Hope & Despair – Part 2

We have stated that you cannot live with hope without despair nipping at its heels. So, the question arises, ‘How does one gently lean towards hope while resisting the gravity of despair?’

As humans, we are addicted to ‘certainty’. We want predictability in order to ‘feel safe’. For most of us feeling safe is more important than being safe. Some of us feel safe by only living in the present and spending our resources and time experiencing as much fun as possible to push back despair and darkness. Others will deal with their need for security by squirrelling away another five hundred dollars into the nest egg in order to create predictability for their future.

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Suicide Prevention

Did you know that suicide is the second leading cause of death for youths between the ages of 15 and 29? According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there are 800,000 suicides yearly. That’s one person taking his/her life every 40 seconds. Furthermore, for every one of those, there are 20 other suicide attempts.

I became passionate about the subject early in my career, as I was once a troubled teen myself. I committed myself to saving at least one person from making a desperate decision after I experienced the suicide of one of my Grade 11 students when I was teaching Social Science and Psychology.

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World Day Against Trafficking

When I first returned to my homeland of Canada two and a half years ago, I was hired as frontline staff in a privately-run group home and was assigned to “Amy”. I was eager to get back to one-on-one work with young women in the hope of guiding them toward empowerment and personal growth.

                              

I had no idea that I would be facing a seventeen-year-old’s trauma of being trafficked for sex within the GTA — and worse still, that she had been a victim of that lucrative industry since she was thirteen years old. Read More Here…

Resistance is Not Futile! It’s Survival: Fear Me Not, For My Armour is But My Defence

As a chaplain and psychotherapist serving in a correctional setting I am challenged to provide a consistently supportive response to individual presentations involving concurrent mental health and addiction disorders, as well as complex trauma exacerbated by the effects of incarceration and its antecedents. Problem management represents the primary focus of my work as every client, without exception, is in a heightened state of disorientation or transitional crisis and has limited access to supportive resources to help themselves.

                             

Responding to Reluctance
As a responder to those who are experiencing personal problems, I find that most are motivated to be collaborative and engage in the solution-seeking process. However, some clients do exhibit a lack of incentive or assume an antagonistic posture in the initial stages of the helping dialogue, which affects not only the helping process but also the development of a therapeutic relationship. I must admit that I tend to feel more engaged with (and subconsciously committed to)clients who exhibit positive interpersonal cooperation than those who don’t. In a correctional context, it is common to encounter disgruntled individuals who attract negative rather than supportive attention. Though I am careful not to withhold support from those who display reluctance or resistance behavior, it can be a challenge to invest therapeutic time and resources in them when so many eager and contemplative candidates are impatiently waiting in the queue. Read more here....

Teens and Smartphone Addiction: What Parents Need to Know

Teen smartphone addiction is quickly growing into a new issue parents must face. In the past, parents had to worry about their teens experimenting with drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. Today, parents have all that plus another addiction to worry about: their teens being tethered to their phones for seven, eight, or more hours every day!

Part of the problem with teen smartphone addiction is that it’s hard to address since the use of smartphones is so ingrained into our society. Just about everyone has a smartphone. Parents like being able to reach their teens via text or phone call. Plus, parents can enable phone tracking, so they know exactly where their teens are at when they are not at home.

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Deal With It By: Kevin-Joel Coupland

Why are these toys in the middle of the floor? Whose turn is it to do the dishes? When are you going to mow the lawn? Our neighbours are giving us dirty looks. Everyday we make decisions whether to ignore things or deal with them. Some challenges are easier to solve, while others, not so much.