Karen's Blogs

Blogs are brief, to-the-point, conversational, and packed with information, strategies, and tips to turn troubled eaters into “normal” eaters and to help you enjoy a happier, healthier life. Sign up by clicking "Subscribe" below and they’ll arrive in your inbox. 

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Karen's Blogs

Taking Care Of versus Caring About

Taking-Care-Of-versus-Caring-About
A conflict that comes up a good deal in therapy is whether we can care about someone but no longer want to be responsible for taking care of them. Discussion of this topic arises more often with people who are co-dependent than with those who aren’t. In fact, it’s often a tip off of their over-focusing on other’s needs.  Here are two examples. A client broke off a long-term relationship with her boyfriend in another state. They hadn’t lived together for a while and slowly became more friends than lovers. My client made great strides in therapy, more or less leaving her ex in the dust, while he continued to be jobless, live with his parents, and do drugs. They’d been each other’s support for decades and she still had deep feelings for him, but she was tired of him calling to complain and always make himself out to be a...
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Life Skills and Self-Care

Trauma Tolerance

Trauma-Tolerance
Many clients who’ve suffered dysfunctional childhoods either over or under respond to trauma. Easily stressed by typical family and work problems, when there’s major mayhem or abuse in their lives, they either don’t recognize it or act as if nothing’s wrong. The goal is to have a healthy window of tolerance for stress and stressors. Over-reacting to situations only causes more stress. For example, when you need to keep calling repeatedly to get information from a bank or doctor’s office, this is simply how life works. Bureaucracy takes time as well as a toll on us. But if you quickly get frustrated, you can make the situation worse by being verbally abusive or giving up on finding out information that’s crucial to your well-being. Alternately, when you let your Mom or Dad scream at your children for no good reason and make excuses for their abuse, you’re under-reacting which will cause...
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Abuse and Trauma

Want to Defeat Narcissists?

Want-to-Defeat-Narcissists
Clients often complain about the narcissists in their lives and I’ve written several blogs about coping with them. I was thinking about them when I was waiting for someone in a doctor’s office and clocked fellow A talking non-stop to fellow B for 40 minutes! I couldn’t believe fellow B sat patiently, injecting only a few questions. Nor could I suppress a silent cheer when fellow A finally stopped talking and fellow B said, “But, you never answered my original question.”  We needn’t become captive to narcissists, especially the ones who drone on and on (and on and on) talking about themselves. I recently read about a technique called “gray rocking” which is one tool to try out. According to Deborah Ashway, LMHC, the term describes the person on the receiving end of an interaction trying “to make themselves as boring and nonreactive as possible to decrease the amount of provoking...
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Life Skills and Self-Care

What Makes for a Great Childhood?

What-Makes-for-a-Great-Childhood
I blog a lot about adverse environments in child-rearing, but what makes for a great childhood is equally as important. This blog is as much for those of you who still blame yourselves for your lack of success or happiness as for those thinking about how to parent future generations. According to “Children Are More Likely to Succeed If They Live in this Type of Environment”, parents can go a long way toward ensuring their progeny’s success. The main ingredient, according to the article, is positive connection, based on these categories: care, support, safety, respect and participation. If you’re thinking about your own childhood, how did things measure up? Did you feel physically and emotionally safe and well cared for? Did you receive adequate and age-appropriate support? Were your opinions and needs respected and did family members treat each other respectfully? Was there a strong sense of belonging in spite of...
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Family Relationships, Love and Friendship

To Take or Not Take Things Personally

To-Take-or-Not-Take-Things-Personally
We’ve all experienced the ouch of “taking things personally,” but what does the term mean? I saw a movie decades ago where someone told someone else, “Well, don’t take it personally” and she responded, “I’m a person, so how can I not take it personally?” The fact is that we can avoid doing so and will benefit from ditching this reaction. Taking things personally means being offended or upset by what someone says or does. However, we have a choice to not be offended or upset. We can avoid it by thickening our skin and giving a different meaning to what others say or do. As I’ve said a million times, just because someone says something to or about us—even if our name is attached—it’s about the speaker, the message sender, not us, the receiver. If someone tells me I’m a bad person because I drink alcohol and will burn in...
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Emotional Management and Self-Regulation

Does Everyone Really Want Cake?

Does-Everyone-Really-Want-Cake-
I was at a birthday bash when, the birthday “girl” announced to some 60 guests that dessert would be served, urging everyone to get up and on line for it. “Who doesn’t want cake?” she asked. Her question reminded me of another blog I’d written about cake which got me thinking about what it is about this food that makes it such a draw. One thought is that cake is viewed as special, traditionally served on certain occasions only such as birthday, nuptial and anniversary celebrations and holidays. We think “cake” and it reminds us of happy times which usually involve friends or family or both. So, cake represents joy, coming together, and a festive mood. Who wouldn’t want that? Cake is also served at the end of a meal, leaving us on a high note, signaling that the meal is over and leaving us with a sweet taste in our...
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Eating

The Limits of Your Powers

The-Limits-of-Your-Powers
It’s time to accept that you have tremendous power to manage your behaviors, thoughts and feelings and very little to govern the lives of others. Unfortunately, too many people have this paradigm backward: they feel and act powerless and believe they’re responsible for others’ actions. Here are two examples, one clinical and one personal.  A client described how a neighbor had been harassing her for months when she was walking her dog. He seemed to pop up wherever she went, even when she changed her route to avoid him. A gentle soul, she only hinted that she didn’t want his company on her walks and didn’t want to date him. One session she came in all upset. “He got hit by a car,” she exclaimed, referring to her neighbor, “and died!” Then she went on to explain how it was all her fault because he was probably out trying to find...
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Life Skills and Self-Care

Characteristics of Dysfunctional Families

Characteristics-of-Dysfunctional-Families
It’s sad when clients don’t know they’re in or grew up in dysfunctional families. It’s often in therapy or through self-help books that they learn how seriously dysfunctional their families are or have been. Here are some characteristics, though I likely left some out.  Addiction kills relationships—alcohol, drugs (recreational or prescription), shopping, pornography, work, etc. When addiction comes first, it leaves family behind and some of these behaviors can change parents’ personalities for the worse.It’s unhealthy when there’s triangulation in a family which involves one member pulling in another member to discuss an issue that’s really between them and someone else. When Dad tells you to tell Mom to clean the house, he’s avoiding conflict by not telling her directly.Keeping secrets is debilitating to a family because children sense there’s something wrong but are told nothing is. I know a family in which an uncle took his own life, but the...
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Family Relationships, Love and Friendship

How to Say Goodbye to Grievances about Your Parents

How-to-Say-Goodbye-to-Grievances-about-Your-Parents
Usually, Thanksgiving through New Year’s is the time clients grow most anxious about dealing with their parents and freak out about seeing—or not seeing—them. This year, parental panic popped up right before and after Mother’s Day, perhaps because the COVID pandemic prevented in-the-flesh get togethers until then.  So, wherever you are on the continuum of emotional separation from your parents, here are guidelines for growing yourself into having a mature, healthy relationship with them. Accept that your parents were or are anywhere from mildly to tragically flawed. Many of them suffered through rough to horrendous childhoods which left them ill equipped and unprepared to be wise, caring parents. They can’t give what they didn’t get.You deserved far better parents than you got, even if you had pretty good ones. You were an innocent child who was 100% dependent on people who may have had a hard time taking care of themselves, never mind...
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Family Relationships, Love and Friendship

Power Over or With

Power-Over-or-With
We all want to feel powerful to greater or lesser extent and there are different ways of achieving that goal. Some people build their inner resources, grow themselves to the best of their ability, and aim to share power with others. Other people try to dominate whoever they’re with to gain power over them.  Graeme Stuart says that power over “is built on force, coercion, domination and control, and motivates largely through fear . . . on a belief that power is a finite resource that can be held by individuals, and that some people have power and some people do not . . . Power with is shared power that grows out of collaboration and relationships. It is built on respect, mutual support, shared power, solidarity, influence, empowerment and collaborative decision making . . . Rather than domination and control, power with leads to collective action and the ability to...
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Family Relationships, Love and Friendship
       
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This website is owned and operated by Karen R. Koenig, M.Ed., LCSW. It contains material intended for informational and educational purposes only, and reasonable effort is made to keep its contents updated. Any material contained herein is not to be construed as the practice of clinical social work or of psychotherapy, although adherence to applicable Florida States, Rules, and Code of Ethics is observed. Material on this website is not intended as a substitute for medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment for mental health issues or eating disorder problems, which should be done only through individualized therapeutic consultation. Karen R. Koenig, LCSW disclaims any and all liability arising directly or indirectly from the use of any information contained on this website. This website contains links to other sites. The inclusion of such links does not necessarily constitute endorsement by Karen R. Koenig, LCSW who disclaims any and all liability arising directly or indirectly from the use of any information contained in this website. Further, Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, does not and cannot guarantee the accuracy or current usefulness of the material contained in the linked sites. Users of any website must be aware of the limitation to confidentiality and privacy, and website usage does not carry any guarantee or privacy of any information contained therein.

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