Serving West Michigan for Anxiety, Depression, and Couples Counseling

What to Do When Your Spouse Is Depressed

How do you know if your spouse is depressed, and what can you do to help them? There are some healthy ways to encourage your partner to seek therapy, open up about their emotions, and address their symptoms, said Susan Bernstein, executive coach and leadership consultant with her own firm in San Diego, CA. Signs […]

How to Deal with Election Anxiety—Without Freaking Out

Note: At the end of the blog article, “Worried About the Election? You’re Not Alone,”—posted on October 5, 2020—I mentioned that I would provide tips on how to manage election anxiety. I offer these tips to you now in “How to Deal with Election Anxiety.” —Michael Angelo, LCPC When it comes to worries about the […]

The Healing Power of Play for Traumatized Children

Play is the natural way that young children discharge the tensions of their daily lives. When children are picked on at school, they may come home at the end of the day and enlist siblings, friends, or even stuffed animals to play out a drama in which the child, transformed into the school principal, gets […]

Therapeutic Ways to Change Negative Thinking

Along With 12 Tools for Addressing Crisis Situations We all have thoughts that invade our brains from time to time and mess with our moods. We all get down. Whether it’s your job, social life, family, or something completely different, sometimes the negativity can be too much. It can snowball. That’s the part where it […]

Frequent Marijuana Smoking Linked to Higher Risk of Heart Attack, Study Suggests

Note from Michael Angelo, owner, Encompass Counseling Center: The following article written by Aria Bendix, the breaking health reported for NBC News Digital, dispels the public perception that marijuana is completely safe and even healthy for you. However, in reality, a high dose of THC—the main component of marijuana—causes vascular inflammation, leading to heart problems […]

Some Use LSD as Brain Boost, But Dangers Remain

In the following article, Jennifer Clopton, health writer for WebMD, discusses the benefits (and drawbacks) in using LSD to increase work performance. The article was reviewed by Arefa Cassoobhoy, MD, MPH, a senior medical director at WebMD and senior medical correspondent for Medscape. Paul Austin believes there is a responsible way to take LSD, and […]

Medical Marijuana a Hit with Seniors

Seniors are giving rave reviews for medical marijuana. In a new survey, those who turned to it for treating chronic pain reported it reduced pain and decreased the need for opioid painkillers, said Serena Gordon, reporter for HealthDay News. According to Gordon, 9 out of 10 liked it so much they said they’d recommend medical […]

The Forgotten Childhood: Why Early Childhood Memories Fade

NOTE: The following article by Jon Hamilton, correspondent, Science Desk, National Public Radio, explains why we lose our earliest memories—unique to us alone—as we age. Highlights include: —Scientists have known about childhood amnesia for more than a century. But it’s only in the past decade that they have begun to figure out when childhood memories […]

More Screen Time Could Mean More Anxiety and Depression for Teens

A new report in the journal Emotion suggests that teens who spend less time in front of their screens are happier—up to a point. The report, “Decreases in Psychological Well-Being Among American Adolescents After 2012 and Links to Screen Time During the Rise of Smartphone Technology,” used a large national survey of eighth, 10th and […]

Bullies Are Everywhere These Days—Here’s How to Respond to Them

Elizabeth Bernstein, a writer for the Wall Street Journal and author of this article about bullying, had something to say recently to the guy who pulled up behind her VW Beetle in a jacked-up pickup truck, honked furiously while she waited for a pause in oncoming traffic to make a left turn, then followed her […]