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BetterHelp and Talkspace, and other online therapy and counseling services only better. Life Therapy Education is an alternative to traditional psychotherapy and medication therapy. It is the informed and skillful art of attending to, serving, and caring for ourselves as we heal and make our way through life’s most difficult challenges.
Life Therapy Education comes from my formal and continuing education, personal experience, and 30+ years of helping my clients heal and make their way to a better place in life.
I truly love my online counseling and therapy clients and the work we do together. Online therapy and counseling works!
As my client, you receive the following 10 benefits:
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.
Research in 2019 estimated that anxiety affects 30% (3 in 10) of adults in the U.S.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Panic Disorder are the most common anxiety diagnoses.
Depression and anxiety often accompany each other.
The good news is that odds are high that, if you are suffering with anxiety, you can make your way through it to a better place.
In Life Therapy Education, your anxiety is viewed as a symptom instead of a psychological disorder.
As odd as it might sound, anxiety is your friend. It’s an alarm alerting you that you’re not in a safe place and haven’t been for a while. It’s time to make your way to a better place.
Almost all of my clients are dealing with anxiety when they begin working with me. So far, all have gotten to a better place. They got there either by Life Therapy Education practices alone or by a combination of Life Therapy Education and prescription medications.
If you are struggling with anxiety or panic attacks, contact me to learn more or Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now. Let’s see how I can help. …Read More
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Dear Mark, thank you for your kindness and spiritual counsel. I’ll never forget you.”
In any two-week period in the U.S. from 2009-2012, 9.8% of adults aged 40–59 had depression; almost 1 in 10. 7.6% of those 12 and older had depression, almost 1 in 8. (Source: CDC)
Depression is a cluster of symptoms that arise in response to a range of causes including stress due to life events, grief due to the death of a loved one, marital and relationship conflicts, divorce, and other significant changes.
Research suggests that depression doesn’t spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals. Rather, there are many possible causes of depression, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, stressful life events, medications, and medical problems. (Source: Harvard School of Medicine, Causes of Depression)
In Life Therapy Education, depression is viewed as a symptom instead of the actual problem. Like anxiety, depression is an alarm alerting you that you’re not in a safe place and haven’t been for a while. It’s time to get to a better place in life.
Research clearly indicates that the combination of prescription medication and talk-therapy is significantly more effective than either one alone.
The Life Therapy Education that I provide is a type of talk therapy. I provide a comfortable, safe, accepting space for you to talk about your struggle with depression. Together we find a way forward to a better place that is customized to you and your unique needs.
: If what you’ve been doing to alleviate depression isn’t working, Contact Me to Learn More or Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now. Let’s see how I can help. …Read More
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Every 13 seconds, someone, somewhere in the U.S., files for divorce.
66% of divorces are filed by women.
41% of first marriages end in divorce. The average first marriage lasts 8 years.
60% of second and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.
Divorce means that the love you and your spouse once had is gone. Grief is a normal response to that significant loss.
Divorce breaks the promises you made to each other on the day of your wedding.
Divorce changes your life forever.
If you have children, their lives are forever changed too.
Since you have to live with yourself after the divorce, you want to do all you can to prevent divorce and improve your marriage.
If your marriage is broken and beyond repair, divorce is often the best for all involved. It makes it possible for everyone to recover and move forward to a better place in life.
The process of divorce is often easier when both spouses want it. They agree that it’s best for both of them and their children, if they have them.
When one spouse wants to divorce and the other doesn’t, the process is usually more difficult for everyone involved.
Divorce is stressful prior to, during, and after the legal process. It’s emotional, physical, and mental labor whether you want the divorce or not.
Under the stress, your cognitive field of perception narrows, and emotional resiliency diminishes. It’s more difficult to make well-informed decisions.
After a divorce, it’s normal to be disoriented and struggling to answer questions about your identity and purpose in life.
What now? Who are you now? What do you do now?
Talking about what has happened as well as your thoughts and feelings helps you make better-informed decisions. It also makes it possible to either reconcile or end your marriage as amicably as possible.
Contact Me to Learn More or . Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now.
Grief is a normal, natural response to any significant loss, especially the loss of a loved one.
Unfortunately, grieving is more difficult today than it was a couple of generations ago. We no longer have the individual and social skills we need for dealing with grief. We don’t know what to say or do for those who grieve. We often grieve alone in isolation.
Few psychotherapy, behavioral health, and social work degrees require courses and training in grief therapy and counseling.
Training for physicians does not teach them how to care for grieving patients. They often treat grief with prescription medications for depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s so-called Five Stages were identified over 40 years ago. They were about observations of her patients who were dying in the hospital. They weren’t about those grieving for a loved one who died.
They’ve been misunderstood as a map of sequential steps a grieving person needs to take to grieve correctly.
About 80% of us make our way through grief on our own or with the support of family and friends. About 20% of us experience complicated grief. Half or less of those with complicated grief get grief therapy or counseling.
Complicated grief is grief that complicated by additional factors such as—
• Multiple deaths within the past 12 months
• Family conflicts
• Health concerns, especially a psychological disorder
• Having to move due to the death
• Loss of income
If you are stuck in your grief, avoiding it, and not moving through it, you might be suffering with complicated grief and need the care of a professional who is trained in grief therapy and counseling.
I specialize in grief. I took courses in grief for my master’s degree and many hours of continuing education in grief since then. I have successfully counseled countless numbers of grieving clients, especially during my 10+ years with a nationally awarded hospice organization.
I can help. Contact Me to Learn More or Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now.
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According to research from Dr. Joe Rubino, it is estimated that 85 percent of Americans suffer from low self-esteem. Low self-worth is closely associated with trauma, depression, anxiety, OCD, paranoid ideation, phobic anxiety, suicidal ideation, and thoughts about death and dying.
It’s often a result of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) such as verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, and emotional and physical neglect. Traumatic experiences as an adult can also cause low self-worth.
The good news is that, with online therapy, you can recover from what caused your low self-worth and regain it. For more information Contact Me to Learn More or Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now.
“Dear Mark, we really appreciate the time you took to talk with us. Your input has ‘stuck’ with me. Your kindness and support have helped make a difficult time a little easier.”
It’s normal for couples to have conflicts. Some conflicts are more likely to break relationships than others. I teach my clients the 8 Red Flags of Relationships that can break a marriage or relationship:
1. Family members or In-laws: Unsupportive family members or in-laws can undermine a relationship.
2. Faith/Philosophy: Differences in faith/philosophy can end a relationship. Religious observances and holidays can be especially challenging.
3. Sexuality: Differences in sex drive and preferences, as well as infidelity, can break a relationship.
4. Finances: Financial struggles and differences in financial priorities and goals can end a relationship
5. Relationships with children: Disagreements about how to raise children or relate to each other’s children, can break a relationship.
6. Use of alcohol/other substances: Use or abuse of alcohol and other substances can damage a relationship beyond repair.
7. Chronic, life-limiting disease or injury: The physical, emotional, medical, and financial challenges of chronic, life-limiting disease or injury can end a relationship.
8. Communication: Failure to communicate openly and honestly, blaming, placating, computer-speak, distracting, lying, and keeping secrets can damage a relationship beyond repair.
If you have conflicts in one or more of the 8 Red Flags, your relationship is at risk. If your communication as a couple is poor, your relationship is at serious risk of coming to an end.
The quality of your communication is the quality of your relationship.
When you have good communication as a couple, it’s possible to make your way through the other conflicts. When communication shuts down, you have no way to resolve your conflicts. If you have one or more of the 8 Red Flags fluttering in your relationship, let’s talk. I can help. I’m trained in the highly effective Gottman Method of Couples Therapy. Read more … Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now.”
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I like to call them Thought Assaults. They are a type of anxiety (add link to anxiety) in which we experience, sudden, unwanted, invasive thoughts that happen to us. We cannot will them to stop. They make it difficult to concentrate on one thing, remember what we did, problem solve, and make decisions. Sometimes they’re so intense our mind goes blank. When they strike, they urge us to engage in behaviors to relieve the anxiety they stir up. We check and recheck things to make sure we did them.
About 2% of Americans experience OCD, that’s almost 7 million individuals.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) such as verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, and emotional and physical neglect often produce Thought Assaults. Traumatic experiences as an adult can also cause them.
With online therapy, you can learn how to manage and overcome these experiences. Contact Me to Learn More or Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now.
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Getting married is life-changing. I offer pre-marital preparation, not to determine if you’re marrying the right person or not, but to help you—
• Better understand each other
• Become aware of the 8 Red Flags of Relationships
• Know what to do when one of the Red Flags waves in your relationship
• Learn basic healthy communication skills
• Set yourselves up for making a happy marriage together
I can help. I’m trained in the highly effective Gottman Method of Couples Therapy. Read more … Contact me to Learn More or Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now.
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In Life Therapy, healthy and life-affirming sexual activity is viewed in a positive, appreciative way. It’s a normal, natural part of life and a source of great pleasure.
Life Therapy supports clients in enjoying healthy sexual activities that are safe, sane, and consensual for all involved.
Life Therapy also recognizes that sexuality is often an area of extreme distress due to abuse, shaming, negative views, and other serious problems. Sexual problems are one of 8 Red Flags of Relationships and are frequent causes of relationship problems and breakups.
Contact Me to Learn More More or Book a FREE 30-minute Online Therapy Consult Today if you have any concerns about the following or other sexual issues:
• Sexual shame, fears, and insecurities
• Gender, sexual identity, or sexual orientation
• Sexual abuse
• Degrees of sexual desire, either high or low
• Changes in sexual desire, either a loss or gain
• Sexual and emotional intimacy
• Sexual differences and incompatibilities
• Sexual performance
• Male sexual issues
• Female sexual issues
I care for—
• Clients of all religious faiths, philosophies, and moralities
• Individuals, couples, and those in polyamorous relationships
• Heterosexual couples in traditional marriages as well as couples in nontraditional relationships.
• I’m a listed LGBTQ Ally, Kink Aware Professional, and Poly-friendly Professional
Contact Me to Learn More or Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now.
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“You were a “calm in the storm” that truly helped me through.”
The American Psychological Association reports that—
• 77% of adults in the U.S. regularly experience physical symptoms caused by stress
• 73% regularly experience psychological symptoms due to stress
The most common definition of stress is, “physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension”. Another popular definition of stress is, “a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.” www.stress.org.
“Stress” usually refers to “distress” rather than “eustress.” Eustress is beneficial stress.
With me as your Life Therapist, you learn about three distressing Stress Response Cycles: cumulative, chronic, and traumatic. You learn how to identify, manage, and resolve them.
If stress is diminishing the quality of your life, straining your relationships, driving anxiety, panic attacks, depression, or physical symptoms, let’s talk.
Contact Me to Learn More or Book a 30-Minute Initial Consult Now. I can help you make your way to a less stressful, better place in life.
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Traumas are sudden or repeated life-threatening experiences that we experience directly or witness happening to someone else. Examples of traumas include physical and sexual assaults, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), sudden deaths, vehicle accidents, break-ins, fires, natural disasters, crime scenes, and battle experiences.
Such experiences are emotionally and mentally wounding. After the initial trauma, current events that are like the original experience(s) often trigger our emotionally-charged, unresolved memories of the original trauma. When this happens our response to the current triggering experience is usually big and out of proportion to what’s currently happening.
Sometimes the memory is so intense that we relive it in our waking life or in nightmares while we sleep. At other times, intense emotional responses are triggered without a clear memory of the original trauma.
60% of adults in the U.S. report having traumatic experiences during their first 18 years. 26% percent of children in the U.S. experience trauma before they are 4 years old.
Trauma is often the underlying cause of depression, multiple types of anxiety, OCD, nightmares, low self-worth, employment problems, and troubled relationships.
Contact Me to Learn More or Book a FREE 30-minute Online Therapy Consult Today.
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If you’re interested in reading about the theory that informs Life Therapy Educator, please read my first book, Re-Visioning Spirit available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Wonder of wonders! Mystery of mysteries! You are alive rather than not! Let the profound mystery of this mere fact sink in: You. Are. Alive! You aren’t just rare. Like a meteor, you happen once. You are a unique, once-in-forever, here-and-gone human being of inestimable worth. And you are not alone. You. Are. Alive. With Others! Never again take your life or anyone else’s for granted—human or otherwise. Never again take your relationships for granted. Now wonder about this: What makes you and others alive? God? A chemical process? Something else? This little book explores a new holistic answer to that question. It explores “small ‘s’ spirit.”
“Mark, thank you for the gift of your spirit, words, and presence.”
© 202024 Mark W. Neville all rights reserved.
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