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Graded Exposure with Anxiety

When a person has experienced anxiety in a certain place or situation previously, they are more likely to anticipate the anxiety recurring under similar circumstances. This can lead to avoidance, which further reinforces the anxiety and its association with the particular place or situation where the anxiety initially occurred. The decrease in anxiety, when the […]

Passionate About Helping Others

It’s rare these days to hear people talk about their work with true passion. You hear so many stories of people working to pay the bills; putting up with imperfect situations; and compromising on their true desires. That’s why it’s always so refreshing to hear regular stories from graduates living their dream to be a […]

Grief Counselling through Questioning

Questioning is used for therapeutic assessment and to facilitate the client’s expression of emotion, which is a crucial part of the therapeutic process in complicated grief counselling. Examples of questions and their purposes are outlined below. Questions “Can you tell me about the death?” “What happened that day”? “Where were you when you found out […]

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 […]

Cognitive Restructuring with Anxiety

Cognitive restructuring, straight thinking or logical reanalysis is based on the belief that the way we feel, behave and respond to situations is based on the way we think. This approach attempts to modify unhelpful thought patterns and beliefs. Cognitive restructuring, also known as cognitive reframing, is a technique drawn from cognitive therapy that can […]

Beck Depression Inventory

The Beck Depression Inventory is copyrighted by the Psychological Corporation. Material here presented is only for educational purpose because the BDI should be used only by registered professionals. The original version of the BDI was introduced by Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock and Erbaugh in 1961 (cited in Victims’ Web, 2007). The BDI was revised in […]

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 […]

Theoretical Principles of Narrative Therapy

A narrative approach to counselling examines the stories people have constructed to define their lives and identities. Using narrative techniques, the counsellor assists the client in modifying narratives (stories) that are unhelpful or ineffective. If, for example, I have a dominant narrative that says that I am simply no good at cooking, it is likely […]

Anxiety and Conditioning

Anxiety that is produced as a result of an actual situation (e.g. being in the dentist’s chair getting a tooth drilled) can become associated to events that surround the incident even when the component that originally activated the fear (a noisy drill that results in pain) is no longer present. For example, just sitting in […]

How Healthy Intimacy is Developed

Intimacy is one of the main ingredients of a successful, ‘ideal’ relationship along with passion and commitment (Hanna, 1991). Intimacy is a journey — it is not a tangible thing. It takes place over time, is ever-changing and is not stagnant. In fact, any kind of stagnation in a relationship may damage intimacy. It is […]

Challenges of Adolescence

While the definition of adolescent can differ from culture to culture, it is generally accepted that the time referred to as adolescence is the period between childhood and adulthood, a sort of “no man’s land.” Geldard and Geldard (2006) explain that adolescence is a time in a young person’s life where they move from dependency […]

History of Behaviour Therapy

Behaviour therapy had its beginnings in the early 1900’s and became established as a psychological approach in the 1950s and 1960s. At this time, it received much resistance from the current school of thought, psychoanalysis. There have been a number of people that that have contributed to the development of behavioural therapy: Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) […]

Three Steps For Better Verbal Intimacy

There are hundreds of personality traits and tendencies that make a person acceptable for a successful long-term relationship. But according to relationship expert, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, there is one trait that is more important than all others. “Mastering verbal intimacy is the most important indicator of whether a person is right for you and […]