Margie Freeman LCSW

Providing individual and couples therapy counseling in South Orange and Northern New Jersey

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Lessons from a Dog

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If a dog was a teacher, you’d learn things like:

  • When your loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
  • Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
  • Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure Ecstasy.
  • Take naps.
  • Stretch before rising.
  • Run, romp, and play daily.
  • Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
  • Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
  • On warm days, stop to lie on your back on the grass.
  • On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
  • When you’re happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
  • Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.
  • Be faithful.
  • Never pretend to be something you’re not.
  • If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
  • When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by, and nuzzle them gently. 

That’s the secret of happiness that we can learn from a good dog. 

-Author, Unknown

Happy New Year! 2019

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Margie Freeman Happy New Year

I regard doing therapy as sacred work. 

When we therapists help our clients heal from trauma, it has a ripple effect—improving not only their lives, but the lives of their families, their friends, and their communities. In that sense, when we help someone heal from trauma, we change the world.

In the coming year, may we all work toward healing our traumas and healing the world. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2019! 

The 5 C’s of Coping

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In Linda Graham’s book, Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being, she identifies the 5 C’s of Coping:

  1. Calm: We need to learn from our experiences with others in order to calm down our nervous system.
  2. Clarity: If we learn how to reflect on our experiences, we can maintain clarity as we evaluate our possibilities of response to a crisis.
  3. Connection with resources: Connecting with resources, both internal and external, can expand our options for coping.
  4. Competence: As we learn specific skills and become competent at them, we can draw on those competencies now and in the future.
  5. Courage: We need to call on our courage from our previous coping, to persevere in coping with our current life experiences.

Linda’s book gives us experiential tools and exercises to help us develop the 5 C’s of coping.

Anger

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Anger - Margie Freeman, LCSWAnger is a normal human emotion. We all feel and express our anger differently. 
 
Many of us deal with anger in ineffective ways. We may bury our anger which can result in depression or illness. We may turn to alcohol  drugs, food, sex, or gambling, to numb our anger. We may explode with anger at every opportunity becoming a hostile, agressive person. We may use our anger to punish those around us. We may let our anger take control of us.
 
Here are 3 ideas to help you manage your anger more effectively:
 
  1. Recognize and accept that you feel angry. Anger is a normal human emotion along with sadness, fear, joy, excitement and others. Give yourself permission to feel angry without making judgments about whether your anger is right or wrong.
  2.  Take a time out, ask yourself what you need and how you can best achieve your objectives. Take some deep breaths. Perhaps you can talk to a friend, or write down your thoughts and feelings. Calm yourself down before you take action so that you can express your anger in a moderate, controlled, and respectful fashion.
  3.  Increase your physical activity. Enhance your sense of well being by releasing tension from your body.  Anger is a signal that something needs to change.
Call or contact me here to learn about additional methods to manage your anger effectively and to achieve your objectives under stressful circumstances.