Have you received counseling or therapy to address addiction and still struggle? If so, you are not alone. When I consult with clients who have done lots of treatment, one of the first questions I always ask is: How much was talk therapy? This often leads to the deer-in-the-headlights look, because many believe there is… [Continue Reading]
A Long Walk to Tucson
As I laid in bed thinking about the next day, about my turn, fear flooded my entire body. I was like a pressure cooker with no relief valve, and I knew I had to do something fast. I dressed quickly and left my room, walking outside into the cold Arizona night. The black sky was… [Continue Reading]
Mark Girard Working with Altered States
For the past few years I have taught a foundations course on addiction treatment to graduate students. An important aspect of the course is helping students understand that longterm successful outcomes necessitate resolving underlying drivers of addictive behavior, namely, adverse childhood experiences. In an effort to illustrate concretely how this may be done, I enlisted… [Continue Reading]
Where the Wild Things Are
Last night my wife and I went to a lecture by Joseph LeDoux, the author of The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life and the Synaptic Self. His research has primarily focused on understanding the emotions of fear and anxiety through animal models, and how these emotions impact memory. One of my favorite chapters in… [Continue Reading]