Alaska Family Counseling

05/17/2023

Calm isn't the only good feeling. Part of improving mental health includes cultivating feelings like excitement and joy.

4. Enjoy other people's successes.

05/14/2023

Wishing a happy Mother's Day to all the great moms and mother-figures out there, from John Fugett!

05/11/2023

You won't get what you want if you don't ask for it. In a relationship, we often hold back out of fear of burdening the other person, but this ultimately leaves both people feeling unfulfilled.

Always watering down what you really want eventually leads to regret.

05/08/2023

Anxiety fatigues us in a way that makes it much harder for us to make decisions, resulting in more anxiety. However, there are often changes we can make to our lifestyle to feel more rested, and break free of the anxiety-fatigue cycle.

Examining the relationship between anxiety and fatigue.

05/06/2023

Sometimes, couples replay the same argument over and over because it isn't addressing the real problem. In those cases, it may actually be something deeper about the way they expect to relate to each other based on past experience.

They may be fights we never felt safe having with our parents.

05/03/2023

Depression sometimes causes us to catastrophize and personalize. With counseling, we can learn to resist those cognitive distortions and resist thinking poorly of ourselves for faulty reasons.

Depression-prone people tend to look through a glass darkly.

04/27/2023

Anger is a natural feeling, but a lot of us don't know how to deal with it in a healthy way. We can make anger less of a problem in our relationships by cultivating self-awareness and perspective-taking.

Stop being angry and start getting what you want out of your relationships.

04/24/2023

Anxiety doesn't feel good, but if we sit with it, we realize it's not really putting us in danger. This allows us to think more deeply about what's causing it.

Stop viewing anxiety as a problem and instead view it as a gift for healing.

04/21/2023

Learning often means making changes. This means that in order to learn, we have to be comfortable with unlearning.

The importance of letting go of habits and mindsets that no longer work.

04/18/2023

We may be more inclined to notice or remember things that provoke bad feelings, but this is a response we can gain control over. Part of this is by recognizing that anxiety is often driven by the same instinct as creativity.

Understanding that it's your choice to step in and intervene.