A Family Therapists Point of View

In one of the groups that I facilitate, we talked about fear.  We approached it similarly as we would anxiety since anxiety is a component of fear. Merriam-Webster.com says that fear  in "the most general term and implies anxiety and usually loss of courage". Ok, I understand that, fear of the unknown, dread.   Psychologytoday.com says, when I google 'fear', is ".. f ear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger; it has strong roots in human evolution. If people didn’t feel fear, they couldn’t protect themselves from legitimate threats, which in the ancestral world frequently resulted in life-or-death consequences. In the modern world, individuals often fear situations where the stakes are much lower, but their body and brain still treat the threat as lethal". Ok, this makes even more sense to me, as in relation to fight or flight responses. Protecting ourselves in both definitions. I asked the group that I was facilitating their idea of fear ...

Last post I wrote about "Enjoying every moment".  How true.  Now that the weather is better, we have the opportunity to put this to action. People usually plan their family trips for the summer months, vacations and camping. It seems as if many times families make these plans because that's what other people do, not for the pure enjoyment. All the planning, booking, packing, etc adds stress that we, most likely, should be getting away from. Time schedules that need to be kept to complete all the tasks, or visits to families takes the fun away. How can we make this better? We may not be able to.  But, we can make weekends a nice time to bond with family, learn about each other, spend nice time together.  Have you seen the commercial with the little girl who asks if she is cute, so why are her parents spending all weekend cleaning and not spending time with her. This is a cute reminder that is true. Children want to have their parents around. They don't really care n...