After suffering from sleep deprivation, anxiety, fear, worry, and stress from work and personal issues at home, I turned to Dr. Robert Rhoton for treatment at his therapeutic practice, Psychological Health and Wellness, in Mesa, AZ.  I couldn’t believe how much relief I got is just the first 5 sessions.  Then we worked on my sleep and fears for 6 or 7 sessions. Read the rest of this entry »

Collaborative, Competency-Based Counseling and Therapy by Bob A. Bertolino and Bill O’Hanlon

One of the most significant aspects of this book is that it presents a structured way to form and maintain positive therapeutic relationships between the client and the therapist. It shows a frank and straightforward way to be respectful and help the client find the strengths and abilities to navigate problems and build a future of positive possibilities.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things that are really important in therapy is that we have an understanding for what’s really happening. What that takes is an understanding of the problem geography.

I’m using geography as the metaphor of the problem at hand. If you think about geography you want to know about the latitude and longitude, the weather, what kind of flora is growing there, who lives there and you want to know the basics of what is going on in that geographic region. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a couple come in for marriage counseling who were having a lot of problems communicating. They fought constantly. Their marriage was in crisis.

He was an engineer; he talked very logic-based, very reason-based. She was all emotion and everything was an emotional thing for her. He was really attracted to that in the beginning and she was attracted to him because he was organized and  logical guy.

Eight years later, they’re no longer attracted to each other. So they talked about what they felt like they needed to do which was work on their ability to communicate with each other and hear each other in the language that they used. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a client named Tina come in for a consultation who was having a problem losing weight. She talked about how depressed she was because of the weight. When I begin to look at the pattern, what I found was that in her family to be connected they had meals together where there was lots of food where you were supposed to eat vigorously to show that you cared. Read the rest of this entry »

How do you deal with a new patient that says I only can afford five or six sessions can you help me and fix me in five or six sessions?

My answer generally is that it depends upon how much energy that you have. How much energy do you have to put into this? We only have so much energy. You may not have enough energy to get it done in five or six sessions but we can certainly make a really good impact in that time. But it might take 7 to 10 sessions over a period of several months.

Read the rest of this entry »