Kate Motaung

Samantha is a 27-year-old female. She has a successful career and has worked very hard to get where she is today. Ever since college, she has noticed that she often feels stressed and worried about a variety of things. They might be worries related to work, school (when she was attending), relationships, or things she wants to accomplish. There are seasons that are worse than others, but overall, it has been an ongoing issue in Samantha’s life. Some weeks

If you are raising a teen right now, then you have probably realized that parenting one is much different than parenting a child. All of a sudden (overnight, it might feel like), your sweet, innocent kid has turned sassy, moody, and wanting nothing to do with you. This can be really hard on parents. Even though you have lived through this stage of life, you may have forgotten how confusing and emotional it can be. It is important to

The scope of this article focuses on addiction to substances and rehab for teens. One of the most difficult things to process as a parent is how little control we end up having over the well-being of our children as they get older. If we do our job well, they go from needing us absolutely (as infants) to not needing us at all (as adults). That doesn’t mean we don’t have a relationship with them, it just means in

Depending on what part of the country you live in, there may be a stigma that surrounds eating disorders if you are male. For one thing, any disorder may be seen as a sign of weakness, and you may have been trained to feel shame in the face of weakness. Culturally, you may have more awareness of females with eating disorders, movie and media references to “girls who eat their feelings” and the like. Addictive or compulsive behaviors surrounding

The thoughts that may come up when thinking about what anxiety and anger feel like can often be connected with a sense of losing control. Often times, anxiety and anger are more connected and related to each other than one may imagine. Anxiety comes from the root feeling often related to stress, often due to a feeling of worry about a particular outcome, and can lead to feelings of being unable to cope with or control one’s situation. These

When I work with clients, one of the first things I often show them is a diagram called “The Social Ecology of the Family.” Basically, it consists of a series of concentric circles that have various labels. About halfway towards the middle, I’ll label a circle “you”, then the next out is family, then friends, then city, county, culture. Then I will return to the “you” circle, then go inward with psychology, organs, cells, and finally molecules in the

Typically, the first sign that indicates a need for me to investigate possible codependency with a client, is when they introduce themselves to me and describe themselves as “a people pleaser.” As we continue, I tend to find out that these people have very poor boundaries within their interpersonal relationships. One of the most prominent researchers into codependency, Melody Beattie, describes codependency like this: “A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her,

Learning how to speak the truth in love isn’t always easy. I can think of many times I’ve sold out truth for the sake “love,” or the other way around. That is, I’ve spoken the truth, but not in a very loving way. They needed to hear it after all, and I’m not afraid to speak the truth. Someone has to do it. So I tell my wife what I think about how she’s handling the stress of getting

Have you ever had a friend who seemed to know you better than you know yourself? Someone who could see right through you when you said, “I’m okay. Everything is fine”? Did that friendship enable you to feel vulnerable and safe in a way that few others have? That type of friendship brings healing to our souls. Now, I want you to imagine taking that level of familiarity up a notch better yet, take it up 1,000 notches. Now

I recently saw the movie 8th Grade, wherein we follow the journey of 13 year old Kayla as she navigates the social landscape of 8th grade. It chronicles in a very realistically and honestly R-rated fashion the struggles that girls (and boys) are going through today. Watching this movie, I was struck by how much I connected with it and some of the feelings that I experienced as a 13-year-old boy. Sometimes a movie like this teleports you in

Raising children can feel like a full-time job. My mother once referred to the process as “the civilization of little savages,” which isn’t far from the truth. We start out all id and ego, needing, wanting, taking, and it is largely due to the intervention of our primary caregivers – who provide the much-needed correction and moral framework – that we are ever fit for society. When our best efforts aren’t enough, when our children persist in unacceptable behavior

The term “bipolar” is sometimes used colloquially to describe shifting or volatile emotions. It is fairly common for someone to say, “You’re being so bipolar right now,” or “I’ve been feeling bipolar lately” as they allude to the typical ups and downs of the human emotional experience. However, this informal use of “bipolar” is problematic for a number of reasons. One reason is because using the term incorrectly perpetuates an incomplete and inaccurate understanding and undermines the very real and