Counseling Blog | LGBTQ+ Couples & Individuals

January 22, 2019 by Alan Zupka Leave a Comment

5 Replacements for Your Smoking Habit

The decision to quit smoking is not an easy one – but it is one that will help you live longer. The toxic chemicals in cigarettes, including nicotine and carbon monoxide, are not only responsible for causing high blood pressure and heart disease but they’re also the number one cause for lung cancer, as well as cancer of the larynx, oral cavity, and esophagus. Not to mention, secondhand smoke puts your loved ones at risk for developing cancer and other diseases.

“But everyone needs a vice. What will I do if I quit smoking?” you might be asking. Well, what if instead of smoking, you formed some new habits; ones that were good for you?

Here are 5 great replacements for your old smoking habit.

1. Exercise

Instead of taking a 15-minute smoke break at work, spend 15 minutes walking around the block. It’ll be much better for your lungs, and the money you’ll save from not buying cigarettes can go toward something that’s actually good for your health, like a new gym membership.

2. Meditate

Meditation is an easy and enjoyable way to center yourself and recharge your batteries. And you can do it in only a few minutes. There are many different ways to meditate so do some research and pick a technique that gels with your personality. You may want to try using a meditation app since there are quite a few good ones now.

3. Get Organized

Take those five or ten minutes you’d use to smoke a cigarette and work on your to-do list. Staying organized will help you accomplish more in your day and feel great about yourself.

4. Listen to Music

Listening to calming music has been shown to lower a person’s blood pressure. While classical music tends to be the best for putting a person into a calm state, any soothing music will do.

5. Think Positively

Why not take a think break instead of a smoke break? Spend a few minutes thinking about all the things in your life that make you happy and that you are grateful for. If you do this multiple times throughout the day, you should notice your overall perspective of things begins to change.

Quitting cigarettes won’t be easy, but it is truly the best thing you can do for yourself. And your loved ones will be so thankful.

If you’d like to explore cognitive behavioral therapy as a way to finally kick the habit, please reach out. I’d be happy to discuss how I may be able to help.

SOURCES

https://psychcentral.com/lib/help-for-quit-smoking-now/

https://www.nicotinell.co.uk/how-to-quit-smoking/succeeding-at-quitting-smoking/smoking-at-lunch.html

https://www.verywellmind.com/things-to-do-instead-of-smoking-2824746

January 7, 2019 by Alan Zupka Leave a Comment

4 Ways to Change Your Thoughts and Relieve Depression

Did you know that on most days, the average person has between 25,000 and 50,000 thoughts? That’s an impressive amount of thoughts.

But when happens when the majority of these thoughts are negative? Imagine the impact on your psyche and your life if you had thousands and thousands of negative thoughts each day?

This amount of negative thinking is a hallmark of depression. Negative or pessimistic thinking is depression speaking for you. It is the voice of depression. What many people don’t realize is that depression is manifested in negative thinking before it ever creates a negative thought itself.

This is why it is imperative for those suffering from depression to become acutely aware of their thought patterns. If not checked, negative thinking becomes a habit, one that has the potential to completely shape your life.

Change How You Think

One of the most powerful ways people can lift themselves out of the darkness of depression is to change their thinking patterns. This is why cognitive therapy is such a profound change agent. The approach is based on the fact that thought-processing errors contribute to a depressed mood.

By changing how you think, you automatically change how you feel. Once you become aware that changing your thinking is important, you are presented with an active choice you can take to benefit your mental health.

I know. This sounds about as easy as changing a tire in the rain with nothing more than a hardboiled egg and a paper clip. But it can be done.

Here are some tips on how you can begin to change your negative thoughts:

Keep Track of Your Thoughts

Many people are in denial about their thought patterns. They don’t want to believe they are overly negative or pessimistic. Catching yourself and recording as many negative thoughts as you can will help you to see your own mental patterns.

What will these thoughts look like? You could write things like, “I hate my feet.” “My boss is an idiot.” “I hate spring.” “I hate getting up this early.” “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Be particularly mindful of making sweeping generalizations from one specific event. It’s a type of black and white thinking that can be particularly harmful.

Identify Triggers

Once you get an idea for the frequency of your negative thoughts, try and pinpoint the triggers for them. Your journal will also come in handy here, because it will point out certain types of events that set off a chain of negative thoughts. Triggers can include being rejected or ignored, or having an unkind remark said about or to you.

Positive Conversion

You have so far learned that the human thinking process is habitual. But the good news is, you can create good thinking habits.

To do this you’ve got to start converting all of those negative thoughts into positive ones. It will be hard at first, and you will most likely feel as if you’re lying to yourself and pretending to be a glass-half-full Pollyanna.

But, as they say, “You’ve got to fake it until you make it.” Though thinking positively may feel foreign to you and like a waste of your time, you are re-training your brain to think (and feel) good.

Every time you have a negative thought, stop, recognize it as negative, and immediately flip the switch and create the positive opposite thought in its place. This could look like:

Negative thought: “I’ll never get this report done on time.”

Positive Switch: “I’m making great progress and being careful to always check my work.”

To get the hang of how to do this, go through your negativity journal and create a separate column in which you will write the positive opposites of your many negative thoughts.

If you feel too dark and down to complete these exercises, please consider reaching out to a trained therapist who can prescribe medication, should you require it, and help you work through these struggles.

If you or a loved one are suffering from depression and are interested in exploring treatment options, please contact me. I would be happy to discuss how I may be able to help.

January 1, 2019 by Alan Zupka Leave a Comment

How to Come Out as an LGBTQA Adult

Most of us had a childhood filled with both subtle and overt lessons of how people and things “should” be. Our family, culture, and society expect us to fit into a certain mold and behave a certain way. Because of the type of upbringing that many people experience, it can be very difficult for people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and asexual (LGBTQA) community to come out to family and friends, and to live openly as who they are.

What Does It Mean to “Come Out”?

For LGBTQA people, to “come out” is to acknowledge and let others know about their sexual or gender identity. There is no wrong way or time to come out; how, when, or if you do so is uniquely personal to you. To not come out means you’re withholding who you are from people you know and may care about, and you may have to lie and pretend. For some people, it’s less stressful to hide than to be open. Don’t feel pressure to come out; you are the only one who can decide what is the best life for you.

Coming Out as an Adult

Coming out later in life poses some unique challenges. By adulthood, many people are already established in their career and may even be married and have children. Family, friends, and co-workers see you in a certain way, and may be shaken when they realize that you are not the person they thought they knew. Not everyone you come out to will be accepting, and some relationships may permanently change.

However, if you’re ready to come out, it means you don’t want to hide anymore and are ready to enrich your life with authenticity. This will inherently bring many benefits to you and your relationships such as reduced stress from hiding your identity, increase your self-esteem by being known and loved for who you truly are, and developing richer and more genuine relationships.

What to Say

You may want to start by writing out what you want to say so you can organize your thoughts and feelings. Some people prefer to tell their loved ones face to face, while others would rather send an email or make a phone call. Whatever way you choose, be sure to come out at a time when you’re not angry or arguing with someone. Also keep in mind that if you receive a negative or less than accepting response, this is just their initial reaction; they may need additional time to process what you’ve shared with them.

Coming out is never easy. It may be difficult and awkward at first, but it will ultimately bring you joy and free you from the burden of hiding an integral part of you who are.

If you’re looking for support and guidance on coming out as an LGBTQA adult, a licensed mental health professional can help. Give my office a call today, and let’s schedule an appointment to talk.

December 19, 2018 by Alan Zupka Leave a Comment

SHOULD I SEEK HELP BECAUSE I’M GAY AND PARTY TOO MUCH?

As an aging member of the LGBTQ community, I have witnessed first hand the strides we have made as a nation toward sexual identity equality. However, even in this new found time of tolerance, there remain significant obstacles for us members of the LGBTQ community from gaining full acceptance from our peers, family, colleagues, government officials, and spiritual leaders which can and do show up as microaggressions. These systemic obstacles and peer-driven misconceptions of who we are have led to a disproportionate amount of substance use, abuse, and addiction among many members of our community.

Even though the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, heterosexism and transphobia have remained one of the most menacing impacts on the LGBTQ community’s mental health. Unfairness and discrimination exhibited through many governmental systems have driven us to self-medicate. For instance, the absence of federal protection from discrimination in the workplace, the supreme court allowing retailers to refuse service to gay couples, and state policies that forbid transgender people from using public facilities that correspond with their gender identities have inflamed a culture of intolerance and have caused the LGBTQ people to feel less than.

Similarly, heterosexism and transphobia also persist through our day-to-day lives ranging from blatant bullying and hate crimes to the more indirect forms of media and cultural bias referred to as microaggressions. Microaggressions are insidious and remain as subtle varieties of judgment. For example, sayings and questions such as; “that’s so gay,” “I’m not being homophobic you’re being too sensitive,” “so who is the man in the relationship?” “you’re bisexual, doesn’t that make your partner feel insecure? and “you’re gay? …what a waste” are usually unintentionally hurtful but they convey intimidating and/or insulting messages that continue to diminish our self-esteem, self-worth, and they can lend to our declining mental health. Hence we party.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), results indicated the following:

4.3 percent of adults aged 18 or older identified as a sexual minority, including 1.8 percent who identified as being lesbian or gay and 2.5 percent who identified as being bisexual.

Members of the LGBTQ community were more likely than their Non-LGBTQ counterparts:

To have substance use and mental health issues.

To use illicit drugs in the past year

To be current alcohol drinkers

To use marijuana at higher rates

To Misuse prescription painkillers

Sexual minority adults were also more likely than sexual majority adults to have substance use disorders in the past year, including disorders related to their use of alcohol, illicit drugs, marijuana, or misuse of pain relievers.

Members of the LGBTQ community were more likely than their Non-LGBTQ counterparts to have in the past year:

A form of a mental illness

Suffered from a Major Depressive episode with or without major impairment

At increased risk for various behavioral health issues

Additional data from the US Census Bureau found that a higher percentage of LGBTQ adults between 18 and 64 reported past-year binge drinking than Non-LGBTQ-adults.

LGBTQ people in treatment for substance use disorder initiated alcohol consumption earlier than their non-LGBTQ counterparts.

These results show that it is imperative that the LGBTQ community embrace support from the mental health community. It is natural for members of the LGBTQ community to feel guarded during the traditional talk-therapy process. Many individuals have faced judgment their whole lives and are inherently reluctant to open up to strangers. That is why it is important to find a counselor that has the power to break down emotional barriers and allow clients to confront potentially traumatic experiences in a safe and positive manner.

It is also important for a counselor to remain mindful of the stressors and microaggressions that lead a person from the LGBTQ community to utilize substances to cope. Accordingly, a counselor should provide personalized, empathetic and effective treatment that allows a person to safely address the origins of their substance use and/or mental health issues. An effective counselor accomplishes this through unconditional positive regard and knowing how to help. Whether it be through proper referrals or through a combination of traditional treatments that include talk therapy, mindfulness, and cognitive behavior therapy; an effective counselor should understand the LGBTQ individual’s struggles with substances and mental health as they help an individual center themselves, access unexpressed emotions, and help them discover a healthier perspective because they are worth it and far from less than.