Articles from the Week of September 6, 2024
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
"Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes."
PETER DRUCKER
Learning never exhausts the mind.
Leonardo da Vinci
Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.
Mary Tyler Moore
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."
Thomas Paine
The only thing we can do is honestly learn from our falls.
Ai Weiwei
Fascinating Facts
“Forks were considered sinful in the Middle Ages.”
“While forks are now a mundane and commonplace item at most dining room tables, they were once quite controversial. In the Middle Ages, many Christian Europeans considered the act of eating with a fork to be a sinful affront to God. According to some clergymen of the time, God had already given human beings 10 natural forks, in the form of the fingers on their own hands, so daring to use an artificial accessory to spear food was an offense to the Lord and his divine gifts. Not only did using a fork insult the fingers that God gifted to humanity, the thinking went, but it also insulted the food God had provided: To use a fork meant you thought the Lord’s bounty was unworthy of being touched by your hands. Forks were so frowned upon in medieval European society that when a Byzantine princess living in Venice died of the plague, her death was said to be God’s punishment for her ostentatious and hubristic custom of eating her food with a fork.” (Source: HistoryFacts.com)
“High Heels Were Originally for Men”
“High heels have long been a symbol of femininity, but that wasn’t always the case. The shoes, which are thought to date all the way back to the 10th century, were invented for a practical rather than sartorial reason: horseback riding. Anyone who’s placed their feet in stirrups while sitting atop a noble steed knows that it can be difficult to actually keep your feet inside them, and some enterprising equine enthusiast eventually realized that an extended heel allowed for a more secure fit.
“In addition to leisure, horseback riding was a crucial element of warfare, meaning that there was a time when entire armies rode into battle wearing high heels. Eventually people realized that this kind of footwear was pleasing to the eye, and in the 17th century high heels became a gender-neutral fashion statement — especially among those who wanted to show off their upper-class credentials (heels were associated with horses, and only the wealthy tended to own them). As for how heels became linked to women, it wasn’t haute couture but rather pin-up photography that brought them back in vogue.” (Source: InterestingFacts.com)
Counseling Articles
The Marriage Paradox
The authors point out that although statistics show that a smaller percentage of young people are getting married, research is increasingly showing that men and women who are married are markedly more financially secure, less lonely, and report greater happiness than their peers who are not married. Marriage seems to be best for men, women and children.
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Being Good Makes Kids Feel Good
Every parent wants their child to be happy, but what causes a child to feel happy? Older research often concluded that young children feel happy when they achieve their material desires (e.g. obtaining a desired toy) or enjoying simple pleasures. More recent research has added another factor—children often associate feelings of happiness with doing and being good.
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Oregon, Citing Failed Experiment, Will Bring Back Criminal Penalties for Illicit Drugs Starting Next Week
Four years ago Oregon began an experiment to see whether decriminalizing penalties for use of fentanyl, meth, heroin and cocaine would improve their state’s situation. They decided that experiment was a failure, and this past Sunday, September 1, criminal penalties for possessing any of those illicit drugs will be reimposed. This change was due in part to the significant increase in fatal overdoses caused by those drugs.
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Load-Bearing Walls: How Denying Biological Reality Harms Us All
A good discussion of how the Biden administration’s changes to Title IX regulations hurts us all.
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Why I regret doing cringey OnlyFans: Australian model speaks out
If you have a young client who is considering going on OnlyFans, here is an Australian young person who makes some objective comments about her experience on OnlyFans and why she now regrets making that decision. She makes no references to Christianity, so her column would also speak to young people who do not identify with the Christian faith.
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When Your Teen Says Weed Is the Only Thing That “Helps”
Teens with ADHD often start to use pot and may resist parents who try to convince them to stop, saying it is the only thing that helps them. Here is some good advice for such parents.
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Childhood emotional neglect, the long-lasting impact of what wasn’t there (part 1 of 2)
This article was recommended to me by Wynne Stallings, one of our clinical members. It is written by a seasoned therapist and talks about adults who were emotionally neglected (not abused) when they were children, and the possible impacts their neglect may be having on them as adults. Part 2, which you can log onto after reading Part 1, talks about steps you can take with your client to help them learn the life skills they possibly did not learn when they were growing up. It’s likely that some of your clients can be helped by parts of the articles, since most of us were raised by parents who were not perfect.
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Rethinking Codependence
For many years some of us have been troubled when therapists labeled all genuine caring as codependency—it seemed like there is a genuine Christian caring for people in trouble that should not automatically be labeled as pathological. Robert Weiss, whom some of you may know because of his long and respected career in the substance abuse and pornography addiction fields, has developed an alternative that he calls prodependence, which involves taking an active stance when someone is hurting or abusing substances that does not in any way reinforce their unhealthy behavior. This is a highly worthwhile concept for all Christian counselors to consider.
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Doctors warn this trendy diet could lead to ‘heart issues and dementia’: ‘Playing with fire’
If you have clients who come in you asking about the “carnivore diet” promoted on TikTok and other places, where people eat only meat and meat products, you can tell them that doctors say that it could lead to both heart issues and dementia.
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5 Tips to Manage Manic Hypersexuality in Bipolar
For those people with bipolar disorder, hypersexuality can have devastating consequences on relationships and health. I may have included this article before, but it has five common-sense tips for clients who face this.
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When Smartphones Get Smarter, Do We Get Dumber?
This is a really worthwhile article to read because it summarizes the impact of access to smartphones on a number of topics, including not only memory and thinking, but also relationships, spirituality and other issues. It also has a good clarification of the difference between AI and human intelligence and thinking.
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Young girls are using anti-aging products they see on social media. The harm is more than skin deep
If you work with young girls or parents of young girls you may want to be aware of this. Some girls as young as 8 watch videos on TikTok and spend as long as hours a day on skin care routines for fear of aging. But young girls often end up doing the just the opposite, and their routines sometimes results in harming their skin or even causing scarring. See article for further details.
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How a Leading Chain of Psychiatric Hospitals Traps Patients
“Acadia Healthcare is holding people against their will to maximize insurance payouts, a Times investigation found.” One of the hospitals is in Florida, (Park Royal Behavioral Health Services, which you may receive advertisements from) which held a social worker who went in to get her bipolar medication adjusted. You may not be able to read this article without a New York Times subscription, although there is a way to read a limited number of articles without a subscription.
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Understanding the Role of Neuroplasticity in Senior Brain Health
Although this is written for seniors, it’s a good explanation of how neuroplasticity helps us all throughout our developmental journey.
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Researchers Introduce Yet Another New Sexuality
In case you weren’t satisfied that the newest acronym (LGBTQQIP2SA) which stands for all the sexual identities was complete enough, researchers at Seattle University have come up with a new sexual identity, “symbiosexual” which refers to someone who is infatuated with preexisting couples. Symbiosexuals are to be distinguished from “throuples” who are persons in a three-person, “committed” relationship. If you need more detail you may consult the article below.
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What does ENM mean? Your polyamory questions, answered.
Polyamory generally is defined as consensual non-monogamy, where people have committed sexual and emotional relationships with two or more people with the full consent of their spouse. There are a number of new terms that have been developed that describe various phenomena within the polyamorous culture. Included among those terms is ENM, solo polyamory, metamour, kitchen-table polyamory, polysaturation, relationship escalator, and relationship anarchy. If you have one or more clients in the polyamorous culture, you may want to learn these terms if you do not already know them.
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22 Small Things That People Say Made Them Drastically Happier
The editors of the Huffington Post asked readers to send in small changes they had made in their lives that have made them happier. Probably you or your clients could consider trying one or more of these things to see if they improve your life.
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Lab-grown stem cells may aid cancer treatment
This is not a counseling-related article, but it is such a significant medical advance because it could save your life or the life of a loved one someday. Up until now some cancer treatments have been plagued by lack of access to donor stem cells. Now a new technique has been developed that allows the patient’s own stem cells to be modified and then grown in the laboratory. Its only been used in mice now, but hopefully will soon be available for human treatments.
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How to Be On-Time (for those with ADHD and anyone who has time getting places on time)
Here are 10 practical tips to help people increase the likelihood that they will be on time. If you go to the article, you’ll find a different title, but I like the above one better.
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Mobile phones do not give you brain cancer, major study concludes
You will be happy to know that a five-year study commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO), which combed through 5,000 studies, found that there was no increase in brain cancer in those who used cellphones. This is in a British newspaper so you may not be able to read it but I’ve given you the gist of it.
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Long-Term Cannabis Use Significantly Increases Risk of Heart Disease and Death
More bad research news for those who are long-term users or heavy users of cannabis, and especially for women and those who start using during their teen years.
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Sextortion: An Increasing Risk for Youth in the Digital Age
Sextortion is this psychiatrist’s term for the situation when someone seduces a teen (or anyone) to send a sexually-explicit picture of themselves and then attempts to extort them into sending money or something else so that recipient will not reveal that explicit picture to others. Some teens have committed suicide out of shame. Please warn your teen clients about this growing phenomenon.
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Rethinking Addiction as a Chronic Brain Disease
You may have seen some newspaper titles where some people are rethinking addiction as a chronic brain disease. However, some mental health professionals are cautioning that this is unwise, because it may cause some clients/patients to view their addiction as lifelong and incurable.
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Understanding Love at First Sight
The concept of love at first sight has attracted a great deal of interest as well as skepticism. This article provides a balanced introduction to the various factors that cause it in some people.
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I’m Sure My Mom Has ADHD, But She Refuses to Be Evaluated.
What’s a person to do when their parent or some other relative probably has ADHD but refuses to be evaluated? This short article has a good, suggested approach.
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Mental Resilience Linked to Longer Life—Study
Resilience, the ability to bounce back after life’s difficulties, has been found to lead to longer life, even when people have struggled with factors such as diabetes, cancer, stroke, etc. It has been shown to have an even greater effect on women than on men. It seems very related to having a sense of purpose about one’s life. As counselors we can help our clients develop resilience as part of the work we do with them.
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I hope you have a wonderful week or weekend!
Henry Virkler