Psychotherapy Areas of Interest
If you click on any of the links below you can get more comprehensive information.
Grief and Loss
Grief is the heart's way of catching up with what the brain knows. We all go through it. It's hard, and it hurts – whether it is the loss of a loved one, a job loss, the loss of family member, a close friend or even a less severe loss. Sometimes, we get through the bereavement process on our own. We may also need the help of a therapist, someone whose been there too, to help us understand the process and get through these really difficult times. the process of grieving is so intensely personal. So too, must be the care and treatment of it.
Post-traumatic Stress
A traumatic event happens! Our left, ‘reasoning’ brain’s ability to think clearly and to solve problems is immediately switched ‘off-line’ by our right brain’s ‘animal instinct’ to survive. Intrusive throughs, flashbacks, anxiety attacks and/or depression can begin within a week, a month, even years after the event! And unless we actively do something about it, we don’t usually “just get over it.” Living with Post Traumatic Stress can be a terrible circumstance…but it just doesn’t have to be!
Depression and Anxiety
You’re always tired and you have a poor appetite. It’s hard to get motivated and you can’t concentrate. Feeling “jumpy,” or scared or tearful much of the time, but there’s really nothing wrong? … or maybe you can’t sleep and don’t feel like doing much of anything at all, much less socializing. Classic depression and anxiety. No one can know the weight of these issues unless you’ve been there! And both, entirely treatable!
Adult Life Transitions and Readjustments
Virtually any significant life change can be seriously destabilizing and disorienting. Change can be highly stressful, to frighteningly chaotic, or even wildly exciting. Depending on how profound the transition, significant life change may often have a spiritual component, leaving you feeling completely lost, with no direction. I have come to regard these changes as “rites of passage:” as evolutionary, revolutionary opportunities for growth and transformation, for greater self understanding, and in some cases, personal empowerment.
Emotionally Committed Relationships and Marital Issues
Tragically, over 50% of all marriages are going to fail! Many couples will prematurely end their relationship before they know that the main three, inevitably occurring, undermining dynamics of all relationships can be entirely workable. Often, with outside intervention it becomes possible to identify, and work through these roadblocks to the robust, alive relationship you wanted when you married. There is no greater opportunity to psychologically and spiritually evolve than in relationship!
Chemical Dependence, Alcoholism, and Other Addictive Disorders
Inherited or self induced, addictive strategies ‘benevolently’ numb psychological pain. But…you’ve been increasingly excluding other, more meaningful people and activities from your life and your circle of resources is shrinking: friends, family, co-workers and supervisors are beginning to be concerned about you. You wonder if your involvement with substance abuse, gambling, sex, relationship, work or other preoccupations are becoming a problem. The work of recovery is challenging, it’s true, and entirely doable. The recovery process has evolved some of the most relationally astute, spiritually awakened individuals I have known.
Adult Children of Alcoholics, and of other Addictive Personalities (“ACA”)
It doesn't feel safe growing up in an addictive family. It’s painful and can be scary, if not traumatizing. Neglect is common, as is psychological, and often physical abuse. Because it’s difficult to develop a core sense of Self, ACAs carry identity confusion along with childhood wounds into their adult lives. Those wounds often manifest in poor relationships and addictions of their own. Working with these ACA related issues in therapy, often in conjunction with related social supports, specific traumas associated with growing up in an addicted family can be resolved.
Premarital Counselling
Statistics indicate that over 50% of marriages will fail. I would like to help undermine that! Prior to any legal bonding, before adding children to the mix, I propose a safe vessel in which guided, open conversations clarify the values, role expectations and agreements that a couple is willing to make with each other. Included here are conversations about fears and expectations of the future, and about historical woundings and cultural influences that will inevitably impact and shape the likelihood of longevity of your relationship.
Co-dependence
CoDependence is the term used to describe the adaptive, often over-functioning strategies used by people who grew up in addictive, disordered, or otherwise dysfunctional families. These are the ‘one-way’ relationships characterized by a lack of reciprocity, where the CoDependent is the constant ‘giver.’ In it’s extreme, the CoDependent may give up every shred of their autonomy, their very identity, for the role of ‘caretaker’ and not even know it’s happening…until they try to have successful relationships of their own. The goal of therapy is met when my clients are creating realistic limits for themselves, boundaries that are easily understood and respected by others, and living an autonomous lifestyle in which they are expressing their ‘true Self,’ even in the face of those important to them.
Issues specific to men
Cultural norms and expectations can program a host of unfortunate consequences to men’s identity. Consider the injunctions against expressing fear or sadness. How does the inaccessibility and denial of these deeper feelings really affect you? How about your relationship? Transmitted mainly through our fathers (who learned from their own fathers), strong messages about not being ‘authentic, often lead men in this culture to depression and withdrawal, irritability, and anxiety that they are not even aware of. The family is though, and often those important others around him! Your therapy is focused on ‘myth busting’. That is, identifying the ways in which you’re participating in societal myths and stereotypes of being a “man” has led to a grief you may not have even known you carried. It is about the reinvention of yourself as a man, informed more by your own Soul than your culture!
Spirituality
By the time people have come to therapy, circumstances may have become such a challenge and so traumatic, that even our spiritual foundation can be shaken. We’re left with a sense of feeling lost and directionless, and that life has lost all meaning. Some of us are simply on a continual spiritual quest and just feel compelled to know more about the depths of the Self and it’s relationship to Spirit, and it's connection to Soul. I see the 'therapeutic' relationship as a safe vessel in which to explore deeply the realm of Spirit: it's relationship to our psychology; it's relationship to Self.
If you live in, or near the Lansing Michigan area, please contact me with any questions or comments:
Peter Roseman Psy.S.
517.861.1167
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