If you are like me, sometimes you look around in your home, your community, and the world and feel overwhelmed by the pain. So many people are hurting. Children are stressed to the point of thinking about taking their own life. Parents struggle to respond when adolescents seem rebellious, angry, lost, and out of control. Married couples … Continue reading Connection Is The Cure For Relational and Emotional Pain
Category: Connection
Five Empathy Skills That Create Connection
I have been reading Brene Brown’s leadership book entitled “Dare to Lead”. If you are familiar with Brene’s work you know that this book is full of talk about vulnerability, empathy, connection, and relationship. So, since we at Connections Family Counseling are passionate about building a community of connected families it makes sense that we would … Continue reading Five Empathy Skills That Create Connection
7 Ways to integrate the Teenage Brain
Dan Siegel (2014) writes about the amazing tumultuous wild wonderful teenage brain describing the radical changes that occur in the brain through the teenage years. He also writes in his book “Brainstorm: the power and purpose of the teenage brain” (2013) about the four qualities present in teenage minds based on the radical changes that occur … Continue reading 7 Ways to integrate the Teenage Brain
Online Counseling
Connections Family Counseling, LLC is now offering online counseling in Quincy Illinois and the surrounding areas. The world has changed and is changing in ways that we could never have imagined a few short weeks ago. We are changing with it by continuing to offer high quality mental health services to meet the needs of our current … Continue reading Online Counseling
Play Therapy Explained
Finding your voice in a world of 7.7 billion inhabitants can be quite burdensome. This is especially true for our youngest members of society, who have not mastered the art of verbal or written expression. Try as much as they can, children frequently cannot articulate the feelings, thoughts, or ideas that reflect their worldview. As … Continue reading Play Therapy Explained
How to Change your brain
This time of year, many of us are wondering how to change bad habits. Others plan out ways to accomplish big goals for the year. We may take big ideas and break them down into small steps or we may subscribe to a “Guru’s” fool proof way to “rock out 2019”. I recently read a book that argued … Continue reading How to Change your brain
How Porn Addiction Hurts
I was watching my son’s baseball game the other day and happened to overhear an exchange between two parents and their two sons that compelled me to write this post. The two boys were joking and laughing with one another through out the game. One of the boys joked with his mother sitting near by … Continue reading How Porn Addiction Hurts
Marriage Conversations for Connection
My last post regarding couples counseling discussed the three demon dialogues described by Susan Johnson in her book Created for Connection. The three patterns of conflict most common in couples counseling are called find the bad guy, the protest polka, and freeze and flee. Each dialogue is a unique pattern of couple interaction driven by … Continue reading Marriage Conversations for Connection
Marriage Counseling
We provide couples therapy in Quincy, IL for couples that have experienced disconnection, infidelity, conflict, or separation. Couples therapy is one of the most important services I have the privilege of providing. Often time’s couples come to me not knowing exactly what went wrong in their relationship. Not only that, they struggle to figure out … Continue reading Marriage Counseling
Adolescent Boredom Busters
For many parents the worst phrase that could come out of their adolescent’s mouth is, “I’m Bored”. This phrase can push the parent fear buttons of “entitlement”, “laziness”, “ungratefulness” or “failure-to-launch”. These buttons when pushed tend to produce feelings of failure, inadequacy, and helplessness. The problem of Boredom Richard Winter described the problem of boredom … Continue reading Adolescent Boredom Busters