A New Way To Be Thankful It’s common during this season of the year to see “gratitude challenges” on social media, or to create “gratitude jars” at home. I really do love these concepts, and gratitude is something that I help people actively focus on at my counseling practice, Legacy Counseling Service, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Today I […]
Letting Your Emotions Rule? The problem with Emotional Reasoning, Labelling, & OverGeneralizing
In my earlier blog post about mental health and automatic thoughts, I talked about three ways in which we can get stuck in anxiety or depression from automatic thoughts that are “all-or-none thinking,” “mental filter,” and “jumping to conclusions.” As a psychologist at Legacy Counseling Service in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, I frequently help people look […]
How Does a Psychologist Help with Anxiety and Depression? Understanding Black/White Thinking, Mental Filter, and Jumping to Conclusions
Imagine that your mind is like a popcorn machine and your thoughts are like corn kernels. When situations heat up just enough thoughts about anxiety and depression automatically pop up and then settle into the mind (like a full movie theater popcorn machine). All the while more thoughts continue to pop up and fill up […]
11 Cool Apps for Physical and Mental Health
I love some of these apps! Some of them come from the Department of Defense and I used them regularly with veterans to help them keep up with skills in between our sessions. Some I use for myself, and others friends have told me about. Check them out and let me know you top 3 […]
What you Didn’t Know About Stress and Chronic Pain
Throughout the month of February, I’ve been writing about chronic pain. Today I’m going to give you the skinny on how bad stress affects chronic pain. Let’s start with what stress is. We all have stress. If you are a living, breathing, human being you have some degree of stress in your life. Some stress […]
3 Ways to Relax and Manage Chronic Pain
Hi again! Throughout the month of February, I’ve been sharing information about Chronic Pain. Today I’m going to tell you about three ways in which you can use relaxation to manage your pain. One of the hard aspects of dealing with chronic pain is that the pain you have in one area may feel like […]
How a Psychologist Views Chronic Pain
If you have been following my posts this month you know that I’ve been sharing information on Chronic Pain. If you have chronic pain, or if you have a loved one with chronic pain, this may be the first time you’ve ever heard of a psychologist treating pain, and you are probably wonder what we […]
What is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Pain?
Chronic pain is a common medical condition in the United States that is caused from a variety of injuries and illnesses. Chronic pain is very complex and difficult to treat; usually people have better results when a variety of approaches are used, such as medication, psychotherapy, physical therapy or other form of movement/exercise, and even, […]
“It’s All in Your Head”: A Half Truth
Many people with chronic health conditions, such as chronic pain, migraines, Fibromyalgia, and gastrointestinal disorders, might be told that their symptoms are “all in your head” when traditional medicine can’t provide answers. Hearing this can be very frustrating, but this statement may only be a “half-truth”. There are many medical conditions that are difficult to evaluate, […]