Danger is Normal...

There is No Pre-Walked Path...

Healing Interactions with Others...

Re-Visioning Spirit is Now Available from BARNES & NOBLE : )

If you are interested in being more aware of your own spirit and the spirits of others, spiritual health and well-being, and spirituality, my first book is for you.

It is now available from BARNES & NOBLE here: Re-Visioning Spirit: A Brief Introduction to Thumotics

Why not be among the first of those bold enough to re-vision spirit?

Healing Is...

You aren't Just Rare...

Shedding What No Longer Serves...

Time Doesn't Heal, But...

The Problem of Mindlessness of Our Own Spirit

For our body to develop and move, we must first be alive. For our mind to think and learn, we must first be alive. Before we can interact with others, we must first be alive. Our spirit is what makes us alive rather than not.

Our spirit is as natural as our backsides, brains, and best friends. It is this-worldly rather than other-worldly.

Our spirit precedes our physical, mental, and social activity. It is the agent of our life and the purpose of our life. It drives us to keep living and guides us toward fulfilling our purpose. It sustains us as we create the narrative of our life one action at a time. By our spirit we know when we are fulfilling our purpose, straying from it, how to return, and when we are back on track.

The father of Western medicine, Hippocrates, said, “The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.” Our spirit is that natural healing force. It is the agent of our natural healing process that drives our recovery from injuries and illnesses.

One of our greatest problems as Westerners is our mindlessness of our spirit. We comply with other’s too readily. We rely on our minds too much. Our mindlessness of our spirit hinders our living healthy, purpose-fulfilling lives.

Be mindful of this: your own spirit. It is the agent of your life. It precedes your thoughts, actions, and interactions with others. Go with it. Act in harmony with your spirit. Discipline your mind to serve rather than constantly second guess your spirit. Interact with those who help rather than hinder you in fulfilling the purpose of your life.

For more about spirit, consider reading this:

Re-Visioning Spirit

You're Already Healing...

Where Healing Begins...

Sex, Religion, Politics: What My Elders Taught Me

The divisiveness among us in general, and this election cycle in particular, have inspired me to reconsider what my elders taught me: It's best to avoid three topics for polite and civil public conversations: sex, religion, and politics. I believe their wisdom was based on generations of actually experiencing the harm that such conversations, when had in public, can have on us and our relationships with each other. 

Public conversations on these topics rarely, if ever, change the behaviors, beliefs, or opinions of those who engage in them. If anything, they promote the hardening of positions and harming of relationships. They tend to dehumanize and divide rather than unite us.

I believe your opinions and beliefs concerning sex, religion, and politics are none of my business. Why would I care about them? If I did care, I would speak with you in private about them, not in a public setting. 

My opinions and beliefs concerning sex, religion, and politics are none of your business. Why would you care about them? If you do, speak with me in private about them.

Your opinions of my opinions and beliefs are also none of my business. Again, I do not care. Why should I? 

I do care about you and our relationship. I do care if you threaten or harm me or those I love and care about. Otherwise, I'm not here to live according to your expectations or hopes for me. Neither are you here to live according to mine. 

I also care very much about our freedom to live our lives, with no harm to others, as we so choose. And I care about our freedom to express our beliefs and opinions, whatever they are. Just don't expect me to give a damn about your expressed beliefs and opinions. I might or might not give a damn. 

When it comes to elections, I don't care about what you have to say about who you're for and against, unless I ask you in private. I care about what the politicians have to say to all of us. And I care about their record. 

You have no sway on how I vote, except when your public behavior and words tell me something about the kind of folks your candidate attracts. 

I wonder why candidates do not care more about what their own constituents say and do in public. 

So, I've decided to take to heart the wisdom of my elders. I'm going private with my opinions about sex, religion, and politics. From now on, I consider your opinions on these topics private too. They're none of my business. If you expose them, I'll pretend I didn't see them and move on...

Because I care more about you and our relationship than I do about your opinions and beliefs regarding sex, religion, and politics. 

How to Help Your Friend Through a Difficult Time, Part 3

Practical Things You Can Do To Help Your Friend

Just as it is important for you to know the best role for you be in to help your friend through a difficult time, it’s also important to know the practical actions you can take to help you friend. What follows are some basic, tried and true, practical, helpful actions to take.

Be available to your friend. Offer to help. Say how you can help and ask your friend if that would be helpful. Say,“I hear that you are dealing with a difficult challenge. I see its affect on you. I care about you. I know you will get through this. And I want to help. You can talk and I’ll listen. I’ll be with you through this and support you. Would that be helpful?

If your friend declines your help, she’s allowed to do so. Her declination is not a rejection of you personally. Leave the door open. You can always offer again later, if needed. 

If your friend accepts your offer, when you are with your friend, relax. Be non-anxiously present. Smile gently. Believe in your friend. Exude confidence in your friend’s ability to make her way through her difficult challenge.

Give your friend your full attention. Listen closely to your friend’s story. Draw out the story. Say things like,“Tell me more” and “What happened next?” Tell your friend what you heard and ask if you understood correctly: “So, I heard you say ___. Did I get that right?”

Accept and do not try to change your friend’s feelings. Validate his feelings. Say things like, “So, I see and hear you crying. Here is some tissue“ or “Yes, I hear how angry/sad/afraid/guilty you feel. You are allowed to feel exactly as you feel.”

Normalize his feelings. Say, “It’s normal for you to feel the way you do. If I were you, I would feel the same way.”

Your friend will be able to think more clearly and make constructive decisions after her emotions pass…and they will pass.

Just listen as your friend shares her thoughts. There is no need to form opinions about your friend’s thoughts. Thoughts are just thoughts, neither right nor wrong. But some thoughts are more constructive than others. You can ask, “How does thinking that help you move forward?”

Applaud the constructive actions your friend takes that help him move forward with his life: Great move! You did it! Way to go! You rock!

After she makes her way through the challenge, find a way to celebrate with her. She gets all the credit. She has accomplished something difficult to do. It’s worth celebrating in a way that is congruent with her accomplishment.

And finally, congratulate yourself. You have been a true friend. You helped your friend through one of life’s difficult challenges.

Mark W. Neville, MDiv

828-551-8825

www.markwneville.com

On-line Counseling at WeCounsel

Book: Re-Visioning Spirit: A Brief Introduction to Thumotics

www.facebook.com/MarkWNevilleMDiv

How to Help Your Friend through a Difficult Time, Part 2: Your Role

Your Role When Helping Your Friend Through a Problem

When helping a friend through a difficult time, it is important to be clear about the most helpful role for you to play in your friend’s story.

Your friend is living her life and writing the story of her life one action at a time. She is the lead actor of her life making her way though her difficult challenge. You are in a supporting role. 

Your most helpful role is as a companion, observer, and supporter.

What Your Role is NOT

It’s important to know what your role is not when you are helping a friend with a problem.

You are not your friend’s fixer, rescuer, cavalry, knight in shining armor, mother or father, hero or heroine.

You are not the one who asks a lot of questions about your friend’s past, analyze her story, and determine the cause and cure of your friend’s problem.

Neither are you with your friend to make your friend “feel better.” You’re not there to change your friend’s feelings to feelings that are more comfortable for you.

You are not the “thought police.” Your friend has no thoughts that you have to police.

You are not the director of your friend’s life story, not in the role of telling your friend what to do and not do. Your friend is both the lead actor in his challenge and his own director of his actions.

Most important of all,  you are not your friend. Your friend’s challenge is not yours. It’s not your role to become the lead actor or a participant in your friend’s problem. When you over-identify with your friend and his problem, you and your friend both have problems to solve.

Your Role

Again, the best role to be in to help your friend is as a companion, observer, and supporter as she makes her way through the challenge she faces. 

You are someone safe, with whom your friend can safely and confidentially express whatever he feels.

You’re in the role of listening to your friend express her thoughts without forming opinions about what she thinks. You listen without judging her thoughts right or wrong. You neither agree nor disagree with what she thinks. 

You’re in the role of a collaborator; that is, one with whom your friend can form a plan of action. But it has to be her plan, not yours. 

As your friend’s friend, you are also in the role of protecting him from harming himself or others. You’re the one who gets helps if your friends is suicidal or a threat to others. You are the one who calls 911 when needed. You are the one who tells your friend that she needs help that you are not qualified to give.

Part Three of this series will give you some practical actions you can take to help your friend.

Mark W. Neville

Author, Educator, Life Therapist

828-551-8825

www.markwneville.com

On-line Counseling at WeCounsel

Book: Re-Visioning Spirit: A Brief Introduction to Thumotics

www.facebook.com/MarkWNevilleMDiv

How to Help Your Friend Get Through a Difficult Time, Part 1

It’s hard to watch a friend struggle through a challenging time in his or her life. Sometimes it’s more than hard. It’s painful. 

We care about our friends. It’s normal to want to help our friend going through a difficult time and important to know exactly how best to help. In this three-part series, I share information that you can use to help your friend.

In Part One, I share 7 things you need to know about your friend’s problem, emotions, thoughts, plans, and actions.

In Part Two, I share helpful, practical information about the most helpful role for you to be in when helping your friend.

In the last part, Part Three, I give you some practical things to do to help your friend through the difficult challenge.

Part One: 7 Basic Things to Get about Your Friend Dealing with a Problem

1. Your friend’s problem is not yours to take on and try to fix as if it was your own. Doing so robs your friend of an important opportunity in making his way through his difficulty.

    Your friend’s problem is your friend’s problem.

2. Your friend’s emotional responses are what they are. She feels what she feels. Her feelings are neither right nor wrong. They simply are what she feels. She cannot change her emotions by willing them to be different. If she could, she would. Like weather fronts, they will pass. 

3. Your friend’s thoughts are also what they are. They might be about doing things that are either helpful or harmful, but thoughts themselves are neither right nor wrong. They just are. Like emotions, thoughts come and go.

4. Your friend’s emotions and thoughts are less important than your friend’s plans and actions. What your friend plans to do or not do matters. What your friend actually does or does not do matters above all else.

5. What your friend plans to do to address his problem guides what he actually does. Since your friend’s problem is his to solve, his plan to solve his problem is also his. Creating a plan is his work, not yours. But you can help him think through and form his plan.

6. Your friend’s actions are hers. Whatever she does, she will not fail. She will do what she does. And she will get feedback. She will experience the consequences of her actions. Those consequences will help her decide whether to keep doing what she’s doing or do something different.

7. Your friend will make his way through his problem, one way or another: constructively or destructively. And he will do so with or without you. You are not necessary for your friend to solve his problem. However, you might be able to help him act more constructively than destructively to himself and others.

If this post is helpful to you, it probably is to others as well. Please share it and help others help their friends too.

NEXT POST: My next post, the second part of this series, will be about the best role for you to play and practical things you can do to help your friend through a difficult challenge.

Our Future Shattered by Grief...

7 Reasons We Choose Holistic Healthcare Providers

Our healthcare industry is tyrannized by the manufacturing assembly line model created by Henry Ford to build cars. That’s why we call it an industry.

Physicians are the assembly line workers. Office visits are what they produce. Their investors, primarily insurance companies, determine what they will pay physicians per visit. Many physicians also have quotas for how many office visits they must “make” each day. 

Physicians have treatment protocols to follow for addressing their patients symptoms. Protocols help physicians work more efficiently so they can “make” their daily quota of patient visits.

Physicians often get bonus pay for writing prescriptions and ordering tests. Their primary purpose is to make money for their investors and themselves by “making” as many visits per day as they can.

In our healthcare industry, patients are the things on the production line. Their symptoms are problems to fix. The process for fixing them is highly mechanical. 

The less time physicians spend per patient, the more visits they can “make" each day. The more visits they make, the money they and their investors make.

Physicians give an average of 7 minutes to each patient they see.

Just as assembly line workers in other manufacturing industries are being replaced by robots, so are physicians. It is a short step from in-person treatment protocols to on-line treatment protocols. Already, patients can call in and answer questions asked by a computer that will lead them through the protocol algorithm to their treatment plan. Why pay humans to do what robots can do cheaper?

Over the years of my professional healthcare career and personal life, I have consistently heard seven main reasons people seek holistic and integrative healthcare: They want-

A personal encounter with a human being that cares about them and their health. They feel the therapeutic value of the personal encounter.

Their healthcare provider to take the time to listen, discuss, and understand what is going on with them. NOTE: When they say they feel bad, they don't want their physician to tell them the tests say that there is nothing wrong with them. 

To be treated as a human being not a thing on an assembly line.

To be treated as a whole person, not a set of physical symptoms.

The cause, not just the symptoms, of their disease addressed.

To use all of the safe, natural methods of healing that are available to them. This is the integrative part of healing.

To be well as a whole person with a life, not just symptom free. This is the holistic part of healing.

I have also consistently had clients and patients tell me that they are self-treating more and using complementary and alternative therapies to do so.

According to a study published in 2007 by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, 4 in 10 adults in the US use some form of complementary and alternative medicine. The study reported significant increases in the use of complementary and alternative therapies over the 2002 study.  The 2012 study showed little change for 2007 to 2012.

By far the most frequent form of complementary and alternative medicine used is nutritional supplements. 

My clients tell me they self-treat because conventional healthcare is too expensive and confusing. 

They say complementary and alternative approaches are safer and easier to access.

In my opinion, what the healthcare industry is doing is unsustainable. It's going down the same road as other manufacturing industries in the US. Time will tell if my prediction is right.

No Failures, Only Feedback...

There is only one kind of life...

Believe in Yourself ...

10 Things to Love about On-line Counseling

If you are like me, you might be skeptical about on-line counseling and therapy services. However, they are growing in popularity.  Now that I have done on-line sessions for a while, I understand why.

At first, I was very skeptical about caring for clients on-line. Now, I love it. Here are ten things I am loving about on-line sessions:

1. They’re easy to do. Both my clients and I have found it easy to log-in and connect with each other. All we need is a PC, laptop, tablet, or smart phone with a camera and mic; internet connection, and username and password for the counseling website.

2. We aren’t limited geographically. You get to have your session wherever you choose. We can be anywhere, as long as it’s a private location, and meet on-line for a session. Neither one of us have to be “in town” or drive somewhere to meet. No one sees you going into my office.

3. Our sessions are secure and confidential. Your information and sessions meet and exceed the Federal HIPAA regulations. Your information is not sold or shared with others. Strict confidentiality is maintained.

4. We have the benefit of seeing and hearing each other during your session. This is important for both you and me. I see your facial expressions and gestures and hear the tone of your voice. You see mine as well. This supports our sense of connection that is so important to our work together.

5. You can access my calendar and schedule your own appointment, if you want to.

6. We both receive reminders of our appointment so we don’t miss it or show up late and cut your time short.

7. I can share clinical and teaching documents with you on-line during our session. These are secured and protected.

8. Paying your bill is easy and documented. 

9. It’s easy to refer family members, friends, and co-workers, regardless of where they live.

10. It raises the quality of care provided by all counselors and therapists, because high quality care is now a click away.

Yes, there are  some cons to on-line counseling and therapy work: We cannot shake hands or hug. Sometimes there are technical problems that we have to address. But, in my experience so far, the pros outweigh the cons.

If you think I might be able to help you make your way through a difficult challenge that you’re facing now, I offer free 30-minute initial consultations.

You can connect with me on-line here:

 https://portal.wecounsel.com/directory/markwneville

Or call me at 828-551-8825