MA, LPC, NCC,
Licensed Mental Health Therapist
By Bernadette Joy Graham, MA, LPCC, NCC, CCHt
Licensed Mental Health Therapist
The Truth Contributor
Every day decisions are necessary. Some are about finite responsibilities such as what time to get up, to be to work or school on time or budgeting your finances to ensure you can pay your rent or mortgage.
Other decisions are based on emotions and, depending upon those emotions, the destiny of our life is often at risk. For example, when we lose a loved one, we grieve which includes heartfelt pain, difficulty concentrating, anger and so forth.
So many decisions are to be made often in the three days one’s employer will give for time off for grief and honestly not nearly enough time to make solid decisions but let’s save that for another discussion. Bottom line, death is costly and whatever price a funeral home sets in front of us, most will often just agree because their emotions have over taken logic, their heart burns in pain and at that time putting up your house just to cover a funeral expense makes perfectly good sense.
If you have been staying abreast of the local news on the increase in crime to include homicides in the area, I believe we can all agree that yes they are all senseless. We think to ourselves “why would someone do that, why are people shooting each other over reasons that aren’t any reason at all except for the fact that obviously emotions were involved?”
We can make bad decisions based on our emotions which happen in a split second and someone’s life is gone or created, another’s life hangs in the ropes of the courts with years of their free life taken for committing the crime, and if any of these individuals had children, that is just another layer of innocent human beings who, through no choice of their own, are now responsible for understanding the emotions of having their future determined by others and living the remainder of their lives wondering “why?” and “what if things had gone differently?”
We all have emotions and we all have to make decisions and, at times, very quick decisions. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is an intervention often used in psychotherapy when helping clients with decision making skills. It uses the concept of a reasonable, wise, and emotional mind to describe a person’s behaviors and thoughts.
The reasonable mind is driven by logic, the emotional mind is driven by feelings. The wise mind is the middle-ground between the two. The wise mind is the part that overlaps logic and emotion. Take a mental health moment and reflect on times in your life when you could have faired better using your wise mind. Moving forward, utilize your wise mind as much as possible. A wise mind can save lives, allow children to grow into healthy parented adults, decrease the crime rate and so much more. Remember to Get Your Mind Right….and you can start by focusing on your wise mind when making the many decisions of your life.
Bernadette Graham is a Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselor, National Certified Counselor and Certified Grief Recovery Specialist. She is also a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist. Provide feedback or reach out at graham.bernadette@gmail.com For appointment information please call 419.409.4929 (Appointments available on Tuesdays and Fridays only). Office location is 3454 Oak Alley Ct. Suite 300 Toledo, OH 43606 www.bjgrahamcounseling.com Available for team building, employee empowerment in motivation and better understanding mental health in the work place. Accepting new client ages 13 and older.