To be at peace with the negative aspects of people in our environment

Some of my clients are really kind and nice persons to me. They frequently are being bothered by the politics of their workplace.  Even though some of them are already good at noticing red flags of their colleagues who may want to manipulate others in some incidents, they felt very annoyed and uncomfortable for having …

Moderation in openness to our anxiety and fear

Anxiety and fear are common emotions.  Functionally, these two emotions are signals for us to be alert to threats and danger.  In my clinical experience, clients often tend to obsess in totally eliminating their anxiety and fear.  It is because they usually find these two emotions as aversive and unpleasant.  For those with social anxiety, …

The ambivalence of people with childhood trauma: the importance of embracing complex emotions towards parents

Most of the people have experience of having mixed emotions towards someone.  A client of mine was frequently being criticized and physicall abused by her father in childhood.  When she talked about this in the therapy session, she experienced anger towards her father.  She thought that what her father did to her was unacceptable and …

Are you a Highly Sensitive Person? Non-pathologizing those with sensory processing sensitivity as we look into the research evidence.

Are you easily overwhlemed by external stimulation?  Do you have higher than average empathy?  Do you have high emotional reactivity?  If your answers are “yes” to these questions, you may have a genetically determined temperament trait known as Sensory Process Sensitivity (SPS).  Usually, people with this trait are known as Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).  However, …

How to regulate our emotions when we overreact to external stress?

Throughout our lives, we inevitably had experiences of stress.  Sometimes, due to our limitations and some environmental factors, we might be traumatized by these stressful incidents.  As a result, we might overreact in the face of future similar external stressors due to the impacts of these trauma on us.   A client of mine was frequently …

How to step out from rumination in depression and take action?

People often find it very difficult for them to ask their closed ones to stop ruminating when their closed ones are depressed.  It is common that no matter how hard one tried, the depressed person cannot step out from thinking about his or her worthlessness or hopelessness.  For instance, a client of mine sufferred from …