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Behind the Therapy Door

Behind the Therapy Door

by | Nov 14, 2024 | Counseling

The stereotype of a counseling session portrays a face-to-face conversation between therapist and client. Often, the exchange is not what you would expect. Not everyone is comfortable talking about their problems.

Some people express their feelings in ways that don’t rely on words. Games, for instance, become metaphors for the challenges a kid might be facing outside of the office. It might be safer to defeat your therapist than it is to take on a bully in the school hallway.

A poem or a song might better capture the nuances of an adult’s situation than a narrative about their life history. When a creative alternative is provided to a client, the traditional face-to-face dialogue usually follows. The goal is to provide a platform for problem-solving. How we get there has many paths.

At Elmhurst Counseling, both kids and grownups are finding outlets for creative expression. To an outsider, it probably looks like the agenda is to play games, solve puzzles, draw pictures, write stories, compose songs, and build crafts. Frequently, that impression is true. These are among the tools we employ with children and adults.

Creative play lowers the barriers to conversation. While the 8-year-old is building a Lego world, he doesn’t realize that he is crafting a parallel universe to his third-grade classroom. When the superheroes battle in the therapy office, he is learning coping strategies for navigating conflicts with siblings and peers.

When the 19-year-old pens song lyrics about a romantic breakup, she might not understand that the minor-key chords suggested to support the lyrics capture the sadness she is trying to express. She just feels understood.

Counseling and therapy take many forms. Sometimes it is as simple as two people sitting across from each other sharing a dialogue about sensitive topics. More often, however, it’s about the therapist reading the client’s unique path of expression and tailoring the clinical environment to enable that language. What would make you most comfortable?

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Negotiating With Children

Negotiating With Children

by | Oct 15, 2024 | Marriage & Family, Parenting, Relationships

Multiple choice. What would you do with each scenario? Each option has longer term consequences beyond the immediate response to the challenge. Sometimes, that’s the decision: immediate relief versus lasting lesson.

Scenario #1

The challenge: It’s time to leave for school and your daughter refuses to wear the shoes you’ve selected.

Your options:

  1. Hold firm and brace yourself for a fight.
  2. Give in. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
  3. Threaten some delayed consequence if she doesn’t comply and hope she gives in.

Scenario #2

The challenge: The dinner you prepared (healthy) is met with protests from the kids. They are demanding an alternative (less healthy) or else refusing to eat.

Your options:

  1. Scramble to put a frozen pizza in the oven.
  2. Craft a lecture about the vicissitudes of healthy eating.
  3. Let them go hungry.

Scenario #3

The challenge: Your son times his tantrum with the arrival of your house guests. He insists on going to a friend’s house, which you’ve already nixed.

Your options:

  1. Let him go and save face with your guests.
  2. Hold the line and endure the embarrassment of your guests judging you as a bad parent.
  3. Provide an alternative version of entertainment that is better than hanging with friends.

Millennial parents have different priorities than their Boomer parents taught. Often, that’s the vibe of generational transitions – improve upon the experience of your family-of-origin. Of all the species on the planet, human lifespans have evolved to enable grandparent insight while the little ones are still little. Yet, the advice and guidance of the elders is not always relevant or welcomed.

What’s your scenario? How would your parents have handled it? Why would you manage it differently? Down the road, how would you imagine your kids will handle it when it’s your grandkids acting up?

Everything cycles.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Who Owns the Feeling?

Who Owns the Feeling?

by | Mar 13, 2024 | Parenting, Relationships, Wellness

Emotions are contagious. Any of us are capable of shifting the mood of a room by bringing our vibe into the space. We’ve all been altered emotionally by the power of someone else’s mood. Whether excitement, anger, sadness, or fear – one of the ways we manage feelings is to share them. When the other person experiences your emotion, you feel understood.

There are a few psychological defense mechanisms that explain this – projection, identification, and projective identification, to name a few. They are designed to selfishly bring relief to negative emotions and to generously share the wealth of positive feelings. Examples abound.

One guy cuts off another guy on the highway and, before you know it, guy #2 is tailgating guy #1 with elevated blood pressure. Guy #1 gave guy #2 the gift of his aggressiveness.  

A teenage girl arrives at the raucous sleepover party in a glum, tearful state. The girlfriends crowd around her and her emotional weight becomes the theme of the night.

A parent screams at their kid for something minor because the adult endured a stressful day in the workplace. The kid takes responsibility for the parent’s outburst and wonders what they could have done or not done to make the parent less upset.

The high school senior learns of the acceptance to her college-of-choice, and the whole family whoops it up in celebration of her accomplishment.

In clinical circles, we call this ‘parallel process.’ The contagion becomes a window to the world of another person. If you assess what you are feeling in a particular interaction, it is extremely likely that your dance partner feels the same way and shared it with you. This becomes a valuable tool for parents. Consider the chart below as a roadmap for how to manage your child’s emotional reaction:

When the                               

child is:                       I Feel…                         Intervention

angry                           frustrated                    de-escalation

scared                         worried                       reassurance

tired                            depleted                      resources                   

overwhelmed              stressed                       structure

hopeless                      ineffective                    encouragement

withdrawn                   sad                              contact

Of course, this works with two adults in the same way. In the heat of the emotion, step back and get perspective. Become a diagnostician of the macro-level interaction from that wider lens, and then step back into the fray with precisely the most helpful reaction. The emotion you are feeling might not be your own.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Evolving Talents

Evolving Talents

by | Feb 13, 2024 | Performance, Wellness

About 100 billion neurons form synaptic connections beginning about 45 days after conception expanding until about three years after birth. That’s enough axons and dendrites to support nearly every future talent. Then, over the next decade and a half, about 50% of those neurological connections shed away leaving behind the uniqueness of each of us as we plow through the end of our teenage years and launch into adulthood. What happens next depends entirely on where we aim our investment of time and resources.

Some of us ride the wave of our strengths, whether athletic, artistic, or academic. Others devote themselves to rigorous practice to maximize the potential of an interest. When that effort is directed at a natural strength, the wind is at our backs in a downhill ride. When we work on one of the abilities that was shed away before the age of sixteen, it’s an uphill battle with the wind in our face.

Either way, growth happens. Sometimes it’s frustrating and seems to take forever to see progress. Other times, time and space get suspended as we flow effortlessly forward. The point is to keep practicing.

Whether a budding cyclist, bricklayer, or cellist, you get to choose how good at your craft you become. The cyclist can coast or pedal. The mason can eyeball the project or learn to use a level, plumb bob, and string line. The cellist can play Frere Jacques forever or tackle the Bach preludes.

It begins with a mindset that predicts whether you can or can’t grow. If you believe you’ve reached your ceiling, you most likely have. If, on the other hand, you believe the sky is the limit, the sky is the limit – even if it takes a lifetime to get there.

 

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Take a Breath for Clarity

Take a Breath for Clarity

by | Dec 9, 2023 | Wellness

It takes very little to spark anxiety. Our internal worlds anticipate worst-case-scenarios while our external environment throws continual curveballs that require all our skills to catch. Every day is an exercise in adaptability. We imagine ourselves managing crisis situations with poise, only to be humbled.

Physiology is not on our side. The path to a fight/flight/freeze response is fast. Once the brain starts cycling that quickly, the ability to decipher communication diminishes. Lessons from past experiences get blocked in the same way students go blank on exams under pressure.

Give yourself a break. A minute or so of breathing done right effectively resets your body, and repairs your temporarily disabled coping skills. Inhale slowly into your belly. Hold that breath for a moment and then let the exhale leak out slowly. Before you know it, your heartrate and blood pressure decrease, muscles relax, brain speed slows down, and the immune system produces more T-cells.

Life’s challenges are constant. Under normal circumstances, we adjust and move forward. Under stressful conditions, some of our strengths disappear temporarily and we’re not always our best selves. Managing the stress effectively awakens maturity. Clarity is only a few deep breaths away.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.