Personality Disorder? There Is Hope!

When therapists attempt to achieve behavior changes in their clients, they usually assume the absence of a personality disorder. 

It is, after all, a major task to work with clients in making significant life changes without going through the hurdle of addressing a personality disorder as well. People with personality disorders often lack the feeling of distress that motivates major changes within the therapeutic setting.

However, when the focus is on specific behaviors that can be changed to bring about smoother life adjustments, therapists can have great success in working with people who have personality disorders. People can recognize when they have a recurrent pattern of difficulty in their lives – and this recognition can serve as the motivator for change in therapy. A trained professional therapist is able to find those areas that help a client recognize the need for change.  For example, people with dependent personality disorder may come to understand that they may well lose their significant relationship unless some changes occur in their need to be taken care of. While the person’s internal needs for dependency may persist even after the therapeutic intervention, changes in the person’s overt behavior can go a long way in resolving the situation. When the outer behaviors are changed, the internal needs may then undergo adjustments in a healthier direction.

People with paranoid personality disorder, for example, can activate their sensitivity so that they become attuned to the needs of other people in a productive way. People with schizotypal personality disorder can transform a pattern of odd beliefs into a more creative and socially approved set of responses. Those with borderline personalities can use their tendency toward rapidly shifting moods to being more spontaneous (and sensible) in their responses toward others. Negative symptoms associated with these disorders can be turned into positive qualities which help the person in adapting to life’s demands.

A trained professional therapist is able to provide a setting in which seemingly intractable problems can be addressed. A feeling of safety and trust is built between the therapist and client – and this opens the door to trying new behaviors, with support, which have seemed impossible until now. A whole new world awaits those who give it a try.

Do you think you or someone you love suffers with a personality disorder? We can help. Please visit our site at www.DrQuintal.com or call us at 941-907-0525 for a free phone consultation.

Struggling with Low Self-Esteem?

If you struggle with low self-esteem, we can help!  Please visit our site at www.DrQuintal.com or call us at 941-907-0525 for a free phone consultation.

Balancing work, school schedules and attention to family issues can be difficult and stressful

At Dr. Quintal & Associates, we will help you and your family to develop a plan that will find a balance. Problems can stem from a variety of sources such as finances, health concerns, jobs and more. Whatever your concerns, we will help you identify the problem areas and find solutions.

Parenting can be demanding.

Children don’t come with an instruction book.  Sometimes it’s hard to know the right things to do to raise healthy kids.  Sometimes it is ultra challenging to deal with their difficult behaviors.  Whether it is challenges with a young child, difficulties during the teen years or any other concerns you may have, our team can provide you support, guidance and the skills needed to successfully raise your child from birth through their adult years.

Dr. Quintal & Associates can provide tools and strategies that will help strengthen your family life. A customized approach based on your specific needs will maximize the strengths and minimize weaknesses of each family member.

For more information or to make an appointment for family therapy or parenting help, please call today us at (941) 907-0525 or schedule a free phone consultation.

Side Effects of Growing Up in a Dysfunctional Family

Over-Responsibility and Guilt

One characteristic of growing up in a dysfunctional household is that we may learn to feel guilty if we fail to ensure the success and happiness of other members of the household. Thus, in adulthood, we may come to feel responsible for our partner’s failures. The guilt we feel when our partner fails may drive us to keep tearing down our personal boundaries so that we are always available to the other person. When we feel overly responsible for another person’s life experiences, we deprive them of one of the most important features of an independent, healthy and mature life – the ability to make their own life choices and accept the consequences of their decisions. At Dr. Quintal and Associates we offer Accelerated Healing Therapy that can remove the feelings of unwarranted guilt and feeling overly responsible for others behaviors.

Fantasy vs. Reality

Children from dysfunctional households often feel that things will get better someday, that a normal life may lie in the future. Indeed, some days things are fairly normal, but then the bad times return again. It’s the normal days that encourage the fantasy that all problems in the family might someday be solved. When they grow up, these adults carry the same types of fantasy into their relationships. They may portray to others the myth that they have the perfect relationship – and they may believe, to themselves, that someday all of their relationship problems will somehow be solved. They ignore the abuse, manipulation, imbalance and control in the relationship. By ignoring the problems, they are unable to confront them – and the fantasy of a happier future never comes to pass. Unhealthy boundaries, where we collude with our partner in believing the myth that everything is fine, make it difficult to come to terms with the troubles of the relationship.

Healthy boundaries allow us to test reality rather than rely on fantasy. When problems are present, good boundaries allow us to define the problems and to communicate with our partner in finding solutions. They encourage a healthy self-image, trust, consistency, stability and productive communication.

Learning to have healthy boundaries is an exciting adventure, an exercise in personal liberation.
It means coming to know ourselves and increasing our awareness of what we stand for. It also means
self-acceptance and knowing that we are OK as we are and worthy of the good things in life. When two people with healthy boundaries enter into a relationship, they encourage wholeness, independence, and a zest for life in their partner. They know that trust is possible and that the normal expected difficulties found in all relationships can be worked on constructively. They can find true intimacy as whole, complete and equal people. The journey to a sense of healthy identity is not always easy – but it need not be all that difficult. It often means letting go of some of our old misconceptions about the nature of the world. It means treating ourselves with respect and
appreciating ourselves for what we really are. When we can do this for ourselves, we can take the same approach toward our partner – and then the true happiness and love that our relationship deserves can become a reality.

For additional information on these subject you can follow us on Twitter, like our Facebook page, or contact us for a free phone consultation at 941-907-0525.

The Benefits of Intimacy

Once two people have entered into a deep level of sharing, they usually want to stay there. If there is true equality between the two, they achieve a balance that feels right and they don’t want to lose. If, however, one of the partners feels the need to lessen the level of intimacy, the probability of conflict increases. You can avoid misunderstandings by maintaining your commitment and trust during these natural cycles that occur within any relationship. Intimacy takes work and a sense of maturity. To shirk the responsibility of keeping an intimate relationship alive invites a return to isolation.

 The intimate relationship is healthy. Intimacy allows us to end loneliness and to share the deepest and most personal parts of ourselves with a trusted partner. As social beings, we respond physically to the experience of intimacy. People who have intimate relationships live longer and healthier lives and they report more personal happiness and satisfaction with the way they live. Intimacy gives us a feeling of comfort, security, and a sense of being loved and accepted. It gives us the freedom and support to stay true to the special qualities that define each one of us as a unique person.

A number of research studies have shown persuasively that people in intimate relationships live longer and happier lives than those who are not.

 

Study Results of the Healthy Benefits of Intimacy

• For example, we know that people in marriages or other committed relationships live longer than
people who are single.

• In one classic study researchers found that 95 percent of people who described their parents as uncaring had diseases by mid-life, while only 29 percent of those who described their parents as caring had mid-life diseases. Having supportive and close relationships with parents in our child- hoods leads to healthier relationships in general when we grow up, and it is these healthier adult relationships that are linked to a lower prevalence of heart disease and cancer in mid-life. In other words, one can compensate for a deprived childhood by learning later in life how to sustain supportive relationships.

• In another series of studies, researchers found that people who are socially isolated are two to five times more likely to die prematurely than those who have a sense of connection and community.

• A study at the University of Texas looked at patients who had undergone open-heart surgery. Those who had neither ongoing group participation nor were able to derive strength from their religion were more than seven times more likely to have died six months after their surgery.

• Women with metastatic breast cancer were assigned to support groups which met once a week for a year. The women in the support groups lived twice as long as those who were not in these groups.

• One study has even found that people with fewer relationships of any kind (e.g., friendship, a partner, family, work, social groups, religious affiliations) were four times as likely to develop a common cold as those who had more relationships.

• Interestingly, research showed that people with pets are healthier than people without them and
have to make fewer visits to doctors.

Psychotherapy can allow us to explore our own deepest and most intimate feelings in a safe and accepting setting with a professional trained to understand these inner processes. The psychotherapeutic relationship allows us to learn to stay true to our uniqueness and feel comfortable in sharing our authenticity with another person. We can explore who can be trusted, and who can’t, as well as the features of our lives that may have led us to hide ourselves from others. Psychotherapy has the potential to teach us how to break out of isolation and loneliness into a world of love and acceptance. It prepares us to explore an intimate relationship outside of the therapy setting.

At Dr.Quintal and Associates we provide a variety of counseling services including relationship counseling. Please call us at 941-907-0525 for a free phone consultation. You can also visit our website at dr.quintal.com for more information on services, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Worry..Oh, Worry....

As we all know, some people worry too much. Rather than solving a problem, too much worry becomes the problem. Not only does excessive worry create personal suffering, but it also affects the people around the worrier. Worry is a fairly common, but potentially serious, condition. A recent survey suggests that one-third of all office visits to primary-care physicians are associated with some form of anxiety. Furthermore, it has been estimated that one-fourth of all people, over the course of a lifetime, will at some point suffer from symptoms associated with an anxiety-related diagnosis. The stress which accompanies worry can have serious physical implications, including an increased risk for blood pressure and heart ailments, depression, immune system deficiencies, and cancer.

TIPS FOR MANAGING WORRY:

• Find Connectedness: When we feel connected to something larger than ourselves (a group of friends, our families, work, a sense of the past, ideas, and religious or transcendent faith), we are less likely to worry.
• Seek Advice and Reassurance: We all need supportive feedback from others from time to time. Other people may have solutions to problems that we haven’t thought about. For reassurance, find people who know how to give it. Many of us spend a lifetime looking in all the wrong places for approval•
• Understand the Difference Between Good and Bad Worrying: Good worry implies having a sense of control in solving life’s problems. It involves examining alternatives and then coming up with a systematic plan for meeting a challenge. Unproductive worry involves engaging in repetitively hashing over the same ideas time and again, negative thoughts, and no real plan for meeting the challenge.
• Try to Do the Right Thing: Maintain your sense of integrity whenever you do something. Tell the truth. Obey the law. Keep to your promises. Let your conscience be your guide. Granted, we might tell an occasional lie or break a promise, and this is fairly common – but it also can set the stage for worry. We may think sometimes that we can get ahead in the world the easy way – but the price we pay could be excessive worry, among other penalties.
• Keep Yourself Financially Secure: Live below your means and put money into a savings account. Pay off credit card debts. Consider ways to live more simply as a way of managing your finances.
• Learn the Value of Judicious Complaining: Sometimes it helps to talk your way through a prob-
  lem by complaining about it. Find a trusted friend
  and just let it all out. And then have a good laugh
  about it afterwards. If a friend is not available, write
  out your complaints.
• Add Structure to Your Life: Worry is often related to disorganization. Make a list of things to do each day and cross off tasks once they are completed. Leave early enough to make appointments on time. Put your keys in the same place every time you come home. Keep your house straightened up. When things are under control, there is less to worry about.
• Learn How to Let Go of Worries: This is a skill which might require some practice, and each of us will have our way of doing it. Some people do this by allowing themselves perhaps half
  an hour a day of worry time – and at the end of the allotted time period, they will be free of worrying until the next day. Some people give up their worries by writing them down on a piece of paper and then tearing up the paper. Some people prefer to hand them over to a higher power. There are mindfulness meditation techniques for letting go of your worrisome thoughts – just decide not to participate in anxiety-provoking thinking. Let the thoughts go (this method takes practice and uses techniques that increase your awareness through meditation or prayer).
• Sleep and Eat Properly: Lack of sleep and a nutritious diet can make us irritable, distracted, and anxious – all conditions that set the stage for worry. (Try to be mindful of the problem of overeating, however, as a way of making your worries disappear.)
• Exercise: Lack of sleep and a nutritious diet can make us irritable, distracted, and anxious – all conditions that set the stage for worry. (Try to be mindful of the problem of overeating, however, as a way of making your worries disappear.) 
• Minimize Catastrophic Thinking: Some people find it difficult to keep perspective when faced with even a minor stressor. Not every mole means cancer and not every bill is going to lead to bankruptcy. Test out the reality of these situations by talking them over with a trusted friend.
• Don't Sweat the Small Stuff: And, in a sense, if you think about it, it’s almost all
  small stuff.

At Dr. Quintal and Associates we specialize in helping you cope and manage stress and can teach you how to manage worry. We provide a full service of counseling methods to provide individual treatment for each client. Please contact us at (941) 907-0525 for a free phone consultation.

For insight on topics such as these follow Dr. Quintal on Twitter and Facebook.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Growing Up in a Substance Abusing Household

Countless millions of adults in this country have a parent with a drinking or drug problem. The emotionally available parent is one who can read and validate the moods and needs of the children and who encourages their independence as they grow up.In these healthier households there is a sense of security, consistency and predictability. As the children grow up, they gain a feeling of trust and mastery in the world with the support of the parent.

But what happens in the dysfunctional household where alcohol or drugs dominate the domestic climate? When an adult has formed a dependence on alcohol or drugs, the normal give-and-take of everyday life can become disrupted. Rather than working through daily problems and frustrations and modifying behavior to adapt to these problems, there is always the drink or drug at the end of the day.
 
Have a drink and the problem goes away, at least in one’s mind. The parent is emotionally unavailable. Thus, the needs of the growing child are often ignored. The drunk or chemically influenced parent can hardly perceive the feelings of the child – and usually places his or her own needs over those of the child. Even if the parent is addicted to a substance but not using it at the time, there is still a tendency, because of how substance abusers approach the world and problems in general, to neglect the child’s needs. The healthy option for the chemically-dependent parent is to work on coming to terms with the impact of substance abuse on his or her own life and the life of the
family.

The Child Becomes Either Overly Responsible or Irresponsible

Children growing up in the substance abusing family cope by attempting to stabilize their chaotic environments and find ways to minimize conflicts or make the parent feel better. Later on they may become compulsive overachievers, taking pride in these behaviors they learned while growing up. They are the ones who help others, yet harbor anger when others don’t do for them to the extent that they do for others. Alternatively, siblings growing up in the same family might become irresponsible, hoping, as they did in childhood, that others might come through and take care of their needs. Regardless of the outcome, when they grow up they avoid looking openly into their own behavior and understanding the effect that it has on themselves and others.

Coping in Adulthood with a Legacy of Dysfunction

The first step in coming to terms with an emotionally conflicted childhood is to admit it, and this can be very difficult. We may have learned to use denial as a way of dealing with our parent’s substance abuse problem, in much the way our parent used denial in dealing with their own use of alcohol or drugs. It may seem that the pain is more easily handled when it is cast out of our minds. But it does not really go away. And the survival patterns we learned in childhood continue to interfere with happier experiences after we have grown up. It takes courage to confront the situation openly and honestly, but the payoff can be life changing. A healthy, functional, and satisfying life is possible and attainable.

For additional information and help dealing with the aftermath of growing up in a dysfunctional family please call us for a free consultation at 941-907-0525 or visit our website.

We can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Suggestions for Experiencing Grief

Grieving is a Major Process in Everyone's Life

All of us grieve in different ways, depending on the circumstances of the death, our own personal characteristics, and the meanings attached to the death by those left behind. Nonetheless, there are some specific actions that most of us can take to complete the process in a way that allows us to move on, eventually, to a whole and meaningful life again. 

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Here are some real-life concerns to keep in mind during the grief process:

Give yourself some quiet time alone. Find a good balance between being around others and giving yourself some solitude so that you can reflect on your loss and process your feelings.

Allow yourself to have some breaks from your grief. Grieving is difficult. As in any hard job you need a break from it from time to time. Go out and try to have a good time with friends. Read a good book. Lose yourself in a good movie.

If possible, avoid making long-term decisions. Times of crisis decrease our ability to make rational
decisions. Put decisions off until things have settled down to a more stable pattern.

Take care of your health.  Grief is a time of high physical risk. Even though it may be difficult, try
to get some physical exercise, even if it is only a daily walk. Maintain a nutritious diet, but don’t avoid indulging in special treats occasionally since self-nurturing is important during the process.
Above all, avoid alcohol and drugs during this time. They may provide a temporary feeling of relief, but your goal should focus on grieving productively, not avoiding it.

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Grieving is a very personal experience and one of our most painful to endure. It is also a journey into
the depths of our lives that can ultimately reveal our strength of character.

If you find that your are having trouble moving on with your life after a significant period of time, or staying positive after a losing a loved one, there are types of therapy that can help assist you with this process. Please contact Dr. Jason Quintal at 941-907-0525 or visit www.drquintal.com for an overview of treatments provided. A free phone consultation is offered. You can also follow Dr. Quintal on Twitter and Facebook.