All Posts By

GlenoraRP

Be Still

By Personal Development

Life is moving so fast that it’s going to take all of us to an early grave. Unfortunately, many of us will end up on our death bed feeling like we have somehow missed the whole point of life. To truly live your life, it is essential for you learn how to be still. This thought actually confuses or terrifies most people. It’s confusing because we really don’t understand what it means to “be still”. You are not still when you sit and watch television, or sit and think, or hang around and fill time. You are still when you calm your mind and your body and you sit with yourself – no distractions inside or outside of yourself. There is just the awareness of the sensations of your body, mind, and spirit rising and falling. You are aware of them but you don’t follow them or gnaw on them…

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Baldness And Other Developmentally Normal, but Difficult, Issues

By Personal Development

Baldness And Other Developmentally Normal, but Difficult, Issues Emotional and physical development does not stop with becoming an adult. Individual growth is a life-long process that presents numerous challenges and demands ongoing change. Many developmental theorists refer to times of change as developmental crises. The word crisis implies that we often experience difficulty as we move from one emotional or physical stage of our life to another. For example a key psychological and spiritual task for adolescents is to become more independent. In middle age, one of the important developmental tasks is learning how to live creatively, i.e. to love well, live well and play well. Also, in midlife, many physical signs of getting older (including losing one’s hair) are seen as threats and as diminishing our stature or power in society. A significant issue in facing hair loss, or any of the normal life changes, is your view of…

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Putting the FUN back in DysFUNctional – Surviving the holidays with your extended family

By Families and Parenting

Dr. Steve Carter and Dr. Shirley Vandersteen, Registered Psychologists Let’s start with a disclaimer. There is nothing fun about a seriously dysfunctional family – one with violence, abuse, addictions, or other grave problems. Serious problems need serious help. We are going to talk about the normal, everyday issues that all families have to deal with. All families are dysfunctional to some extent. We love the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” because we can name at least one relative for each character in the show. Most of us have odd, difficult, unpredictable, attention-seeking, or downright mean spirited family members. Your family may have long-standing conflicts that seem to have no beginning and no end. People can’t quite remember how the fight started or why certain people can’t stand each other, but everyone sits on pins and needles just waiting for someone to take offence and the feud to begin. There…

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On Being A Parent

By Families and Parenting

Being a parent is a lesson in love and in life. Too often we get caught up in the work and responsibility of parenting and don’t realize the benefits that come with the job. In raising children, we have the opportunity to become a better human being and to learn what is really important about life. While there is a lot of work, worry, and pain in raising children there are also times of great joy and deep satisfaction. If you allow your children to be your teachers, you grow up psychologically as you learn from them and with them. When another life depends on you, you realize that your life is not the only important thing. In assuming the tremendous responsibility of caring for a totally dependent human being, you must move past your own self-centred needs to consider the needs of your child. The demands of raising children…

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Mothers and Teenage Sons

By Families and Parenting

Mothers often get along quite well with their teenage sons except when it comes to the area of personal responsibility. Sons frequently complain that their mothers nag them too much. Mothers and sons fight about household chores, curfews, schoolwork, and personal accountability. These conflicts can occur on a daily basis, and if not effectively dealt with, can form the core of the interaction between mothers and sons during adolescence. At the heart of this conflict is the issue of control. A boy resists what he perceives as his mother’s control. He strives for autonomy in order to feel like a man. In response, his mother escalates her attempts at gaining compliance from her son, which only causes further resistance. Mothers increase their efforts to parent their sons because they want their sons to become mature and independent young men. A boy’s behavior at home is often indicative of just the…

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Mothers and Teenage Daughters

By Families and Parenting

Mothers and daughters often enjoy a close relationship in the early years before adolescence. Once a girl becomes twelve or thirteen, she may become moody, extremely critical of her mother, and withdraw from physical affection. If this is happening between you and your daughter, please don’t be too concerned. Your daughter is becoming a young woman and is going through great emotional, physical, social, and psychological changes. This is likely to be one of the hardest and most complicated times of her life. Now is the time when she needs you the most and yet, it is becoming increasingly difficult for her to be close to you. It’s easy to mishandle this stage of development as a parent. You have to keep your cool if you are going to be of any help to your daughter, and if you’re going to maintain the strong bond between you. Here are some…

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Being the Executor of a Will

By Families and Parenting

Family members are often designated as the executor of a will. As the executor of a will, you have been given a challenging responsibility as well as a great honor. A loved one has entrusted you to carry out their last wishes and to disburse the contents of their estate. No matter how clearly the will is drawn up, this is usually not an easy or simple task. Emotions run high as family and friends come to terms with their grief, old conflicts rise to the surface, and ongoing clashes take center stage. When money is concerned, people are often at their worst instead of their best. Family relationships can be ruined as family and friends fight over the financial and personal assets of the deceased. Too much value is placed on money and personal possessions and people lose sight of what is truly important. As the executor of the…

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20 Back to School Tips for Success

By Families and Parenting

The end of summer is a mix of disappointment and the excitement of starting a new year at school for many children. There are several things that a parent can do to assist their children in establishing a strong and positive start to the school year. Some ideas include: View the new school year as a new beginning, perhaps a time to have a slightly later  bedtime, an increase in allowance or other privileges. Establish new routines. Perhaps the best routine for elementary school age children, if you are not yet doing so, is to read to them each night when they are in bed, usually a chapter book one or two levels above what the child can read and also giving the child some extra time (10 or 15 minutes) before lights out if they have a book (at their reading level) to read to themselves (and yes, comics…

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Psychologists Working With Families in Transition

By Separation and Divorce

This article describes the services a psychologist can provide for parents, children and/or the courts when families transition through separation and divorce. While the following descriptions provide a range of alternatives, it is likely that lawyers will encounter situations that do not neatly fit into any one area. Each family is a unique and dynamic system that requires services tailored to meet their distinctive needs. Professional services must be personalized if they are to be intentional, consequential, and successful. When counsel or their clients engage the services of a psychologist it is prudent to clarify responsibilities and objectives. The parameters of the service to be provided must be clearly delineated and agreed upon by all parties. The types of agreements to be reached can vary. They can range from a simple agreement with parents to address child/parent adjustment issues in therapy, to a more complex multi-faceted retainer agreement regarding a…

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Leading Your Children Through the End of Your Relationship

By Separation and Divorce

So many people look back on the time of the ending of their relationship with a feeling of regret over how it all unfolded. You may be embarrassed by the way you behaved with your former partner or your children, or by the things you revealed to your family and friends. You may still feel a burning anger towards your partner, and blame him or her for what happened during the ending of the relationship. The ending of a significant relationship is one of the most difficult and painful times of your life. Regardless of who initiated the termination of the relationship, both parties usually end up dealing with intense emotional hurt, grief, anger, fear, and disillusionment. There is no way to end an important relationship without experiencing some degree of these feelings and your feelings impact everyone around you. The adults in your life may be able to deal…

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