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What Is Your Happiness Worth?
By
Sloane Veshinski, LMFT, CAP |
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Are you aware that most Americans spend more on material items than they do on their individual happiness and personal relationships? In the United States, the average American spends upwards of $40,000 for a luxury automobile and approximately $5,000 for a two week family vacation. What if I told you that for far less than the cost of a car or a vacation, you can achieve individual happiness and relationship stability.
The truth is that individuals, couples and families experience a level of both internal and external conflict daily over their own wants and needs, the needs of their children, financial issues, sexual issues and life in general. It is when these daily conflicts become weekly and then last for a month or more, without any relief despite your best efforts that you may need to consider counseling as opposed to a drink, a drug, a vacation, new car, a sparkly bauble or a costly divorce to resolve your issues.
Counseling and therapy have long had a reputation for being only for those who are “crazy” or “out of control”. This is simply not true. Therapy and counseling are available for people who are having individual issues, relationship issues, family issues with children, in-laws or significant others in their life, career challenges, or are dealing with experiences that happened years ago which are still affecting how they are coping with things today. Therapists are not so powerful as to be able to change the past, but they are able to help you see the past in a different way than you currently see it, with a goal of processing and putting to rest uncomfortable or negative experiences so that you can enjoy your life in a full and successful way. The role of the therapist is to facilitate your process of change, not to do the changing for you, so that in the end, you hopefully get what you wanted for far less than you would have spent for some form of external gratification.
When looking for a therapist, the most important criteria to look for is whether or not the therapist is licensed; licensure implies that the person has earned a Masters degree, went through at least two years of post-graduate supervision with a licensed and state approved professional, and passed the state licensure exam. You can also check on a mental health professional’s licensure status by going to your state’s website and click onto the Licensee Look-up area of that site. It is also important that the consumer go to websites that are designated as only listing licensed professionals such as http://www.Goodtherapy.org.
This is clearly a field where there are as many types of therapies as there are therapists. Be sure to review the therapist’s website (if they have one) to make sure that their way of conducting therapy is what you are looking for, interview them over the phone prior to making the first appointment and don’t be shy about letting the therapist know what you are looking for in your therapy experience. Therapy is about you making a commitment to yourself to work on you and your spouse, partner, family issues. Make sure that this is a comfortable process for you and those who are important to you.
Make a commitment to yourself to move forward and be happy – you are worth the investment.
Author's Bio
With over 21 years of experience in the mental health field, I have come to look at stress and conflict from a multidimensional perspective. I believe that conflict comes from unclear or ineffective patterns of interactions, or the dance that people do with one another. Do you notice that at times you move smoothly along the dance floor of life and at other times you just step on each others toes? If you find that the times that go along smoothly are becoming less frequent for you, it's time to look at changing your dance moves or how you interact with the people in your life and how they interact with you. This toe-stomping dance can come about as a result of past experiences, present beliefs or an unspoken, misunderstood, or just plain different idea of whatever is causing the conflict to occur.
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