Being Alone Many persons use the terms loneliness and being alone as interchangeable.  The first is missing an emotional connection with the people in one's environment.  The second is not having other humans or living things around self. Being alone is easily changed: add people or pets.  Loneliness is a more complex combination of factors to effectively connect with others such as self-esteem, interpersonal skills, emotional life history, etc. Feelings of loneliness are more difficult to change and are less noticeable to people in our world.  

Power For Positive Living

6.3 Being Alone

Learning With Solitude and Isolation As humans, we tend to need the presence and active interaction with other humans to feel complete during our life journey.  There are also times when we can learn much about ourselves as individuals when we structure periods of isolation or solitude.  These experiences allow us to better understand ourselves and strengthen the unique friendship that each of us has with self.

6.2 Learning With Solitude and Isolation

 Our birthdays can be a time for reflecting on the choices we have made during the past year as well as choosing the direction we wish to go during the coming year.  The past is gone except for our memories.  We each have the opportunity to take what we have learned in previous years of living life and focus our individual power of choice to produce a positive and healthy lifestyle going forward.     Making our birthday into a personal holiday for celebration allows us to appreciate our previous life path as well as focus on the choices we make for whatever time lies ahead.

6.1 Personal Holiday Celebration

Pricing My Life Choices   This interview allows each listener to consider knowledge and life options presented from a different point of view.   Your host is interviewed by Henry Bogan on WBT-AM in Charlotte, NC, on Friend Ship's focus on wellness psychology.      Together they explore the basic concepts of emotional pricing that each of us pays when we make our individual choices interacting with ourselves and other people.  There are no freebies!  Callers join in for a portion of the discussion on how to understand and implement the giving and receiving of emotional pricing. 

Mid-Season Bonus: Pricing My Life Choices

Healthy Aging With Friends   This episode continues the self-study of one's friendship circle    Many of the characteristics of the building and maintaining our friendship family continues to change as we age.   We may be fortunate to have "historical friends" who have been friends for decades.    Like any critical part of our lives, friendships need our attention and support to remain living and positive aspects of our emotional and physical health systems.   As we age, we often make new choices on how to manage these life changes with those who leave our friendship circle for a variety of reasons.

Healthy Aging With Friends

Building My Friendship Family Most of us have two major groups in our lives.  One is our biological family and the other is our friendship family.  While our biological family is given to us at birth, each of us makes our own personalized choices for persons we include in our individual family of friends.   Wellness psychology sees friendship as a contract between individuals that contains our beliefs, values, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.  Most contracts have varied steps in building and maintenance.   As a living relationship, mutual nurturance is needed for a friendship to stay alive.   Our friendships tend to be healthiest when we understand and openly address the mutual expectations and assumptions that we each have with our friends. 

Building My Friendship Family

Friendship Store   Seeking and understanding our individual friendship circles can be a powerful contributor to our personal mental health system.   One analogy that can be useful is comparing our behavior in a book store with what one might do in their individual Friend Store whether 'shopping' for a book or a friend.   Another possibility to consider is what we each write on our personal 'billboard' as we offer ourselves to others as bringing value into a friendship.  

Friendship Store

My Friend Print   Friend Print processes were developed for those persons who seek information to better answer the introspective question of "Who Am I?".   Friend Prints are structured to better understand the value of psychological exercising in developing and maintaining ones personal mental health.    Using an initial list of five persons that a listener calls "friend",  one is encouraged to create their own Friend Print beginning with 25+ categories of description.  Having this completed Friend Print allows an individual to see visually in a single place some characteristics of their friendship circle.

My Friend Print

Understanding Adolescent In-Patient Psychiatric Treatment   Two staff members of a psychiatric hospital in Houston (Scott Kunkle/Danny Carr) discuss the in-patient psychiatric treatment that adolescents can expect to experience when they enter a psychiatric hospital program.   The various aspects of hospital psychiatric treatment are demystified.

Understanding Adolescent In-Patient Psychiatric Treatment

Why Lie to Your Counselor? Truth and lies tend to come in various shades and degrees.  Individuals tend to choose to interact with themselves as well as with others by following personal beliefs, values, beliefs, feelings and behaviors on how they see themselves and their world.   Many people choose to assist other people with their life journey.  Regardless of being self-defeating, some will choose to interact with these helpers with a degree of untruthfulness.   Many will go to great lengths to present themselves in a positive way to others to avoid personal responsibility for their life choices.   Working through these distortions of dishonesty can frequently be a major challenge of the counseling process.   

Why Lie to Your Counselor?

Choosing a Counselor For Me   There can be times when we need an objective, competent and caring person to listen and offer guidance for the many and varied stresses of living.   Sometimes we need more than we can receive from family and friends.    Choosing a counselor is a very personal decision.  One may be lucky with the first choice they try or they find that finding the right person can be a long and challenging road.  Like many significant life choices, it helps to do extensive research on options that match one's own unique personality. 

Choosing a Counselor For Me

Understanding My Personal Counseling Choices   There are many factors to consider when we seek counseling assistance for some of the emotional challenges each of us faces during life.  Whatever choices we make, each will bring its own 'price' to be paid.  The more information we have on ourselves and what we are seeking, the more likely a positive outcome will occur.

Understanding My Personal Counseling Choices

I Have the Choice!   One of the cornerstones of wellness psychology is acknowledging the power of choice that each of us implements every day of our lives.  A key to a better understanding of who we are is learning how we choose our attitudes, expectations, and create our personal definitions.    We also make choices on deciding what we do with certain feelings and situations. Your host's experience with Hurricane Jerry is offered as an example to consider in reminding us that each does have the 'power of choice' in our lives; choices that fit the individual we are.

I Have The Choice

I Would Be Happy If You...   Accepting responsibility for the personal choices that we each make in our lives can be one of the most important aspects of creating positive mental health for ourselves.   When we recognize and accept that each of us has this personal power to select options that either increase or decrease our happiness, we tend to be healthier in relating to ourselves and to other people.  This acceptance of personal choosing increases my ability to appreciate and enjoy the diverse relationships I have with myself and others.

I Would Be Happy If You...

Making Healthy Life Choices   As a child, our individual choices for living life are often made by others.  Some continue to give that power to others as we become adults.   Each of us eventually develops our personal cost/benefit process of choosing what does/does not work for us as we each choose how to live this gift of life.    We can ask ourselves introspective questions such as: What gives my life meaning and value today?   We may eventually reach a point where the quality of life is more/less important to us than the quantity of life for certain situations.   Hopefully avoiding the burdens of perfectionism, we each can make healthy life choices for today and tomorrow while realizing that we each retain the power of re-decision as our situations evolve.  

Making Healthy Life Choices

Personal thoughts for positive living shared by a retired counseling psychologist as we all travel on our mutual journey through life.

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Power For Positive Living

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