Do you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep through the night? We can help!

Insomnia, or sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which there is an inability to fall asleep or to stay asleep as long as desired. Using Accelerated Healing Methods, the team at Dr. Quintal & Associates is able to successfully treat insomnia without the use of medications.

The Good News About Chronic Pain

With good therapeutic support and a commitment to do some hard work on important life issues, chronic pain can be managed very effectively. For some people, mind/body strategies have been shown to eliminate pain altogether, even when all else has failed. People who have been through therapy which addresses pain report significantly reduced pain severity, lessened depression and anxiety, and decreased feelings of losing control. They report reductions in the degree to which pain interferes with their daily activities. Even if the pain continues, the sufferer can experience less distress and emotional suffering – and can become an active participant in life again.

Therapy For Chronic Pain

 There are several good physical treatments that can alleviate pain. Some forms of acute pain respond well to painkilling medications ranging from mild analgesics to strong opium-based drugs for the most severe cases. Some chronic pain responds well to anti-inflammatory medications or antidepressants, although narcotic drugs are seldom effective for chronic pain (they may work for short-term acute pain) since narcotics tend to require ever increasing doses and they become less effective over time – not to mention their effect on our sleep, our mood, and our ability to think and perform clearly. Sometimes electrical stimulation methods provide some relief, as well as local anesthetics, surgical procedures, ice, heat, and massage. If these medical interventions fail, however, it may be time to take a hard look into some psychotherapeutic techniques that focus on the way we handle our emotions and our general way of living.

Although the cause of chronic pain is usually difficult to pinpoint, most pain experts believe that it is caused by damaged and inflamed nerves, muscles and blood vessels – and it is very real. The body becomes locked into a vicious cycle. You naturally limit movement in the painful area, and this causes you to lose strength and flexibility. If you try to ignore the pain and increase your activity, the pain becomes so severe that you again become inactive. Sometimes you unconsciously guard against the pain and this leads to muscle tension and spasms. Your body becomes weak and deconditioned, and you begin to feel frustrated, angry, and depressed. Your friends and family do not understand the pain and may underestimate its impact on your life. This leads to more anger and depression.

Sometimes, though, it may overindulge you, and this can make you feel more dependent and out of control of your own life. These negative emotions can actually perpetuate pain. The more negativity we feel, the greater our pain – and the greater our pain, the more negative emotions we experience. This negative spiral, though, can be broken. We are sometimes told that we will just have to live with our pain after all else has failed, but we are far from doomed at this point. The realization that nothing else medically can be done can actually force us to examine the way we have lived and what brought us to the point where pain can play such a dominant role in our lives. In fact, this may just be the thing that it takes to turn one’s life around in a very positive and meaningful way.

You are invited to explore the many alternative ways of dealing with pain that therapy has to offer. Please visit our site at DrQuintal.com or call us at 941-907-0525 for a free phone consultation.

You can also receive more information by following us on Twitter and Facebook.

Treating Anger Issues with Accelerated Healing Methods

Anger is a completely normal, usually healthy, human emotion.  Anger is a natural response to perceived threats, a warning bell that tells you when something is wrong. Anger is “an emotion that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense rage.” Click here to learn more...

Understanding and Managing Chronic Pain

Estimates based on research indicate that from ten to thirty percent of the American population suffers from chronic or recurrent physical pain. Pain sufferers often feel that their doctors are not able to give them the treatment they need to alleviate their pain. They may have been told that it is all in their head, and they feel very alone when nobody can seem to give them support for being in pain. They feel helpless, anxiety-ridden, depressed, angry, frustrated, and out of control. They often turn to prescription pain medication, drugs or alcohol for relief – only to find that these quick fixes can cause more complications and devastation in their lives than the original pain.

Tips For Managing Chronic Pain and Regaining Control of Your Life

The first step in taking charge of chronic pain is to learn more about our experience of pain in a structured way. When we live daily with pain we sometimes lose track of just how severe the cycles can be, and we also tend to forget the better periods. We need to increase our awareness of the cycling of pain throughout the day and what we are doing to manage it. We also need to distinguish between the actual pain we experience and our emotional distress associated with this pain. Thus, it is important to keep a pain diary. This allows us to record our level of pain at various times throughout the day – and to see how pain is related to the time of day, mood, fatigue, stress, what we are doing, and whom we are with. It also encourages us to become aware of the crucial question of whether the pain is physical or more associated with our subjective experience of emotional distress.

Negative thinking can greatly increase a person’s experience of felt pain. When we think that our life is over, we will never have fun again, and our plans for the future are destroyed, we are undermining our own sense of control and are setting ourselves up to experience more pain. We need to challenge these negative ideas and replace them with positive thoughts. Examine your negative thoughts and change them to more positive, assertive ideas. Rather than saying, “I am totally incapacitated and will never have pleasure again,” replace it with, “I need to learn what I have done wrong in the past so that I can go on to accomplish things in the future that I have always wanted to do.” These are but a few of the techniques that can be explored in dealing with chronic pain. You are invited to explore the many alternative ways of dealing with pain that therapy has to offer. Please visit our site at DrQuintal.com or call us at 941-907-0525 for a free phone consultation.

You can also receive more information by following us on Twitter and Facebook.

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.

Healthy and Unhealthy Boundaries in Relationships – Some Examples

Are you able to establish healthy boundaries in relationships?  Here are some examples of healthy and unhealthy boundaries in relationships:

Healthy

• Feeling like your own person
• Feeling responsible for your own happiness
• Togetherness and separateness are balanced
• Friendships exist outside of the relationship
• Focuses on the best qualities of both people
• Achieving intimacy without chemicals
• Open, honest and assertive communication
• Commitment to the partner
• Respecting the differences in the partner
• Accepting changes in the relationship
• Asking honestly for what is wanted
• Accepting endings

Unhealthy

• Feeling incomplete without your partner
• Relying on your partner for your happiness
• Too much or too little togetherness
• Inability to establish and maintain friendships with others
• Focuses on the worst qualities of the partners
• Using alcohol/drugs to reduce inhibitions and achieve a false sense of intimacy
• Game-playing, unwillingness to listen, manipulation
• Jealousy, relationship addiction or lack of commitment
• Blaming the partner for his or her own unique qualities
• Feeling that the relationship should always be the same
• Feeling unable to express what is wanted
• Unable to let go

A most exciting way to live is in true connection with your partner, family, friends and business associates.

Are you in a rut, feeling stuck?  Perhaps experiencing ongoing conflicts?  Wish you felt closer and more connected?  Have you been hurt, finding it hard to trust again?  These are just a few of the feelings that may be present in a relationship.  Most create undue tension, sadness, worry, fear, stress and more.

Dr. Quintal & Associates look at a variety of therapeutic approaches and tailor those best suited to you and your partner’s needs.

Learn to communicate more effectively and remove the blocks that keep you from connecting.  Get the tools you need and build the relationship you’ve always wanted.  Resolve conflicts and create a close loving relationship that can last a lifetime.

Dr. Quintal & Associates highly trained and skilled therapists are ready to help.  Make an appointment or schedule a free phone consultation today:  (941) 907-0525

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.