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Being Blog • Complicated Grief: How to Lessen Pain that Persists

As I have tried to help people, both as a pastor and now as a therapist, move through their experience of grief, I have not had a good model for what is known as complicated grief. Complex or complicated grief lasts longer than most people mourn a loss, and is so intense it blocks every other life experience of drive, desire and pleasure. Researchers at UCLA have made brain scans of complex grief that look and behave like trauma would. Treating complex grief with a model of exposure therapy has shown a great deal of promise for people. At last, a map for this territory! Being Blog • Complicated Grief: How to Lessen Pain that Persists

Loose connections | The Christian Century

Another great article thinking about the changes in mainline Church. Loose connections | The Christian Century

Major Mental Illness (MMI) and the Family

For all the research that has been done in the last twenty years attempting to understand the brain, the organ at the top of our spine retains its essential mystery. We know more now than ever how the brain works, how it has developed over the centuries to do the miraculous things it does, and what is happening to it when it gets injured. Doctors, parents, coaches and professional athletes are more alert to the dangers of brain concussion. Neurologists study to become adept at repairing the brain with surgery, cellular transplant, or electrical stimulus. Every one of us has a stake in the health of our minds. But no one has now, or may ever, understand what to do when a brain loses its essential emotion balance. Major mental illnesses (MMI) like bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorders, and severe personality disorders are currently treated with hospitalization, a variety of medicines, and several kinds of therapies including group, art, music,

Missed Deadline

Chalk it up to personal development; I missed a writing deadline and I haven't fainted dead away. For a writer, a deadline is a looming, ever-present line in the sand. The Thing Which Must Be Met. All through college, seminary and grad school, I have made my writing deadlines. With more or less aplomb. For twenty years I had weekly sermon deadlines. And those deadlines were deadly, let me tell you. There is absolutely no getting around a Sunday morning pulpit. Nothing quite so serious, at least for me. I have written a spiritual reflections column every dozen weeks or so for a local paper since 1997. That's over 100 columns of over 500 words each. I have pushed my editor a time or two, but never failed to make my deadline. And I write as a volunteer for an online psychotherapy directory, GoodTherapy.org. I'm one of their Family Therapy topic experts. I have had this monthly gig for about a year and a half. It's here, in my volunteer world of therapy expert, that I

Sitting All Day Is Worse For You Than You Might Think : NPR

Even with daily exercise, don't just SIT THERE all day! Sitting All Day Is Worse For You Than You Might Think : NPR