The Mental Emotional Health Blog

A friend of mine has been frustrated lately with someone asking personal questions, with the obvious intent of getting info for gossip. That got me thinking about different ways to handle questions that aren’t anyone’s business. I thought I’d offer a few ideas:

1) After the person mentions something personal about you they heard from someone, say something like, “I heard that you just can’t stay away from gossip.”

2) Once you can tell the person is starting an inappropriately/private question, dart your eyes back and forth several times between their eyes and their mouth, ear, or hair. Once they ask what you’re looking at, say, “Oh, it’s nothing.” After they ask, “What?” just keep denying it’s anything important. They could be self-conscious for hours.

3) Get a thoughtful look on your face, look up and say as if you’re thinking out loud, “I am trying to figure out if that’s something I want to talk about with you, here at work, in front of all these other people. I’m also wondering why you want to know.” Then give them your full attention again. If they keep at it, say directly to the person: “Now I’m wondering if you are just looking for gossip you can spread to whoever wants to listen.”

4) Be sincere and direct, “I think that’s something for me and my <family/significant other> to figure out, don’t you?”

5) “Do you want me to email you the answer to your question, or should I send a press release to the TV stations in town so everyone knows?” Say this jokingly, and if the person persists get a little more serious and say, “Oh, you seriously want me to answer that? That is funny.”

Have fun with it. You don’t have to let a gossip wreck your day.

Do you ever feel like your energy has just drained out of you? Sometimes it is due to lack of sleep, or a frantic schedule. For me, the emotions involved in being a therapist tend to drain me. Usually it isn’t the clients or the sessions though.

I’m talking about the part of therapy outside of the sessions. This involves writing progress notes, completing diagnostic evaluations, writing letters, and treatment planning. It’s a necessary part of the job, and I benefit from the “administrative” end of therapy.  Documenting my sessions and treatment planning help me remember where I am and where my clients are in the process. Writing out my “therapy thoughts” also help me clarify what actually happened and what it might mean. Making phone calls also isn’t too bad, and writing letters on behalf of clients almost always help them feel better. So I have clear reasons for doing all those things outside of sessions.

It’s just that I like listening and talking with people that need help in one form or another. I want to be a person that provides hope and encouragement. For most of my clients, I am one of the few people (with some, the only one) in their life who always has kind words to say, who tends to not blame or criticize, who doesn’t call them names or use sarcasm, and is someone who clearly wants to help and encourage.

So when I’ve just connected with someone, listened, and given them some hope or a new perspective, it often feels too minimizing to write that down. There are documentation words and phrases that can accurately summarize what happened in a session, but leave out the emotional feelings and amount of energy expended. So many times, the words just aren’t there to express the depth of a session. Plus, I am always concerned about privacy of records and some detail just doesn’t need to be in a person’s chart. Anyway, writing down what I talked about with a client seems to cheapen the experience, and that bothers me.

Go figure, I get emotionally drained. Hopefully this is somewhat interesting to all of my wonderful readers. But if not, I felt the need to get it out anyway. And it is not a subject I hear discussed very much from other therapists/counselors/social workers.

By the way, I take enough care of myself that I am stable and okay, even when drained.

Have a great day, everyone!

I suppose sarcasm is considered a form of humor. Unlike light-hearted humor though, sarcasm takes on an edgy quality. If a statement is really sarcastic, a common description is that the statement was “dripping with sarcasm”. That doesn’t sound too fun.

The reason I mentioned the edgy quality to sarcasm in the previous paragraph is because the edginess is negative, even if intended to be funny. Negativity affects you mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socially. Following my line of logic here, when you are sarcastic you are probably having a negative influence on yourself and others.

Which would you prefer to hear of the following 2 examples?

1) Oh, you did the dishes. Thanks.

2) You did the dishes?! Wow, that’s not a surprise because you always do the dishes, don’t you?

Consider these 2 definitions of sarcasm from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. I have underlined certain words for emphasis:

“1: a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain“

“2 a: a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual“

How much sarcasm do you use on a daily basis? Do you use it rarely, frequently, or only around certain people? Making basic communication adjustments can increase your positivity and decrease negativity. Eliminating sarcasm from your conversations is a great step toward feeling better about yourself and others.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. At least, I hope it’s happy for you. If not, then I’ll say Happy Middle-of-February.

 Trust is so important in relationships. When it’s there, relationships have a better chance of being enjoyable and lasting. When trust is not there, or has been betrayed or damaged, the enjoyment and likelihood of a long-term relationship are decreased.

With that in mind, I have developed a series of questions to help you assess and start to repair trust if it has been broken in a relationship you have.

1. How was trust first established in the relationship?
2. How was trust broken or decreased?
3. How did/do past relationships of yours decrease or limit trust in your current relationship?
4. Are both of you willing to re-establish trust in this relationship?
5. What are specific ways or situations that could help to rebuild trust (name 5)?

I hope to provide a separate sheet within the next week that can be downloaded if you wish.

Take care!

Two components of communication are speaking and listening. Although I plan to concentrate more on listening as this website develops, today I’ll start with speaking.

Speak with purpose.  What you say and the way you say it guide/drive communication.  Recognize that people think ahead based on what you say and how you say it.  Many, and I’m still guilty at times, form their response before the message is even complete and jump to conclusions. A great example of this is game shows in which the host warns the players to listen to the full question before answering. It happens every so often that one contestant buzzes in too early, and gives an incorrect answer because the last part of the question is the key to the answer. In everyday life, we aren’t in the spotlight of a game show, but in my opinion the communication we have with friends, loved ones, and co-workers has great importance. The interactions we have influence our moods, thought-patterns, motivation, relationships, and decisions. 

Have you ever had a conversation in which you ended up on a completely different topic than what you wanted to discuss? Obviously, people have directions in conversation that they would like to take. But if you make your purpose clear at the beginning, the focus of conversation has a much better chance of remaining on the original topic.  Help them get a better understanding of you and your perspective.

Speaking with purpose doesn’t take much time, and can make conversations more productive and less frustrating.