A person's mood can fluctuate when they are struggling with mental health issues. Some days are easier than others, and patterns of dealing with harder days can affect a person's progress in therapy. Clients often have a pattern of how their mood affects them. Throughout the day there are certain triggers based on respon [...]
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Thoughts can be upsetting sometimes, but the thoughts that upset us are not always healthy or realistic. We often have thoughts in reaction to situations that we may not fully understand or are interpreted through our feelings. Upsetting thoughts can affect how we feel about ourselves, our behaviors, and our emotions, so [...]
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Core beliefs are the strong and withstanding beliefs that a person has about themselves and how they relate to others, the world, and their future. These beliefs are based on what a person has learned through life experiences and begin being formed during childhood. The way a person sees each aspect of their life is affe [...]
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In cognitive behavioral therapy, a therapist will often work with their client to identify their cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are patterns in thinking that typically make someone think in the negative and have negative expectations. This can be detrimental to the client for many reasons, the biggest being [...]
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After learning what cognitive behavioral therapy is, how it works, and how components like cognitive distortions, automatic negative thoughts, core beliefs, emotions, and behavior all contribute to our perceptions, it is important to learn how to challenge negative thoughts and cognitive distortions. A great tool to learn [...]
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Many clients seek therapy because they struggle with regulating their moods. They go through mood swings that may cause them to easily feel stressed. People who struggle with managing their moods can often feel overwhelmed, which makes it difficult for them to understand and manage what they are feeling throughout the wee [...]
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Sometimes we get caught up in the day and forget to focus on what we are feeling. This can cause us to miss important signs of our changing mood, which can affect our ability to use healthy coping skills. When we are struggling with understanding our mood patterns it helps a great deal to have a method of tracking change [...]
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Sometimes when people suffer from low self-esteem, low confidence, or mood disorders like anxiety and depression, it is easy to focus on the negative and forget about the things that they appreciate in their lives. When clients focus only on the challenging or painful parts of their life, it is hard to imagine a life that [...]
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It can be difficult for clients who suffer from emotional issues like depression and anxiety to keep from falling into bad habits, like isolating and cutting off things that bring them joy. With such mental health challenges, it can be difficult for a client to enjoy the moment without having to deal with uncomfortable sy [...]
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Children find it hard to cope with things they do not understand. There are many people, places, and things in the world that scare children, and when children are afraid they feel lost, alone, and vulnerable. A fearful child will have a hard time developing the confidence they need to face their fears, but helping them [...]
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Therapists who are trained in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) find value in teaching their clients how to cope with automatic negative thoughts (ANTs). ANTs can be catalysts for negative behavior like lashing out at others and self-destructive habits. They also cause negative emotions and hurt feelings that may not nec [...]
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Negative thoughts can control the way people perceive almost every aspect of their lives. Some may have negative thoughts about themselves, others, or the way of the world. Negative thoughts generate negative feelings. In turn, negative feelings contribute to harmful behavior and can worsen mood disorders. That is why it [...]
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When it comes to teaching children healthy behavior it helps a great deal to have a system in place in which the child can watch their progress grow. Such tools for positive reinforcement help motivate children to continue to grow and work hard to learn healthy behaviors and responsibility. Especially when working with c [...]
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Helping a client build self-esteem can be a challenging process. Many people in therapy suffer from low self-esteem, which contributes to other challenges they may be facing. Low self-esteem makes anxiety, stress, relationships, and depression more difficult to cope with and holds clients back from reaching their full pot [...]
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There are several reasons why a person in therapy may struggle to express their feelings. Many grow up learning that they need to silence or suppress their uncomfortable feelings, which can affect the way they relate to their emotional needs. People can also struggle to understand how they feel when they suffer from mood [...]
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Children in therapy often have a hard time healthily expressing their emotions. Emotions can be overwhelming for kids, and their ability to express what they are feeling depends on different factors. It is not uncommon for a child in therapy to struggle with understanding, identifying, and expressing their emotions. In s [...]
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Sometimes clients struggle with learning how to feel happy and fulfilled in their lives. Whether it is due to depression, low self-esteem, or motivation issues, it is not uncommon for clients in therapy to struggle to find traction toward happiness or contentment. These clients will ultimately feel lost and sometimes hope [...]
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As therapists, we know that most issues and concerns our clients face are more dynamic and intricate than the client may realize. Many components contribute to presenting issues with our clients, and often there is more than meets the eye. When working with clients on issues like emotional regulation, mood disorders, anx [...]
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It can sometimes be tough for clients to know what words to use to express what they are feeling. Emotions are complex and can be uncomfortable and overwhelming to talk about without proper guidance and support. When a client struggles to articulate their feelings, it can be helpful to provide a tool to help them identify [...]
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It can be easy to get wrapped up in the moment of a stressful situation and instantly feel overwhelmed. Without direction or hopes of finding a resolution, that overwhelmed feeling can turn into helplessness or hopelessness, and make you lose touch with your authority over how the situation affects you. Each person react [...]
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Negative thoughts can be powerful and have a big impact on a client's mental health, especially when they are dealing with issues like anxiety, grief, and depression. Without proper tools for managing negative thoughts, a client's process for healing may be challenging. When a client is struggling with negative thoughts, [...]
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Teaching a client in therapy how to maintain healthy habits for mental health is an important part of the therapeutic process. Clients learn a great deal while in therapy, and making sure that they learn skills to cope with life challenges helps ensure the client's success. It is also important to guide the client in nec [...]
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We all know that sometimes life can get overwhelming. Stress at work, home, or from unexpected circumstances causes us to feel overwhelmed when not properly managed. It is important to know how to manage the feelings of anxiety, fatigue, and depressed mood that can come with prolonged and unmanaged stress. Because life c [...]
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When confronted with a difficult situation or an uncomfortable feeling that is not easily resolved, clients can fall into a pattern of ruminating over the discomfort. Oftentimes, the ruminating thoughts cause a sense of urgency to resolve an issue or find a solution to help you feel better. With that sense of urgency, it [...]
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Creating mantras is a great way to help your client learn how to cope when dealing with life stress. A mantra is a repeated phrase or saying used to calm the mind and promote relaxation. It is a useful tool when needing to calm anxious thoughts or feel more grounded. Mantras are an important exercise used in mindfulness [...]
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Many life experiences can contribute to feeling unsafe. It is common for clients in therapy to struggle with feeling safe, which can contribute to anxiety, panic attacks, and feelings of helplessness. A history of trauma, personal insecurities, low self-esteem, and more can all increase the risk of anxiety, panic attacks [...]
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Many clients in therapy struggle with low self-esteem. They often do not have a strong sense of identity or are unhappy with who they are. Facing yourself in therapy can be scary, so a therapist needs to be equipped with helpful tools to help their clients boost their self-image and self-esteem. A poor self-image can con [...]
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An important step to understanding anger is understanding how intense it can become and the situations that make it as intense as it can be. People with anger management issues find it difficult to assess a situation without their anger affecting their judgment, which makes it challenging for them to control their reactio [...]
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Negative self-talk can impact many areas of a client's life. It can cause challenges when managing mental health, including low self-esteem, poor self-worth, anxiety, depression, and more. An important part of therapy is learning how negative thoughts affect core beliefs and self-esteem. Focusing on only negative beliefs [...]
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It can sometimes be a challenge for a client in therapy to balance their thoughts and feelings. Difficulty with finding clarity when feeling uncomfortable emotions is common because the two elements can tend to work against each other. Conflict between feelings and logic can cause anxiety, panic, depression, and more when [...]
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Controlling anger can be challenging for many people. People can be triggered at different times and for different reasons, but the experience of anger is often relatable. Everyone deals with anger sometimes, and while the reasons may be different, people can empathize with each other's experiences and methods of coping. [...]
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Ruminating or negative thoughts are a common struggle for clients in therapy. Having difficulty controlling overwhelming thoughts can be frustrating for a client, as it contributes to ongoing challenges with anxiety, depression, and more. Ruminating thoughts are distracting and prevent clients from feeling comfortable and [...]
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It is important to have a list of goals and objectives for the client and therapist to work toward when beginning a new therapeutic relationship. Setting goals creates a foundation that helps the client and therapist stay on track when helping them address their mental health needs. Goals also empower clients to stay con [...]
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At some point in a client's journey in therapy, they will need to evaluate how they are managing their personal needs. They need to be aware of their needs and how to prioritize them effectively. When a client does not know how to prioritize their needs, they may struggle with important life skills, like stress managemen [...]
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A pivotal part of therapy is learning coping skills. Coping skills are what a client will use to build a sense of authority over their mental health. Coping skills help clients learn how to manage their symptoms and develop healthier ways of thinking, feeling, behaving, and living. Mindfulness offers many different types [...]
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Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has become a leading form of treatment that mental health professionals use when working with their clients. Part of the process of CBT is focusing on interaction between a client's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. A tool that is used to help explain how these three components affect a [...]
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Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) offers useful tools for teaching clients in therapy how to handle distressing or upsetting situations. DBT teaches healthy coping skills for distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and the reduction of mood swings and panic attacks. It provides tools that help a client learn how to c [...]
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Everyone has a story. In therapy, processing key events in a client's life can help them heal. Processing key memories and events can help clients build an understanding of their challenges with mental health. Exploring life events that contribute to challenges can help with recovery from trauma, anger, anxiety, depressed [...]
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Anger is an emotion that can overwhelm anyone, especially when proper coping skills are not being used. Clients in therapy benefit from learning healthy and effective coping skills for anger. Coping skills help with regulating emotions and reducing reactivity and destructive behaviors. Teaching proper anger management sk [...]
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A client's sleep quality is an important part of their mental health. Poor sleep patterns or difficulty with establishing a healthy sleep routine can be symptomatic of different conditions, like anxiety, depression, insomnia, or PTSD. If a client is suffering from sleeping issues or a recurrence of nightmares, it is impo [...]
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Stress is a natural part of life. We all feel stressed sometimes, whether it is due to work, relationships, or dealing with life's challenges. Some people can manage stress well, while others struggle to cope. Stress can lead to other issues, like anxiety, depression, low motivation, and relationship challenges, so it is [...]
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Managing anxious thoughts can be challenging, especially without proper tools for coping. Anxious thoughts can be triggered by many things, like prolonged stress, low self-esteem, or unexpected issues. When left unmanaged, those thoughts can affect confidence, motivation, and the ability to cope with trials healthily. Cl [...]
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Many clients in therapy struggle to see their daily lives from a healthy perspective. It can be a challenge for clients to remove the negative lens that causes them to feel anxious, depressed, or angry. While we cannot expect someone to always see things positively, teaching clients to balance negativity with positive expe [...]
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Being aware of a client's triggers is a critical component of learning how to cope with symptoms of mental health challenges. Triggers are situations that can cause a person to react in an unwanted or unhealthy way. Triggers can cause a person to struggle with unwanted thoughts, feelings, and impulses. They are especiall [...]
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When working with clients on methods to boost self-trust, self-esteem, and emotional resilience, it is important to ensure that they are aware of their protective factors. Protective factors promote confidence, hope, and trust in their abilities to care for themselves in times of trial, challenges, or confrontation with tr [...]
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When teaching your clients cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) coping skills, it is important to introduce them to common thinking errors. Thinking errors, or cognitive distortions, are thought patterns that can affect how clients interpret situations, contributing to hurt feelings, unwanted behaviors, an impaired sense of [...]
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Staying in touch with emotions can be difficult, especially when they are triggered by unexpected or complex experiences. Some clients are aware of the reasons behind their emotional responses, while others struggle to identify what is contributing to how they feel, which can make it challenging for them to cope. When clie [...]
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Having healthy communication skills are important, but also challenging to develop. Some people may struggle with articulating their feelings and needs. It is common for a client to struggle with being assertive or understanding what it means to be assertive with your needs. Learning how to reflect on a situation before [...]
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Our thought patterns make a difference in how we interpret challenging situations. When we practice healthy thinking patterns we can control how we react to upsetting issues. When we have errors in thinking, or cognitive distortions, we can misunderstand a challenging situation and behave in a way that may not fit our cha [...]
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Social anxiety has an effect on how people interact with others. It affects the connections people make with friends and family. Social anxiety can cause a great deal of stress for affected people, and can be really frustrating to manage everyday. Those who seek help with social anxiety aim to learn how to manage their s [...]
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Throughout the course of therapy, it is important for both the therapist and the client to have a concrete understanding of how the client is growing and developing their coping skills. Therapy is more than just talking about feelings. It is about personal growth and learning how to manage thoughts, feelings, coping skill [...]
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A huge part of using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help clients cope with their triggers is teaching them about cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are patterns of thinking errors, and they affect a person's thoughts, feelings, and reactions to upsetting situations. It is not uncommon for a person in therapy t [...]
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Cognitive distortions (thinking errors) are a huge contributing factor to many people's mental health issues. Cognitive distortions are erroneous patterns in thinking that lead to negative thoughts, bad feelings and poor behavior. When someone suffers from a cognitive distortion, they are not able to perceive tough situa [...]
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When used properly, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a very effective form of therapy. CBT helps people work on their problem behavior by providing a means to understand their thoughts and feelings. People often react to stressors quickly, and that can prevent them from thinking things through. CBT teaches a person [...]
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Catastrophizing is a common issue that people face in therapy. It is a term that refers to people feeling anxious because they feel the worst will happen in a challenging situation. Catastrophizing causes people to feel a great deal of anxiety. It often causes people to act irrationally and in a way that worsens the situa [...]
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Everyone has stressors in their lives. When people are in therapy, different stressors can serve as triggers for different conditions. Most people in therapy will have significant triggers that can cause them to think, act and feel in ways that are not healthy for them. An important part of therapy is helping clients ide [...]
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A huge part of having a healthy lifestyle is having proper boundaries with yourself and the people in your life. Boundaries promote healthy relationships with others and a good sense of self-esteem. They are very important, but can sometimes be difficult to maintain. Everyone's boundaries are different. Each person has t [...]
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Exploring values can help a great deal in therapy. When a client understands their values, they can gain a better understanding of their goals and what they want from life. They also learn about the type of person they want to be, and how they want to behave. When a person does not have a clear understanding of their val [...]
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Rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) is a form of therapy that can be very effective in helping clients. It offers a means to gain perspective on challenging situations. REBT suggests that the way people understand situations causes them to be reactive. The concept of REBT implies that a situation is neither positi [...]
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Anger can be difficult to manage. People who suffer from anger management issues often struggle to cope with their anger in a healthy way. They may engage in unhealthy behaviors, like lashing out at others or taking it out on themselves. It is important to have healthy anger management skills. Without proper anger manage [...]
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Self-image is an important part of understanding who you are as a person. Many people who seek therapy struggle because they do not have a good relationship with themselves. They do not understand who they are, and that can be for many reasons. Sometimes people are so distracted with who they want to be they struggle to [...]
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It can be challenging to have a balanced and healthy perspective on life's challenges. Clients often struggle to understand how they think and feel, and how their thoughts and feelings can affect a situation. When a client is being negatively impacted by their behavior, it is important to help them take a step back. A gr [...]
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Awareness about your own cognitive distortions is an important part of therapy. It is a step toward correcting thinking errors. A cognitive distortion is a pattern in negative thoughts. It is an error in thinking that causes many challenges in a person's life. Understanding cognitive distortions is a part of the process o [...]
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Cognitive distortions are a major source of mental and emotional strain on a person's day-to-day life. Everyone struggles with cognitive distortions sometimes. They are natural patterns that our brain develops to understand how the world affects us. The challenge with cognitive distortions is they warp the way we see the [...]
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A great method of helping a client overcome their anxiety is educating them about cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are patterns of negative thinking that make the client have unrealistic expectations or perceptions of a situation. Cognitive distortions can cause a person to view the world and themselves in a n [...]
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It is important to teach clients how to challenge their negative thoughts. Negative thoughts lead to negative self-talk, which can affect a client's self-esteem. It can also affect how they relate to people around them, and have a negative effect on their ability to build relationships with others. Cognitive restructurin [...]
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Anger is a powerful emotion that can have many effects on people. Everyone feels anger for different reasons, and everyone has different triggers for their anger. It is important to be in touch with your anger. Understanding your own anger and why you are feeling angry is an important step in managing anger. If an affect [...]
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Negative thoughts can have a significant impact on how we feel and how we react to challenging situations. They can cause us to act out of character, and get down on ourselves for reasons that are not fair to us. When we give in to our negative thoughts, we set ourselves up for feeling anxious, depressed, angry and resen [...]
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A big part of therapy is learning how to experience one's own emotions. It can be hard to experience emotions and learn how to be comfortable with feeling them. It is not uncommon for people in therapy to struggle with identifying and embracing how they feel. This can cause them to transfer all of their feelings into one [...]
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Managing symptoms of mental health conditions can be challenging, especially for clients who prolonged mental illness or clients who are new to managing their mental health and wellness. It is common for clients to give in to their symptoms and allow them to take control, which can feel good at the moment, but causes a wo [...]
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Change takes time. Change can be challenging for people to accomplish, and it is often something that people resist. Change is scary, but can also be exciting, healthy, and liberating. Some changes cause pain while others cause relief. Whatever the need is for change, it can be difficult for a client to facilitate change [...]
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When you do not set clear and healthy boundaries with others, you put yourself at risk of being mistreated. Without proper boundaries, the people in your life may mistreat you and not realize it. This is because they do not know that the way they are approaching you is upsetting you or simply does not work for you. Bound [...]
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Gratitude exercises can help clients in therapy cope with challenging feelings. Different conditions, including anger, depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and more cause patterns of negative thoughts. When a client learns how to practice gratitude regularly, their negative thought patterns become more balanced. They st [...]
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Educating clients about the warning signs of gaslighting can help with addressing harmful relationship issues. Without knowing the warning signs, gaslighting can be difficult to identify and can leave clients feeling insecure and confused when dealing with relationship stress. Gaslighting is an abusive and manipulative b [...]
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Relationships can be challenging when a partner is suffering from borderline personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder affects a person's sense of self-worth and ability to regulate their emotions, which can lead to behaviors that impact the quality of their relationships when left unaddressed. People who suffe [...]
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