Sign up for your FREE e-newsletter

You’ll regularly recieve powerful strategies for personal development, tips to improve the growth of your counselling practice, the latest industry news and much more.

We’ll keep your information private and never sell, rent, trade or share it with any other organisation. And you can cancel anytime.

Addictions

The Psychology of Bragging

You are asked at the cocktail party what you do. “Well,” you respond with enthusiasm, “I’m so excited right now. I just graduated with my degree in hospitality.” “Oh, a future barista,” says the other guest, swirling his drink. “I guess we can’t all get Ph.D.’s in science like I did.” You run into a […]

Dealing with Deception in Counselling

“You should always believe your clients,” said the counselling-training professor to the trainees, “and you should always disbelieve them”  It’s possible that that advice — confusing and impossible as it seems to be — is useful not only for therapists listening to clients, but to any of us listening to a fellow human being. Even […]

Lying: Life Skill or Lousy Habit?

Johnny sings a song to his mum and asks her how well she thought he sang. In reality, Mum likens Johnny’s voice to, as Simon Cowell once said of a talent show participant, “the sound a cat makes after it falls off the roof before it hits the ground”. Does Mum say this to Johnny, […]

Recognising and Treating Exercise Addiction

He’s up at 5:00 a.m. every morning, slipping into jogging shorts despite the single-digit temperatures, cold winds, and darkness. He pounds the pavement faithfully for 90 minutes a day, at least five days a week. He is also chronically tired and complains of frequent joint pain. He has recently been feeling like, “Why bother? Life […]

Compulsive Gambling: Myths and Facts

Have you ever attempted to speak with a gambler about his or her gambling patterns? Chances are that the person overrode any concerns you might have broached about their behaviour by saying that they couldn’t possibly become addicted because they don’t gamble regularly, they don’t lose more than a few hundred dollars at a time, […]

Book Review: Counselling Older People with Alcohol Problems

Mike Fox, Lesley Wilson (2011). Jessica Kingsley Publishing. Australia, like other developed countries, has a rapidly ageing population. Over the next 50 years the Australian Bureau of Statistic (2000) predicts that the number of older Australians is expected to increase to 6.5 million, representing approximately 25% of the total population. Whilst the use and abuse […]

Understanding Shopping Addiction

Spending too much, too often, goes by several names: “shopping addiction”, “over-shopping” or “overspending”, “compulsive shopping”, and “oniomania”. People even designate themselves as “shopaholics”. Definition Donald Black, a doctor and professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, describes compulsive shopping and spending as “inappropriate, excessive, and out of control. Like other […]

Characteristics of Addiction: Loss of control

Loss of control in its broader sense encompasses both the relative inability of an addict to terminate consumption once initiated and the inability to refrain from substance use following a period of abstinence (Lyvers, 2000). This has been attributed to impairments in the area of the brain that is responsible for executive functions including behavioural […]

Characteristics of Addiction: Compulsive Use

Addictions may manifest in numerous ways, but generally they share three common characteristics – often referred to as the three C’s of compulsive use, loss of control and continued use. In this post we’ll focus on the role compulsive use plays in addictive behaviour. Compulsive use has three elements: reinforcement, craving and habit. Reinforcement refers […]

Drug Addictions and Group Work

A Support Group had been advertised on the display board of the local Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre in the City where the Counsellor had been seeing each of the members for private counselling prior to the start of the programme. Ten clients enrolled in the group but by 7:15pm only 5 of the ten […]