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Helpful Articles

Helpful Articles by Elizabeth Myers

Building Healthy Relationships

Healthy relationships allow for individuality, bring out the best in both people, and invite personal growth. Take a look at all your relationships – do they meet up to these standards? And if not, why not? It takes two to tango, so be honest about looking at your own feelings and behaviors before you look at someone else’s.

What Is Happiness?

There have been a series of articles in various papers recently asking the question “what is happiness?” In recent years, there has been some serious research to find an answer to this question. Interestingly, the more one thinks about it, the more one reads, the less of an idea one has on what the word happiness actually means.

Telling Your Story in Therapy

If you were to tell your life story, which story would you tell? For most of us, when we come to the pretty big decision that we need help, it is in part because we feel that we are not being heard in our relationships, in part because that way we are being heard by the listener is through the filters of his or her own experiences, judgments and hurts, in part because there are often stories that we have never told anyone.

Why Tell Your Life Story - Part II

When our life stories are spoken out loud and shared with family and friends, they lose their power over you. When these stories are shared with a trained counselor, often for the first time, they still do have a tremendous hold over you, over your behavior, your feelings, your relationships. The job of the therapist is thus to help you separate out the past and the present, your old story versus the one you are now living. Because you do have the choice about which story you live.

Why Tell Your Life Story

Why do we tell our stories and enjoy listening to others? If you were asked to tell your story, what story would you tell?

Controlling Anger Before It Controls You

Anger is a completely normal, usually healthy, human emotion. But when it gets out of control and turns destructive, it can lead to problems—problems at work, in your personal relationships, and in the overall quality of your life. Controlling your angry responses and reacting appropriately, ie with respect for yourself and others, can keep you from being extremely unhappy in life.

Suicide Prevention and Intervention

Have you ever known anyone what has attempted suicide? Chances are you have. This is why last month, I attended a suicide intervention training called ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training). The ASIST training breaks the intervention into 3 phases: Connection, Understanding and Assisting

How to Find Mental Health Care When Money is Tight

Is this you or someone you know? You are struggling - mentally, emotionally, physically - with the stress of these economic times. You may be stuck in a dead end job, or you may not be employed at all. You may not be able to pay your monthly bills. You might be fighting with your spouse or your children. You don't know what to do. So you do nothing.
If this sounds like you or someone you know, you are not alone. According to a recent survey, the main reason that people with mental health issues do not seek treatment is because of cost. But care does not have to be expensive, and over time, you may even see that the benefit so outweighs the cost that you wonder what took you so long to get the help you needed.

Do You Suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) may result after exposure to a traumatic event, with symptoms ranging from nightmares or headaches, flashbacks, anxiety, anger, emotional numbing, depression, guilt and others. Without treatment, many struggle with these sympthoms for life.

Relax, Refocus, Regenerate

The winter season is ending and many people are facing even greater financial and emotional pressures. As stress builds, relationships become strained and people turn to stress reduction strategies which have worked for them in the past. In this valley, that is often exercise and/or a few extra beers or glasses of wine every evening. These are not bad strategies, but they do not lead people anywhere. They do not offer “ways out” or solutions from which people can grow and learn.

Does Depression Impact You?

October 8 is National Depression Screening Day. Given that we seem to have as many national days as Hallmark can dream up, I usually pay no attention to these. But this year, for reasons we have been reading about in this paper in recent months, I am making note of October 8 because this has been a year in which so many people have struggled. Here in the Vail Valley, over the past year, there has been approximately one suicide a week. Not all of these are reported, but the fact remains, this is something we need to all pay attention to. This is a small valley and the fact that people in this beautiful place find life so unbearable that they make the choice to end it is incomprehensible. And yet they do.

The Samaritan Way

A holistic view of health is something we have all become comfortable with. We like to think that we take care of different parts of ourselves when we exercise our bodies, hang out with our friends, buy food at the local markets, sleep well, limit alcohol intake (just enough that's good for our heart!), see our doctor once a year for our physical, and pop a few vitamins for good measure. And we are taking care of ourselves. But some of us think less about the health of our brain, or our spirit, if we want to call it that, or even, our mind. We are comfortable enough with ourselves that exploring how and why we do things is not somewhere we really want to go.