just garbage. We tell ourselves we’re not good enough, we’re too ugly, too fat, weren’t born with the right genes, we’ll never be happy… the list can go on and on. First of all, if you believe all the negative self-talk, they tend to come true and become self-fulfilling prophecies. Second, they make us feel like crap and rob us of our natural power to feel good and be awesome people. Third and perhaps most importantly, they usually aren’t true. We have to challenge those negative thoughts instead of just accepting them. When you catch yourself having negative self-talk, ask yourself is it true? How do I know it is true? Negative thoughts and negative self-talk will do nothing but rob you of your power to control your life and have the life you want and deserve.

Another way we give away our power is through our actions or lack of actions.

Sometimes we are too afraid of making a decision, too afraid of change. We don’t set goals. We sabotage ourselves. Sometimes we are waiting for something or someone instead of going out and doing it ourselves. I used to have a friend who was very educated, but he had trouble finding a job because he was always waiting for someone (usually family and friends) to find a job for him. He wanted them to find a place that was hiring, find out about the job, sometimes even get him the application. Needless to say he was unemployed for a very long time because he was waiting on someone else to do the things he could do for himself. He was giving away his power to be employed.

Lastly, perception is a major way many of us give away our power.

We give away our power by the way we look at things and perceive the world. Many people see themselves as victims and that things are always done to them, that other people are in control of their lives, holding them back, causing their problems. If you perceive the world in this way then you are giving away your power and not taking personal responsibility for your life. Many people don’t understand that we choose how we perceive the world and we can look at it from different angles and viewpoints. Many of us have a default way that we perceive the world, but if that default way is holding us back and robbing us of our personal power, then we need to try a different perspective.

Take for example, if I go for a job interview and I don’t get the job, my default perspective might be “The guy interviewing me just didn’t like me. If I were a woman he would have probably hired me.” That’s giving away my power and making me feel like crap. I can change that perspective to something good and say, “I didn’t get the job, but at least I got an interview and I did my best, next time I’m sure I’ll get the job.” Or it could be a little more indifferent such as, “I didn’t get the job, guess it wasn’t meant for me. I’ll keep applying for other positions.”

The outcome doesn’t change. I didn’t get the job. However, my perspective changed and therefore how I felt about it changed from crappy, to positive, to indifferent. When I gave away my power with a negative perspective I felt worst then when I kept my power with good or indifferent perspectives.

There’s a saying that says, if you can’t change something then change the way you think about it. I have subscribed to that philosophy for a long time and trust me when I say it’s helped me stay positive and stay in control of my thoughts, feelings and actions.

When we give our power away we are allowing other people, events, circumstances, etc. to control how we feel and react. We are the captain of our ships and therefore are more control of our lives than we sometimes realize. When we take our personal power back we get out of the passenger seat and back in the drivers seat of our lives.

Popular Psychology

Adrian Peterson and Whipping: A Tradition That Goes Back To Slavery For Black Children

16 Sep 201419 Sep 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC5 Comments

This is not a post about corporal punishment although it could be. However, with all the buzz going on about Adrian Peterson being charged with reckless and negligent injury after whipping his 4-year-old son with a “switch” that left severe welts and broken skin on the child’s legs, it had me thinking about why do so many Black parents whip their children.

To be a little technical, there is a difference between a spanking (usually done with an open hand), a beating (usually done with a belt), a paddling (usually done with a wooden paddle) and a whipping (usually done with a small branch or twig). These are all forms of corporal punishment, but we are focusing on whipping since that is what Adrian Peterson is facing abuse charges for.

Parents of many different races, culture and ethnicities whip their children, but as a Black man I was really curious to why do Black parents whip their children since to me, even the term “whip” reminds me of the history of slavery when slaves would get whipped by their slave masters. Seeing welts on a child’s legs, back or arms are subtle reminders of much worse whippings inflicted on those slaves.

So why then would a Black parent choose to whip their child?

I know this is a hot debate and many people believe that whippings keep children in line. Many people will say they are successful and not in jail today because their parents whipped them. I also know that many people are in jail or are troubled individuals not necessarily because of being whipped, but whipping didn’t seem to have the desired behavior modification it was supposed to and may have had adverse effects.

Some of the most violent and aggressive teens I have worked with were whipped regularly. Not whipping a child in some people’s views may make the child spoiled, but I have never seen any real evidence that not whipping a child is more likely to make that child more physically aggressive later in life.

Each child is different and while one child may respond positively to whippings, another may become more violent, hostile, fearful and detached from their parents. I’m not shying away from punishment. There are a number of different nonviolent ways to punish a child.

I personally don’t believe in whippings. Growing up I may have been whipped two or three times, but I was never whipped as a default form of punishment, therefore I was never afraid of whippings. I was more motivated by not disappointing my parents and by rewards for good behavior, than punishment for bad behavior. I know that each child is different so I am not debating that.

However, I am here to educate. What many Black parents don’t know is that whipping our children is a direct syndrome of slavery.

An old classic picture of a slave showing healed scars from multiple whippings.

Injuries left on Adrian Peterson 4-year-old son after the whipping that has him facing charges.

Black people were unfortunately treated like beasts of the fields and whipped to discourage undesired behaviors. Black slaves were also used to whip and punish other Black slaves as a form of emotional and psychological warfare. Black slaves would be so afraid of the slave masters whipping their children for inappropriate behavior that they often would whip them first, hoping to save them from a much more severe whipping from the slave master.

This violent model became the only form of discipline that the Black slaves had to follow and therefore it was handed down throughout history.

During slavery, Black children had to learn very quickly the do’s and don’ts of being a slave on the plantation, or they would be beat severely or even killed by Whites, so Black parents whipped their own children to prevent this.

After slavery, the tradition continued. Blacks were usually punished more severely for committing social infractions than whites by teachers, people on the street, police and courts. Blacks were more likely to be beaten, thrown in jail or even lynched for minor transgressions so Black parents would punish their children severely through whippings in order to keep them from being punished by White society.

This was not down out of malice (although many parents have whipped their children out of anger), but out of love. The Black community felt a strong need to use corporeal punishment in order to keep their children from suffering potentially worst punishment from White society. Adrian Peterson was no doubt doing what was done to him by his mother and grandmother, and what was done to them by their parents, all the way back to slavery. He was doing what he thought would teach his son to stay out of trouble.

A lot of people will disagree with me about corporal punishment and I do believe that for Black people it served its purpose back in the day, but times are different. It’s time that we evolve and start looking for nonviolent ways to correct bad behavior.

There is enough violence in this world that we don’t have to subject our children to it in their own homes on a regularly basis. Stopping the violence in our communities is much more complicated if we don’t stop the violence in our own homes.

For more information, check out the article Punishment or Child Abuse?

The Perplexed Minds of Teenagers

Signs Your Teen May Need To See A Counselor

15 Sep 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC6 Comments

Very often I have parents ask me if I think their teen needs counseling. They will tell me about different behaviors they have observed and pretty much ask me if it is “normal”.

The advice I normally give is, if you think your teen needs counseling, they probably do. I have seen more instances of teens not receiving mental health help or receiving it once the issue has gotten out of hand, then I have of parents bringing their teens in for counseling when they are perfectly “normal”.

Don’t get me wrong, I have seen parents who have brought their teens in for counseling only for me to soon realize that it was the parent that actually needed help, and not their teen.

In any case, it never hurts to schedule a session for your teen if you think they may need help. A trained mental health professional will be able to tell you in a couple of sessions or so if your teen needs further help or if the issue extends further into the family system.

Some signs that your teenager may need counseling

Mood swings– Yes we all know that teenagers have mood swings. It is definitely part of that developmental age, but as a parent, you should have a general baseline of your teens mood swings. If their mood swings seem extreme or are way outside of your teens normal mood swings (too depressed, too elated, too labile, etc.) trust your gut, it may be worth looking into with a trained professional.
Self-medicating– Some teens will try to hide or control their issues, especially when they don’t understand why they think or feel a certain way. Many will turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, self-mutilation, or eating disorders just to name a few, in an effort to make themselves feel better. If you notice your teen involved in any of these things it’s almost a guarantee that they are trying to mask something else, that could be anything from low self-esteem to sexual abuse and it’s worth investigating.
Changes in friends– many times when a teen is suffering from a mental illness it will impact their ability to maintain healthy friendships. They may push friends away or become too clingy. You may see some of your teens friends start wanting to avoid them or your teens choices of friends may drastically change.
Changes in school performance– is another sign that your teen may be suffering from some form of mental illness. It’s generally hard to concentrate and focus when one is in a poor mental state and this can affect a teens grades and/or conduct.
Physical symptoms– if your teen suddenly starts to care less about their appearance, stops taking showers, gains or loses a lot of weight or starts complaining of psychosomatic symptoms like backaches, headaches or stomach aches, these are all possible signs that your teen is dealing with something they can’t handle alone.
Behavior changes– behavior like mood can change a lot during the teenage years, but for the most part, if you teens starts presenting as a totally different person to you then it may indicate either a mental illness or substance abuse issue.

Being a teenager is hard and most teens will try their best to hide their problems from their parents, which is why it is imperative that parents are attune with their teenagers. Today it’s even easier for teens to hide how they really feel through social media so parents have to be vigilant to monitor their social media pages as well in order to gain insight into what is really going on with their teen.

With the appropriate help, all mental and emotional issues can be treated and managed so if you have to ask the question, “Is this normal”, chances are you should contact a qualified mental health professional for a further evaluation.

Taking Control of Your LIfe

Absolute Yes: How To Learn To Say No To The Things You Really Want To Say No To

11 Sep 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

Making decisions can be very hard to do. Making tough decisions can be even harder and even anxiety provoking, which is why many people end up either in bad decisions, a place of ambivalence or living with more angst than necessary.

Many people are so afraid of making tough decisions that they simply don’t. Unconsciously many of these people will put themselves into positions (i.e., being homeless, being institutionalized, exceptional religiously preoccupied, joining the military, being taken care of by government assistance) so that they don’t have to make many decisions.

One way to make decision making easier is to develop a principle called absolute yes.

The principle is simple. Say no to anything unless it is an absolute yes. That means if not every part of you, mind body and soul, is not saying yes, than the answer is no, at least for now.

Many of us, besides finding it hard to make a decision, end up saying yes when we really mean no. Sometimes this causes us to end up in undesirable situations all because we didn’t follow through with our true answer.

When you start to use the absolute yes principle, you will see it demands commitment to the truth. It forces us to know ourselves, the little games we play, the excuse, justifications and stories we tell ourselves. We will start to re-examine situations where we are tempted to sell ourselves short, give our power over to someone else or sabotage our own happiness and success.

It will help us to see through the glitz and temptation that often makes us say yes because we want to be respected and loved, when inside we really want to say no.

Think about it. Many people say yes to having sex, getting married, to having kids when they really want to say no. Everyone has things that tempt them to say yes; from the sexy bad guy you know will only drain you emotionally, to that second piece of cake or that new red Mustang 5.0 you really can’t afford, but really want.

Saying no to anything unless it is an absolute yes means we have to take a step back from these temptations, put some emotional distance between our desires and what is actually best for us. That is why it is a discipline and a practice which takes time, commitment, especially commitment to personal mastery.

An absolute yes means that there is no doubt and while we may not know what is going to happen next, we take responsibility for our decision and there is no one else to blame for our choice.

Just because something isn’t an absolute yes now doesn’t mean that it will be a no forever. We may require more time, more information, or more insight before our no turns into an absolute yes.

This reflection, gathering information and putting some space between our emotions are all essential parts of effective decision making skills.

Taking an absolute yes approach to making a decision will reduce the amount of stress involved as well as help us to say no to the things we really don’t want to say yes to and say an absolute yes to the things we do. We’ll spend less times doing things we truly don’t want to do and more times really living the life we want to live.

For a more colorful take on Absolute Yes (and a very good read), check out Fuck Yes or Fuck No by Mark Manson.