Here are excerpts from a recent book, Disconnect to Connect: Couples and Social Media Use. Very interesting ……………

• You may have clients who complain about their spouse’s excessive use of technology and social media and how it interferes negatively with their marital relationship. Married couples enter counseling for a variety of reasons, and yes, poor communication, which leads to an escalation of conflict, is indeed among the top reasons. You may have helped couples deal with more complicated situations, such as affairs, pornography, or some other types of addictions. Interestingly, many couples have faced high levels of conflict and low levels of marital satisfaction due to the negative impact of their technology and social media use. Therefore, whether you are counseling, mentoring, or discipling married couples, addressing the impact of technology and social media use on marriage needs to be part of your counseling approach.
• The reality is that a growing number of people use social media. According to the Pew Research Center (2018), “roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults (68%) now report that they are Facebook users, and roughly three-quarters of those users access Facebook on a daily basis.” The same article points out that the younger generation tends to use other social media platforms, “78% of 18- to 24-year-olds use Snapchat, and a sizeable majority of these users (71%) visit the platform multiple times per day. Similarly, 71% of Americans in this age group now use Instagram and close to half (45%) are Twitter users.” Consequently, counselors need to be competent to address the potential issues that may arise due to the pervasive impact of technology and social media on couple’s lives.
• Technology and social media have revolutionized the way people communicate and conduct business. It has enriched our lives in many ways, but it has also created some new challenges for couples and counselors as well. Different opinions and research findings exist regarding the impact of technology and social media on mental health and how they can affect the quality of marital relationships. When a spouse is more connected to social media than to his or her spouse, the relationship may suffer.
• Be wise when you post on social media. Ask yourself, “How will this post motivate and encourage people?” or “How will this post reflect on my marriage?” You may even ask yourself, “What if this post is read in court?” or “What if my boss reads this post?”

                                                  Disconnect to Connect (2022)

Being married to your best friend can lead to happier marriages and greater life satisfaction. It can also be a burden. So says a recent article. Here are some interesting excerpts:

• About half of married people and couples living together say their partner is their best friend, with men more likely to say so than women. Forty-eight percent of married women listed their spouse as their BF compared with 64% of men in a 2017 study. 

• Couples who are best friends say they work on it. They listen, share feelings, thoughts, affection and laughter, and explore new things together. But relying on one person to be your “everything”—partner, cheerleader, lover, counselor and playmate—can be too much, even for spousal superheroes.

• It’s useful to have a different confidant to listen and give objective advice when you are worried about things at home. Likewise, you can be deeply in love and have a healthy relationship, and still want to go shopping, to a baseball game, or out for a beer with a best friend from work or high school.

• Millennial couples often feel pressure to have their partner as their best friend, says Liz Higgins, founder of Millennial Life Counseling and herself a millennial married to her best friend. Some in their late 20s and early 30s saw their own parents’ divorce or remain in unhappy marriages. They want to avoid that—and think having a best-friend partner will help. If that’s the goal, she says, they need to focus on what it means to be a best friend and work on that with their partner. 

• One key is remaining curious and exploring new things together. 

• “You hit a dead end when you think you know everything there is about your partner.”

• It is also important to realize that marriage is a journey, and there are times you feel like your partner is your best friend and times you don’t, she says. That doesn’t mean you’re with the wrong person. 

• John Helliwell, a Canadian economist who researches happiness and co-wrote the 2017 study on marriage and friendship, says being best friends with your spouse increases some of the well-being benefits that come with marriage, such as life satisfaction. 

                  “Spouses and Best Friends.” Wall Street Journal (Sept. 18, 2023)

“Couples who have more couple friends are happier in their own relationships and more likely to stay together, research shows. Hanging out with another couple can help you see your partner in a new light.

It gets tougher to make friends as we get older. We have less time to get together. We no longer have a ready-made pool of potential friends as we did when we were at school. We’re more inhibited, too.

Here’s some advice to help you find the right couple friends:

• Confer with your partner. Do you both want new couple friends? It’s important to be on the same page

• Put yourself out there. Be brave and host a dinner party or invite another couple out to dinner. “Food always helps build relationships,” Slatcher says. 

• Ask questions and share. Research shows that couples who discuss personal issues bond more closely than couples who stick to small talk. Carry your part of the conversation. Don’t let others do all the work.

• That can be annoying to your partner and intimidating to the other couple, who may worry what you’re thinking. Let the other couple get to know you. Don’t hog the limelight, either. (Extraverts, I’m talking to you.) “One-sided relationships are usually ultimately doomed,” Slatcher says. So let everyone have a chance to shine.”

From “”Couples Who Have Couples as Friends — How to Mett New Couples.” Wall Street Journal (August 18, 2023).

Recent article in Psychology Today discusses sex and older couples (60+). Very interesting. Here are a few highlights ………….

• Older adults who have sex at least twice a month report greater happiness than those who abstain from partner sex, according to a study.
• Women in the study did not consider intercourse to be a major contributor to sexual satisfaction. Men missed intercourse more than women.
• Intercourse is often not as central to sex for older adults, but sex remains important late in life. There are many other ways to enjoy sex.

More specifically:

For women, the moves that brought the greatest satisfaction included: kissing, cuddling, hugging, mutual whole-body massage, and oral sex—but not intercourse. The men expressed a bit more nostalgia for intercourse, but otherwise concurred with the women’s erotic preferences.

Fortunately, when older couples—or lovers of any age—jettison intercourse, they can still enjoy marvelous sex by focusing on kissing, hugging, cuddling, mutual whole-body massage, and other types of play.

By age 60 or so, intercourse will probably become problematic, and you’re likely to decide to let go of it. That’s no big deal. Studies shows, among late-life adults, even without intercourse, sex remains fun, nurturing, and satisfying—and an important contributor to happiness and well-being.

                                          “Older Lovers.” Psychology Today (2001).

An outstanding article appeared in a Virginia newspaper this week discussing mental health counseling in Virginia and the very long process of being licensed. Here are a few excerpts. (See also –– Virginia governor’s extensive mental health legislation now law (June 2023)

                                 …………………………………………………………………….

On college campuses in Virginia and nationwide, students are increasingly reporting struggles with mental health. 

Now, Virginia is trying to harness campuses’ soaring demand for mental health services to meet another goal: get more young professionals in the pipeline to provide them.

In 2022, lawmakers added $1 million to the state’s two-year budget for a pilot program that would pay salaries and benefits for counseling and social work graduates pursuing state licensure to work at campus student health and counseling centers.

Among nearly all age groups, there’s a rising demand for mental health services nationwide. In Virginia, policy discussions have mainly centered on the state’s troubled behavioral health system, the network of community services boards and state-run facilities that provide treatment to people who are in crisis or experiencing the most severe mental health challenges. 

But while the overburdened public system deserves attention, said Deborah Oswalt, executive director of the Virginia Health Care Foundation (VHCF), the majority of Virginians who seek mental health treatment are in search of more “basic” services. Those include treatment for conditions such as depression, anxiety and panic disorder, as well as help dealing with difficult circumstances like a death or traumas linked to situations like abuse. 

Even as demand has risen, the number of professionals available to meet that demand has fallen in Virginia, with data showing it could shrink ever further as a wave of behavioral health providers prepare to retire. 

The workforce was also nearing what the VHCF called a “provider cliff”: Among psychiatrists, 61% of providers were aged 55 and older, as were 36% of licensed clinical psychologists, 37% of licensed clinical social workers and 32% of licensed professional counselors. Furthermore, the majority of providers were white, even as Virginia becomes more diverse. 

“As more people get comfortable with seeking out mental health treatment there’s not going to be enough providers,” said Lusk. “In reality, pretty much all of us could use someone to talk to at some point in our lives.”

Despite the aging workforce, getting new professionals into the field has been difficult because of the steep requirements many graduates face to achieve licensure in Virginia. 

The largest sectors of Virginia’s behavioral health professions are clinical social workers and professional counselors, who in 2021 made up almost three-quarters of the workforce, according to VHCF data. While roughly 4,000 of the 12,000 current professionals in those fields are nearing retirement age, colleges and universities in the commonwealth are only producing approximately 400 graduates per year — not enough to offset the exits. 

More crucially, those graduates still lack licensure. While both professional counseling and clinical social work require graduate-level degrees, licensure requires graduates to undergo thousands of hours of clinical and supervised practice. Professional counselors must undergo 3,400 hours of clinical work experience, of which 2,000 must be direct client contact and 200 must be supervised. For clinical social workers, the requirement is 3,000 hours of experience, including 1,380 clinical hours and 100 supervised hours. 

“That’s one of the big hurdles a lot of [licensed professional counselors] have,” said Ritchey. “I think there’s a lot of people who want to be in higher education who are LPCs that the doors need to be opened to.”  

Supervised hours are particularly tricky for graduates, as most are forced to pay experienced practitioners an average rate of $100 per hour for the supervision. 

The state’s steep licensure requirements, in the absence of other mechanisms to offset the burdens, may also be weeding out candidates with graduate degrees in their field but without the resources to navigate a prolonged and expensive process. 

“Given the low salaries available to these pre-licensees ($42,000 – $47,000/year) and the high student debt load they carry, many cannot run the financial gauntlet of paying for the required supervision hours,” the VHCF report found. 

Virginia has “some of the strictest and highest standards to get licensure,” said Lusk. “We have to be gatekeepers of our profession, right? But sometimes we have such high standards in Virginia, it really puts a barrier up.” 

‘Exactly what we’ve been trying to do for such a long time’

Over the past few years, Virginia has become increasingly interested in putting state support toward licensure of counseling and clinical social work graduates. VHCF’s Boost 200 program, which aims to speed up the licensure of 200 behavioral health professionals by paying for their required supervision hours, has received funding from the General Assembly and Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services. 

            “Virginia Counseling and Mental Health.” Virginia Mercury (June 12, 2023)

     A good piece recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerning improving your mood to have sex. This is important for all couples, young and old. Very well done. Here are a few highlights:

• It can be hard to get sex started, especially now. Even couples who still desire each other may fall out of sync or miscommunicate about when to be intimate. After all, we’re stressed and exhausted from the pace of postpandemic life. When we finally fall into bed at night, that arm reaching out for us can sometimes feel like another task on our to-do list.

• That is, if we even get the hint. Sex therapists say that the act of initiating sex can be hard for long-term couples because it’s easy to miss each other’s cues. You may think that the foot rub you’re giving your partner is an obvious hint that you’re ready for sex; she may be thrilled just to get off her feet. This leaves plenty of opportunity for hurt feelings.

• Heterosexual women fantasize about initiating sex more than they do in real life, while heterosexual men fantasize about initiating it less.

• Many relationships start off hot and heavy, so couples who struggle with initiating sex are often surprised, psychologists say. But that level of urgent desire typically fades over time. “Sex doesn’t always happen naturally. There are times when you need to put a little effort.

• How can you initiate sex better? Here is some advice from the experts. Start with a chat. Begin with a compliment, reassuring your partner that you still find him or her attractive and enjoy it when you have sex. Ask about any roadblocks. Is your partner experiencing a sexual difficulty, or too stressed to feel desire? Does he or she want something different? Initiate early. For many people, initiating sex means expressing that they want to have sex right now. But it may not be easy for your partner to rev up quickly. Start your approach earlier in the day or the week.

               “Right Mood, Wrong Time.” Wall Street Journal (Feb. 8, 2023).

A good article recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal summarizing an extensive Harvard study on relationships and loneliness. The bottom line is that social relationships have an immense positive impact on one’s life. So does loneliness, a significant negative impact. Here a few excerpts:

• Through all the years of studying, one crucial factor stands out for the consistency and power of its ties to physical health, mental health and longevity. Contrary to what many people might think, it’s not career achievement, or exercise, or a healthy diet. Don’t get us wrong; these things matter. But one thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance: good relationships. 

• Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period. If you want to make one decision to ensure your own health and happiness, it should be to cultivate warm relationships of all kinds. 

• On days when men and women spent more time in the company of others, they were happier. 

• The simple measure of time spent with others proved quite important, because on a day-to-day basis this measurement was clearly linked with happiness. On days when these men and women spent more time in the company of others, they were happier. In particular, the more time they spent with their partners, the more happiness they reported. 

• But people who were in more satisfying relationships were buffered somewhat from these ups and downs of mood—their happiness did not decline as much on the days when they had more pain. Their happy marriages seemed to have a protective effect. 

• How can loneliness be so physically harmful when it’s a subjective experience? 

• The same effects of loneliness continue today. The feeling of loneliness is a kind of alarm ringing inside the body. At first, its signals may help us; we need them to alert us to a problem. But imagine living in your house with a fire alarm going off all day, every day, and you start to get a sense of what chronic loneliness is doing behind the scenes to our minds and bodies. 

• We don’t need to be with all of our good friends all of the time. In fact, some people who energize us and enhance our lives might do so specifically because we don’t see them very often. Sometimes we are compatible with a person only to a point, and that point is good enough. But most of us have friends and relatives who energize us and who we don’t see enough.

• A few adjustments to our most treasured relationships can have real effects on how we feel. We might be sitting on a gold mine of vitality that we are not paying attention to, because it is eclipsed by the shiny allure of smartphones or pushed to the side by work demands.

     “Lifelong Fulfillment (Harvard Study).” Wall Street Journal (January 14, 2023).

A short but really good article on “mindfulness” recently appeared this week. It discusses several simple techniques that can keep a couple connected and involved with each other. Here are a few excerpts:

• Mindfulness has been shown to help with work, stress, anxiety and depression. It also can benefit your marriage. Being present and intentional is vital to the appreciation, satisfaction and longevity of your relationship.

• Mindfulness interventions increase self-compassion, well-being and quality of life. Mindfulness can relieve psychopathological symptoms such as anxiety and depression and psychobiological stress.

• Relationship quality, such as in intimacy, can be enhanced by mindfulness training.

• Through mindfulness we can minimize distractions, discern what is going on in our bodies and emotions, and begin to be more present in our relationships. As this occurs, forgiveness and gratitude can increase.

• Here are three ways to increase mindfulness in your relationship that have benefited my clients.

1. Hold hands for one minute
2. Try a new hobby together for the first time
3. Sexual mindfulness

• Many of us want our relationships to be healthy and long-lasting. Mindfulness helps us to continue to see our partner with a sense of curiosity, gratitude, acceptance and satisfaction, which can help the relationship be rich and fulfilling for a long time.

                             “Mindfulness.” Washinton Post (January 2022).

Reconnecting after the pandemic is really important for couples. A recent article discusses how to do this. Not that difficult. Here are a few excerpts:

• She began inviting people into her home again this fall. “I was sick of being alone,” she says. Ms. McCue is more purposeful about her invites than she was before the pandemic, though. She’s made a list of people she wants to see and is reaching out, saying: “I miss you and need to see you. Could you give me a specific date and time that you are open and can come over?” Her gatherings are also smaller and more intimate. Sometimes she plans activities, such as pumpkin carving for Halloween or a game night. And she keeps the food casual: “drinks and nibbles” or pizza and wine. “Home is the perfect place to connect,” says Ms. McCue. “You get to feel like you’re all family for one night.”

• Pick up the phone. This one hits on one of my biggest pet peeves—how no one picks up the phone anymore, either to make a call or answer one. Bill Kalmar does, though. For years, he’s made a concerted effort to call family members, friends and cherished colleagues on their birthdays, anniversaries and other significant days. To remember the dates, he records them each year in his new leather calendar as soon as it arrives in October, then checks the calendar each week to see what calls he needs to make.

• New experiences help prevent boredom and complacency. They also activate the brain’s reward system, flooding it with powerful neurochemicals related to pleasure and bonding—the same circuits triggered when we fall in love.

“Creating a Postpandemic Life Full of Connection (Wall Street Journal 12.29.22)

A really good piece appeared in the Financial Times on mental health and EAP’s. The need for employee assistance has skyrocketed. But here and in England this has now become a crisis. Especially in the context of getting proper medication and therapy. Here are a few excerpts:

• Employee assistance programs are usually pretty dull affairs. For a few decades now, employers have paid EAP providers to run phone lines their employees can call if they need support with personal problems. The idea is to provide some short-term support — a handful of counselling sessions, say — to help staff deal with mild problems before they get worse. But this year, EAPs have found themselves facing a swelling wave of complex mental health problem.

• A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighted the striking link between antidepressant use and deprivation: in 2021/22, more than twice as many patients were prescribed antidepressant drugs from practices in the most deprived areas in England than in the least deprived areas. The problem with leaning more on employers to provide mental health support during this time is that not everyone has access to such programs.

•  People on low pay, insecure contracts or no work at all are less likely to have such a safety net. They will need as much help as the money-constrained state can spare. Some interventions don’t have to be very costly, such as integrating talking therapies with debt advice. Other policies that would help are already on the table but need to be implemented, such as government plans to make life in the rental sector less insecure.

•  Leaving people to cope on their own will store up more problems, both for them and the economy as a whole. Already, a rising share of people say they are too ill to work. Although the over-50s are the biggest driver of this trend, there is also a worrying rise in inactive young people. For them, the biggest cause of long-term sickness is mental illness, phobias and nervous disorders, up 24 per cent since 2019. Economic problems are hard for people at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. How well or badly we handle this moment will have ramifications long into the future.

        “The Mental Health Recession is Deepening.” Financial Times (Nov. 22, 2022).