Counseling News from the Week of February 27,2026
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
“Take care of your mind the same way you take care of your body.”
KAYSHA LOVE
“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”
G. K. Chesterton
"If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt."
Phil Knight
“No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good.”
Cicero, "On Duties"
“I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.”
Johann Sebastian Bach
Fascinating Facts: I’m not going to include anything in this section to leave room for counseling articles.
Counseling Articles
Is marriage eternal?
While not a counseling article per se, many Christian clients have questions about marriage in heaven. Will I remain married to my spouse in heaven? If I had more than one spouse, either because of death or divorce, what will happen? What if I never married in this life, will there be an opportunity for marriage in heaven? This author, an associate pastor, has an answer that is biblical and suggests an answer to many of these questions.
Click here to read the full article
Resilient Children, Struggling Parents: Mapping American Parenting
This study of 24,000 parents and 40,000 children throughout the U.S. is quite informative and has too much information to summarize easily. See the Executive Summary or the complete article for full details.
Click here to read the full article
5 Books for Setting Better Boundaries
This is from the New York Times, so I’ll summarize its major recommendations. It asked therapists what are the best books they recommend for helping clients set better boundaries. Here were the ones they identified:
- 1. Set Boundaries, Find Peaceby Nedra Glover Tawwab
- 2. Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown
- 3. Boundaries by Anne Katherine
- 4. But What Will People Say? by Sahaj Kaur Kohli
- 5. The Assertiveness Workbook by Randy J. Paterson
Click here to read the full article
Want a Great Life Hack? Marry in Your 20s
Our contemporary culture is encouraging young men and women to use their 20s to get an education, establish themselves in a career and pursue activities such as travel and shopping. These marriage researchers encourage readers to reject the contemporary thinking and consider getting married in their twenties; they give three reasons why they believe this is beneficial.
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We Need Realistic Conversations About the Costs of Raising Kids
Many young couples put off having children because they believe it would be too expensive to raise one or more children. This author, a home-schooling mother, says that it is true that children do add more to family expenses, but that some family expenses are unnecessary and could be dispensed with without harming children, e.g., having nannies do much of the family work, or serving sushi to elementary children or taking them out to expensive restaurants as a reward for completing homework.
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Does Getting Married Really Make You Happier?
There are those in contemporary culture who discourage people from getting married. However, while there are many unhappy people in our world today, studies show that both men and women as a group who are married are happier than those who are not. Some skeptics would argue that happier people are likelier to get married, rather than that marriage makes them happier. This author looks carefully at the research on both sides of this issue, and concludes that in general, married men and women end up happier than those who are unmarried. (Other research has also shown that married couples with children view their lives as more meaningful).
Click here to read the full article
Our Schools Are Failing. Here's How to Find a School That Works
American students’ ability to read, write, or do math problems at grade level has declined significantly in recent years. Quoting, the article describes a major possible cause: “The proximate cause of the decline beginning around 2015 is not hard to pinpoint. From 2002 through 2015, public schools nationwide were bound by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which held schools to strict federal standards in reading, writing, and math. Schools that repeatedly failed to meet the standards were subjected to sanctions and required to restructure. If the school still failed to meet standards, the school could be forced to change leadership or even close. In 2015, NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which eliminated all federal accountability, instead allowing states to set their own standards. Almost every state responded by lowering standards so that every student would, indeed, succeed, because it was impossible to fail. As The Atlantic’s investigation found, the years since passage of ESSA have
...marked a shift in concern among educators, toward equity and away from excellence. Roughly 40 percent of middle-school teachers [now] work in schools where there are no late penalties for coursework, no zeroes for missing coursework, and unlimited re-dos of tests.”
The author suggests several things parents can do to try to improve the situation for their children. While this family apparently has financial resources that some families do not have, there are some ideas in this article that even families with modest salaries could use.
Click here to read the full article
Online Dating is Mainstream—But What Are the Consequences?
Since 2015, online dating has become the most popular way that young adults meet each other. This marital researcher has studied the research for several years. Some trends have changed, and some early fears (e.g. that online dating would increase promiscuity and STDs) have not materialized, but he concludes that the research shows that “the modern mating market, of which matchmaking apps are an integral part, isn’t particularly healthy, with a generation of young people failing to form partnerships and get married (and ultimately have kids). Maybe it’s time to bring back dating people we actually know?”
This article echoes many of the ideas from last week’s article entitled Chemistry Needs Proximity: The Case for Old‑School, In‑Person Dating
Click here to read the full article
Your Understanding of Calling Is About to Change Radically
This article by Russell Moore will primarily affect younger people, but it could affect us all. He is writing about an article titled “Something Big is Happening” written by an AI programmer named Matt Shumer. Shumer writes about how AI will change many careers, even replace some people. In response, Russell Moore reminds us that many of our basic personality traits will remain the same (e.g. attention to detail) even though the name of our career or where we work may change. And this gradual change has been going on for many years. We do research, write articles, and prepare lessons somewhat differently than we did 50 years ago, but the foundational parts of our life remain similar, just applied in different ways than before.
Click here to read the full article
Mortality After Menopausal Hormone Therapy: Study Weighs In
Another reassuring study for women approaching menopause: a Danish study just confirmed what previous studies have also shown--that women using menopausal therapies had no high mortality rate than those who did not. Actually they had a slightly lower mortality rate, but that probably was not because of the menopausal therapy. So women concerned about using drug treatments to deal with menopause have another study showing that these treatments are safe.
Click here to read the full article
Bacopa: The 3,000-Year-Old Herb Sharpening Modern Minds
Bacopa, a herb which grows in the swamps in India, has been used for centuries there to sharpen aging minds, but until recently was not used widely outside that country. But recent research in a controlled study of older people found that it significantly improved “verbal short-term, spatial short-term, visuospatial working, episodic, and working memory. Cognitive functions, including concentration, reasoning, alertness, and mental flexibility, also improved. Other benefits reported included improved anxiety and sleep quality, reduced cortisol levels, and increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels. (quoted material from Epoch Health, 2/21/26)”
Bacopa is easy for homeowners to grow both indoors and outdoors, and with an aging population and the increase in neurodegenerative disorders we may see an increase in its use.
Click here to read the full article
Born to Be Good: The Science Behind Children’s Inner Moral Code
Further information on a topic covered last week: Research has shown that 5-year-olds have an awareness of right and wrong. Those who have studied this issue say that this innate moral code can be nurtured through instruction and modeling by caring adults.
Click here to read the full article
The Benefits of Counseling for Teens
Some parents wrestle with the idea of taking their teen for counseling because of pride or other reasons. Here’s a good article to have them read and possibly discuss.
Click here to read the full article
Crucial Lessons from Ancient Rome: The Corruption of Family and Society
There have been many analyses of what led to the downfall of the ancient Roman Empire. One common theme among them all is that when the moral framework of the people crumbled and the commitment to marriage and family decreased, the Empire gradually weakened.
Click here to read the full article
They Killed Their Abusers. Should They Spend Their Lives in Prison?
This is from the New York Times, so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription. It is a long article that describes many stories of women who suffered years of horrible abuse and eventually killed their husbands, many claiming they were doing it in self-defense. Many of these women, while married, had been told by their abusers that they would never allow them to leave them, so sometimes killing their abuser seemed like the only option they had. Many received life prison sentences. Now several states have enacted laws trying to rectify the situation, but reversing a life sentence is a long process, and many women continue to languish in prison. Clearly a better option for leaving an abusive relationship needs to be developed.
Click here to read the full article
Falling From Ivy League Grad to Prisoner Expanded My Social Circle
This is another article from the New York Times, so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription. But it’s an insightful article about what it’s like to be in a federal prison. Even though there is little freedom and the food is reportedly horrible, there are also moments of genuine compassion and understanding, especially in Bible study groups. The author perhaps was not guilty of the crime he was accused of, was released early on appeal, and received a pardon by President Trump. I think the interesting part of the article was the information about the humanity that sometimes occurs within prison.
Click here to read the full article
Whether it's a mini-sabbatical or an adult gap year, more people are taking extended work breaks
Taking a “gap year” has been traditionally done between graduation from high school and entry to college. But recently it has started being done by a small minority of people in mid-life. For a little more information on this new trend, see article.
Click here to read the full article
Exercise can be an effective treatment for depression and anxiety
You’ve heard this before, but this article contains additional evidence from the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Pooling data from many studies of both anxiety and depression, the authors showed that regular exercise significantly reduced both sets of symptoms.
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Is Ghosting in Bipolar Disorder a Real Thing?
The author, Julie Fast, is a bipolar researcher and writer. She tells a reader that sometimes, even though a couple may believe they’re deeply in love, the person with a mood disorder may suddenly disappear from the relationship without explanation (ghosting). If you work with partners of bipolar clients you may want to be aware of this in case it happens to them.
Click here to read the full article
New technology reveals hidden DNA scaffolding built before life ‘switches on’
In brand new research, scientists have discovered that in the first few moments after an egg is fertilized (in fruit flies and all the way up to humans) a microscopic scaffolding develops that guides the development of the organism further. If this scaffolding is imperfect it can lead to diseases such as cancer. Although Darwinists claim that life emerged from inert matter when lightning struck a proverbial soup, this is just one more piece of data suggesting that this universe, and life, was created by an incredibly intelligent creator who understood and developed the intricacies, even at the molecular level, that make life possible.
Click here to read the full article
Medical Associations Trusted Belief Over Science on Youth Gender Care
This is from the New York Times, so you can’t read it without a subscription, so I’ll summarize it’s major points because the Times is probably the most widely read newspaper in the world and has regularly championed liberal viewpoints. The fact that they would allow this article to be printed, even though it is by a guest writer, is a significant development.
The writer, who identifies himself as “center-left” has been covering gender treatments for the last ten years. He said that professional organizations have been quoting each other for their statements on gender treatments for many years, but this is starting to change. Three European countries, Finland, Sweden and Great Britain, did their own careful research and stopped providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender surgery for children. And now both the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association have said “in the absence of clear evidence, the A.M.A. agrees with A.S.P.S. that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.”
Click here to read the full article
Ben Sasse and the Political Illusion
Ben Sasse has been a respected Christian leader for several years, and now, as he tells us that his earthly life will probably end in months, he shares how to prepare for a “good death.” Certainly knowing that we will soon join our Lord and our loved ones in heaven helps us prepare for the end of our lives here.
Click here to read the full article
Have a wonderful week!
Henry Virkler