Faith-based therapy, nutrition and mental health, children’s therapy, therapist best-practices, and more mental health trends we hope to see in 2012.

In Kabbalah, true compassion is the ability to harmonizes opposing forces-generous love + wise restraint- to produce enlightened balance.

It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are. If you are drinking or using drugs your therapist needs to know.

Therapists are, by profession, expert listeners. They mine the spokent word (and gesture and expression) for insight into their patients’ minds and hearts.

There could be a few reasons a person is resistant to therapy. It could be a deep, unresolved issue or it could simply be that the therapist you are working with is not right for you.

The person who calls might have been caught up in their loved-one’s symptoms. They might be codependent. They might be held hostage by the other person’s symptoms. They become frozen and afraid to act. This perpetuates the cycle. The more they ignore the situation, the worse it usually gets.

If you are a therapy patient, you need to know: You have the right to see your clinical records, at any point in time. There are no ifs, ands, or buts.

It doesn’t make sense. You pay a lot of money (or use up your insurance “bank account”) to your therapist – and you don’t tell them what’s really on your mind. You may not even tell them the main reason you are in therapy and just offer a “side” issue for them to focus on!

When we interviewed therapy patients for Therapy Revolution one of the most common complaints was that therapists took phone calls (or accepted other interruptions), during sessions. Can taking a phone call during a patient’s time ever be okay?

Acting appeals to most of us-something about taking on a different persona, exploring unfamiliar motives and gestures is alluring. With roots in *psychodrama, role-playing in individual and family psychotherapy offers an exceptional tool for patients struggling with a variety of issues.