Understand the Effect of Fear on Your Relationship With Telehealth Therapy

Many of us are in the process of recovering from the last year of living under the threat of Covid-19; we are vaccinated, pulling off our masks, and moving in to hug the people we have missed. We are venturing out into the world, whether that means visiting friends’ homes, dining in restaurants, or shopping in stores. Now that some of our fear is lifting and our focus is not solely on our survival and the safety of others, we are going about getting our lives back into balance.

This means looking at the ways that our relationship might have been knocked off-kilter during the pandemic and getting it on track again. It is an unfortunate reality that when we are operating in survival mode, we stop paying attention to other aspects of our life. Chief among these is our personal relationships. It is very likely that, with our hardly noticing it, the undercurrent of tension/alarm during the pandemic has had an impact on the way we relate to our partner. Prolonged stress has that kind of effect.

Fear has been a dominant emotion for all of us over the past year. It has affected every one of us, regardless of whether you are unaware, partially aware, or fully aware of having felt it. Fear is an appropriate reaction to danger. We need to feel it; it keeps us safe. But it can also make us self-protective and distrustful. Then we shut down emotionally, which causes us to stop being vulnerable and available to others, especially our partner. Fear can also leave us feeling overwhelmed and powerless. This may make us desperate to be helped or saved by someone else, and during the pandemic, often the only person to turn to for this would have been — you guessed it — our partner. So, we have conflicting reactions: We want to push away our partner, while at the same time, we feel an intense need for them. We often resolve this dilemma by forming a fantasy bond in our relationship. This is a largely unconscious, defensive strategy that we originally developed in early childhood to deal with pain and frustration.

The fantasy bond offers an illusion of being merged with and connected to another person. When we become fearful and self-protective, we withdraw from the emotional give-and-take of interpersonal exchanges to a fantasy of love. When we become anxious and alarmed, we forfeit our independence to maintain this imagination of being one with our partner. However, the fantasy bond eventually takes a toll as it replaces the actual love and intimacy between two people.

Continue reading at Psychology Today.

Make an online telehealth appointment for residents of Washington, Oregon and Florida.

Oregon Runner Considers Therapy of Listening to Self

Therapy Licensing for Oregon, Washington & Florida

You may think that telehealth allows you to see any clinician anywhere. This makes logical sense. You are on video. Your therapist is on video. Why would it matter where you are located?

It does matter where you are located. Legally you need to be in the state where the therapist is licensed.

When I had an office where people came to see me in person, we were all located in the same place. It was never an issue. Easy peasy, it was not an issue. People came in or cancelled.  We didn’t typically just switch venues to video or phone because of a cancellation.

Telehealth changes everything because you and the therapist can be located anywhere. Yet legally, your therapist needs to be licensed in the state where you are in when you are having the session. I will state psychologists may be able to cross state lines. Other types of mental health practitioners are trying to gain access to be able to cross state lines with the change to video sessions. That is not yet the case.

As an LCSW, I am licensed in Oregon and Washington State. I am also able to practice in Florida. Some states have an easier system to be able to get a temporary license or to get permission to provide therapy to people in their state. Other states require you to go through more paperwork as if you were getting licensed.

This is something to consider when thinking about seeing a clinician.

Take care, Caroline

If you have more questions about Oregon, Washington or Florida state therapy licensing, contact me or make an appointment.

The Neuroscience of Springtime Bliss & Wintertime Doldrums

Seasonal rhythms may affect our mood via mu-opioid receptor (MOR) availability.

“We were shining our light into the days of blooming wonder. On and on and on, we kept singing our song. It’s easy to describe leaves in the autumn. And it’s oh so easy in the spring. But down through January and February, it’s a very different thing. On and on and on, through the winter of our discontent. When the wind blows up your collar and the ears are frostbitten, too.”
—from “A Sense of Wonder” by Van Morrison

Seasonal Affective Disorder’s acronym, SAD, sums up how many of us in the Northern Hemisphere feel during this time of year—when the days tend to be shorter and colder. February is one of Americans’ least favorite months, Gallup Polls have found.

Long before SAD was included in the DSM-IV in 1994, William Shakespeare summed up the seasonal pattern of recurrent depressive symptoms that usually begin in late autumn and continue through early spring in the opening line of William III: “Now is the winter of our discontent.”

In 1985, this age-old phrase was repurposed by Van Morrison in “Sense of Wonder” to juxtapose how the song’s protagonist feels in January and February compared to the spring and summer months. The Winter of Our Discontent is also the title of John Steinbeck’s final novel, which has been described as a “tale of spiritual crisis.”

When it comes to seasonal variations of mood, humans since de temps immémorial seem to grow increasingly happy and contented as the days get warmer and longer, which happens in opposite months for those living in Northern vs. Southern Hemispheres. (December to February is summer in Australia, for example.) Literally and figuratively, the transition from spring to summer is generally considered a hopeful and regenerative time of growth or rebirth.

Continue reading at Psychology Today.

If you or someone you know needs help, contact me about telehealth Therapy in Oregon.

Counseling Reflection on Grief & Loss During the Pandemic

We are now close to a year into this pandemic and life has been trying on many levels. People who used to have access to ways to care for themselves don’t have the same access as before. Self care is challenging to say the least and I know people have different levels of comfort with risk.

One thing I talk to my clients, as well as my family, about is that there is a lot of loss. And the loss keeps coming. Winter holidays have come and gone, and for a lot of people holidays were extremely different then years past. Life is different. Most people have had birthdays already. And yet we are still in it.

Please don’t compare your pain. On a Brenee Brown pod cast with David Kessler, who is an expert in grief, he shared that the worst grief is the one you are going through. Don’t compare, you can almost always find people in worse situations or better positions. Comparison keeps you from feeling what is really going on. You grief is your grief. Feel it.

If you need help in this trying time, contact me for ways I can help.

I wanted to share this video, It does have curse word in it, just FYI.