In Person Counseling – Page 8 – One Life Only Counseling Services

Get to know the difference in our approach to counseling…in 30 minutes!

I am quite sure that many of you think that all of the counseling practices being offered in the Philippines are just the same. Pretty much about common sense advice to deal with your difficulties in the secret life you and I have in our minds. You probably hear a lot of these in talk shows and see them online in your Google searches.

I must admit that from 2009 up to 2019, my practice varied only slightly from what was and is still widely available in the Philippines, that of a syndromal and symptom-reduction approach to therapy.

Since 2019 though, I have come across an approach that I believe jumps out as the most scientifically sound that I have ever experienced applying in my own life, as well as those that I have helped in the past two years or so!

In my zeal and excitement to share this with you, I am now offering a 30-minute session that is packed with enough information for you to see how this relatively new approach in the field of counseling and psychology works so well, and why it is now the most researched method in the world for the last 20 years!

What you will be shown is what Dr. Kevin Polk calls the Psychological Flexibility Point of View, which can neatly sum up this approach to therapy in just 30 minutes!

Feel free to reach out to us and book yourself a quick 30-minute appointment that we are confident will change your life’s direction! Yes, that’s all we ask! Thirty minutes and you are free to decide if you wish to continue your work with us or not.

You can be an individual, a couple, or a family. Just take 30 minutes of your time and see if this is something that will explain best why you and I struggle within our mental worlds!

Call or message me now at 0917 886 LIFE (5433)! I’d be more than excited to share my newfound knowledge with you, so you can start your journey towards creating that best version of you that you’ve always wanted!

What is One Life Only Counseling about?

Hi everybody! We have recently updated our definition of what One Life Counseling is all about. In our zeal and dedication to provide you with the best possible results in your quest to change your lives for the better, we began our new journey towards a process-based approach to our work. This applies to all our clients including couples and families.

We will never be satisfied unless we find the best possible and most effective approaches that empower you and help direct you to a path of growth and personal satisfaction in living the kind of life you have long wanted for yourself and your loved ones!

We have put the updates in italics.

Here’s what you can expect from One Life Only Counseling:

You can be assured that your information with be kept completely confidential.

You will be respected regardless of your religion, gender preference, ethnicity, economic status, and even your personal lifestyle and values.

Your counselor will not impose his or her values and beliefs on you.

We use brief, scientific, and evidence-based approaches to address your concerns. These approaches are known to produce the best results that require only a handful to about a dozen sessions for you to experience life-changing results, as against years of seeing a therapist which can, at its worst, foster dependency.

Since 2019, we have adopted new therapy approaches that do not categorize people into sets of symptoms. They are process-based approaches to therapy that are now gaining appreciation from thousands of experts in the field who have found the current symptom-reduction, syndromal approaches less than adequate in addressing the human condition. The process-based approach has been found to be effective in many areas of concern ranging from common mental health concerns like depression and anxiety to even work and sports performance.

Since 2019, we have been very excited to offer this type of a radically different approach to therapy that is not just about relieving symptoms, but rather helping people towards creating lives imbued with meaning and purpose.

This is content is the subject of our first podcast in our One Life Only Counseling Spotify Channel! If you wish to hear this on Spotify, click here!

What happens when we biomedicalize mental health?

by Nathan Chua

If we were trained to look at the ads we see everywhere from our mobile devices to the busy highways we go through in our regular commute, we can pretty much sum up what they’re selling us in one word. Would you like to venture a guess? That new car, that shimmering bottle of beer (that in reality is rather bitter and awful-tasting), that outfit, or even that loan that you have to pay off in a matter of a month to 20 years, are invariably supposed to make us feel good! So what in one word are they selling us? Happiness!

Having this in mind, the helping-people business has not been above the culture of the times. It is understandable that for about a century now, the field of psychology has devolved into an endeavor of classifying us into a set of symptoms or syndromes. The goal then becomes removing or lessening the four out of seven or the five out of nine signs that you are, for example, a borderline personality. This is what experts have called symptom-reduction therapies. Let’s remove your anxiety and depression so you can start moving on with your life, at least to the level of “normality.” To borrow from one of the pioneers of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, it’s sort of like looking at how a fountain works by trying to figure out the different colors and patterns, and seeing how these can be explained.

Unfortunately, such endeavors have only left places where people have been almost literally drugged out of existence. It turns out that removing these “negative” emotions has a costly side effect: not feeling at all! There has been no science to determine that there is a germ or microbe or gene that causes mental problems. The drugs only serve to numb us–something that dead people can do better than we who are alive.

Too much anxiety? Well, here’s a drug to keep you relaxed. Too much depression, well here’s something to perk you up. It can go so bad as to make those who take these medications dependent on them. As another expert has said, it’s become so prevalent that in their country, the chemicals that are used in these antidepressants are now found in their water. Moreover, there are now drugs to treat the very side effects that such medications can create. And with trained eyes, you can sum up what these drugs are selling in one and the same word again–Happiness! The objective is to remove those feelings and thoughts first before you can start living a worthwhile life.

Fortunately, the group of people that Dr. Steven Hayes has assembled, have come up with something called process-based therapy. Dr. Kirk Strosahl who likened the way symptom reduction therapies work to explaining or addressing the phenomenon of a water fountain by the numerous colors and patterns that it makes, explains it this way: That if we were engineers studying how this fountain works, we will see that underneath it, is a simple combination of processes that a few tubes combine to do, to make it look intricate.

I have seen it in the people I have met in my work, where they come in with glassy eyes, looking enervated and lifeless. It breaks my heart to see this. In my work, I would love to see the exact opposite happening to my clients. I would love to see them bubbling with energy and enthusiasm for what life has to offer.

The culture nowadays provides for an environment where people (and that includes me) are unintentionally tricked into believing that life is about feeling good. The meaningful life has become about having the right kind of car, job, or even partner. Got this or that and you and I will be happy all the time. Well, first of all, that goal is impossible. Secondly, some of the most meaningful parts of life revolve around something we did that was hard and anxiety-causing.

I often use the following vignette to give my clients a new perspective towards life and what it is that we come to therapy for:

“If you look back at a graduation ceremony of a child, or a wedding, or any of these momentous occasions, don’t you at some point want to shed a tear? Why? Is it because raising a child and putting them through school was always happy and joyful? Is culminating a long-term relationship during a wedding all just about having fun? Or was it more like, you went through a lot of hardship and trials and somehow made it through together? The most meaningful and purposeful moments were hard, full of ups and downs, and of unpredictable and anxiety-causing moments! The tears would mean you somehow pulled through and made it! You did the hard thing, the brave thing! That’s why you come to me for counseling. Not just to be happy but always pursuing that which gives you purpose and meaning, until you breathe your last! And that’s how that wiser part of you says you were meant to live.”

Goals of Counseling: What is it all about anyway?

by Nathan Chua

I remember a person who shared with me that she had been with her therapist for several years. She felt it helped her in terms of managing her anxieties and anger issues. She went on to share that she needed her weekly sessions to get some relief from all the emotional struggles that go on during the week. This type of counseling is called supportive counseling which certainly has its place in the field. In my graduate studies, I can certainly attest to the fact that I used to do this type of work in dealing with my test cases to begin my training in listening or counseling skills. With this person who shared her experience though, the weekly sessions have become a psychological crutch, just like taking a break from her cares for at least an hour a week. *

Counseling work is more than just being supportive. The goal is more about having clients learn, as experientially as possible, skills that can be brought to their everyday lives. The counseling room becomes the lab where these skills are introduced and tested.

I don’t really mean to be simplistic here but I thought the title can help us focus on knowing what goes on inside the work I do and its ultimate goals. If we come up with something that would make it simpler and more understandable, then we would have done a better job in assisting people in appreciating what all these working sessions are for.

If you wish to change the way things are in your relationship with your partner, then you need to try different things. In ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy linggo, we call that expanding behavioral repertoire. It is also referred to as flexibility skills. If you start a conversation with your spouse with a criticism or a “You” statement every time, you are more than likely to get defensiveness in return. And so on and on you go with the circular arguments that often lead you to ultimately just avoid each other or get into a massive shouting match.

Unfortunately, we are the creatures who think that we can do the same things over and over again and come up with the results we want, even if the evidence clearly shows the contrary. We like to follow rules and rule-following becomes the dominant reinforcer of our behaviors, and not the actual contingencies that show up. We can see this if we break down the process of how people get hooked to the slot machine or some form of gambling addiction. Although it is true that there is a one in a billion chance that you might hit pay dirt, the addicted person is not aware of the consequences happening as they continue this obsessive behavior.

Taken in these terms, we in this helping profession are after you getting out of your comfort zones. Comfort zones are places where we want to end up that give us the short term feel-good moments. Being able to analyze your spouse and find out what’s wrong with them, can give you that sense of accomplishment that you know something they don’t. Getting that high in front of a slot machine when you win a small pot can be intensely rewarding at the moment. However, the long term consequences eventually show up. You no longer become the spouse you want to be. The more you criticize your partner, the more they snap back. Slowly eating away at the relationship you once thought will go smoothly through the years. The more you gamble, the more you end up piling up debts and spending countless hours unable to do anything else that could have otherwise been spent more productively and meaningfully.

I’d like to borrow a phrase from a book to help you, my readers, understand how counseling works. The work is about being comfortable with the uncomfortable. Maybe it’s time you tried another approach to your spouse, even if it feels embarrassing or extremely “so not you.” Maybe you need to sit with those urges to gamble and find out what really is behind the pull towards the addiction so that you can find alternatives to spend all that energy on. To paraphrase a well-known ACT therapist, Kirk Strosahl, maybe there’s something more important here than what you feel.

If you are like the person I discussed in the first paragraph of this post, then be wary. That’s because the counseling work is making you feel comfortable! If you start to do things that are uncomfortable with the help of your counselor, then you might be on the road to being comfortable with being uncomfortable. That’s also when you know that your work with your counselor is worth all that time and energy. Maybe you’re on to trying something different that moves you towards what I regularly use in my discussions with my clients: being the person you want to be, and living the life you want to live.

*The example here is an amalgam of different cases that do not refer to any person in reality.

Running Towards the Vaccine: Overcoming Vaccine Hesitancy Revised Version

by Nathan Chua

I recently came upon an article on my newsfeed that someone had a really bad reaction to the vaccine. I can’t remember if she had either died or gone through some really frightful and horrific struggle to survive. Asked whether she regretted taking the vaccine, she had an interesting response. No.

Now I am not here to talk about every single reason as to why some people are either hesitant or completely opposed to having the shot, but I am here to share with you some way that those of us who are willing to take the vaccine can encourage those who have yet to decide.

First, there is really little use to argue about how safe the vaccine is. We all have that confirmation bias in which we tend to believe what we want to believe. Secondly, it is true that one could die not because of the virus but the vaccine, just as the lady I talked about in the beginning of this blogpost.

So how can we encourage a friend who’s afraid of needles, even more so a needle with a newly-developed drug, to go out there and take something that we can’t really guarantee to be 100 percent safe and effective? What can our knowledge of the human mind tell us about what motivates people to do some things and not others? Well, we can start with knowing how our minds can trick us into believing that some things, like taking a risk to get vaccinated, are beyond our capacity to do. Ever woke up one day with your mind telling you that you’re too tired to get up? Stay a few more minutes, don’t worry you’ll wake up with no time lost for work. Well, you know what comes after. There’s a good chance that you’d end up being late for work or just waking up with just enough time to call in sick.

However, what if we were to say that this urge to stay in bed happened while your bed had just caught fire? Wouldn’t you jump out of it faster than a rabbit being chased by a cat? Or if I were to say that you should get up at exactly six o’clock this morning otherwise I would kidnap your loved one and you’d never see him or her again, would you still follow the rule your mind is giving you that you’re too tired to get up? So if it were important enough, we can certainly break such rules for the sake of saving our own life as well as a loved one.

So what other things can someone tell a vaccine hesitant friend about why it is beneficial to them that they take it? If you look at the example above, it tells you that you and I are capable of doing things out of the ordinary when faced with something that connects us with our values.

Guess what the girl in the article said when asked why she didn’t regret taking the vaccine? She said she was willing to do her part to end the pandemic that cost the lives and livelihoods of billions of people around the world, including her loved ones. As human beings, we are capable of doing things beyond what logic can explain. We are the most successful species on the planet because we cooperate to a degree that not even the ants and bees can match. The more we do things that may not be good for ourselves but good for this and future generations, the more we thrive and extend our existence on this finite planet. It’s part of our evolutionary DNA. They’ve done studies that have found that societies where people are more cooperative end up becoming more successful in promoting social well-being.

Is it true that the vaccine can have lethal side effects? Yes, of course! But it is also true that we are unique in our ability to do things as crazy as sacrificing our own safety to save another human being, our pets, and our planet.

So if you have a friend who is still hesitant to take the vaccine, ask them if deep inside they see that in their own small way, they can be part of a story that ended the pandemic and brought us back to what life used to be regardless of the end results.

You can also ask your friend, “If you had a dear friend or loved one who lived in another country and was very ill, wouldn’t you take the next plane out to have just a few moments with them even if it would cost you some? And by doing so, is there a likelihood, albeit slim, that your plane may crash and you’d die in the process of wanting to say a few last words to this person?” If the answer is, “Yes, you’d go,” then what’s stopping you from getting the shot!

In action movies (and we love them, don’t we?), we’d see the hero fighting the enemy in that one last fateful battle. We’d see the hero lose their weapons one by one and sometimes even get severely wounded by a lethal strike from the enemy, and yet keep fighting on with whatever is left in their arsenal.

The science is still imperfect, but it’s all we have left to fight this pandemic. You and I can ask our hesitant friends, “Like that hero we pay to see in those movies, would you be willing to join in the fight with whatever is left in our arsenal?”

Grief Counseling Module with Russ Harris

Nathan just finished another training module with renowned author and ACT therapist from Australia, Dr. Russ Harris!

What is in your “born-again experience” and how can you make your newfound spirituality last?

by Nathan Chua

Growing up exposed to faith traditions, I remember always looking forward to spiritual retreats. Not only do I get to have time off from school or work for free or at a discounted rate, I also get to meet new people or have more bonding opportunities with friends or schoolmates. However, it is often a big question among retreat-goers as regards how long the effects of such a religious experience will last into their mundane lives. Of course, being in a situation where everybody is smiling and having a break from the usual busyness of life, provides an idyllic setting that makes it easier to be kinder and more loving. No doubt there are doubts if there is an actual spiritual side to any one of us. Maybe we are just ordinary folks not really destined to consummate lives that are anything close to the clergy who facilitate these events.

Well, what my fellow retreat-goers and I couldn’t figure out in those days, I think some good ol’ science has posed an answer to. In most other approaches I have encountered in my more than a decade’s long journey into counseling, I think ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy stands out as unique in its inclusion of values into what I thought was supposed to be a valueless undertaking. Before 2019, I used to think that my job was confined to helping people find a way out of their mental miseries and the rest was up to them. In ACT though, there is that very powerful component of pursuing a values-based life.

So how do spiritual retreats work? Why do they have such an impact on us? How do we keep that spiritual revival going in real world settings? To answer the first two, these retreats function as a way to help us get back in touch with our values. These values are chosen patterns of behaving that are consistent with our deepest aspirations for ourselves. These values never actually leave us, they just become obscured when life as we know it, gives us the challenges of work and the important but difficult relationships we have.

Our minds have evolved into an evaluative, problem-solving tool that takes over when challenges to these values are present. Your kid starts to act nastily towards you. Your boss makes a comment that you found offensive. Your spouse forgets your birthday. How are we supposed to still be kind and loving in these situations?

Dr. Steven Hayes mentioned in one of his talks, that the problem-solving mode of mind can be described as analytical and predictive. In other words, it wants to find out how we got into such a situation and how we can get out of it quickly and painlessly. And these modes of mind are focused on the past and the future; unable to recognize what’s going on in the present. Our minds pretty much work in a way that suggests we take the fastest way out of troublesome thoughts and feelings that come along at work and in relationships. For example, the recalcitrant child is making us feel angry and frustrated. The problem-solving mode of mind figures out how we got to this point by thinking that the child has been spoiled, and then suggests the quickest way to solve the spoiled child and get out of our frustrated feelings is to just try to control the child by yelling and screaming at them. Goodbye sweet, kind, and loving us that came out of the retreat! It is easy to see how these spiritual revivals are only as good as the few days or the few weeks after. Simply said, it is more likely that we live out or become aware of our values or what is truly meaningful and important to us, when the situation is well-protected from the challenges of life outside these exclusive retreat enclaves.

And how do we keep the spiritual fire burning when like all good things, the retreat must come to an end? In ACT, I have learned quite a few ways to do it. The first step however is to get out of the mindset that all good things are about good feelings. A good way to challenge this “good feelings equals good life” idea is to notice the not-so-good feelings that come with living our values. Anything important to us usually comes with a price. If it were easy then we wouldn’t really care about it. We hurt because we care. Our sadness from a loss is because we loved. We get angry because something has violated our sense of justice. We experience anxiety because there’s something worth our trouble that we want to accomplish.

As we keep our final destinations in sight, committing to something also involves taking small steps towards them. After having been able to return to these values, we can take action no matter how small in that direction we go. Make it a point today to call a friend you haven’t reached out to in a while. Go buy ice cream for your kid just because. Stand up for yourself and don’t take a sip of alcohol in your weekly gathering with your alcoholic friends. Small steps to break your patterns can put you back in touch with those values you cherish and also understand that situations, thoughts, and feelings have no control over you, but you do. Start doing the uncomfortable stuff and then take time to savor the results as a reward. It will likely be worth all the struggle!

Every so often I do get some calls inquiring about whether I do a faith-based approach in my practice or not. I welcome anyone and everyone from all faith traditions to come see me. I’d rather spread the word that I am inclusive, not exclusive. Why? Because while we may be subject to different rules of faith, we are all subject to the same rules of science. For me, there is no conflict. In fact, what I am learning now from ACT as an evidence-based approach to therapy, just showed me how much traditional faith-based practices have been affirmed by the science behind ACT, albeit thousands of years late.

I always feel a sense of sadness when people turn away from what ACT science can do for them, without first investigating if it is in sync with their faith. I hope, if you’re one who is looking for a faith-based approach to therapy reading this post, that you give me and this science I use, a chance to help you because it has tremendously helped me. Call or better yet, text me. I’d love to go on a journey with you towards a more meaningful and purposeful life you may have yet to experience!

Coming to An Acceptance of Your Partner or Loved One

by Nathan Chua

One of the things that our minds are really good at doing is judging. Our minds have developed this highly useful skill for the ultimate survival of our species that has very few qualities which can protect it from external threats. We don’t have large sharp teeth or claws and are said to be a species that has the longest gestation period among all creatures.

You might be curious to know how judgment can play any part in our survival, let alone the survival of a whole species. Isn’t it that we use judgment more to describe the ways we behave towards others? We are not used to using the term in light of its impact on our evolutionary history. Let’s do this little exercise to see how. If our minds didn’t know how to judge between a threat and a non-threat, we would be like the fish that get caught twice or more times by a fishing hook. Our minds are there to create rules that keep us out of harm’s way. If you see a line attached to a bait, that’s not dinner being presented to you, but you becoming somebody else’s dinner. Don’t cross the street without looking side to side. Stay indoors when your experience tells you that this is the time of the year when the weather can be harsh. This rule-following ability is what sets us apart from other species and gives us an edge of tremendous effect on who dominates the planet.

Unfortunately, this talent is double-edged. It can be useful to judge between a lion and a puppy but not when we use it to judge our internal processes. If our minds weren’t able to tell that the moving thing in front of us is a hungry lion, we could be its next prey! The mind applies the same rule to our feelings and thoughts, because the mind does what it does. Our difficult thoughts and feelings that naturally come by because of the life situations we face, are equated as bad, as in hungry lion-bad!

Couples and families often come to a judgment of their loved ones. Unfortunately, such judgments often get in the way of the loving relationships each party wishes to develop. One way of stepping out of these judgments is to consider your differences as they are and not as defects. Here’s one way to be more aware of this. Imagine if you had a loved one (either a romantic partner or a family member) who has suffered from a childhood impairment, let’s say, he or she is half-blind or has an injury that makes it difficult for them to walk at a normal pace. Would you demand that he or she be able to walk and do stuff as fast as you do? Probably not! You would most likely make adjustments to accommodate your loved one’s condition.

Given this, you and I can be more conscious of what our minds say are defects and begin to view them as conditions or differences around which we have to work. We can recognize our tendencies to see our loved ones as defective and therefore more like problems to solve rather than human beings who have learned a different way to tie a shoelace so to speak.

Another way of putting this into a clearer perspective is to notice the difference between describing a movie and judging it. A descriptive statement would be to say that the movie is an hour and 40 minutes long. While an evaluative statement would be that the movie was too long or too boring. Why don’t you try this at home? You can then experiment with a loved one that you have long judged to be defective. Just like a narrator for Nat Geo, see if you can objectively describe how your partner or child or parent behaves and say to yourself, “This is someone special who I would much rather choose to love with all his or her different behaviors that I have come to accept in the service of a truly honest and loving person that I wish to be in this and every moment.” That, my friends, is the key, not to feeling good, but to living well in spite of what your mind says are judgments to be made. It is up to you to look at those judgments and say, I choose not to run away from or struggle with my difficult experiences in dealing with this important person in my life, and to accept them above all. Be my guest and see peace arrive in your life.

Coping With Covid

by Nathan Chua

It is hard to imagine how all of us have suffered through this pandemic for so long. None of us, except for a few elite scientists, could have known that this would happen in our lifetime. This situation has probably sent you through a whole gamut of difficult thoughts and feelings. From struggles with anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, relationships, boredom, and more; they are all understandable in these times.

Some of us may be saying, look what Covid has done to me? I’ve become more irritable, less tolerant, depressed, anxious, angry, and many more. You are not alone. You share these thoughts and feelings with anyone who has had a brush with all that this pandemic has been inflicting on us for over a year now.

The key here is to know what is within or outside our control. With difficult situations come difficult thoughts and emotions, and sometimes it could be difficult relationships as well. Unfortunately, it is often that we find ourselves judging all of these as unwanted, unnecessary, and even harmful to us. We can’t be blamed for having these judgmental thoughts. In today’s “success equals feel good and happy” society, there is really nothing much that can explain why we feel miserable, except that there’s probably something wrong with us. We are defective in some ways compared to others. They all seem well put together and coping well in spite of everything.

You and I have minds that are quick to judge ourselves especially when times are rough. This is the hardware that we come with. The depression comes when we buy into the idea that we have something to do with the quality of our thoughts. We measure our sanity against the seemingly pristine and peaceful minds we see in TV ads, social media, and the gigantic, right on top of us, billboards. Eventually we discover how futile our attempts to suppress unwanted thoughts are, and begin to have a sense of powerlessness and of being ineffectual. We fight with the constant murmurs of our minds and get caught up in this struggle. Here’s the secret sauce, “Give it up!” It doesn’t matter how many pills or distracting activities we do, let’s come to an acceptance that our minds are simply wired that way. Next thing we do?

Commit to doing things that tally well with what we want to do with our limited time on this planet, and more so, with our short, precious moments with those who matter to us. Take these thoughts and feelings and bring them for the ride of our choosing. Come back to what truly matters to us with all the unwanted chatter! Be present with our kids even if our minds continue to remind us of that upcoming mortgage payment. Be kind and loving even as we feel frustrated with how people around the house are acting. Act calmly even if we aren’t feeling calm. We can do it if we are willing to do the hard work, because in the end, it only matters what we have done, not what thoughts and feelings we struggled with in our heads.

ACT for Trauma Certificate of Completion

Having been trained in psychodynamic therapy, helping trauma clients from a behavioral lens was unimaginable for me as a graduate student. With the use of the inner child, memory and exposure work, it turns out that the two approaches share much in common. From an ACT or behavioral, and scientific perspective however, I have learned the rationale behind such practices, and how our nervous system works to produce the kind of ineffective responses people have towards traumatic experiences. It was difficult having done this together with the ACT for Adolescents course, but it was well worth the effort. I consider it a privilege to be around in an era where people like Dr. Russ Harris, a best-selling author and renowned ACT therapist, are able to share their knowledge and expertise from thousands of miles away! I eagerly look forward to more courses in ACT, Relational Frame Theory, and Functional Contextualism.