This is a professional blog about health and wellness, personal growth and transformation, mind-body medicine, and spirituality. Highlights include life coaching, counseling, psychology, and behavior change.
We offer the support you need for creating a healthier, more fulfilling life. Includes self-help tools for creating lasting change, navigating trauma and difficult life transitions based on the author's vast life experience, knowledge, and scientific research.
Most clinical models and mental health manuals do not offer a realistic summary of real grief. Far as I can tell, these definitions appear to have been written by those who've never lost someone close. At 4 to 6 months you are still in shock, especially if it was a sudden death. Year 2 is the WORST. The shock has worn off and reality is setting. You live every day with it in your face that you are never going to see this person again. All the support people provided in year 1 is gone. No one wants to hear about your grief anymore. This agony can go well into year 3.
At year 4, there is some acceptance. The pain begins to dull a bit, the hurt turns to a reluctant new normal with memories that evoke gratitude for the person that was. The hole inside begins to close up and the rawness isn't so fresh. But, you are never the same. Grief bursts continue to erupt without warning, sometimes intensely. Grief never really ends. Please know that at 6 months your process of grieving has only begun. And that is normal. It takes your brain time to rewire and adapt to a new reality. A reality not of our own making, that cannot be undone. It is the utter permanence of the loss (or losses) that drives grief. The landscape of our lives has been altered, and there's a missing piece that's irreplaceable forever.
So however you grieve and for however long, know that there is no time line or end point; life just morphs and evolves until a new normal emerges that is unpredictable and unknowable until we are there.
Share your thoughts on grief in the comments below.
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Living Large Coaching & Counseling
It's Your Life. Your Evolution.
Please
help share this resource, as you never know whose life you might
save. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at: 1-800-273-8255.
Mental health stigma still has us in the Dark Ages
Boot Straps Stoicism has killed more people than anything I know in the form of alcoholism, addiction, suicide, and the long slow death of denial and (C)PTSD. Depression, anxiety, and PTSD are not illnesses to be scorned or defects of character - they are neuro-psychological responses to extreme stress in numerous forms that affect every one differently and are NOT to be shamed by ignorant bystanders who would lay judgments on people struggling.
While it's getting better, mental health stigma still persists like a
bad dream, even today. So, while addiction and suicide rates climb,
competent qualified mental health professionals are at a premium, and
often difficult to find in rural areas and small towns. Good mental
health care can be found if you know where to look. The search is worth
the effort, and this blog has a number of links on our home page to get you started.
Self-Help Strategies
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms and are uncomfortable seeking a therapist, counselor, or life coach, then get out a notebook, and START WRITING. Write whatever comes into your head, don't censor it, and UNLOAD. When the paper owns it, you'll be able to look at it and see yourself more clearly. This is the first step to well being.
No one knows better than you do what you are thinking and feeling, and the pen and paper are your vehicle to clear the channel, especially if you are bogged down in hopelessness, feelings of despair and raging emotion. Remember, suicide is permanent, and feeling wretched might feel like it will last forever, but if the paper becomes your friend, then you can process those feelings and move thru them. Being emotionally stuck is like being constipated, something has got to come out.
What about online coaching & therapy?
Studies have shown that online therapies can be quite effective for those dealing with suicidal thoughts. Even texting can be an effective intervention. What's important is reaching out for help, instead of suffering and staying stuck because it seems like there's nowhere to turn.
Below is a link to an interesting scientific article on suicide prevention. If you're feeling over whelming symptoms of distress, as outlined below, please seek professional mental health care. There's no need to be miserable and suffer endlessly alone!
Suicide Prevention and Texting: Easier Than You Might Think
Are you having difficulty making a needed change? Quitting smoking, losing 20 pounds, ending a toxic relationship, stopping that social media doom scrolling, etc.? You know what I mean. You "know you should stop", but you don't, can't, or won't. And with every failed attempt, you feel bad, beat yourself up, and then eat another Twinkie.
Welcome to the human race. All the insight in the world rarely leads to permanent behavior change. We know we should, if only we could. But, don't despair, change can and does happen in a very patterned and predictable way. It's all well documented by the Stages of Change Theory* (see link below).
And once you understand the process, it can help you along the way. You're not defective, or a failure. It's only that we tend to underestimate the effort required to create lasting change and it's easier to fall back into old patterns. Once we understand the stages of change, we can more easily make successful attempts to reach a goal.
In a future article, I will outline my experience going thru the stages of change to quit smoking. Until then, get acquainted with the stages of change.
*Reference: Raihan N,
Cogburn M. Stages of Change Theory. [Updated 2023 Mar 6]. In: StatPearls
[Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2026 Jan-.
National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK556005/
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Living Large Coaching & Counseling
It's Your Life. Your Evolution.
What's Fun Got To Do With It? Asking the Right Questions
Sometimes our mental health hinges on asking the right questions. When experiencing a bout of depression or anxiety, it may become easy to pathologize our current state i.e., view our condition as psychologically unhealthy or abnormal. Certainly, in the present day environment of being trauma-informed, it seems like all the focus is on healing childhood "wounds" or grieving losses in adulthood. But, what if it wasn't as complicated as all that? What if we've been asking the wrong questions? What if focusing on how bad we feel, or our anxiety was better dealt with by making a slight shift in our mindset? This is where the question: What's Fun Got To Do With It? comes in.
When was the last time you had a roaring belly laugh? Or grinned from ear-to-ear so hard your face hurt? When was the last time you intentionally set out to have fun? Do you even know what fun feels like anymore? Fun is a necessary prelude to joy. Fun brings us lightheartedness. Fun is a giant stress reliever. It resets our nervous system and offers a coffee break from becoming over focused on the negative. Fun is a respite from the daily grind of life's responsibilities and chores. Fun and laughter bond us to the people we care about and creates memories we share together. Fun brings us back into balance and shifts our perspective making life worthwhile. Fun eliminates the drudgery we can get caught up in when we work too hard. Fun helps recharge and rejuvenate our physical energy. It can also provide the space we need to shift into problem solving mode, instead of endlessly ruminating.
Just like getting enough sleep can reduce stress and anxiety levels, fun makes it easier to cope with emotional challenges. There's something to be said for gallows humor. At the end of his life, my father developed Lewy-Body dementia. In our morning phone call, I would always ask him, "What's going on?", and he would reply, "You're asking me?". Even though my Dad's memory was slowly waning, he never lost his sense of humor and was able to laugh at himself to keep going.
Here's a challenge for you. Make a list of the top ten activities that make you laugh, smile, giggle, or feel joy. Make sure to add silly nonsensical items to the list. Then the next time you feel super anxious or depressed, pull out this list and do the quickest activity you can manage in the moment. Take time to lighten up, put your emotions into perspective, and recognize not all negative feelings mean we are suffering from ongoing trauma or wounds.
Here's my top ten list of fun mental health activities:
1. Watch YouTube videos of the Beatles.
2. Joy ride in the car to my favorite rock-n-roll tunes.
3. Watch the sunset over the beach.
4. Pull goofy faces in the mirror.
5. Watch dance videos on YouTube.
6. Go to a Comedy Open Mic night.
7. Tell Knock-Knock jokes to my friends.
8. Pull a prank or practical joke on a friend.
9. Listen to an oldie but goody AM radio station.
10. Make up irreverent words to my favorite songs.
You get the point. I leave you with a laugh track video from my YouTube channel.
A fun laugh track from a sketch comedy improv writing session with my friend, Stan.
In loving memory of Stan Fleisher, soulmate and running partner. May he RIP.
Now
we have AI Apps being advertised as real therapy. The depersonalization
of vulnerable humans for monetary gain and data collection purposes is
now complete. This is such a joke. AI
CAN NEVER BE THERAPY. All these AI Apps exploiting vulnerable people
with fatuous promises is disgusting. All
this is, is Dear Diary with a sycophantic feedback loop, based on some
Psych 101 principles in a dumb algorithm with a screen. Call it what it
is and please stop duping people.
This really takes AI too far. It strips us of all that makes us human. I
had a young man today tell me that he found a good therapist on Better
Help for 2 half hour sessions a week, for $75.00 out of pocket, that has
been a life saver. Why? Because he's not sitting alone in his pain. Therapy
is only therapy with two live humans, for God's sake. Don't let all
this AI Therapy hype fool you. It is because we are human that we need
other humans. Now
if AI Dear Dairy works for you, fantastic! But let's not confuse that
with something it's not. It's not therapy, it's a playback machine and
nothing more.
All Rights Reserved, Copyright
Living Large Coaching & Counseling
It's Your Life. Your Evolution.
This is such a joke. AI CAN NEVER BE THERAPY. All these AI Apps exploiting vulnerable people with fatuous promises is disgusting.
All this is, is Dear Diary with a sycophantic feedback loop, based on some Psych 101 principles in a dumb algorithm with a screen. Call it what it is and please stop duping people.