In the helping professions, working effectively with clients depends on understanding them well. Such understanding can be developed by reading relevant records, meeting with clients face to face, and using assessments such as a mental status examination. As you proceed, you are forming a guiding concept of who this client is, how they became who […]

Jean Piaget’s theories of cognitive development remain hugely influential in both the popular and academic understanding of how our knowledge of the world is shaped by developmental forces. Piagetian approaches to learning as a process of actively constructing knowledge have been particularly effective in education, where they challenged traditional methods of teaching that overlooked the

Are you a sensitive soul? Do you know someone who is? Did you know there is a trait characterized by sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), which identifies a highly sensitive person/personality (HSP)? The term HSP was first coined by the psychologist Elaine Aron (1996), who is herself an HSP. She and her husband devised the Highly

Mental health is an integral component of maintaining good overall health. When individuals are mentally healthy, they are able to realize their own abilities, cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively, and make positive contributions to their community (World Health Organization, 2004). When individuals experience poor mental health, they may start to withdraw

Every day, millions of people are affected by the loss of a loved one. They remember the precise time, location, and what they were doing when they heard the news and its devastating impact. While commonplace, we may feel ill equipped to manage our grief and not ready to accept its impact on our lives.

Each grief experience is unique, yet we share the need to have it witnessed without someone attempting to lessen it or find ways to reframe it (Brown, 2021). While grief is typically acute during the early stages of loss, complicated grief is persistent, characterized by a long-lasting preoccupation with the departed. This is where therapy

Guided meditation is a great starting point for those new to meditation and a great way to refresh your practice if you are a seasoned meditator facing inner obstacles to meditation. Even the most experienced meditators experience obstacles, such as excessive internal chatter, dozing off, or restlessness, on occasion. All meditators benefit from fresh guidance

Visualization is a component of many meditation practices, including loving-kindness meditation (or metta) and the other three Brahma Viharas of compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity (Fronsdal, n.d.), often collectively known as the Four Immeasurables. Some types of meditation focus primarily on visualization and guided imagery to cultivate certain psychological states. This article explains how visualization

Feeling stressed? Take a few moments to focus on your breath rising and falling while sitting comfortably with a straight back in a quiet place. This summarizes the mindfulness of breathing meditation practice that was promoted in the West by John Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the Center for Mindfulness at the University

How much control do we really have over our lives? Many psychological theories have attempted to answer this question. One such explanation is the locus of control. Locus of control is a concept created by psychologist Julian Rotter (1954). Rotter was interested in social learning and why some behaviors stick while others languish. Locus of