 Something I get to do as a therapist that I never expected as a benefit of the job is being able to help people I love navigate finding their own therapist. Due to my ethics code, I could not provide therapy to someone who I already have a relationship with. However, I can use my knowledge of the field to help them find who they need to see. Have you ever looked for a therapist and seen a string of acronyms you don’t understand? Do you need an MMFT, LMFT-Associate? A PhD, LP? A Psychiatrist? An MA, LCSW Certified in EMDR? I hope you will be able to use this as a guide to find a therapist that fits your needs if you are looking and overwhelmed by the endless acronyms.
Before we get into this, I would start with an encouragement to find someone that IS licensed. There are plenty of people masquerading as therapists that have no business doing so. If you want help with mental health, step 1 is finding a LICENSED clinician. That means dump your life coach that just makes decisions you should be making or yells at you. Degrees-Degrees are simply education. Someone can have a degree without having a license. Most licensed clinicians will have at least a graduate degree. This would mean they have completed a 4 year bachelor degree, or undergraduate degree, and went back for another degree. Exceptions would be Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselors (LCDC) or Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) Therapists. We will be focusing on graduate degrees.
Licenses-For someone to have a license, they must have completed a graduate degree (Listed above) with the relevant coursework for their field, completed a state test to prove competency on the material, and have completed a determined number of supervised hours by an experienced clinician (or may be in the process of doing so).
Certifications-Certifications would be the 3rd step for a licensed clinician. If someone has a degree and a state license, certifications tend to show areas of interest for someone and may give you more confidence if you are wanting help in a certain area. This is not to say someone has to be certified in something to be able to help, it just means they may have more training and possibly experience. Then again there are many clinicians with a tremendous amount of experience that choose to not get certified in one approach. They may even have all the necessary training without completing the process to be certified.
Hopefully, this will give you some clarity when searching for a therapist. Look for someone that is qualified and seems competent in the area you need help. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions.
0 Comments
 Divorce. The word alone can end an argument. Even used out of anger or just to end a fight, sometimes the suggestion can be so hurtful the actual result is divorce. For one spouse it can be a word that can be tossed out as a sign the fight needs to stop while another spouse can take it as the end of the marriage. An unforgivable word. This word can carry a lot of pain. In some cases, pain that has never been broached. This is exactly why couples that are considering marriage need to have this conversation openly and explicitly. Would divorce ever be an option for you?
My wife and I used to do premarital counseling at our old church. We always made a point to ask couples about their views on divorce. Many couples seemed shocked by the question-some assume premarital counseling should focus on the positives. The problem is if the discussion is not had assumptions are made. Then you can end up in a situation where one spouse, feeling overwhelmed and wanting to stop the conversation, throws out a comment about ending the marriage. What could be a parachute for one can be a free-fall for their partner. Then they crash land into irreparable damage. One view that has arisen in the past decade or so is the idea of a starter marriage. The belief is that you need a practice marriage prior to a “real” marriage. So you get married with the plan of getting divorced when things get hard. Rather than preventing divorce it assumes it as in impossibility. Spoiler alert: This does not make you more prepared for a successful marriage. One of the greatest factors for success in marriage counseling is the level of commitment. On the other hand the more marriages you have had the higher probability of divorce. With this information we can predict Starter Marriages prepare us to end our future marriages as well. One of the huge benefits of talking about it beforehand is it can give you great confidence and motivation in the midst of an argument. Confidence because you know as bad as it is your partner is not going to abandon you. Motivation because you will take seriously finding help and doing what is necessary to work on the relationship. On average, couples wait 7 years of being unsatisfied with their marriage before seeking help. If this sounds like a dumb idea, chances are many other conversations that need to be had are also being ignored. This is setting yourself up for failure. Challenging goals must be planned out. Marriage is similar in that matter. Avoiding tough conversations only makes you ill prepared.
 Just the words “Disney princess” brings up all sorts of nostalgic feelings for me. I have been a handful of princesses, currently own the majority of their movies, and several dolls for my daughter. The idea of being a princess has always been an ideal that I have never shied away from. Imagining myself as a princess, in a far away kingdom, awaiting a prince to love….I mean it brings up such positive emotions! I even like the idea of having a cute little critter to talk to about my problems and dreams. So it always saddens me when people go on the attack against Disney princesses.
Everyone has their own opinions about this idea of Disney princesses. I have heard it all: they dress inappropriately, they change for boys, they’re boy obsessed, they’re disobedient, always waiting around for someone else to save them, among many other criticisms. These are my thoughts that I have developed over the years on why I am not just ok with Disney princesses, but why I fully support the enjoyment of all things Disney princess. My first argument to all of the criticism has always been: what’s wrong with a little fantasy? We watch our children grow and learn through the power of play and imagination. So when we take away an innocent idea like Disney princesses, we are actually causing unhealthy ideas about what is inappropriate versus appropriate content. Generations of child researchers have studied how pretending is not only necessary but crucial for children to express themselves. There is nothing wrong with wearing a sparkly dress or a crown while pretending to be a princess. When we criticise our children for what they like or what they want to pretend, we teach them that they are wrong. When we criticise, we teach them they aren’t actually allowed to express themselves in a way that they feel comfortable. We never tell boys they can’t pretend to be knights or kings but we constantly preach that girls shouldn’t want to be a princess or queen. That is what we call a double-standard and I for one am not comfortable with that discrepancy. My second argument for why we should allow Disney princesses to be viewed is because they promote healthy relationships. Hear me out: healthy boundaries and creating lasting relationships is something that most grown adults still struggle with. When I watched the Little Mermaid, I was never distracted by her bikini, I was distracted by how Flounder and Sebastian worked together to try to help her make positive choices. Sure she goes against their wishes, but they continue to support her through the choice she made. When I watch Aladdin, I am not looking at how Jasmine wears a two-piece outfit, I was watching how she made the choice to reject Aladdin after she finds out he lied about who he was. I don’t know about you, but that takes a bold person to tell someone to go away after developing feelings for them. These princesses make decisions and face the consequences, good and bad, for which they take full responsibility. My last argument is for those that complain that princesses wait around for someone to save them. To this I always ask, “Have you ever even watched a Disney movie?” The princesses I know and love have all worked hard to save themselves, their friends, and their family from terrible situations. The majority of the princesses learn how to save themselves on their journeys of self-discovery. Moana, Elsa, Tiana, Pocahontas, Rapunzel, Belle to name just a few, all learn what’s important to them and how to save themselves and the people they care about. Sure there is Snow White and Sleeping Beauty who were cursed and forced to wait for a kiss to awake but they chose to run away from the lives they were living in order to feel free and discover the truth. If I had been lied to and abused for most of my life, I would have run away too! Every time a princess chooses to chase a life where they can dictate the rules, I praise them for being brave enough to journey into the unknown, to take a healthy risk to discover who they are. Without these journeys, they would not discover all that they can achieve alone but also with the people they care about. This may not have changed your mind and you may not agree with my points for why we allow Disney princesses in our home. What I hope is that maybe, you have a new viewpoint, maybe some new ways of viewing some of the beloved stories that are told. As always, what is right for one family is not always right for another. Make the choices that you are most comfortable with but I hope you do so without criticizing the child that shows an interest. We can criticize an ideal or an image but we should never criticize the child. |
Archives
October 2025
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed