From a client’s perspective, I felt put off by the rigidity of the situation. From a therapist’s perspective, I was left considering what kind of practitioner I want to be for the people I serve.

Therapist Point of View

Let’s consider why some therapists impose calendar restrictions on their clients.

First, building the therapist-client relationship is the most valuable part of establishing mutual trust. Trust is built over time. If time is limited, the process and therapeutic benefit will take longer to co-create. While I agree with the initial regularity of creating the space to get to know clients for the first few sessions, there should be room to make adjustments once enough ground is established.

The main reason is financial. If mental health practitioners with private practice base their sole income on client work, they risk the impacts of market fluctuations, especially new therapists starting in the field who may not have a full client roster. In times of economic prosperity, people have additional income to spend on therapy, and the opposite is true when the winds of uncertainty arrive.

Client Point of View

Building on the last point, in a struggling economy, clients (in particular those who do not have health coverage) will most likely spend their hard-earned money on life’s essentials — food, shelter, and other primary necessities and forgo therapy as a ‘nice to have.’ Would you rather eat a chicken dinner or work on your anxiety? When money is tight, the chicken wins.

My Opinion

Therapists benefit from creating multiple income streams to help brace for tough financial times. For example, from day one of starting the five-year Gestalt Institute of Toronto, I knew I would not abandon my corporate career given the uncertainty of finding and maintaining therapy clients. Writing, ski coaching, and course content creation are other ways I can quickly funnel new revenue streams. These decisions allow me to give clients personal freedom to see me when they want to and have space when my services are not required. Everyone wins.

Your Opinion Matters

In the comment section, let me know your beliefs regarding whether therapists should enforce a regular schedule on clients. What is your experience to date? Am I missing any unearthed points of view?

The post To Meet Regularly Or Not? That Is The Question appeared first on Medika Life.

At work, you may have been taught to always say “yes” to your boss — even when your inner self wants to say “no.”⁠ ⁠

In relationships, you may have been taught to always say “yes” to your partner — even when your inner self wants to say “no.”⁠ ⁠ We all need social connection.

And if we’re only rewarded by others for saying “yes” and disapproved of for saying “no,” we may become habituated to ignoring our inner voice.⁠

The body doesn’t like that. The body may feel betrayed when you ignore your inner voice. The body may do things to defend your inner voice:⁠ ⁠

🔸 Like getting a migraine so you don’t have to attend that event you said “yes” to but really wanted to say “no” to.⁠

🔸Or getting back pain so that you don’t have to sit at that desk job you took because you thought you “should” even though you really wanted to follow your passion.⁠

🔸Or getting a stomach ache so that you don’t have to spend time with that person who disrespects your boundaries.⁠ ⁠

If we are conditioned to always say “yes,” we may find ourselves in conflict with our body when it says “no.”⁠ ⁠

🌸 BUT just like with couples therapy, conflict resolution is possible between mind and body. ✨⁠ ⁠

The first step to conflict resolution is: Each party needs to have their side of the story heard and acknowledged.⁠

👉 Here’s something you can try:⁠

Ask your mind, with pen and paper 📝:

Dear part that always says “yes,” what are you feeling? What would you like me to know? What are you trying to protect me from?⁠ ⁠

And see what flows out onto the page 📄.⁠ ⁠

Then, ask your body 📝:⁠

Dear part that says “no,” what are you feeling? What would you like me to know? What are you trying to protect me from?⁠

You may find that the mind and body have similar goals — just different ideas about how to get there.⁠

If you need support with chronic pain and anxiety, take my FREE QUIZ called “Why the *bleep* am I still in pain?!” so I can help you get some clarity.

The post If You Don’t Set Boundaries, a Symptom Flare-Up Might Step In and Do It For You appeared first on Medika Life.

While this is great news, it can also make choosing a coach or online program overwhelming and confusing. Especially because one of the ingredients that contribute to chronic pain is a lack of self-trust and a belief that someone other than you has “the” magic solution to your recovery.

The truth is that we are each unique beings, and finding your unique path to healing is a bit like discovering your purpose in life:

• Your path isn’t going to be the same as everybody else’s, because it’s your path!
• Mentors and education can be a helpful and even life-transforming vehicle for exploring your path, but they can’t define your path for you.
• Finding your path is not about finding the “right” set of rules to follow, it’s about learning how to trust your intuition — and seeking out the supportive people, places and resources that reflect your intuition back to you, helping you strengthen your self-trust.

So, if there isn’t a singular coach, mentor, doctor, therapist or program that’s right for every single person, how do you find a coach or program that’s a good fit for you?

Here’s what I suggest: Explore a bunch of different options and do a “vibe check.”

Contrary to popular myth, therapists, doctors and coaches are not omniscient, objective beings — they’re people with value systems, beliefs and viewpoints. Ideally, a pain recovery practitioner will be your ally in healing and growth. And when choosing an ally — like with choosing a friend — it’s important to discern whether or not you have enough shared values around the issues that are important to you.

A good starting point for assessing a practitioner’s values is to take a look at their website, social media, blog, podcast etc. and notice how their point of view feels to you.

For example, if you read my weekly emails or blog or follow me on Instagram, you’ll probably pick up on some characteristics that are specific to my personal style as a therapist and coach. Such as:

1️⃣ I talk about how the hierarchical culture we’re living in (otherwise known as patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, etc) creates our social social conditioning, and how this social conditioning (in the form of emotional suppression and self-harshness) feeds into chronic pain. I also talk about how we can unlearn our social conditioning and reclaim emotional freedom and self-kindness, both individually and collectively. In my view, this work isn’t just about healing from chronic pain, it’s about healing in a much broader sense.

2️⃣ I’ll never tell you that you need to trust my process in order to heal from chronic pain. My aim as a therapist and coach is to support you in learning how to trust your process by developing healthy communication between your mind and body. And I’ve got plenty of tools and resources to help you explore and discover your process!

3️⃣ I’m not just a licensed therapist and chronic pain recovery coach. I’m also a creative and an entrepreneur — I’m a lifelong writer and I had a career in television before becoming a therapist. I’m intimately familiar with all the particular ups and downs, strengths and challenges that come with the passionate creative’s recovery process!

To get a sense of what some other practitioners’ styles are like, you can use this resource list to start your exploration.

Bottom line: Go with your gut. Trust what feels right and what doesn’t. By doing so, you’re already engaging in the process of healing!

With love, encouragement and limitless faith in you,

💖 Anna

The post How to Choose a Chronic Pain Recovery Coach appeared first on Medika Life.

In my opinion, this confusion often stems from a false binary that is unhelpful to our recovery: The notion that mind-body healing and “medical issues” are two entirely different and separate things. And that taking one route seriously means excluding the other.

This all-one-or-the-other mindset can add to the nervous system stress that is already ramping up symptoms. So I want to offer you another perspective here:

For some types of chronic pain, releasing your fear of the pain can actually resolve your symptoms completely, it’s true.⁠ But this is not the case for all stress-related conditions.⁠

Chronic stress, anxiety and fear can lead to complications — like bacterial infections, inflammation, chemical sensitivities, ADHD, codependency, IBS, recurring injuries, etc., etc., etc.⁠

And often these complications require other tools to support their unraveling — from behavioral interventions to postural adjustments to antibiotics — on top of the self-love, emotional expression and fear reduction that is needed to address the underlying issue of nervous system stress.⁠

This integrative approach doesn’t negate the validity of either top-down medicine or bottom-up healing. This isn’t an either/or situation. Rather, an integrated approach uses top-down medicine to complement and support bottom-up mind-body healing, and vice vesa.

Is this perspective helpful to you? Let me know!

With encouragement and love,

💖 Anna

The post Untangling the False Binary of “Medical vs. Mind-Body” appeared first on Medika Life.

The therapist is free to violate that implicit understanding of confidentiality under certain conditions. Occasionally, a lawsuit will be brought regarding a violation of confidentiality and an organization may file an amicus brief to offer reasons why it has not been violated and information was appropriately released.

The American Psychological Association has listed a number of these amicus briefs on their website. Additional examples of confidentiality issues may be found here. A good overview of therapy and how it works has been provided by the APA.

Besides confidentiality, there is something called privilege and that is information that is left to the sole discretion of the patient whether or not to permit a therapist to release it. The patient controls privilege.

Exceptions to privilege include child abuse cases, mental health at issue cases, disputes between co-patients, disputes between patient and therapist, crime or fraud, and duty to warn. The latter refers to the 1976 case of Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, in which a patient informed his therapist that he was having violent thoughts about a young woman he had been dating.

Prior to this killing, there doesn’t seem to have been a legal duty to warn but the “future crimes” standard releasing a therapist would seem to have been the standard of practice. The therapist at UC thought he took appropriate steps, but never warned the identified victim, and she was murdered. The murderer was found guilty, spent a short time in prison, and was then deported to his homeland.

In the above-mentioned instances, the therapist is not only free to release privileged information, but required by law to do so. In the Tarasoff case, curiously, the therapist’s supervisor ordered him to destroy all his therapy notes. The laws vary by state and there is a chart providing each state’s requirements regarding duty to warn.

An exception to the duty to warn (the third-party informant) came up in a case in California where a young man, who had broken off with a young woman who began to date another man, indicated to his father that he wanted a gun and he wanted to kill the other young man.

The father went to the patient’s therapist and informed him of this. The therapist told him to take his son to the hospital, where he was voluntarily admitted overnight and released. The next day he killed the young man and himself.

A court in Ewing v. Goldstein and Ewing VA Northridge Hospital Medical Center found the therapist was liable for the death of the young man. The California Court of Appeals indicated that the young man’s father had told the therapist of his son’s threats, and there was a duty to protect, which the therapist failed to follow through on, which resulted in the death of both the young man and the patient. The “failure” hinged on the therapist’s failure to tell the hospital of the impending danger the young man posed if permitted to be released after one day.

The court indicated that the therapist should have been aware of the patient’s state of mind and the dangerousness which he presented and revealed this to prevent his hospital release; he did not. This, then, indicates that even if a third party tells a therapist about the patient’s potential danger to someone or the community, there is a requirement to report it.

What about prior criminal activity or prior crimes committed by a patient? Does a therapist have to report them? The answer to these questions remains vague, and it appears there is no current law requiring therapists to report. Therefore, Tony Soprano was in the clear when he told Dr. Melfi about his criminal actions.

I was in a group session in my doctoral studies where one student revealed that a patient told him he murdered someone five years previously. The student asked what he should do. Neither the professor nor the group had an answer, and the professor told him to seek guidance from his professional association. After he did contact the association, guess what happened? They told him to talk to his supervisor. And so it went.

A good overview of the situation may be read here. There are still grey areas that legal scholars and laws must address. In the meantime, anyone entering therapy should consider current legal protections for themselves as well as problematic areas.

Some mental health professionals have questioned this believing a discussion of legal releases of information will prevent either full disclosure in therapy or lead to an individual not attending therapy, even when they need help.

The post Patient/Therapist Confidentiality Has Its Limits. What Are They? appeared first on Medika Life.