The Importance of Treating Depression

Depression is like a dark hole that threatens to swallow a person. Plagued by overwhelming sadness, wearied from responsibilities and unable to find pleasure in normal activities, a depression sufferer often feels paralyzed. Professional help is needed to prevent the sufferer from losing his job, turning away from family or quitting life.

People of all ages suffer from depression. Men, women and children can feel the effects of sadness and fatigue in their daily lives.According to Bryon Remo, M.Ed., LMFT, who practices in Southbury, Connecticut, depression can be quite manageable, but if left untreated can overwhelm a person's entire life. Depression primarily manifests itself through withdrawal, lethargy, disinterest, sadness or anger. The specific symptoms and depth of feelings differ between patients.

While depression may debilitate a person, it can be treated with therapy. After recognizing the symptoms of depression, a patient who agrees to undergo counseling can discover the sources of the dark feelings. He or she can move toward healing with helpful techniques suggested during counseling.

Remo notes that because everyone’s depression symptoms are different, a therapist creates a customized plan for each patient. In addition to medication, social support, nutrition, exercise and stress reduction help a patient manage depression symptoms.

In some cases, depression may be caused by an underlying medical condition. Underactive thyroid or medication interaction mimics depression. A professional therapist can diagnose the source of depression, prescribe a successful plan of action, and bring healing and hope to each patient.

Identifying an effective therapist makes the difference between finding healing and staying stuck. When choosing a professional therapist, look for a caring and supportive listener who connects personally with the patient. Clients are not looking for a book smart psychologist void of any emotional connectedness. They want to feel understood and cared for.

Depression affects thousands of patients each year. Instead of suffering with the sadness and fatigue, seek help. Find answers and healing with professional therapy assistance, and move forward with life.

Bryon Remo, M.Ed., LMFT, specializes in working with couples and challenging adolescent issues.

He serves the communities of Southbury, West Hartford, Oxford, Watertown, Monroe, Seymour, Roxbury, Naugatuck, Woodbury, Bridgewater,Thomaston and Danbury.

Bryon Remo Primer on Creating a New Experience for Teens in Therapy

Not surprisingly, teens are often the most difficult population to try and get into the counseling office.

It is not so much that they have little to say, it is that they have an erroneous perspective as to what effective therapy can look like. According to Bryon Remo, M.Ed., LMFT, who specializes in working with teenagers in Connecticut, teens are looking for a different experience than what predominately exists. Sure therapists all offer a safe, confidential and supportive environment; that is par for the course. But today's teenagers are looking for a therapy experience that is much more honest and "real" than previously occurred. This means that they desperately want to know that a therapist "gets it."

Teens do not want to attend therapy in many ways because they do not believe a therapist will truly remain unbiased. According to Remo, teens are also worrried that they are going to be grilled with endless questions prompting them to open up in ways they are not ready for. It is important that teens feel that their view of the world is understood before they can be challenged to consider an alternative perspective.

Too often today parents want to see change quickly in their adolescents and assume the therapist will wave the magic wand that brings about such dramatic change. And although therapists have many tools at their disposal it is the relationship that always trumps the interventions in order of importancy. Teens need to know that they are fully accepted.

According to Bryon Remo, teenagers today want to know that they are not going to have to be so appropriate in therapy. They do not want to have to monitor each word that comes off their lips for fear of being judged as being inappropriate. When a therapist is able to speak the language of a teenager it does not suggest an endorsement of behavior unbecoming, but rather an acknowledgement that their style of communicating is recognizable and workable to the therapist. A therapist needn't be "cool" to connect well with kids, he/she just needs to know what's really on their radar.

Bryon Remo, M.Ed., LMFT is a licensed marital and family therapist practicing in Southbury, CT. He specializes in couples closeness and challenging adolescent issues. He serves Southbury,Watertown, Oxford, Monroe, Seymour, West Hartford, Naugatuck, Farmington,Thomaston and Southington, CT.

Bryon Remo Primer on Creating Relationship Change Today!

Couples that enter therapy often assume that either there is a quick fix solution to their marital woes or they are in for a long arduous road. The truth is that both ideas are accurate. There are quick fixes that can impact one's relationship today and there are things that will simply need time to be experienced and sustained (i.e. rebuilding trust, emotional closeness and safety).

Bryon Remo, M.Ed., LMFT notes that when couples stop analyzing their relationship and start "doing" things to improve it, they are speeding up the process of closeness. It is nice to have some insight into one's relationship but it is simply not enough to move it in a new direction- action must ensue. According to Remo, couples who simply take the risk of doing one small but conscious deed for their partner daily can have something to build upon that is not based on empty words. Couples often lack enough positive experiences to keep them grounded. When they begin to make little efforts to connect, it often leads to becoming comfortable taking greater risks.

It is often the case that couples will balk at such efforts because they feel that their problems are on a much deeper level. And although this is often true, there is a need to keep connecting while working through the layers that may need to be shed in order for even greater change to occur. Bryon Remo's work with couples encourages both individuals to work toward creating a shared vision of how they want their relationship to look. When couples begin with a fantasy, it slowly moves from unimaginable to possible sometimes much sooner than they realize.

Bryon Remo, M.Ed., LMFT practices in Southbury, CT
http://www.ctfamilycounseling.com/

Couples Therapy for Maintenance

Many couples view therapy as a sign of weakness of their marriage being in trouble. Yet for many couples, the idea of regularly tuning up their marriage with some added insight, improved communication and action is often a small price to pay to maintain marital longevity.

Bryon Remo,licensed marital and family therapist, practicing in Southbury, Connecticut notes that, "Couples who engage in preventive counseling are often able to recognize that problems are an essential part of life and that maintaining closeness during times of trial is important for long term stability." They do not view conflict as a threat to their marriage, but instead see it as an opportunity for closeness. Couples counseling allows individuals to feel that they can weather whatever storm comes their way.

Couples that seek out therapy services are essentially feeding their marriage the gift of understanding, patience and giving. Most people who come to counseling are doing so in the aftermath of repeated patterns that have not shifted. They no longer see hopefulness going it alone. And yet, once they participate in counseling and can maintain an awareness of their desired outcomes, they often do quite well. This is true when ownership and willingness is high.

Bryon Remo strongly suggests that couples learn to play "tug o' war on the same side of the rope." That is to suggest that they view conflict as a shared problem as oppossed to a competitive process.

Bryon Remo, M.Ed., LMFT
Licensed Marital and Family Therapist

Creating the Right Energy for a Healthy Divorce

Bryon Remo Primer on a Healthy Divorce

For long couples have stayed married for fear of harming their children, being alone, having their financial efforts crumble or avoiding ugly litigation that does further damage. Many parents do not realize that there are alternative ways to proceed during a divorce that has an outcome that is healing and helpful in moving forward.

Bryon Remo, a licensed marital and family therapist, notes that couples who long for a healthy divorce recognize that divorce should not be reduced to the pursuit of meeting one’s own needs and avoiding getting “screwed” as much as possible. Instead, it can be a collaborative and soul-searching process in which both parties realize that they needn’t be defined by their divorce. It can be shaped by the positive energy they put into creating a peaceful and empowering outcome. According to Remo, when couples recognize that their kindness and unselfishness empowers them, they often begin to feel a sense of confidence that divorce needn’t feel so ugly. Couples who use their divorce as an instrument for their own personal change often emerge on the other side a better person, parent and partner to their once spouse.To get to that end require a willingness to change old thought habits.

Bryon Remo suggests that couples who reinvent their relationship are able to do so because they use their painful past to assist their desired present. They come to understand hurtful words not merely as weapons but as information informing them of what’s still unfinished in their mindset. Creating a healthy divorce means caring about the process more that perhaps having ever cared about the marriage. Although this may sound odd, there is a need to use the process of divorce as a vehicle toward growth, not something that needs to be done as quickly as painlessly as possible. Remo further suggests that emotions serve as a source of illuminating what is needed in the process. Couples therapy can often help those pursuing divorce recognize that they can each truly find their best self through the process, not after its completion.

Bryon Remo is licensed marital and family therapist specializes in couples and adolescent issues. He practices in the Southbury, Connecticut area.When Bryon is not supporting families he is typically enjoying his own family, hiking, playing tennis, and performing stand-up comedy.

To learn more about Bryon Remo’s work go to the following links:

http://www.ctfamilycounseling.com/bryon_remo_index.html
http://www.bryonremo.blogspot.com/
http://bryonremo.wordpress.com/
http://bryonremo.weebly.com/
http://workface.com/e/bryonremo
http://bigsight.org/bryon_remo

Couples That Understand the Benefit of Silence

After a stressful day at work including endless traffic jams to endure before arriving home, talking is sometimes the last thing of interest to a mentally beaten down spouse. The couch, pillow, wine and a soft shoulder is what the doctor orders for these days.

These are the days that don't always seem to make sense and may seem to lack purpose. Is it really possible that your 20 minute grinder was the only reprieve from a day filled with annoying requests, annoying people and annoying everything else?

The return home on these days is a reminder of how home is the great escape, the sanctuary, the place of tranquility; where sanity can be restored. There is not always a need to process the day with one's spouse, especially if the day...well, sucked. A better intervention may simply be a state of quiet nothingness- no words, no thoughts, just being. A little pinot noir could be useful, but going backwards in dialogue does not always bring relief to the anguished partner. Spouses who have a keen pulse on their partner's needs can often sniff out the day's tension without having to prod. This 6th sense brings much relief to the spouse who merely wants to pretend he/she is not employed, if only for a moment.

Relationships often ebb and flow according to the ability of a coupleship to gauge what's needed at a given point in time. Whether a couple is married, dating or courting, there is a mental plugging in that allows these couples to stay conscious of each other's needs without having to say much at all; sometimes even nothing.

Bryon Remo is a licensed marriage and family therapist practicing in Southbury, CT.

Relationships: What Bothers Men Most?

It is widely agreed upon by both genders today that we are wired differently. Not dramatically (although that is debatable), but in certain ways that can cause unnecessary frustration if not recognized. Men DO NOT like to mind read! They are painfully aware that doing such adds another layer to whatever is currently at play.

When a man and woman seem to be in a good place there is a natural flow they both share. But when a woman becomes frustrated with her partner, the flow can be interrupted.

Of course she has every right to express her frustration, anger or disappointment. But unfortunately she does not always do such. And here lies the place of frustration for men.

Among couples, men are likely to assume that if an issue is not brought to the table, then there is no issue(at least not of pressing importance). Yet this is not always the case with women, who will often stow away matters of importance for an undisclosed time that she deems most relevant. This frightens men as it often unravels and reveals itself unexpectedly. When men appear dumbfounded because of their statute of limitations thinking, they can appear foolish and insensitive as oppossed to merely confused.

To be fair, men can be selfish, inconsiderate and mindless, and thus deserving of whatever words may come their way. But when these words come in delayed and random fashion, it not only creates more tension, but creates a new conflict that runs the risk of drowning out the old. This unintended consequence prevents important matters from being discussed in a collaborative way. And the very goal that a woman may have in helping her husband understand her, now gets lost.

Being assertive and more timely is necessary to know that each partner is on the same page. A child is not given time-out for something they did two days ago. Men and women need to be responsive to each other's concerns; and men are more likely to plug-in when they are not forced to connect the dots. They are okay with being humbled- they just want it in direct form.

Bryon Remo, M.Ed., LMFT