Healing Happens Therapy

you can heal, we can help.

Relationship & Intimacy Expert, reconnecting couples through counseling so you can rebuild and get on with the best parts of being in a relationship!

Certified Nutritional Advisor and Professional Life Coach, helping motivated people take back their health, reach their goals and integrate a sense of balance in their lives.

What is Telemental Health Care? The Benefits of Online Therapy

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What is Telemental Health Care? The Benefits of Online Therapy

What a time to be alive! That line may be the stuff of silly memes, but it has a very serious side, too. Rapid changes in how we communicate have significantly changed the field of mental health for the better. Scheduling difficulties, time restraints, and even geographical distance no longer automatically prevent you from working with the therapist of your choice. Thanks to telemental healthcare, the playing field has shifted.

What is Telemental Healthcare?

Sure, therapists have been doing phone sessions in a pinch for years. Today, however, teletherapy is a featured service and this means using a face-to-face video platform. Your device may be:

  • Desktop computer
  • Laptop
  • Tablet
  • Smartphone

What matters is that you’re comfortable with the technology and are able to arrange for a private time. From there, it’s just like any other session with your therapist—without the commute, rush, or barriers created by a disability. The video platform allows important elements like voice inflections and facial gestures to be factored in.

What You Need to Know About Telemental Healthcare

1. Ask your therapist about their experience

Not all counselors are skilled or comfortable using telemental healthcare. Ask questions about their experience. Perhaps try one session first before committing to this format.

2. Talk to your therapist about the video platform being used

Of course, privacy is paramount. Licenced therapist use HIPPA compliant platforms. To keep your information private, make certain the platform is the most secure choice available.

3. Learn about state laws

State licensure and regulations vary from state to state. This could impact your ability to work with your preferred therapist. Clarify all such details with your counselor before beginning.

4. Is it right for you?

If you can easily get to a physical appointment, are you the kind of person for whom this is optimal? Sometimes, to have a specific go-to venue for counseling is part of the benefit. The goal and purpose of telemental healthcare is not merely a convenience. As with all modalities, it’s about recovery and results.

The Benefits of Online Therapy

1. Making the impossible possible

The most obvious benefit is a drastic reduction in scheduling obstacles. For example, if your job takes you temporarily from Oakland to Los Angeles, or you work a different schedule like a fireman, it no longer means you will go without therapy during that time. Of course, telemental healthcare is especially important for those with a disability that makes traveling a challenge.

2. Countering the stigma

We’ve come a long way, but the stigma of therapy can still exist for some. Even today, individuals can face family or work pressure surrounding their choice to seek therapy. Scheduling a location other than a therapist’s office may provide privacy and peace of mind.

3. It may coincide with your specific needs

You may, for example, be seeking therapy due to depression or severe social anxiety. These circumstances quite possibly could make it daunting for you to commit to a regular appointment outside your home. “Teletherapy,” in such cases, is an ideal entry point for moving towards recovery.

How to Connect with an Online Therapist

Telemental healthcare is a relatively new approach. As touched on above, it has unique requirements. Therefore, those seeking to try this method must choose carefully. Equally so, tele-therapists must wisely discern which patients are best able to adapt to the video platform. To learn more, and perhaps get started in the realm of telemental healthcare, contact Healing Happens Therapy for a free consultation.

Filed Under: balance, calm, communication, couples counseling, depression, divorce, family, goals, health, healthy relationship, infidelity, men's couseling, new years resolutions, parenting, purpose, reframe, self care, self help, self love, stress, therapy, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Rebuilding Trust After Infidelity is Not Easy

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Suggestions for Success

“Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.”

–Isaac Watts

“Trust me.”

Once upon a time, those two words came easily. They were honored without any qualms, fear, or the suspicious “yeah, right” that currently runs through your mind.  It’s not that you aren’t committed to getting the trust back. You both still want a life together. After the infidelity, the disclosure, and the trauma of it all, there is still a lot of love to save.

That’s huge.

And that’s also really, really hard. Because rebuilding trust after infidelity is not easy.  Can you do it?

Of course, if you want to. But to be successful at rebuilding trust, there are things you’ve gotta do.  This is work.  But don’t get discouraged. It’s worth doing.

“Trust is built with consistency.”

–Lincoln Chafee

Start with a good look inside.

Are you committed to your relationship? Be sure.  Rebuilding trust will be a bumpy road. To get anywhere, you’ll need to stay on it.  Exclusivity is a must on this journey. There cannot be a hint of drifting or wavering when building trust in a committed relationship. That is firmly in the past. Trust after infidelity is only built when you and your partner believe the other is all in.

Choose your relationship and honor that choice every day.

Begin building trust with dedicated help, support, and counseling.  Like it or not, broken trust is a messy thing.  Especially when betrayal comes by way of cheating and sneaking and lies.  There are shards and splinters of fractured trust pricking your relationship deeply.  Some in places you expect, and a lot you don’t.

Time and energy are precious. Don’t waste them on draining, ineffective attempts to work it out alone. You don’t have to figure this out on your own.

You need nonjudgmental people around to hold you both up when you get tired of the pain. You need sure, steady counsel to guide you when you’re weary of the painstaking process of repairing your love. And you’ll likely come to rely on the tools and lessons of therapy to teach you how to really heal.

Don’t prolong the pain. Call a therapist who can help get you talking and trusting again. Call for help.  Keep generating trust by opening yourself up fully, once you feel safe.  Hiding from each other does not support a trusting relationship. You’ll need to find ways to be transparent and honest, even when your partner isn’t actively seeking answers. Open your emotions and thoughts to your partner.

Practically speaking, you might need to open your smart phones or laptops too, let them know where you are and be reliable and set expectations: “I’m in Oakland hunny see you in 10 minutes” so your partner is reassured that the honesty he or she is witnessing is at work in public and private. 

Is that overkill? Not really. Trust and transparency may require an extra measure of effort to demonstrate your trustworthiness. Part of the consequences for going outside your marriage is now being very available. Demonstrate a willingness to communicate without holding anything back.

In the interest of moving forward, it is not too much to expect that passwords are provided, and all answers are straightforward and forthcoming.  Sincerity and consistency help rehabilitate trust and intimacy between you.

Respect, repair, and release.

Following infidelity, your primary goal is be more than just a couple surviving or recovering.  To solidify your new and improved relationship, seek to forgive.

As you work with your therapist, accept that mutual trust will include self-examination and realizations about how you both participated in the breakdown of your relationship. Releasing each other from shame and blame to do the repair work is freedom to successfully rebuild trust authentically.

Ultimately, sincere forgiveness supports trust, accountability, and a return to true partnership.

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”

–George MacDonald

When you rebuild trust well, you will have built a stronger, surer love. Love that is shored up with reliable and healthy relationship habits that will serve you well from here on out.

Recommit, recognize the need for transparency, reestablish respect and communication, and release the past. With help and support, you can do it all for the sake of a solid second chance and the future together you always wanted.

Filed Under: cheating, couples counsleing, infidelity, Uncategorized

After Infidelity: Can Trust be Rebuilt?

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How do you reskiss lapel (2)pond when someone asks you what makes your relationship great?

You might say that trust—opening yourself up fully to another person—and comfort are what make your romantic partnership mean so much. You know each other like you know yourselves.

So what happens when trust and emotional safety are compromised by one partner’s infidelity? If you’ve been cheated on, you’re familiar with feelings of bewilderment, fear, sadness and anger.

Maybe you’ve spent more time than you’d like thinking about the person your partner cheated with. It’s painful to imagine that someone else has intimate knowledge of your marriage.

Maybe for you, infidelity spells the end of your partnership—you’ve packed your bags because you feel like there’s nothing left to salvage. On the other hand, infidelity doesn’t always seem like the end. What if you still have feelings for your partner? Can the two of you repair the wreckage?

If both you and your partner are willing to work to find your way back together, trust can be rebuilt (flexes emotional muscles*).

How do you rebuild trust after infidelity?

It probably took a long time to fully trust each other in the first place; it’ll take a while to rebuild that trust too. The journey back together will likely be confusing and uncertain at times. As you’re struggling through the sometimes frightening in-between space separating your marriage before infidelity, and your marriage after cheating, there are a few—hopefully helpful—things to keep in mind:

· For the one who cheated: Take responsibility

If you cheated, you might have minimized the significance of your infidelity by telling yourself your partner wouldn’t find out. Maybe you were unhappy with certain things in your marriage. Or maybe your marriage was great—it’s just that you were struggling with old feelings of insecurity, or with attraction to another person.

Acknowledge your actions and choices. Acknowledge the pain your partner feels. Taking responsibility often means sorting through your own feelings about why you cheated, and what your needs are now.

· For the one who was cheated on: Trust yourself

Being cheated on can be so painful because your anger and hurt aren’t limited to your partner—you might be mad at yourself too. “How did I not see this coming?” you may wonder. Know that it’s okay to trust your own feelings; they probably make a lot of sense.

If you feel right about staying in the relationship, it’ll be much easier to move forward than if you’re questioning yourself, and your instincts, with every step.

· For the one who cheated: Be honest

If you’ve cheated on your partner, your honesty is one of the key ingredients missing from your marriage. You partner probably has a lot of questions for you: “What were you thinking?” “Why him?” “What did I do wrong?”

It’s important for your partner to feel like his questions are being answered. If you’re interested in rebuilding trust, avoid sweeping difficult subjects aside—there are things you’ll need to address.

· For the one who was cheated on: Build trust, not certainty

This might sound scary, but it could help. You can’t know with 100% certainty that your partner will never cheat again. That is, you can’t control what your partner does or doesn’t do.

What will help you get back to a place of love and safety is asking for what you need to believe him again, when he says he made a mistake. Get to know the person behind the words again. Ultimately, trusting your partner again is a choice you’ll make when you’re ready.

This one is long path sometimes years, but it can be done and it can make your relationship even stronger if you put in the work. I’d love to be a part of your support system. Come in to my office in Oakland to get started feeling better again. Call 510-507-1763 Kelly Montgomery, LMFT

 

Filed Under: Affair, cheating, couples, infidelity

What is an emotional affair?

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What is an emotional affair?

Emotional AffairAn emotional affair is a breach of trust, a break in a verbal or written (marriage) agreement.  This can be over whether you are monogamous or when your spouse lies to you or keep things from you. Having someone trust and confide in another person over you and share intimate moments that were supposed to fall under your role can feel like an emotional affair.

Emotional intimacy and physical intimacy are different. However, they can be closely related.  Although not all relationships are monogamous especially here in our great Bay Area Oakland city, we all have attachments and in an emotional affair that is what is being threatened. The idea in most marriages or committed couples is that each other are the priority. They are supposed to be your “go to” person for times of happy, sad, need, and love.  There is nothing wrong with someone having friends and respected relationships with others.  We all need a healthy support system.  However, when the majority of the reliance is not with your spouse things begin to shift.

If your spouse is seeking out any of these from another person and it begins to feel out of balance, this could be a red flag. If you sense something is off please call to save your committed relationship. 510-507-1763 Kelly Montgomery, LMFT, www.healinghappenstherapy.com

Filed Under: Affair, cheating, emotional affair, infidelity, Oakland, therapy Tagged With: , , ,