Blog Articles
Additional resources written by our PCS therapists.
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The Dreaded Shame Spiral
Series One: Blog Fifty-Seven “There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember, carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after when we will have to return to normal lives. Will there be any changes then?” — Slavoj Zizek, speaking… -
Self Love
Series One: Blog Fifty-Six “A Man cannot be comfortable without his own approval” — Mark Twain I am convinced that coming to terms with who you are requires self love. Not a profound statement but a profound reality. Addicts must come to terms with ugly behavior, limitations, living one day… -
Codependency: The Jelly on the Tree that Every Addict Must Nail
Series One: Blog Fifty-Five The late John Bradshaw has said that at the core of every addict is the dynamic of codependency. Yet, my experience is not just addicts, but partners of addicts, families of addicts and non addict families also commonly must address codependency in varying degrees. Codependency is… -
Sexual Abuse— An All Too Familiar Story for Addicts of Every Kind
Series One: Blog Fifty-Four I have been a recovering addict for over 30 years. The greatest healing experience in my addict life has been the ever-deepening exploration of my own personal story. Nothing has been as invigorating and palliative as embracing the depth of my life experience. My brother Steve… -
Addictive Demand: Addicts Taking Up Too Much Space
Series One: Blog Fifty-Three Addicts take up too much space. I have this exercise ball in my office that I do sit ups and exercise. If somehow you could take that ball and blow it up so that like an expanded balloon it took up all the space in the… -
Living with COVID Parallels Living with Addiction
Series One: Blog Fifty-Two There are few things in life that I always do every day. Yet most days I get out and hit the road for a morning run. Sometimes toward the end of a run I will decide to sprint to the end. Sprinting for an old guy… -
Every Addict Needs to Play
Series One: Blog Fifty-One “It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.” -Leo F. Buscaglia I never really learned how to play very well as an adult. It’s not attractive, it’s… -
Somethin’ from Nuthin’
Series One: Blog Fifty Almost everyone has had the experience when they paid for something and got nothing or at least something that was very disappointing. It could have been an investment, a vacation rental, or some other purchase. When this happens, we usually feel ripped off, gypped, and unjustly… -
The Betrayal Odyssey: Roadie or Roomie?
Series One: Blog Forty-Nine I have a friend who is a professional roadie. He travels all over the world working for different rock bands-setting up for a concert and then tearing it all down and packing it up for travel, hours later. Obviously, with COVID-19, he hasn’t been working all… -
Family Footprints
Series One: Blog Forty-Eight Addictionologist Gabor Mate asks the question “why the pain” not why the addiction. Makes sense. Most of us who know addiction recognize that there is a pack of wolves chasing us through the woods, nipping at our heels. Mood altering addiction helps to escape the wolf… -
Facing Everyday Life Requires Courage to Be Average
Series One: Blog Forty-Seven Embracing the average everyday life experience is hard. Today, one of my wife’s family members lost a loved one to COVID. In the US the COVID count is nearing 4.5 million cases and 150K plus deaths. We still have 6 months to go before the one… -
Surrender’s Sweet Spot: Knowing When to Quit
Series One: Blog Forty-Six Recovery is such a paradox- to be in control means to let go; to win you must know how/what to lose; to know God is to humbly embrace what you don’t know; to go deep in wisdom you must dare to embrace the commonplace average. I… -
Get On Up Or Get Down | Part A
Elijah Bedrosian, LPC, SEP speaks about “feeling better in ways that make more sense”. -
Dinosaurs and Macaroni: The power of our sub-conscious mind.
I was heating up some food in the kitchen area of the office where I work, and my colleague asked, “Are you whistling the theme song of Jurassic Park? Admittedly surprised, I realized I had been, and said to her “yes….but why am I doing that?!”After all, I hadn’t watched… -
The Brilliance of Tolerance
Series One: Blog Forty-Five “Honesty gets us sober, but tolerance keeps us sober” — Bill W Tolerance is a human capacity that requires a deeper education of yourself and usually develops later as your recovery matures. It is dependent upon acceptance of yourself. When you don’t accept yourself, particularly the… -
Scrubbing the Wound
Series One: Blog Forty-Four One of the most tortuous experiences of healing in life are stories told from those who have suffered with injuries that require their wounds to be scrubbed. Emergency room doctors have shared experiences of cases involving car accidents that have required scrubbing the road rash covering… -
Entitlement and the Special Worm
Series One: Blog Forty-Three There is a story about the subtle snag of grandiosity in The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketchum: A past president of the Hazelden Foundation, a leading treatment resource for alcohol and drug addiction, was approached by a young researcher asking, “Why is… -
The Drawbacks to the Straight and Narrow
I grew up in a family of four, younger sister, dad was a minister, turned Psychologist, stay at home mom, public school education, private 4 year college, married, Masters and then Doctorate degrees, begin career in family business, have two children, grandparents met our children, my parents are still living,… -
Reconciling Y(our) White Privilege
Questions to explore your own White Privilege: What positive cognitions do I hold about myself, others, and the world? If my life experiences included systemic and/or individualized racism, would I hold those same beliefs? If not, how do I reconcile this? What positive cognitions do I hold about myself, others,… -
About Finding Center
Elijah Bedrosian discusses his professional background and gives an overview of topics to be covered in the blog series “Finding Center.”
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