Counseling News from the Week of June 5, 2026
Explanation: Although I scan the Internet primarily for counseling articles, in the process I run across quotes and interesting facts that I sometimes include in these first two sections. If you’re just interested in the counseling articles, you can skip these first two sections and go directly to the section called Counseling Articles. HV
Interesting Quotes
"Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers."
Voltaire
“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”
Robert Frost
"Fatigue, discomfort, discouragement are merely symptoms of effort."
Morgan Freeman
“Rest satisfied with doing well and leave others to talk of you as they please.”
Pythagoras
I think our job as parents is to give our kids roots to grow and wings to fly.
Deborah Norville
Fascinating Facts: I’m not going to include anything in this section because of all the interesting scientifically-related and counseling-related articles published this week.
Counseling Articles
What Does Our Modern Economy Offer Men?
In previous decades men and women were both respected in their traditional roles. This female author makes a number of observations about how our contemporary culture is undermining men and their self-confidence as men, and so may be contributing to the fact that some men are failing to “grow up” and assume the responsibilities needed to establish careers and households. I think her article can alert us all to the ways our contemporary culture is doing this, and hopefully, give us insights to be able to start changing this trend.
Click here to read the full article
Lab-Made Babies Won't Solve the Fertility Crisis
The fact that almost all cultures are not producing children at the replacement rate necessary to maintain current tax revenues and governmental and social services predicts severe cultural results in the coming decades (in some cultures the problems are already here, as in Japan, where robots are needed to care for the elderly). If one reads the literature from evolutionary psychologists, one could become seriously depressed about the future. However, there are islands of hope—young men and young women who are developing their lives around God’s plan for living. See the descriptions of these two contrasting scenarios.
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IFS Files Amicus Brief in Support of Texas App Store Safety Law
At first this title didn’t seem to have any relevance to Christian counselors and Christian parents. But after reading it, this lawsuit is very relevant to Christian counselors and Christian parents, and their ability to guide their children and protect them from the many harms that are out there. I encourage both counselors and Christian parents to read the reasons why this lawsuit is so important to all of us.
Click here to read the full article
A Free-Range Childhood Is Key to Civic Infrastructure
Another title that initially seemed to have little relevance to helping families grow up healthily today. But the author makes the point that encouraging children to have the freedom to visit peers and to learn to play together and work out differences between each other (rather than always having parents do this for them) helps prepare them for adulthood. While helping parents move toward a more free-range childhood may be a challenge in today’s culture, read the article and decide whether there would be some benefits to them doing so.
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The Road to Hell Is Being Paved With Suicidal Empathy
As counselors we’ve been schooled to believe that empathy—the ability to understand the world of another—is good. But more and more speakers and writers are saying that empathy must be combined with other things, reason and science, common sense, and for the Christian, Judeo-Christian values. This new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind by Gad Saad, talks about this.
Click here to read the full article
These People Visited the ‘Other Side,’ and Came Back Completely Changed
Of those who visited the ‘Other Side’ (an alternative way of saying they had Near Death Experiences), about 80% come back significantly changed, and these changes apparently seem to last for many years, perhaps even for the rest of their lives. Quoting from the article, “Compared to people who did not have near-death experiences, those who did were much less afraid of death, more likely to believe in an afterlife, more interested in the meaning of life, and felt more love and compassion.” Many said that the changes came from conversations they had with a friend who had already died, or from a “Being of Light.”
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Want to ‘Optimize’ Your Happiness? This Happiness Expert Says: Don’t.
This is from the New York Times, and it’s a long article, so I’ll summarize its basic points. The focus of the article is on Laurie Santos, who is a cognitive scientist and is considered a “happiness expert.” She has written a book about happiness and has a free on-line course on the subject. She identifies two basic kinds of happiness; the first kind is hedonic happiness, which comes from having pleasurable experiences. The second kind she calls eudaimonic happiness, that comes from having a sense of purpose in one’s life. She suggests that people who pursue hedonic happiness as their only goal will often become less happy.
From a Christian perspective, I think the happiness that comes from having God in our lives and trying to live out His precepts is what can give us eudaimonic happiness.
Click here to read the full article
Is Listening to a Book Really the Same as Reading One
This 15-minute video by Makai Elias Calles compared reading by adults (this research does not apply to young children, who are still learning to read). For light reading, such as reading stories, audiobooks were good, but for dense material, such as college texts, when the students took quizzes afterward, the students who read actual textbooks versus those who listened to the same material on an audiobook scored 28% higher than those who listened to the same material via audiobook. Other research found that reading technical material in a textbook was slightly better than reading it on a Kindle. So it seems that, for adult readers, what you are reading and how much you want to remember afterward is important in terms of choosing the format.
Click here to read the full article
Free Video Series on Socialism
Many young people, and a growing number of politicians, believe that socialism is the most equitable way for a country to govern itself. Initially this does seem like a fair way to apportion wealth. But there are problems with how this has worked out—in the Soviet Union, in Cuba, in Venezuela, and other countries, which went from prosperous countries to countries where most citizens live at the poverty level (only the elite became rich). This video series from Prager University are five-minute videos, often narrated by people who either are from those countries or who have studied those countries extensively, that are highly informative. They explain how socialism works and why it leads to impoverished citizens for everyone except the elite. They also explain why the Scandinavian countries, which have socialized medicine, are exceptions. These countries have maintained market economies, which produce enough wealth to sustain socialized medicine and maintain a healthy standard of living for their citizens. It is those countries that have adopted socialism for their markets as well as their medicine that have produced impoverished conditions for the majority. I highly encourage you or anyone who believes socialism would be a good plan for America to adopt to watch the Socialism 101 series. And since in November we will have national elections, which include several candidates who advocate socialism for the U.S., please share this series with others and encourage them to watch it before they vote in November.
Click here to read the full article
What’s the purpose [and timing] of the rapture?
Although not a counseling article per se, this question is of interest to most Christians, and a few might occasionally bring concerns about this topic to counseling. Scripture teaches that Christ will definitely return at some time to rapture His church and take them to be with Him for eternity. But there have been many theories and many debates about when this will actually occur. This article identifies five of those theories. Having studied the arguments for these theories extensively, I believe that whether God delivers us from the Tribulation or stays with us during it, I think we can rest in the assurance that He will always be with us.
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What About Our Kids?
A brief, but important article for parents and counselors about what are the most important things for parents to want for our children (hint: it’s probably not just about being happy).
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Tech Billionaire Claims Brain Implants Will Perform Miracles
Elon Musk has raised questions with his statement that Neuralink will produce “Jesus-level miracles of science.” While Neuralink does seem to have the potential to produce significant medical breakthroughs, Musk has been known in the past to make overly-optimistic predictions about his discoveries. Whatever the future holds, we know that God is the one who gave humans the ability to discover and to innovate, and so whatever does develop can be one more example of His goodness.
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Scientists are finally moving away from the UN-backed climate doomerism that scared a generation of young adults off having babies
For the last decade young people have been warned of climate doomerism and professional groups like the American Psychological Association have echoed this refrain, which undoubtedly has had an impact on lowering birth rates as hope for continued life on planet Earth has plummeted. To quote from the article, “New reporting indicates that much of the climate anxiety shaping millennial and Gen Z attitudes toward the future was manufactured through years of exaggerated predictions, catastrophic media framing, activist incentives and scientific models that are now being quietly reconsidered or outright abandoned.”
Click here to read the full article
Christian Psychologists in Brazil Fight to Express Their Faith
We know that many clients who are Christians want to go to a counselor who will support their religious convictions rather than attack them. But in Brazil, although it is a primarily Christian nation, there is a prohibition against identifying one’s religious faith with their profession, e.g., identifying themselves as a “Christian psychologist.” Americans recognize this as an important free speech right, but apparently not in every country, even in predominantly Christian countries such as Brazil, this is not taken for granted, even though I think the arguments that this Christian psychologist makes (that clients prefer to go to a counselor who reflects their values) are valid.
Click here to read the full article
The Dangers Of Artificial Intelligence
I think there is no question that AI is here to stay and that it has many good things to offer us. Many public schools are introducing it in every grade, starting with kindergarten. This week it was reported that AI just solved a math problem that kept mathematicians puzzled for 80 years. But this article raises some thoughtful concerns about AI that educators and legislators need to address.
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How to Design a Soft Life: Spaces That Take the Edge Off ADHD
In this article people with ADHD give suggestions about every room in their homes and things they have done to make it a “safe space” for them.
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Six surprising signs of ADHD you might not spot
This article is from a British newspaper, the Telegraph, so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription, but since its content is so interesting and not typically covered in American courses in psychopathology I’ll summarize its major points. While most people think of people with ADHD as being hyperactive and impulsive, according to Abrahm Kustlow, a consulting psychiatrist and the author of How to Thrive with Adult ADHD, in women it often shows up in different ways. Those six ways include:
- 1. Risk-taking in sex and relationships
- 2. Being bendy (hypermobile), clumsy and exhausted
- 3. Eating disorders and ‘never feeling full’ (women with ADHD have a higher incidence of binge-eating disorder, bulimia, and anorexia)
- 4. Workaholism and being almost too organized
- 5. Insomnia, vivid dreams and sleep apnea
- 6. Hypersensitivity to noise, light and textures
- Click here to read the full article
Garbage Goodbye: In Blow to Junk RNA, “Majority” of Transcription Not “Background Noise”
For many years we have been told that much of our RNA is “junk RNA.” New research has found that the great majority of it is not junk but is important guiding the development of DNA and to preserving life.
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Pope Leo is wrong about just war — especially in the age of Artificial Intelligence
Just war theory was never intended to encourage war. Just the opposite: it intended to make it harder to justify going to war. But there are times when going to war is justified, e.g., when a country is attacked, as the U.S. was in WWII, and Ukraine by Russia last year. And the introduction of AI into war, where potentially autonomous killing machines could conceivably go on killing rampages with no moral safeguards, make this even more complicated. This author makes the point that this new situation makes it even important to have a doctrine of what a just war is, and to apply that doctrine more rigorously.
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New Trials Show ECT and MST Both Effective in Reducing Bipolar Depression & “Unipolar” Major Depression, with a Safety Advantage for MST
New studies in treating unipolar depression and bipolar depression comparing electro-convulsive therapy with magnetic seizure therapy found that both reduced symptoms, but that MST produced less memory loss and cognitive symptoms than did ECT.
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Is Your Teen Rebelling? Here’s What You Need to Know
Mark Gregston says that teens rebelling is rarely about rebellion but about something else. Read his surprising answer and his suggestions for parents.
Click here to read the full article
Have a wonderful week!
Henry Virkler