Counseling News from the Week of August 1,2025
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
"Life’s a roller coaster you don’t always get to choose the seat you’re in, but you can choose to throw your hands up and enjoy the ride."
Anonymous
"If we don't care about our past we can't have very much hope for our future."
Jacqueline Kennedy
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not but rejoices for those which he has.”
Epictetus
"Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths."
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity.”
Isaac Newton
"Talent without effort is wasted talent. And while effort is the one thing you can control in your life, applying that effort intelligently is next on the list."
Mark Cuban
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
Theodore Roosevelt
Fascinating Facts
Memory
While not a counseling article, this article on the various types of memory, and some of the hypertext links it includes, offer some fascinating information and information that could potentially be helpful in counseling.
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World's 'Oldest' IVF Baby
“A baby boy born in Ohio on July 26 has set a world record as the oldest baby ever born from a frozen embryo. Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was conceived from an embryo created and cryopreserved in 1994 by Linda Archerd during an in vitro fertilization cycle.”
“Now 62, Archerd donated her remaining embryos after menopause through a process known as embryo adoption, in which donors have input on where embryos are placed and which are often handled by Christian agencies. Lindsey and Tim Pierce adopted the embryo, which had been stored for over 30 years in a slow-frozen plastic vial.”
Counseling Articles
Optimists share similar brain patterns when thinking about the future, scans show
Previous research has shown that optimists experience many positive benefits over pessimists. What this research found was that optimists had very similar brain wave patterns in the medial prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain associated with future-oriented thinking) when presented with a series of possible future scenarios, whereas pessimists showed a variety of brain wave patterns to these same scenarios. This research doesn’t tell us how to help pessimists develop more optimistic brain wave patterns, but the article on resilience from last week gives us a good clue to consider. I think if we systematically attempted to help pessimists change their perceptions and attitudes in a more positive direction and then measured the results (and possibly repeated these brain scans before and after the interventions), we might be able to answer the question of whether it is possible to help pessimists become more optimistic.
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How to Safely Taper Benzodiazepines According to Patient Response: New Guideline
Patients who have been on benzodiazepines for a year or longer are likely to have developed dependence and may experience serious withdrawal symptoms if the tapering is not done correctly. This well-done research used clinicians and patients working together to develop tapering guidelines. Since many of the doctors who prescribe benzos (and probably therefore monitor tapering) may not be aware of these new guidelines, if you are a substance abuse counselor you may want to download these new guidelines and help doctors who may oversee tapering become aware of them.
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Men need to lower their standards on dating apps, new study shows
This study reviewed a large number of men and women and their use of dating apps. It found that men tended to view their own desirability as higher than it actually was and tended to look for women who were more desirable than themselves. As far as ultimately successful matches, it found that when men and women were more matched in their desirability, they were more likely to have successful outcomes.
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How to Explain Your Bipolar to Friends and Family
These next two articles are by writer/bloggers who both have bipolar disorder themselves and offer excellent advice. This one is by Julie Fast and discusses how to explain bipolar disorder to friends and family, how it is different from normal mood changes, and some sample scripts to use to help people understand what it is like living with bipolar disorder.
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7 Things to Know About Paranoia in Bipolar Disorder
Paranoia, an intense and irrational mistrust or suspicion of others, often occurs during the manic or depressed phases of bipolar disorder, but it also may be present in less intense form in between mood episodes. It is more likely to occur in those who have experienced abuse during childhood. Tanya Hvilivitsky discusses this and also gives several suggestions for those who struggle with paranoia.
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Large-scale genome-wide analyses of stuttering
Probably all of us will run into a client sometime who stutters, and this careful research study will give you some good background about the condition.
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Goodbye Gentle Parenting, Hello ‘F—Around and Find Out’
Gentle parenting has been popular among some parents for the last few years, but some have criticized it for leading to “feral children.” Although the term used in this article is a little stronger than I would prefer, it does communicate how some people feel after seeing the results of gentle parenting.
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First Pill for Postpartum Depression Shows Varied Real-World Results
About one in eight women experiences significant depression sometime during the first year after birth. The first pill for postpartum depression, Zuranolone, works faster than other antidepressants, and it works for about 60% of postpartum women, but does not benefit everyone. I’ve summarized the main points of this article, since it’s from the New York Times, and you won’t be able to read it without a subscription.
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Will the Transgender Consensus Hold?
Probably most of us, as 80% of Americans agree, that biological men should not compete against biological women in athletic competitions, should not be allowed in women’s restrooms, and should not be housed in women’s prisons. This author concludes that this consensus will continue within our culture.
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Trans-Identified Male Athletes Have Stolen 1,941 Gold Medals: Report
Just to underscore the fact that the above issue is a problem, this article compiles the number of gold medal stolen by males claiming to be females.
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DIVORCE RATE AT A 50-YEAR LOW
In news that is likely to be an encouragement to Christians and to most marriage and family counselors, the divorce rate is now at a 50-year low and the number of children being raised in two-parent families is increasing. Our culture seems to be recognizing the value of parents remaining together and working out problems and providing a two-parent foundation for their children.
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No Longer a Coin Toss: Less than Half of Marriages Predicted to End in Divorce
This article, by a postdoctoral student, explains why the often-used metric of comparing the number of marriages and divorces within a year gives an incorrect number. Based on his reasoning (which seems quite plausible to me), he estimates that 42% of marriages that occur today will end in divorce. Besides the tremendous pain divorce causes the marital couple, see the next article about why this is still far too high.
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Is it time to admit that divorce hurts kids big time?
When couples are struggling with marital problems, this next article might be helpful in motivating them to continue working to try to resolve their problems.
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Music Strikes a Chord for Brain Health
A very interesting article on how music may be helpful to some individuals with psychological or neurological disorders. The comments are conservatively framed, recognizing that music does not help everyone. But the article also helps us begin to understand the psychology of why music helps some people and some conditions.
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Playing Music Tied to Better Cognition in Later Life
If you have played a musical instrument earlier in your life this research might encourage you to start playing it again to encourage your brain health. You also might find that it encourages your enjoyment of life, though that is not the focus of this research.
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A Look Into The Science Of Addiction
If you are a trained counselor this article probably won’t give you much new information. But if you are helping a new client understand their addiction or want to help family members understand their loved one’s addiction, this article could be helpful.
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NT Wright says marriage won’t exist in Heaven, but love will be transformed
This isn’t a counseling article, but the issue might be brought up by a client (e.g., my first wife died. If I remarry, will it be awkward in heaven?) So listening to NT Wright’s answer might help you in responding to that client’s question. While I know that there are a few evangelicals who have raised questions about NT Wright, for many decades many evangelicals have viewed him as a very knowledgeable and respected scholar, and I think his discussion here is good to consider.
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5 Opportunities to Better Support Pastors
This article by Barna Research Group identifies 5 practical ways that we all, as church members but also as counselors, can support our pastors.
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A Renewed Commitment to Psychotherapy in American Psychiatry
An interesting article by a leading psychiatrist about how psychiatrists are seeing the value of psychotherapy in treating patients with mental disorders, and how an increasing number are including 15 minutes of psychotherapy in their meeting with patients.
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The Cognitive Debt We Accumulate Every Time We Use AI
This article contains such important information that I wish every parent, student and teacher would read, for it shows that when students (or anyone) use AI to write an essay they remember almost nothing about what they wrote afterward. Also brain scans indicate their neural networks are significantly less active than when they compose an essay on their own. And AI reduces their creativity significantly. So AI can and will benefit us in many ways in the future, but it is important that we, and our children, exercise our brains fully in activities such as writing (and not depend on AI) to achieve the best results.
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Orgasms aren't the sole key to women's sexual satisfaction, study finds
This study from New Zealand found that, while women’s sexual satisfaction is related to the frequency with which she has orgasms, having orgasms with each sexual encounter is not necessary for a woman to be sexually satisfied. Other relational factors such as affection were important, and if these factors were present, orgasm with every sexual encounter was not necessary.
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The Attraction of Drugs
Mark Gregston has written a good article describing five reasons teens sometimes try drugs and then gives parents several practical suggestions about how to work through this issue with their teens.
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Calvinism debate: An alternative to both Calvinist and Free Will formulations
Christians for many hundreds of years have struggled with the issue of how to reconcile the biblical concepts of God’s sovereignty with the truth that “whosoever will may come.” This is important in counseling because we need to know whether human beings have agency (and therefore can make decisions to choose one thing or another) and also because sometimes we have clients who are angry with God because a loved one died who was not saved, and they may have been taught that that person never could have been saved because they were not of the “elect.”
Steve Land is a respected theologian, highly respected in Southern Baptist churches, who has written what I believe is an excellent article showing how we can reconcile both God’s sovereignty and free will. It is so important that I have downloaded it into a Word document and will be attaching it to this week’s Friday Mailing. I encourage you to save it to your computer to possibly use in your counseling and to possibly share with someone who is struggling with God because they believe He chose to not elect their loved one, and that is why their loved one never accepted Christ.
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We had a enjoyable vacation to celebrate 55 wonderful years of marriage, but we’re happy to be back home where we sleep much better.
Hope you have a wonderful week!
Henry Virkler