Counseling News from the Week of July 25,2025

Special Note: This week’s news is a little shorter than some weeks because I’m on vacation, so I haven’t had the time to research as much as I sometimes do. God-willing, I will try to post these news articles from a hotel in Montana.

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

Two good quotes from Levi Lusko

Your job isn’t to understand God, it’s to obey Him. Clarity, frustrating as it can feel in the moment, often comes in hindsight. You might not get it at the time, but obedience now translates to revelation later. Stay the course, He’s got a plan.

Trust shows up over and over in the stories of people who choose to follow Jesus (mine included and I’m guessing yours too). But when we surrender and follow in faith, we don’t just watch Him work we get to be part of it.

"There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot."

Robin Williams

"The secret to happiness, of course, is not getting what you want; it's wanting what you get."

Alex Trebek

"Three secrets to success: Be willing to learn new things. Be able to assimilate new information quickly. Be able to get along with and work with other people."

Sally Ride

Fascinating Facts

Stratospheric skydiver Felix Baumgartner dies in paraglider crash

The internationally known skydiver often nicknamed “Fearless Felix,” who was known for free-falling faster than the speed of sound after he was lifted 24 miles by a helium balloon and then free-fell for several miles before opening his parachute. He participated in many other daring stunts during his lifetime before a fatal accident occurred this past week.

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Counseling Articles

Children Give Life Meaning Across All European Countries

This research study found that all across Europe, having children is associated with feelings of greater meaning in life. This finding held across all age categories, education levels and relationship statuses.

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New Paper Explores the Complex Factors Behind Declining Fertility

Declining birth rates have serious implications for all countries. Declining marriage rates are obviously a factor, but it also appears that shifting priorities among young people and couples is definitely a significant factor. Young people see job satisfaction and friendships as a higher priority than children. Difficulty finding affordable housing can be a factor. Also declining involvement in religion may be contributing. Making employment more compatible with raising children could be helpful. It is interesting to compare this article with the previous one, which found that having children was associated with feelings of greater meaning in life versus the present trend of young people choosing to not have children. See articles for more discussion.

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Why Most Americans Admire Adoption But Don’t Choose It

This research found that most Americans admire adoption but often don’t choose it even when faced with an unexpected pregnancy. It seems that they often don’t consider it because of misinformation. This article corrects some of that information: the information in this article could be helpful if you counsel young women about their options.

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Bread and Honey: Sometimes, marriage is about learning how to braid the bitter with the sweet.

 This is not a counseling article, but it contains a beautifully written description by a Jewish wife of how long-term marriages often contain periods of both closeness and challenges.

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5 Over-the-Counter Supplements Show Promise for Depression, New Review Finds

Many supplements claim to help treat depression, but only a few actually do. Here are the five, some of which work in combination with antidepressants. The first one on this list, St. John’s Wort, while it may help in some cases, has some serious drawbacks (see article), so even though this supplement is in this list, I do not recommend it be used.

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The Data Broker opt-out steps every retiree should take today

Although this article has “retiree” in its headline, the article has information that is probably important for any person to know. There are a dozen Data Broker sites, and they collect publicly available information (name, home address, phone number, email, age, marital status, children’s information, education, job, income, political leanings, health details, location data, and purchasing habits). Fraudsters can use this information to take out loans in your name or even sell your home without your knowledge or consent. They will sell this information to anyone with a credit card. It’s possible to manually request them to remove this information, but it will probably take 15 to 20 hours of your time and will require constant monitoring after that. It is possible to hire a company to do this for you, although the cost might be prohibitive for some retirees. But for younger couples with stable incomes it might be a worthwhile investment. The article explains the process and contains a reduced rate for some people who want to purchase real-time monitoring.

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Landmark 20-Year Study Reshapes Understanding of PTSD

Most research studies of PTSD have been short-term (at most 2 or 3 years). This study was different in that it studied those who were diagnosed with PTSD for 20 years. The results are important for all counselors to know and since they are just released, I recommend all counselors read this article.

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Two Sexual Scandals that Made International News in the Last Two Weeks

Last week I mentioned 8 Hindu monks who were propositioned and gave into temptation with a seductive young woman, who then proceeded to blackmail them, and they were eventually defrocked. This week the news covered a couple who worked at the company Astronomer, who were caught on a videocam that soon played internationally. Andy Byron was the founder of the company, but within 24 hours he had resigned and his wife had initiated divorce proceedings. Kristin Cabot, who is the Director of Human Resources, so is responsible that employees maintain proper relationships with other employees Kristin Cabot, has also resigned.. A public statement from the company on Saturday said: ““As stated previously, Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.” The untold pain this will cause their loved ones, plus this is likely to do significant financial and career damage to both of them. Even though our culture has become more secularized, and many moral values have weakened, it seems that violation of sexual commitments still has serious repercussions. 91% of Americans still believe adultery is wrong. As Robin Schumacher in a Voices article asks: “if you can’t keep the most important promise you’ll ever make to the most important person you’ll ever meet, how can I trust you to keep any promises you make to me?” We are reminded of the enduring truth captured in Proverbs 6:32, which says: “The one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking sense; he who would destroy himself does it.”

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Chrissy Metz, Alexa PenaVega share how God led them to Lifetime’s faith-filled films

Believers can be encouraged by the increasing number of faith-filled films on TV recently. Here a few actors share how God worked in their lives, and how this inspired them to star in faith-encouraging films as well.

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The Mind Science Behind True Resilience

We regularly observe the differences between people who deal with significant stress and overcome it versus those who are often overwhelmed by similar situations. What makes some people more resilient than others? This article, which includes comments from several medical and psychological experts on resilience, is interesting because it identifies the primary ingredient in what makes the difference between resilient persons and those who quickly cave under pressure to the interpretations people make of their circumstances. This means that the things we work on in counseling—interpretations and attitudes—are two of the most important factors in helping people become more resilient.

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Four Biologically, Clinically Distinct Autism Subtypes Identified

In a major change, four clinically distinct autism subtypes have been developed. These have new and very different diagnostic subcategories than previous classifications of autism, so if you work with this population or will be asked to make diagnoses this new information is quite different than anything you have probably read before.

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Michelle Yang on What It Takes to Love Yourself With Bipolar

Michelle Yang has written a book (Phoenix Girl) on what it takes to come to a place in life where you can love yourself even if you have bipolar 1 disorder, are overweight, an immigrant, and were physically and emotionally abused as a child. This article and the book might be helpful to some clients who struggle with self-acceptance, even though they may not have had to deal with all of those problems.

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Born This Way: Bipolar Disorder and My Brain

Although this was written by someone with bipolar disorder, I think it could be helpful to anyone labelled as neurotypical (e.g., including anyone with ADHD) or for almost anyone, because each of us has minds that are strong in some areas and not so strong in other areas. She encourages all of us (and all our clients) to focus on the areas where our minds are beautiful rather than, as we so often do, on the areas where we are unhappy with our minds.

How I Calm My Dysregulated ADHD Nervous System

In recent weeks more attention has been placed on recognizing that women with ADHD have for too long gone undiagnosed. Here is the story of one woman who wasn’t diagnosed until late in life, who attributed her feeling “off”-- overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted, or hyper-alert, without an explanation of why. Some of you may have middle-aged or older women who have lived with experiences like hers, and the reason might be undiagnosed ADHD.

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3 things pastors should know about grief

Although this title suggests it was written for pastors, I think this article would be of benefit to counselors as well, because it talks about three things that the writers of GriefShare have learned over the years. Counselors as well as pastors deal with grief over the loss of a loved one through death or divorce, and its helpful to be reminded of the things they have learned about grief, some of which may question some of the things we learned in academic textbooks.

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I hope you have a wonderful week!

Henry Virkler