Category Archives: Self Help

What do you do when nothing is working? – Problem solving.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Problem-solving.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

When the old solutions do not work – then what?

How about you? When your best effort to solve your problem has not worked what things might you try?

It surprises many of us that there is a relatively simple, standardized process, for solving problems. This procedure is not a onetime find a solution but a continuous feedback loop that works for companies, governments, and dare I say, families and individuals.

1. Gather information about the problem first.

What exactly is the problem? Are there other ways of looking at this? If you define the problem as someone else’s behavior you are at an impasse. If you define the problem as your response to their behavior then lots more options open up to you

2. Whenever possible get outside expert advice.

Look for the person that might have the most information and the best insight into your problem. If it is a money problem consider advice from a financial adviser or tax person. For mental health problems or relationships consider at least one visit with a counselor or therapist to see how they might be able to help you.

For a family problem, try to get information and insight from other members of the family. This does not mean that you need to agree with them or do what they tell you, but it is beneficial if you can get their insight. Asking them and then really listening to their opinion is a long way from what most of us do, which is ask, and then argue with them. That old, Yes but, and No but, game will kill the value of any advice you might receive.

3. Generate a list of possible solutions to your problem.

Akin to brainstorming, the goal of this process is to get a list of all possible solutions. They do not have to be realistic solutions. The wilder the better. It is a lot easier to take a wild suggestion and tame it down then to take a timid suggestion and breathe life into it.

4. Evaluate that list of potential problem solutions.

Combine ideas where possible, modify the outlandish ones to make them practical, or find ways to make the more creative ones work. The ones that will not work do they suggest an alternative that might work?

Which potential solution has the best chance of success?

5. Implement this solution.

This requires a plan for implementing the solution. Who will do what when? How will we know if the solution has been implemented?

Give it a fair trial. Decide at the outset how long you will give this solution. How will you know if it is working? Just saying you will do it and then, “there, we did it” are not enough. How will you genuinely know if the things you did improved the situation?

Make sure you actually do the work required.

6. Plan from the beginning a time to evaluate your progress.

Has your efforts to change things made a difference? Has there been enough change to justify your efforts? Do we really think that if you keep on in this direction things will get better? Should you change and try idea number two?

7. Continue to modify the things you are doing based on the evaluation and improvement until you can see a significant improvement in the problem.

So a brief practical example of this approach. The family finds that they are behind on the bills, the credit card is maxed out and the cell phones and cable are about to be turned off. After a lot of arguing and yelling they decide to sit down and talk this over.

Some ideas are developed. They consider bankruptcy. Mom suggests she could get a job, dad could get a part-time job or they could try cutting the bills. The kids scream they will just die if they don’t have phones.

The decision, for now, is that they will make up a list of how much they are spending, on what and look for things they can change.

They talk to a bookkeeper and the helpful man at the credit union. They make up that list of bills and payments and see just what dad is making every week. On paper, it just does not add up. Bankruptcy will not work, it would cost some money and even after they file, dad will still not be making enough to pay all the current monthly bills.

Dad could get some overtime. Mom offers to look for a job. They try this solution.

A month later things are not much better. Dad has not been getting that much overtime. Mom has not found work and the cable and cell phones, they are now turned off. Additionally, mom has had to pay for babysitting for the little one so she can look for work.

The revised solution? One of the older ones will watch the little one, saving the baby’s sitting money. Mom will try an employment service at the college where she was taking a night class and dad offers to give up his Saturday golf game until they are back on track. The oldest asks that when mom gets a job could she have the first chance for a phone since she is doing the babysitting.

Each month as they go along they find the things they can’t pay for, well they are getting by without them so they can come off the budget. Mom begins to work and eventually things stabilize.

Here comes the critical part. They can now revert to their old pattern of spending more than they have until they get in trouble again or they can adopt some new habits and start paying that credit card debt off and having something left over. It will be interesting to see what they do.

Now I gave you an example of a financial problem but this problem-solving approach can be used for almost any problem including relational ones. It just needs some adjusting to make it work on some problems.

So have you used this method or something like it to solve problems? Care to share what worked and what didn’t?

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Are you at the bottom of the hole? – Problem solving

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Problem and problem solving

Problem-solving.

Sometimes problems look like there is just no solution.

Every one of us has to face problems in our lives. Some people’s problems are much larger than others. The people who do the best job of solving their problems are not those with the fewest problems, they are the ones who practice solving problems until they get good at it.

This reminds me of a story and as my colleagues will tell you I am fond of telling stories. There are a bunch of versions of this story and if you have heard one of those other versions, well be warned this is the definitive version or at least I would like to think so.

The Gold Rush played a dominant role in early California history. We still like telling and listening to those old stories. Life in those mining camps was hard and sometimes there were tragedies.

One day a group of miners was out away from camp working on their claims. These particular claims were strung out across the hillside. This one old miner was pretty well-liked by his fellow miners. Despite that Gold fever going around this miner still, would do a good turn for the other minors.

So one morning after the other miners was already at work, this old miner named Pete (Might have been Pedro, I can’t be sure).) Well, Pete comes walking along, with his mule Betsy behind him, bringing up his tools and a few things for the other minors. Some say the mule’s name was Bonita but we can’t tell about that either.

Well, Betsy slipped and slid down the hillside, ended up in a deep old open-pit mine shaft.  Pete commenced to hollering and the whole hillside full of miners came running.

For the best part of the morning, they tried everything they could think of to get that old mule out of that pit.  If you heard this one before just keep it to yourself.

By noon these miners had tried everything they could think of, ropes and lowering a man into the pit to try to help the mule climb up and all like that. Nothing had worked.

Pete decides to do the right thing and put his girl (Mule) Betsy out of her troubles. So he and the other miners decide to give Betsy a decent burial right where she was. Sometimes it pays to give up and just let it all go. They were thinking this was one of those times.

So they all went and got their shovels and started throwing dirt in the pit. It started to pile up around that old mule and then commenced to covering her back. This was in the days before the SPCA and stuff like that. Today you wouldn’t be allowed to bury a mule without a permit and an environmental impact study.

So old Betsy did not like that dirt on her back and commenced to shaking. The dirt flew everywhere and ended up under her. So the minors threw in some more dirt.

Burying a mule that keeps moving is a chore. Well, the long and the short of the story is that the more dirt they threw at her, the more old Betsy shook and the higher up in that pit she came. Before long the pit was full and Betsy, why she just stepped out onto the surface again, shook the last of the dirt off her back, and looked at Pete as if to say “What took you so long?”

The moral of the story, you knew one was coming, didn’t you? That moral is that sometimes when we are down in the bottom of the pit and they are trying to throw dirt on us we need to keep shaking it off and stepping up a little higher.

So if you have been feeling like you were so far down you would need to climb up just to find ground level this story may be for you. Keep on shaking it off and let’s see who is standing on top next time.

Sometimes we get to thinking like those minors, they couldn’t get that mule out of the pit and so they were gonna give up on her. But Betsy, she did what she needed to and got herself out by using that dirt to form a bridge to her future.

So if the way you have been going about trying to solve those problems and the solutions of those around you are feeling like so much dirt in the face, like old Betsy what other uses can you think of for that dirt?

Coming soon, a post about how to find solutions for your problems that involve using your mule sense.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Shrinking the world by studying a rock

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Polish rocks

Polished stones.
Picture courtesy of Pixabay.

When problems seem insurmountable.

There is a technique that when used correctly helps to shrink things down to a proper size. Used inappropriately it can turn the smallest of issues into insurmountable obstacles. Let’s talk about this “Alice” skill.

Whatever you attend to you get more of.

One effective technique for shrinking things down is to increase our ability to concentrate. Pain, unhappiness, and the negatives of life come screaming into our awareness. The happy, peaceful, and contented items stand there, like a shy child, waiting for us to notice them.

Try this exercise. It will only take a couple of minutes and it may be worth many times that.

Look down at the floor or the ground. If you are confined to the indoors pick a spot on the floor, a speck of dust, or even a discarded piece of paper.

If you are fortunate enough to be able to be outside for this exercise look for pebble. Really look at this object. What color is it? Is it smooth or textured? What patterns are visible? How does this thing interact with its world? Does it lay flat or does it wobble?

As you sense your mind wandering off return it to this vital task at hand. Your goal is to learn all you can about what it would be like to be that pebble.

Keep racketing up your concentration on your pebble. The more you concentrate on that pebble the larger it grows in your consciousness and the more the rest of the universe will recede. All of existence becomes concentrated in that one stone.

People who practice this pebble meditation find that their abilities to concentrate at will grow. The result is that distractions shrink and become irrelevant. The background noise fades away and so do our other perceptions.

So what benefits does this pebble meditation bestow besides a chance to practice our concentration?

People in chronic pain clinics who learn to concentrate on an object report that while their mind is on the pebble the experience of their pain shrinks.

If you spend all of your time focused on your pain, you will find the pain grows. Their question becomes “How is my back feeling now? Not what else exists besides my back pain?

The objects of our attention play a role in our recovery from emotional as well as physical pain.

The wood spurge leaf of three, the squirrel running across the path, and the pebble at our feet have all played a role in alleviating suffering.

The risk? If you start caring enough about that pebble you may find a strong temptation to pick him up and take him home. If you pay attention to another person, you risk caring enough about them to let them into your life.

What would you like to shrink out of your life by discontinuing paying it attention? What will you grow in your life by making it the center of your attention?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

If your house is leaning check the blueprint – life plans

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

No Roof.

No Roof.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Things we know, that aren’t so, keep life from being happy.

Can you imagine someone building a house with faulty blueprints?

Leave out a couple of braces, a support or two, and cut some boards a little short, and – Wallah – a house that leans precipitously, ready to fall over. There have been a couple of notable cases of this in buildings built by government agencies but that is another topic.

Imagine building your life using a faulty set of blueprints.

This is precisely what a great many clients who come for therapy are trying to do. They keep doing the same thing over and over using a life plan, a set of mental blueprints for living, that the copied down in childhood but there are some mistakes in those plans.

One clinician observed that those life problems that cause us the most difficulty are the things that we learned between five and fifteen that turn out to not be true. The age range may vary but the principle is the same.

Some examples of defective life blueprints may help.

You grew up in a home where alcohol or drugs were readily abused. You grew up thinking that everyone drinks and drugs a lot and this is normal. You may also think that the cops are out to get you because they show up on a regular basis every time you and your family members fight.

This is not normal behavior. Did you know that half of the adults in the United States who are old enough to drink have not had a drink in the last thirty days?  Turns out that the twenty percent heaviest drinkers, they drink eighty percent of the alcohol consumed in America.  Not everyone who drinks at home gets violent either, but the people who do get violent seem to drink and drug a lot more than the people who don’t.

So if you formed a plan for life that includes getting drunk and fighting with people who don’t do what you want them to do, this plan may not work well for anything but sending you to jails and institutions or worse.

Other errors you may have made in transcribing your life blueprints besides drugs and alcohol.

You may have been taught and therefore learned that people with emotional problems, they are crazy and so you need to try really hard to pretend you don’t have any emotional problems because if you admit you have them you will fall apart and go crazy.

This turns out to be very untrue. In the course of their lifetime, half of all Americans will have an emotional problem that becomes so severe they need to get help. My suspicion is that this is true in other places on earth also. Those who recognize they have a life problem and get help early; they have a better chance of getting over this problem quickly.

Everyone who sees a counselor is not crazy. Crazy people pretend they don’t have any problems even when those problems have overwhelmed them.  Much of what we do in counseling is helps people find solutions to normal life problems that are right for them.

We may have “learned” that to be wealthy you need to have been born into money, have a stroke of luck like winning the lottery or come up with some new technological innovation like invent the next e-pet. Turns out that there are people in America who are wealthy and do not realize it. There are also a lot of other paths to wealth that people don’t know exist.

Later in the year, I plan to post a series of pieces about financial issues and how a large amount of what we may have learned and are trying to do may be the result of really defective blueprints.

Some people have a blueprint in their head that tells them they are defective, worthless, or stupid.  If you were told a lot of negative things about yourself as a child you may have internalized thoughts about how you are less than others. Turns out there are a whole lot of very bright people out there who never knew they were that smart. Since others put them down, they have never tried to do the things that they were meant to do.

There are plenty of other examples of this faulty blueprint phenomenon. These may have to do with religion, politics, or other values.  Anytime we swallow someone else’s beliefs whole without digesting them and getting a full understanding we are at risk to have gotten them wrong.

This year may be as a good a time as any to take another look at the blueprints in your head, the ones you learned as a child, and see if they are working or is your life house leaning over and about to collapse. If you find beliefs that are holding you back this may be a time to examine them and see if you may have learned things that are not true.

Some of the structures you have added on to your life house, they may be rooms from someone else’s structure that were never intended to fit into your life.

You can’t create a happy life with a set of blueprints that create misery.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Would you want to go on a trip with you?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Taking a trip.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

How much do you really know about you?

Most of us can tell the world quite a lot about others in our lives. If you have a friend and I asked you about that friend you could tell me a whole lot. Why even an enemy, someone you could not stand, you could go on for a long time telling me all about their defects. But let me ask you about yourself and most people could not tell me much about them and what they did say would likely not be very accurate.

Start right now to get to know yourself the way you would come to know a very best friend.

You will spend more time with you than with anyone else you ever meet in your life. Everywhere you go, when you wake up the next morning you will be there. You need to start right now on becoming the world’s expert on you. You should strive to be your own best friend.

It is said that we teach others how to treat us. We need to begin by learning to treat ourselves better. Compassion like charity begins at home. Treat yourself kindly and you will encourage others to treat you better. Is there one thing that you could do today to get to know yourself better?

Learning what makes you happy goes a long way to becoming happier. Make a list of all the things that make you happy. Decide which of those things you want more of. Decide right now that you intend to be that best friend you need.

Some of us have been blessed with true genuine friends. But whether you have had the experience of a trustworthy friend or not you can determine here and now to become that best friend you need. Treat yourself well.

For many of us, empathy for others comes more easily than tender feelings for ourselves. Learn to honor and respect yourself, learn also to identify those things that cause you pain, and resolve to eliminate those causes from your life.

It is difficult for others to care any more about you than you care about yourself.

Learn to accept the defects in yourself in the same way you might accept defects in others. Believe that you are a worthwhile person, not because of some great accomplishment but just because you are a unique individual. You are special in your own way, just like every other person on planet earth is special in their own way.

Some people can’t stand to be alone. They have never become comfortable spending time by themselves. Learn to occupy yourself. Be happy being in your own company. You will be with yourself all your life, start by learning how to mindfully do things with and by yourself.

What is your favorite color? What activities make you happy? What things in your life have made you sad? Hear your own pain and tell yourself it is all right. Learn to give you comfort and reassurance.

What has been the best moment in your life? What was the worst? It may help you to take notes.

What makes you feel loved? Couples tell me they do not feel that their partner loves them but they have never considered what makes them feel loved. How do you show yourself self-love? Loving yourself does not make you vain, it makes you mentally healthy.

If you want your children and your partner to do things that make you feel loved, you need to demonstrate how this love should be displayed.

Often I find clients are unable to tell me anything good about themselves. They have been so concerned about sounding conceited they have been cruel to themselves.

Taking good care of yourself is not being selfish. Giving yourself credit for things well done does not make you conceited. Failure to recognize and give yourself credit for things well done is a form of false modesty and is detrimental to your self-esteem.

I ask them what would a friend say about you. What would they say was your best quality? What do they like about you? If you don’t know, ask that friend, and while you are at it share with them the things you like about them.

In parenting class, one exercise we have used is to have each client sit in the center of the circle and as we go around the circle have each person tell them one thing they really like about that client. People often hear positive comments from their peers that they have never heard before. We often think good things about our friends but fail to tell them.

Tell yourself what you value about you. If you can’t make a list right off then make that a project to work on this year. Find the true value inside you.

Learning to accept praise, thanks and congratulations is a part of beginning to see yourself realistically as a worthwhile person. Accept that you are someone who sometimes does well and sometimes makes mistakes but is always a person worth having as a friend.

What will you say about yourself? What you tell yourself about you will determine the kind of person you become.

Become the kind of friend you will want to spend your life with.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Inventorying you baggage.

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8

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Baggage.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Are anger and pain all you got in there?

When people start on the project of inventorying their baggage they customarily find a whole lot of anger, pain and resentment, and a liberal serving of fears. If they find any happiness, joy, or contentment it doesn’t seem to take up much space and is easy to carry so it tends to go unnoticed.

The expression baggage mostly comes from relationship issues, leftover emotions from the last relationship that gets unpacked and used in this relationship even when they are totally inappropriate. The term inventory comes mostly from twelve-step recovery literature. I have combined the two here because they have a whole lot of common elements.

People who unpack their baggage find a whole lot of negative emotions, anger, fear, and resentments, that they need to inventory before they can move on. Any good twelve-stepper can tell you that the big book says that inventories are not only done in red ink. You need to give yourself credit for the good parts of yourself.

That asset taking, the black ink part of the inventory, will come up in a later post.

The big book then goes on to provide specific directions on how to do a fourth step inventory of your anger, fears, and resentments.  I will not try to repeat that explanation here. If you are interested in the full discussion the A.A. big book titled simply enough “Alcoholics Anonymous,” is available inexpensively and most everywhere.

While we have since developed over 300 different therapy schools, each with its own set of initials and applications to various disorders, the A.A. program appears to work no matter what problem it is applied to.

The closest cousin to this A.A. program among the therapy schools is the CBT process and its cousins REBT and DBT.

The short version here is that by one method or another, the way to get recovery is to get a head change. Your thinking needs to change for your feelings to change.

The reason we get hurt in life is that our expectations for others are faulty. We need to reexamine our beliefs about why people do things. What we find is that other people’s behavior is rarely about us. It is usually about them. Sick people do sick things. If we try to hang onto that sickness, stay angry and resentful, we stay just as sick as they are. Maybe sicker, because as we know better we should do better.

So we don’t need to hang on to all that anger and resentment. That does not mean we forget. Those experiences made us who we are, but we do stop ruminating on these old injuries “gnawing on the things that are eating us” as Casey Truffo called it.

So do you have any negative emotions on your inventory list, some anger and fear and resentments, you are ready to let go of? Toss that stuff, lighten your load and let’s get moving on this journey towards a happy life.

If you don’t have the strength to do the tossing, recruit some help, a counselor, sponsor or a friend can help you sort through that pain and become willing to let go of the past.

You need to jettison the past; it is heavy to carry and takes up a lot of room in the baggage. If you intend to get to that new happy life you had better plan to travel light. The joy and the happiness, hold onto that, it never seems to take up any room in the luggage, and the more of it, you spread around, the more you seem to have.

This lightening the load, getting rid of the garbage that is holding us back, some people do it quickly, but most of us need to do it over and over again. Keep coming back to it whenever you need to.

If you get going on this journey towards happiness you will quickly find that you just don’t have room for all that baggage. The closer you get towards your happy life goal the less value you will find in that junk and the easier it will be to get rid of it.

So let’s get moving. One last thing to consider. Who will you be taking along with you on this quest to find your happy life?

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Your autobiography as therapy.

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12

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Your autobiography as therapy.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Where did all this emotional stuff come from?

Most businesses take inventory every year. It is good to see what you have and also what is missing. For many businesses there is a step that needs to be taken before we can even begin to take that inventory, it involves cleaning up the warehouse.

Businesses accumulate a lot of junk. There are boxes and bags tucked here and there and no one remembers what is in them and where they came from. Our emotional lives get like that also.

We have an “insecurity” here and a “resentment” there. Something that is said at work triggers a memory of another time we were told that same thing and it made us feel really awful. Only we can’t remember when that other time was and how that happened. We have boxes and baggage but we don’t know what it goes to.

Before you get to the point of taking an emotional life experiences inventory, which is coming up soon, it pays to try to figure out what this stuff you are feeling is and where it came from.

In a previous post, I talked about how our minds have at least two memory systems. We have a verbal, story type memory which is stored as words, this happened and then that. We also have an emotional, feelings memory which is stored as pictures and sensations. Very likely there are other memory processes but let’s just work with these two for now.

So you see something, a single fresh flower lying on the floor next to an empty beer bottle. What does this mean? Some people will think nothing of it, pick the bottle and the flower up and maybe put some water in the bottle for the flower. Others of you will get upset, start to cry, and run away without touching a thing.

Past experiences have conditioned a response to this scene. You have learned from experience what this will mean to you emotionally and you have launched into an automatic response.

One way to begin to find these past events, to make some sense of them, and see why those past experiences are continuing to influence you today is to write out your autobiography. In the beginning, it is not necessary to figure out everything.  Just write the memory down.

Some people start trying to interpret things from the start. Do not fall into that trap. You remember being in a room with a particular decor and you were scared. Don’t run for the “was I molested” trap. Just know that you were there and you were scared. That experience increased the risk that when you see that decor again you will feel scared again whether this is a dangerous situation or not.

So write down the first thing you remember in life, then the next. I recommend for this using a loose-leaf book. You may find every time you write about something you will remember something else. There may be gaps in your memory. At this point all that matters are you are exploring you. Finding out what feelings you have had and where they may have originated.

In a later post, I will talk about how to do an inventory of these experiences and emotions. For now just work on getting back in touch with you, who you are what you have felt and how did you come to be you.

Some of these remembered experiences will provide insight. You always knew this; you just never invested the time in yourself to think this through. Some experiences in your life are just that, experiences. No emotional content. Some have left lifelong scars even if you have not been consciously aware of them.

Please don’t only look for the sad, the painful experiences. Along the way find the things that were happy times. Maybe the memory will be of a pet or a special person who was in your life if only for a while. If you had that pet, for a while, and then you lost them, think of the time when you had them. How did you feel? What did you do?

If you can find that reflected crystal of joy from that time then you can tuck it away and recreate it at will. That time you were so happy, that special place, you can get back there again when you need to.

This project, taking a look at you and how you became the person you are, will take some time. We will want to return to it again and again. Tuck those pages away and keep adding to them as you think of more you remember.

In a future post, we will look at the process of inventorying those feelings that these memories and stories produced.

So far this year, we have done a lot of work on finding out who we are, what we value, and how we became the people we are. You have also thought about who you want to be, the place you are going to find that happy life. This might be a place to take a break.

Some posts on other topics are coming up along with some answers to reader questions. But keep working on your autobiography and your other projects in the meantime. We will get back to the self-improvement program soon.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

How heavy is your baggage – Unpacking your baggage.

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9

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Baggage

Baggage.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Just what do you have packed away in your baggage?

The idea that we all have some baggage, things that connect us to our past, and that we keep carrying around with us, is common currency. We find that if we fill our lives up with that left-over stuff from the past then there is no room for making new experiences and memories in the present.

The result is that people continue to live in the past weighed down by their pain and suffering when they could just pitch some of that stuff and move on. Easy to say, this is really hard to do.

Unpacking that trunk is a task the may require some help. Professional helpers spend a lot of time working with people on healing from the past. Please consider getting some of that help. I don’t want to hear that you can’t afford help. That is an excuse, not a reason. Last year there was a post on “How to get help when you do not have money.”

The short version is that if you are really that impacted by the pain of the past there are those who will help you with this unpacking task. Therapists, peer counselors, religious leaders, and sometimes friends can all be of service here.

Beware of friends who want to take things out oh and ah over how awful that was and then help you put the thing back in the trunk for safekeeping.

If you want to move forward in having a happy life you need to start tossing that garbage.

Unpacking this trunk is a messy business. There may be some things you want to keep. Let’s see what you might find in your trunk.

There is that large bottle of jealousy and anger that you filled up during a series of particularly nasty fights you had with the ex. Your anger has spilled over everything.

Down towards the bottom is a photo album that has the pictures of the birth of your child and their first step. When you look inside there is your ex in those pictures. That is how those kids came about. How do you toss the anger towards your ex without tossing the pictures that remind you of the birth of your children?

So there will be some large things that got all messy and painful that we need to get rid of.  And mixed in there may be some small pieces of treasures we don’t want to toss.

Some trunks wiggle around on their own. Looks like a lion in there. When we open that one up for a peak the lion tries to stick its head out and eat us. We don’t want to face that one. The temptation is to slam the lid shut and never look in there again. The downside to that is that this is a really heavy trunk we have to carry around forever to avoid dealing with that creature in there.

This unpacking time is when you most need help. A good professional lion tamer with a chair and a whip can keep that lion at bay. Sometimes though, once that initial roar is over what we find is that lion, it is a very small scared little house cat. Having a friend look in the trunk with us can help with perspective. We think we have a lion, they laugh and tell us their cat is bigger than that. Now together you can deal with this unruly animal.

There are times that in unpacking the trunk of the past you will find some really awful things. Learn that if a real lion jumps out you can’t solve this problem by trying to put it back in the trunk and pretend it isn’t there.

Sometimes the only way to deal with a really awful creature in the trunk is to open the door; get out-of-the-way and just let it go. Don’t hang onto it anymore, just be glad it is gone.

There may be a few things from the past that you will keep anyway. That photo album of the kids and the good times, you may want to keep that even if it is stained by the anger and hurt of the arguments that came after. Some of those painful things made you who you are and you don’t want to forget how you got to be the person you are today.

Most of the stuff in this baggage is just junk. Stuff you were carrying around that is of no further use to you but you were not sure you were ready to pitch it. Have your friend or helper work with you and toss out everything you no longer need. You are about to take a journey on the road to a new happy life and you will need to get rid of all the baggage you can dispose of.

Repack what’s left along with your list of values and goals in a small overnight bag and let’s get going!

Some of us find this is harder than just cleaning out that one trunk full of baggage. What if you are an emotional hoarder? What if you have not one, but a whole bunch of containers full of baggage? You have accumulated so much emotional wreckage that you just don’t know where to begin.

You may need to do a couple of things before you are ready to move on. Next, we will talk about figuring where all this baggage came from, a look at the past. We will also need to take some inventory of the emotional baggage contents to help with the “what to keep and what to pitch” part. You may decide to keep some parts of you even if they are not fully perfect.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Danger at the crossroad – changes you can’t take back.

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7

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Road

Road to a happy life.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Linger at the fork in the road – you won’t come this way again.

So you have reached that fork in the road. You have been in pain or unhappiness too long and have determined to set off on a quest for the happy life you want. You know you do not want to go back and if you wait too long that is exactly what will happen, you will get sucked back into the quagmire of pain and misery. So you are anxious to set off.

Which way should you go?

This is a common problem for people in recovery. People in recovery from depression, anxiety, a bad relationship, or an addiction all reach this place of the crossroad. You will need a warning about the potential danger before you make a choice.

Forks in the road don’t lead off in just two directions. There are three. You could go back the way you came. Given the choice between two potential new lives, many of us will avoid the uncertainty and turn around and return to our misery. Going back is the most common choice and also often the worst one. But that is not the only danger here.

I will not argue with you which path you should take. That is your choice and yours alone. Some people prefer the well-trod path and go that way. Clearly many others have gone that way. Some of you may pick the road less traveled, for better or worse you decide to strike out and explore that route.

Some few of you in the rush to reach a new destination will head out across the wilderness looking for a shortcut. There are no shortcuts to happiness. Occasionally someone tries to make a new path and they are successful. You might be that one, but we find a lot of skeletons in the desert, people who wandered off the trail and got lost far away from civilization.

If you are fortunate there will be an information booth at this fork in the road.  This is one time it pays to ask for directions. The people at the booth can’t tell you which path is right for you, but they can tell you the reports from up ahead on the roads.

Recovery groups will suggest that you linger a while at the fork in the road. They don’t call it that but that is the way I see it.

What you are likely to be told is that during the first year in recovery; do not make any changes that you can’t take back. If you have a job, don’t quit it. If you are in a relationship don’t end it precipitously. And for sure do not jump into a new relationship. Give yourself time to figure this out.

The reason for this advice is that having left where you were before, a place of pain and unhappiness, you will begin to feel all sorts of feelings. One way our emotional memory protects us from pain is to shut down feelings, sometimes called dissociation. I think there are levels or variations in the experience of dissociation.

Having been through a period of time where you tried to avoid feeling because of the pain, or where your mind helped you out and did this for you, you will suddenly begin to feel all kinds of feelings and you may not know what to do with them.

People in substance abuse recovery frequently find that they have suppressed their appetite for all sorts of things and they go seeking to fill those cravings. Sudden sexual feelings are common. So are cravings for excitement and novelty.

So if you are coming from a place of a bad past, linger before committing to an uncertain future. Don’t quit the job that has been stressful right away, but begin to explore ways to make this job less stressful or what else would you want to do.

If you were married young and never got to date be especially careful of the one who comes along and you say they are what I have been missing out on. In this highly emotional state of early recovery what we see in the opportunities are what we want them to be not the reality of what they are.

That new job on the other coast sounds perfect until you give up everything to move there. That new partner, there is a reason their last ex left, and you need to take your time to check this out. Make sure you see things and people as they are not as you want them to be. Explore your options and keep options open as long as you can.

So here you sit, at that fork in the road ready for a whole new life. You are lingering to think things over and getting back reports on the road ahead. You are anxious to be off on the trip to a happy life. Just one thing.

That trunk you are sitting on is full of a lot of very heavy baggage.

What to do with that baggage is the focus of our next post.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Would a Genie help? Happiness by magic

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2

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Happiness by magic wand.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Magic is about to happen.

In this quest for a happy life, it is easy to get confused, lost, and turned around. Sometimes we stumble over an obstacle or two or even end up in a deep hole. We lose sight of where we are going and get stuck in just getting by each day. The solution to our problems may be just around the other side of that big rock over there or behind any tree but if you are tired and discouraged, then it is hard to keep going.

Time for the Genie

Genies are magical creatures that can clap their hands, wave a wand, and change things instantly. Wands used to be exclusively for use by fairies but that was back when fairies were predominantly heterosexual. These days Genies have taken up using magic wands. Wands appear to work regardless of your sexual preference.

So imagine with me that you have just encountered a Genie carrying his magic wand. Because you and you alone have seen him he grants you 3 magic wishes. You must use them now or lose them. There are no “do-overs” and wishing for more wishes is not allowed.

What would you want?

This magic wish question is helpful in discovering our real desires. Not the things we say we want or the things we know we are supposed to want, but what do you really want?

I have asked this question of people young and old, on crisis psychiatric units and in residential treatment. The answers I get are amazing.

Some children list things – lots of things, that new video game and a better smartphone and – and –and. Other kids say things like “I wish my parents didn’t fight.” They want a safe place to live or food to eat. They are wishing for the things that are the necessities of life in my book.

So what three wishes do you have for this Genie?

Write those wishes down. Pull out the list of values you made earlier. If you are just joining us we made a list of values, things that really matter to us earlier. You can look back at that post if you chose.

Make sure these wishes are consistent with your values. Now keep that list of wishes. Take it out on a regular basis and see if you are any closer to these goals. Be forewarned that just accomplishing a goal will not make you happy. Happiness is an inside job. But you will never move forward if you don’t have a clear vision of where you want to go.

An example of progress towards happiness may help.

Let’s say that your values were that you wanted to have a better relationship with your kids. Your religious and spiritual values are really important to you. Right now you are stressed out from work and overcome with bills. That financial and job stress is making you so upset that you can’t really be present when you are with your kids. You find that when you are around them you are short-tempered and grouchy. So two of your wishes to the Genie were; that you had a less stressful job and that your bills were paid off.

Now you need to have a conversation with the Genie.

He could eliminate the job stress by getting you fired. No job, no stress – is that what you want?  Or he could give you some magic herbs that reduce stress. Careful here, lots of people opt for the herbs. You say herbs; the Genie has done his work and is gone. Now, what happens when the herbs run out? Lots of people reach for drugs or medications to relieve stress and discover they have become dependent on them. We call that addiction.

He could solve the bill stress. Get you evicted, no home, no more water, and power, or rent bills. Is that what you had in mind?

What else could the Genie do for you? Maybe he teaches yoga and meditation part-time. He could teach you relaxation techniques. Or he might also moonlight as a CBT therapist and teach you how to avoid “stressing yourself out” over work. Learning ways to reduce your stress at work might be just what the Genie ordered.

The Genie could also get you transferred to another department. But you don’t need him for that. You can put in for that transfer all on your own.

So what you have done here is develop a list of things that you would like the Genie to change. You have also thought about the how, the way in which you want him to make the changes.

For each change you want the Genie to make in your life, record the way in which he would do this and the steps that would take.

You might decide you want a new career. You need more education and training to get that new job. That means going back to school, which means applying to get in and taking a placement test. Don’t overload yourself. You did not give the Genie a time deadline to get this done. You just want him to start making the changes and so you need to know what the steps are that will make up those changes.

Wait – before you run out the door and start making all these changes. The Genie is trying to tell you something.

You are at the crossroads in your life and there is always danger at the crossroads. You need to hear what the Genie says about those dangers.

Next post I will tell you what the Genies warning was.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel