Rethinking Las Vegas

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

This is garbage. Total garbage. Stop telling yourself total garbage. A witty ad campaign is not a good excuse to make a bad decision.

You might think you can do whatever you want, and your spouse and friends will never know. But your covert deed does not stay “in Vegas.” You are going to stuff it into your baggage, cram it into your overhead compartment and take it home with you.

You know what you did. It will always be in your baggage. It will affect you.

The next time you are at a party and someone jokingly says “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” you will laugh nervously and look around the room wondering what people know and why are they all staring at you.

Every time you think about what you did, you will feel that pang of self loathing, regret or whatever emotion it is you are trying to pretend isn’t there.

You’ve heard the urban legend of the poor soul waking up with a headache and discovering that some tiny insect crawled into their ear and laid thousands of eggs while they were sleeping? The problem grew and grew until his entire head was infested with insects? Your Vegas moment is just like that.

I tell my clients that they can lie to me, and I will believe their lies, but ultimately they are lying to themselves...and they know they are lying.

What happens in Vegas is the ultimate lie you tell yourself. You lie because you are ashamed of what you did. If you were proud of your actions, you wouldn’t keep them a secret.  

What happens in Vegas most certainly does not stay in Vegas.

Please don’t take mental health advice from the marketing department of America’s most hedonistic city.

For information on individual counseling, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature or Psychology Today profile, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

Rethink Ignoring

Just ignore them.

This is the most overused and useless advice we give our kids. STOP TELLING KIDS TO IGNORE THEIR PROBLEMS!!! Ignoring someone is impossible, and I will prove it.

Imagine you are arguing with a friend/co-worker/significant other and you are angry to 11, quivering with rage. To show that person you are ignoring them, you turn your back to them.

Who are you thinking about?

That person.

And when you get up and leave, slamming the door behind you, who are you thinking about?

That person!

Then you scream, “I’m ignoring you!”

Directly addressing someone is the exact opposite of ignoring them.

You cannot ignore someone who is in your head. You can distract yourself, but what always happens? They come back every time. Sooner or later you have to deal with them. You have to replace the angry thoughts with something more productive.

Relax, this isn’t that big a deal.

I don’t want to do anything I will regret.

I’m better than this.

It’s only temporary.

You have to find a way to rethink the situation. Everything else is the mental equivalent of spraying air freshener over the pile of smelly clothes you refuse to wash. Drinking. Exercise. Eating. Shopping. Once those activities are over, the person that made you mad is still in your head.

Ignoring something is not an option for you. Stop thinking it’s an option for your kids. When you tell a kid to ignore their problem, you aren’t doing anything to help them deal with the situation or their anger in a constructive manner.

That is a fact that we as parents, mental health professionals and educators can no longer ignore.

For information on individual counseling, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature or Psychology Today profile, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

Rethink Respect: R.E.S.P.E.C.T is G.A.R.B.A.G.E.

Respect is overused and misunderstood. We have reduced a noble goal into a festering dung pile. Forget about respect. Aim for courtesy.   

I’ve spent a decade working with angry teenagers. If I had a nickel for every time I heard the “if you don’t respect me I won’t respect you” rant, I’d retire and sail the world on my own cruise ship.

If I had another nickel for every time the adult responded with the “you have to respect them as a person” speech, I’d fly to Jupiter on my gold plated rocket ship. What’s the best way to ensure a teenager won’t respect you? Lecture them about having to respect you.

I don’t normally do this, but Webster’s Dictionary defines respect as, “a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.”

In order to truly respect someone, you have to get to know them, identify something they have done AND admire them for having done so. That is hard to do within the first 2 minutes of just having met someone.

Do you know what you can do in the first 2 minutes of meeting someone? Be courteous.

Do you know what you can do if your paths cross for only a brief moment, never to see them again? Be courteous.

Do you know what you can do if you disagree with them? Be courteous.

Do you know what you can do if you think someone is a babbling moron? Be courteous.

Do you know what you can do if someone thinks you are a babbling moron? Be courteous. Kill them with kindness.

And if you are courteous enough long enough, you know what will happen?

You will earn their respect.

Need help rethinking a situation in your life? Email me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

For information on individual counseling, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature or Psychology Today profile, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

Rethink Parenting: Is your kid Attila the Hun or Marco Polo?

A friend told me she still hasn’t adjusted to being a mom. This is a common refrain for parents with newborns, but my friend’s daughter is almost 3.  

When I asked what she struggles with the most, she said it’s the constant noise in her home. I suggested that instead of thinking of her daughter as an angry little invader plundering the village, think of her as a modern day Marco Polo, exploring and discovering her world. Kids learn by experimenting, trial and error. This is normal, essential for healthy development and frequently louder than we would like.

Now my friend isn’t getting frustrated trying to change her kid’s behavior. She is changing her perception of what is happening.

Noisy kids are like every other event in our life. The thing itself is not inherently upsetting; our thoughts on the event make us mad, sad, happy, frustrated, etc…

If you are a parent and all you hear is noise, you get angry and your goal is to stop the noise. This goes bad faster than unrefrigerated milk. Arguments. Power struggles. Fractured child-parent relationship. Stifling their natural curiosity and playfulness. All the things parents say they don’t want. It starts with your thoughts: WHY ARE YOU SO LOUD???

When you think of the noise as a normal part of play, then you hear your child entertaining themselves, exploring, solving problems, building the skills every parent wants their child to possess. It makes you happy to have a healthy creative child. Again, it starts with your thoughts.

I have little ones. I know it’s tough. No one said parenting would be easy or quiet. If you can reshape what you think about your kids, you will be happier, they will be happier and maybe years from now they won’t be telling a therapist about their rotten parents.

Need help rethinking a situation in your life? Email me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

For information on individual counseling, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature or Psychology Today profile, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

My primary goal as a therapist

I tell my clients my primary goal as a therapist is to help them see in themselves what I see in them.

I have worked with ages 6 to 60. I can say with absolute certainty that 100% of my clients are far more capable than they give themselves credit for. No exceptions. No asterisk.

I work with teenagers who fight me tooth & nail when I try to reflect back to them how much talent they have.

I work with successful business people who stare at me like I’m speaking Chinese when I highlight how much they have accomplished.

Just this week I met a young woman who plays five instruments and has done so on stage with orchestras. To hear her tell her story, her future is hopeless.

Here’s what she sees: she will never earn a living playing the violin, viola, or stand-up base.

Here’s what she missed: she had the courage to get on stage and share her talents to a potentially critical audience. She displayed a high level of teamwork, interacting with dozens of other musicians in a primarily non-verbal capacity. She spent countless hours working on her craft, developing her talents, committed to the process, doing something that made her happy.

These are skills every employer in the world would cherish in an employee. These are things most of us would love to be able to say about ourselves. And she didn’t see it.

There is no value in beating yourself up and denying that you have something to offer to society. It might be easier than looking deep and seeing your strengths, but easier is rarely better.  

Having confidence will not solve all your problems. It takes more than confidence to overcome trauma. But it does make everything easier. Confidence is the foundation upon which everything in mental health is built upon.     

Give yourself the credit you deserve. Give yourself a pat on the back.

See in yourself what I see in you.  

Do you have questions about a specific situation in your life? Topics you want addressed in future essays? Email me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

For information on individual counseling, please contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

I’m an LPC and a writer. If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

I don't give a $h!T therapy

I always joked that I should pioneer “I don’t give a $h!T” therapy.

For the purpose of mass consumption, I will scale it back. My heart says stick with “I don’t give a $h!T” but my head says go with “I don’t care.”

So many of our problems stem from the fact that we care too much about things that don’t matter. I was reminded of this recently when my daughter decided to wear her pajamas to the grocery store. How does a 5 year old get away with the things that scare adults?

Because she doesn’t care.

She was excited to wear pajamas. Didn’t give a second of thought to what other people would say. She did what she wanted to do. Good for her.

It helps that she is amazingly adorable (I’m not biased) in pajamas. That doesn’t change the fact that she simply doesn’t care about all the stuff adults burden themselves with.

Pretend for a second that you, an adult, want to wear pajamas to the grocery.

People might look at me.

I don’t care.

People might laugh.

I don’t care.

People might think I’m crazy.

I don’t care.

People might judge me.

I don’t care.

I might see someone I know.

I don’t care.

You get yourself worked into a frenzy caring about all the stuff that doesn’t matter. STOP CARING!

I have to stop here and clarify. My daughter is not engaging in anything illegal, immoral or ethically blurry. If you are considering breaking laws or committing crimes against humanity, I strongly urge you to care.

If you want to do something that makes you happy, isn’t illegal and might be outside “the norm,” do it. Stop caring about the stupid stuff.

Or if it suits you better, don’t give a $h!T.

Do you have questions about a specific situation in your life? Topics you want addressed in future essays? Shoot me an email at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

For information on individual counseling, please contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

I’m an LPC and a writer. If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature, write to me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

You are 6 blind men

There's a famous parable about 6 blind men and an elephant. Each man touches a different part of the elephant and comes away with a different impression.

The one who feels the leg thinks it's a tree.

The one who feels the belly thinks it's a wall.

The one who feels the trunk thinks it's a snake...and so on.

Every day, your life is just like touching that elephant. What you see depends on what you are looking at.

If you’re sitting in rush hour and all you see is traffic, you’re angry.

If all you see is your kids yelling at each other, you want to scream them silly.

If all you see is idiot co-workers ruining the workplace, you are ready to explode.

If I could modernize the parable, one blind man would suggest to the others that they all switch positions, so they would all get a different "view" of the elephant.

If you’re sitting in traffic and you see it as a few seconds to relax without being bothered, you’re calm.

If you see your kids yelling and see it as a teachable moment, you are feeling hopeful.

If you see yourself as the lone shining star in a very dark sky, you feel better about going to work tomorrow.

If you don't like what you see, switch your perspective. Find a new way to look at something. Feel a different part of your elephant.  

You are 6 blind men. Your life is the elephant. If you keep feeling the elephant's leg expecting something different, you will be disappointed. The elephant doesn’t care & is never going to change for you.

Do you have questions about a specific situation in your life? Topics you want addressed in future essays? Drop me an email at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

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For information on individual counseling, please contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

I’m an LPC and a writer. If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com  

Taller on the inside

I was in my early 20s, flying home from college in one of those tiny airplanes. Two seats on one side of the aisle, one on the other. Feels like you’re flying over a sky full of speed bumps.

I was sitting comfortably in my chair, or as comfortable as one could be while bouncing around like tennis balls in the dryer. The man next to me, the very tall man, was awkwardly folded into his chair. He sniffed his knees from Missouri to Memphis. His only other option would have been to drape his legs over the seat in front of him.

It was that exact moment I stopped wishing I was taller and found happiness with my vertically challenged frame.

All my life I wanted to be taller. Not freakishly tall. I would have been happy at 6 feet even; tall enough to dunk a basketball but not so tall that everyone assumes I play basketball.

Then I saw this poor guy, miserable and struggling to achieve comfort while tackling the most mundane of tasks: sitting in a chair.

It was the first time in my life I appreciated being the size I was.

Years later, working with teenagers who never hesitate to comment on my height, I started telling them “I’m taller on the inside.” I really feel that way. I am confident with who I am and what I do. My height doesn’t define me. Why should it? I didn’t choose my stature. I can’t change it. I might as well accept it and make the best of it. It’s a lot easier than wearing heels and combing my hair up.  

It took me years to hit internal puberty. I was a late bloomer. Also, I think I'm still growing.

Everybody is born with something about them they would like to change...something they didn’t choose and can’t control. I say embrace it. Revel in it. Plop your butt down in that tiny airplane seat and be comfortable.    

Find happiness with who you are.

Be taller on the inside.

Do you have questions about a specific situation in your life? Topics you want addressed in future essays? Let me know about it in the comment section.

For information on individual counseling, please contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com.

I’m an LPC and a writer. If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature, contact me.

Rethink Closure

There is no such thing as closure!

It drives me crazy when pop culture cliche invades mental health. It creates unrealistic expectations and pushes people further away from the help they need. Do you know when you get closure? When you die. Until then, the door can swing open any time.

Let’s say someone significant in your life dies. For the first few months, you cry easily and a lot. You struggle to focus on day-to-day life. That’s normal.

As time goes by, the tears subside. You resume daily activity. You find reasons to feel good without feeling guilty. You cry a little on birthdays and anniversaries. All normal. You think you have closure.

Then one random day 10 years down the road, you have a meal that tastes just like Mom used to make...see a guy wearing a jersey of your husband’s favorite team...hear the shared song that you haven’t heard in years...and you break down and cry like you just heard the news for the first time. Closure just opened up.

In real life, the door swings open and shut all the time. You can’t predict it. When you think you have closure, an unexpected wind blows it open. Maybe just a crack. Maybe rips the doors off the hinges. That’s life and that’s normal.

Closure is not life and closure is not normal.

When you see a therapist, it’s for big reasons. Life changing reasons. Emotional hurricane reasons. It’s not realistic or healthy to think you can close the door and never look back. If it’s big enough to seek help, it’s too big to forget.   

If you are currently in therapy or considering it, it is important  to have realistic expectations. If you don’t, no therapist will be good enough to help you.

You can cope...manage...strive to find a balance...make lemonade...dance in the rain...whatever suits your needs. Remember the past, move forward with the lesson and leave the pain behind. But know that sometimes the pain gets a second wind and catches up to you...if only for a moment.  

Don’t look for closure. You’ll never find it.

Do you have questions about a specific situation in your life? Topics you want addressed in future essays? Let me know about it in the comment section.

For information on individual counseling, please contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com.

I’m an LPC and a writer. If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature, contact me.

A nursing home primer

Consider these 2 fact:

1. Every day, thousands of Baby Boomers are retiring.

2. Development and construction of nursing homes and senior living facilities is booming.

Put these together and that means in the next 10 to 15 years, a lot of you will face the reality of putting your parents in a facility. When that day comes, here are some tips to help make the transition less stressful.

1. ASK QUESTIONS. I worked in a nursing home for 5 years. I listened to nurses rattle off terminology as if they were speaking in code while family members nodded along, clueless. As you age, you are essentially learning a new language dominated by acronyms. COPD. CHF. UTI. CNA. LPN. Acting smart is dumb. Educate yourself.  

2. GET TO KNOW THE STAFF. Nursing homes are divided into units. Each unit has a social worker/case manager. They generally handle all non-medical stuff but you can go to them for anything. You have nursing assistants (CNAs or PCAs) and head/charge nurses. Then there’s a unit manager who oversees everything on the unit. There is a director of nursing (DON), possibly even an assistant director of nursing (ADON). Then you have various administrators. If you have a problem, find the right person who can help. And don’t stop. Keep going until you get the results you want.

One of the most popular people on my unit was the housekeeper. He knew the residents and visited with families. He kept track of special requests. It’s helpful to be on the good side of the people actually doing the work, not just the important bigwigs.

3. KNOW YOUR MEDICAL CONDITION. What you have dictates your level of care and what services you will need. Can you expect to get better, manage the pain or simply slow down your decline? Also, diseases progress in stages, so it’s important to know where you are.

4. KNOW YOUR EXPECTATIONS. Some people walk into a nursing home hoping to be there for years. Others roll in knowing they won’t last the month. This ties directly into knowing the stage of your illness. Do you expect aggressive treatment, maintenance or comfort measures/hospice? If you don’t know what you want or need, you won’t know what to ask for.

5. BE SPECIFIC. The more information you can give staff, the better they can meet your needs. “Dad likes to eat” is not as valuable as “Dad has a big breakfast and skips lunch, but he does enjoy a snack around 2pm, usually fruit or yogurt, something light.”

6. KNOW WHAT THE FACILITY PROVIDES. It always frustrated me when residents assumed we provided everything. Facilities aren’t obligated to buy you new socks, pay for cable tv upgrades, electric razors and anything else you don’t want to purchase. If you have unrealistic expectations, you will be disappointed. This is a good rule of thumb for life in general.

7. BE PART OF THE CARE. It also bothered me when families would drop their parents at our door with the unstated message they are now our problem. Stay involved. If staff sees you’re a regular, they’re more likely to respond to you in a positive manner when you ask for help. If you roll in on the big 5 (Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthday, Mothers/Father’s Day, Fourth of July) then staff will see you as the jerk who only comes in on holidays.

9. I have saved the best for last, something I told every new resident upon admission: ADVOCATE FOR YOURSELF! It is YOUR OBLIGATION to make sure staff provides the level of care you expect. If something doesn’t look right, ask questions and speak up. DO NOT EVER feel like you are “bothering” staff. And don’t ever tolerate staff that makes you feel like a pest or a burden. Staff is there to do a job, to take care of human beings in a dignified fashion. If they don’t want to do that, then they can hit the road. I have a low tolerance for people who underperform in this field...and you should too.

Ultimately, growing old is like any other endeavor in your life: the more you know the better off you'll be.  

Do you have questions about a specific situation in your life? Topics you want addressed in future essays? Let me know about it in the comment section.

For information on individual counseling, please contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com.

I’m an LPC and a writer. If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature, contact me.

Knees and Empathy

Mr. Jack was a paratrooper during World War II. He helped liberate a concentration camp. I saw the pictures he personally took while standing in Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. By the time I met him, he was 85, in a nursing home, struggling to dress himself.

As I watched him one morning laboring to put on his shoes and socks, I thought of myself. I play soccer, and the day after a game my knees and back don’t cooperate. It takes longer than normal, and a lot more grunting, to reach my feet.

I could see myself on his bed with Mr. Jack, struggling alongside him to get dressed...thankful that for me it’s one day a week...painfully aware that for Mr. Jack it’s every day he wakes up.

It was one of the seminal moments of my life. Without knowing it, Mr. Jack taught me empathy.

Empathy is the ability to find a piece of yourself in someone else.

This bears repeating because empathy is one of those words that gets tossed around so casually that it’s lost all meaning.

Empathy is the ability to find a piece of yourself in someone else.

When you find a piece of yourself in someone else, you connect to that person. It allows us to show others we care, not because we have to, but because we have even a modest bit of insight into their situation. It is not pity. It is understanding.    

Empathy is what keeps us from judging too quickly. It tempers our hostility. Empathy demands that we know ourselves and we make an effort to get to know others...to make a connection. Empathy separates us from the animals.

It is easy to connect to people just like you. Perhaps the most human act of all is to connect with someone with whom you have no obvious connection.

Can you see a piece of yourself in the mother struggling to control her kids in the grocery store? The refugee dropped into a new city with minimal grasp of the language? The old man taking too long to put on his shoes and socks because you have other tasks to get to?

Hero is another overworked word. Mr. Jack is the guy I think of when I think of the Greatest Generation. He did things I can only read about. He was a hero. I am not. But one morning every week, Mr. Jack and I are connected, if only at the knees.

Do you have questions about a specific situation in your life? Topics you want addressed in future essays? Let me know about it in the comment section.

For information on individual counseling, please contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com.

If you are a mental health professional and need creative consultation for your professional literature, contact me.