Mental Health Counselling

Since the beginning of time we have told stories to each other. As we have become more articulate, we have learned to include metaphors to emphasize our point. A story or metaphor can "paint a verbal picture", and help express what we really feel, think, and believe. For those in the wellbeing space, this is a potential goldmine for exploration and opportunity.

This groundbreaking text goes to the very heart of the therapeutic meeting between therapist and client. Focusing on the concept of "relational depth", the authors describe a form of encounter in which therapist and client experience profound feelings of contact and engagement with each other, and in which the client has an opportunity to explore whatever is experienced as most fundamental to her or his existence.

“To treat, even to cure, is not always to heal.” In this expansive cultural history of the treatment and healing of mental suffering, Kay Jamison writes about psychotherapy, what makes a great healer, and the role of imagination and memory in regenerating the mind. From the trauma of the battlefields of the twentieth century, to those who are grieving, depressed, or with otherwise unquiet minds, to her own experience with bipolar illness, Jamison demonstrates how remarkable psychotherapy and other treatments can be when done well.

The Couples Therapy Workbook: 30 Guided Conversations to Re-Connect Relationships is a series of guided questions to promote meaningful conversations between couples and build ongoing, connected communication. The core of this unique guide is 30 guided conversations of the most critical relationship struggles. For each of the 30 topics, there is an introduction, goal-setting strategies, and 10 scripted questions to ask each other—all presented in an easy-to-use, mindful style.

Death is the last taboo in our society, and grief is still profoundly misunderstood. So many of us feel awkward and uncertain around death and shy away from talking honestly with family and friends. Grief Works is a compassionate guide that will inform and engage anyone who is grieving, from the expected death of a parent to the sudden unexpected death of a small child, and provide clear advice for those seeking to comfort the bereaved.

When treating a client who has suffered from interpersonal trauma - whether chronic childhood abuse or domestic violence, for example - talk therapy isn't always the most effective course. For these individuals, the trauma and its effects are so entrenched, so complex, that reducing their experience to a set of symptoms or suggesting a change in cognitive frame or behavioral pattern ignores a very basic but critical player: the body.

An essential resource for psychologists, therapists, and clinicians to help clients understand dissociation, make sense of their parts, and visualize depersonalization and derealization—a stigma-free guide from the bestselling author of Dissociation Made Simple.

Strengthening, calming, and stabilizing the mind is the essential first step in accomplishing nearly any goal. Growing up American with a Tibetan twist, Sakyong Mipham talks to Westerners as no one can: in idiomatic English with stories and wisdom from American culture and the great Buddhist teachers. Turning the Mind Into an Ally makes it possible for anyone to achieve peace and clarity in their lives.

The act of caregiving is physically exhausting and emotionally draining, yet caregivers describe it as rewarding and gratifying. Prolonged exposure to human suffering, however, is not without risks - caregivers report high rates of burnout and poor quality of life.

Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder is designed to be practical and useful. It is made particularly for the therapist new to dissociative identity disorder (DID) who needs brief, to-the-point guidance on how to begin working with someone with DID. The audiobook includes many therapist-client dialogues that illustrate the techniques and strategies Dr. Ross has learned over the years.

We have learned how to suppress our pain and deny its presence, but when we fight against our internal turmoil, glimmers of peace are short-lived. Rejecting our suffering is not a sustainable solution because trauma is held in the body. In this book, Nityda Gessel invites listeners on a journey toward lasting freedom, with insights and experiential practices that marry the wisdom of Buddhist psychology, yogic teachings, and Indigenous understanding with somatic psychotherapy and neuroscience.

Integrating Geek Culture into Therapeutic Practice: The Clinician's Guide to Geek Therapy, the 2nd Edition, is a comprehensive compendium of how Geek Therapy clinicians and scholars currently use a variety of games, media artifacts, and other geek culture items in therapeutic context and intervention. Even more important, the authors within this book are currently at the forefront of their research fields and are accordingly considered experts within the growing field of Geek Therapy clinical practice.

Peter Fraenkel presents a practical, creative, integrative approach that combines action- and insight-oriented techniques to help last-chance couples manage conflict, modulate intense negative emotions, address power struggles, develop mutual compassion, and restore emotional intimacy and pleasurable connection. Special attention is paid to developing a collaborative therapeutic alliance when partners have little motivation for therapy or faith that it can be effective. Through engaging in "nonbinding experiments in possibility," partners can then better evaluate whether to "stay or go."

Counselors and psychotherapists are faced with ever-increasing complexity in their work with adolescents. In this book, Bronagh Starrs offers an understanding of developmental and therapeutic process from a relational-phenomenological Gestalt perspective. Starrs shows how the adolescent's presenting symptom issues are statements of compromised life space integrity and demonstrates therapeutic sensibility to the adolescent's first-person experience. Throughout the book, the clinician is offered extensive relational and creative strategies to support integrity repair for the adolescent.

Challenges the notion that clients with PTSD must revisit, review, and process their memories to recover from trauma. Multiple therapeutic transcripts illuminate key points in trauma treatment, including stabilizing clients who dissociate, identifying and implementing hidden somatic resources, and utilizing good memories and somatic markers. With an authoritative yet personal voice, Rothschild's book is essential listening for anyone working with those who have experienced trauma.

Mending the Soul, newly revised and updated, provides a well-researched biblical and scientific understanding of the complexity of abuse, its effects, and an integrated path to healing.

It takes quite a lot of courage to admit that you might be of a narcissistic nature, or even to seek proof that you aren’t. If you’re searching for a way to be better, Self-Aware Narcissism: How to Stop Being a Narcissist is for you. Maybe you’ve served time, broken your marriage, or lost your job because of self-centered behavior? Maybe you’re worried one of these outcomes is just around the corner for you?

Across the globe, therapists are using tabletop roleplaying games (RPG) such as Dungeons & Dragons as a part of their practice. This book provides an overview of what RPGs are and what makes them such an effective and powerful tool for therapy. By examining research on gaming, flow, immersion, and role-play, listeners will gain a better understanding of the theoretical underpinnings and how to skillfully and ethically use RPGs in their own practices.

Childhood sexual abuse (or child sexual abuse/CSA) is not only an assault on the body—it is an assault on the mind and on the spirit. It is an insult to the victim’s integrity, her self-esteem, his very being. Besides imposing a significantly higher risk of conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sexual exploitation, intimate partner violence, suicidality, substance abuse, and learning & educational difficulties, the most devastating consequence of childhood sexual abuse is shame.

This extraordinary book presents scenarios of one family's therapy experience and explains what underlies each encounter. You will discover the general patterns that are common to all families - stress, polarization and escalation, scapegoating, triangulation, blaming, and the diffusion of identity - and you will gain a vivid understanding of the intriguing field of family therapy.