Food Or Belonging: What Is More Important?
Who do we belong to first? Ourselves? Our mothers, fathers, caregivers? It’s hard to say because whoever first takes care of our food needs, we will belong to, right? Well, think again!
Belonging and Loneliness
About 1 in 2 Americans feels alone or left out and 1 in 4 Americans feels that there is no one who understands them. Smoking 15 cigarettes a day has the same physical effects as loneliness in terms of lowering life expectancy! This is comparable with the risk factors of being obese, physically inactive, and living with air pollution!
Why Did I Become A Counselor?
When I was four years old, I wanted to become my father’s secretary. He had often complained and so, with the healthy arrogance of a toddler I was going to take care of him. When I was seven years old, my mother was dying of cancer. I knew that I could not cure her. At the same time it was also abundantly clear to me that this should not happen to other children or mothers. I decided to become a surgeon and take care of it.
About Glaciers and Counseling
I have been asked to deliberate about why my home page for my blogs shows the inside of a glacier. Well, here it is: I like the image. I like the colors, the wavy depth of the cave, and the winding path. More than anything though, I like the memory I have from visiting a glacier.
988—The New National Suicide Hotline Number
“I want to kill myself”. When I hear these words my entire being shifts into a different awareness and attention state. My years at the Suicide Prevention Service Hotline in Columbus, Ohio taught me to shut up and listen. Often, our callers had been socially and emotionally isolated for far too long. Most callers needed someone who listened well, someone who could also respond in a manner that let them know that they were heard and understood. The caring voice of a stranger was comforting enough to enter a conversation instead of following the feelings of hopeless- and helplessness.
Joy, Happiness, and Other Challenges …
In my upcoming blogs, I will discuss how various feelings can be challenges and functions of how we may lead happy, satisfied lives. Our feelings ever so often possess the potential to lead to our experiences of the joys of life and their opposites. Joy and happiness seem an optimistic and robust starting point and will serve as good juxtapositioning to other feelings and our dealings with them.