October 29, 2024- It is difficult enough making good decisions in life, even with the best of information available. The dilemma of overthinking is that one is constantly living with problems in decision-making whether they are past decisions or those we are going to make in present and then future decisions that will need to be made. A further problem is they tend to be negative. This can result in such mental health conditions as anxiety, depression, PTSD, OCD and panic attacks. This is not to say that everyone has all these conditions, but they are often present with persons who have problems making decisions or looking at what they have done or the possible consequences of decisions in the present or future. Add on top of this that persons who overthink often tend to be negatively evaluating the whole process of decision-making to the point that they end up with mental health issues. This trend to see decision-making in a negative light often leads to an inability to make decisions, which of course, then brings on the mental health issues.This endless loop on decision-making can be overwhelming for persons. Let us make sure that we are not confusing doing the groundwork necessary to make good decisions but rather overthinking decisions in a way that they are never made or will be simply reviewed negatively from the past. I might add as a longtime psychologist, this is a more common problem than one might think. It also is true that most of us if we honestly look at ourselves or analyze persons we know in family or outside of it, we can see overthinking is often present. The following are some remedies to deal with the problem of overthinking: 1. Accept decisions you have made in the past and let them go. One cannot could have, might have, ought to have or should have done anything differently than they did. 2. Realistically look at the options one has, make a decision and live with it. 3. Accept you may have made bad decisions and may continue to make them. The point is to try to make good decisions and learn from any bad decisions we have made. 4. Replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts when dealing with the inability to make decisions. When a thought comes into your mind that you cannot make a decision, you need to tell yourself yes you can make a good decision based on the best information available to you. This is obviously easier said than done, but needs to be worked on a little bit at a time. 5. If you find you cannot solve this problem of not being able to make a decision and it is causing you mental health distress, now is the time to seek out an experienced therapist who can help you overcome this problem.

October 22, 2024-

When it is right to feel bad about your behaviors

For those of you who know me or have followed my podcasts and writings over the years, you will know I strongly am opposed to persons having inappropriate guilt in the sense that it totally destroys a person’s ability to live effectively in the present, and thus there is no future. On the other hand, I strongly believe that if a person has behaved poorly to someone or a group, then it is the right thing to have legitimate

guilt, to accept responsibility, feel badly and make amends as best we can. If someone has done wrong, then feeling bad is appropriate. In this age of of what I call “feel gooditis”,people too often do not want to accept responsibility and would prefer to just overlook inappropriate behaviors,minimize them and let them go. It is important to deal with our feelings after we recognize that we behaved inappropriately and work this out in our mind that we are not going to do it again. it is often overlooked that when we do something inappropriate that we ought to feel bad about it and even more important than that, we must try to resolve the problem and let the person or group know we feel bad about what we did. it also is very important to not endlessly ruminate about these behaviors and cause ongoing negative guilt and even depression and poor self-esteem. The purpose is not to allow our inner critic to beat us up every day and ruin it. No,the goal is to honestly reflect on our inappropriate behaviors and try to understand why we did them and determine to not do them again. Obvious examples would be hurting someone’s feelings, lying , stealing, cheating others, slandering persons and their reputations, being dishonest and dishonorable in a relationship, putting people down with the goal of helping yourself or making yourself feel more powerful, and slowing down the progress of others for fear they will compete with us or we enjoy them in a subservient position. Something important not to overlook when we try to make things right is not to end up gaslighting the person and not being totally honest about how inappropriate our behaviors were when admitting that our intentions were not good. To be honest with yourself and the other person is critical to our making changes to self as we improve our character. It also is true that we may have hurt someone inappropriately but had no intention of doing it. Then it is worthwhile to indicate we feel bad for what happened, but had no intentions of doing it. When we do this, we do run the risk of the person not being willing to accept our honest apology. That is a risk we must take and something that needs to be done to in effect right the ship of our sense of right and wrong. Advice succinctly stated would be when making right when we have behaved inappropriately would include accepting the behavior was inappropriate,having appropriate guilt, determining not to do it again and making amends for what was done as best as possible. This is how to deal with appropriate guilt.

October 15, 2024-

HOW TO HELP YOUR DEPENDENT ADULT CHILD

One of the most difficult things for an adult parent to do is to separate themselves from requests from adult children that are harmful to both. Good parents never quit loving their children, regardless of their age. Problems occur when parents, regardless of the reason, find themselves helping out their adult children in a never-ending stream of needs ranging from financial to overwhelming emotional. To help out a child in a difficult financial or emotional relationship situation is what good parents do. When the help leads to dependency on the part of the children on their parents, then something needs to change or it will be a never-ending dependent relationship where the child will not be launched into life with its necessary responsibilities, but rather will be living off of their parents as if they are still young dependent children. This is even more essential if the relationship has never evolved from a dependent child into an adult adult relationship. If you find yourself in such a situation, the following are things to do to return your relationship to hopefully one of two loving independent family adults sharing a loving lifelong family relationship: 1. Determine if you honestly enjoy the dependency and find it hard to say no because it makes you feel better about yourself. 2. Determine what would be reasonable boundaries to help yourself be more responsible as a loving family member, and at the same time helping your child be a responsible adult. 3. Make sure you do not allow your dependent child to use emotional blackmail in the sense that if you do not help them, you will be letting them down as if you were still responsible as a parent for them and they may even indicate you may not be able to see the grandchildren or them if you do not help them get what they want. It is critical not to allow this to happen to you. 4. If your children are financially dependent on you, you need to set up a timeline when you are going to have them be responsible for themselves. A crisis will eventually occur when you stop the funding unless they begin to take responsibility for their own financial needs. 5. If your child is emotionally dependent on you and wearing you out emotionally ,you need to give advice when it is asked, but not become emotionally distraught yourself as you inappropriately take on the emotional burdens of your children. 6. Accept you must stick to the boundaries you have set and recognize that you must stop the process in order to have any lasting change. 7. If you are not able to implement the boundaries that you need to have in order to set your child free to become an independent person, then you can consider bringing in family, friends or an experienced therapist in such matters to help you in the process…This is going to be a very difficult situation for you to change. Oftentimes, this codependency has been in place for many years and may have always been in place since your children became adults. Whatever the situation, the time to change the relationship into a healthy one is now. You both need it.