by Marina Edelman, LMFT | Jan 29, 2018 | Blog, mediation
Counseling and Mediation services in Westlake Village and Thousand Oaks
Hello, My name is Marina Edelman, founder of Marina Edelman Counseling & Mediation. I would like to introduce you to my staff and let you know that we are now offering family mediation. My associates and I provide professional guidance you need to effectively resolve life issues, address mood disorders, and help find solutions/options to general problems. Our therapists are experienced & well trained to listen, guide, and respectfully challenge you. Our team is made up of
extremely passionate clinicians who enjoy providing counseling and mediation for people in need. We work with
individuals,
couples and families to help them acquire healthy coping skills in order to improve relationships, refine communication skills, and achieve greater overall happiness. We also work with families on parenting and marital issues as well as provide
mediation services.
On our staff we have therapists that are Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists that are Certified in Family & Divorce Mediation and Parenting Coordination. To accommodate all incomes we have pre-licensed associates. Our therapeutic approach is holistic (that involves mind, body, and spirit) and our techniques are evidence-based modalities such as DBT, solution focused & CBT. We have specialists who treat depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, ADD/ADHD, Trauma, and relationship issues. We also have support groups for Mindfulness and Addiction.
by Marina Edelman, LMFT | Jan 25, 2018 | anxiety, Blog, focus, holiday
Guest blogger and associate Maxcy Dancy shares tips on how to keep your New Years Resolution.
How many New Year’s resolutions have you made over the years and how many have you actually accomplished? Are you like so many of us who start the year off being super optimistic about our New Year’s resolution, whether it’s to conquer a fear, get in shape, eat healthy, be more productive, quit smoking, etc., only to find ourselves back at square one within weeks after the New Year? If so, then what you need are a few simple techniques that will enable you to create lasting change and fulfill the goals that you have set for yourself.
First: Don’t set vague goals like “I’m going to be healthier.” Instead, be specific. Set behavioral goals based on measurable outcomes. So, in terms of wanting to be healthier, your specific behavioral goal might be: Lowering cholesterol by five points. Eating five servings of fruits and veggies each day. Losing 20 pounds. Running 5k in 30 minutes. You get the idea. Decide what your goal is in measurable, specific terms and then write it down.
Second: Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Instead of deciding to change twenty things, pick one thing to change that is a top priority for you because it is much easier to accomplish something when you only have one thing to focus on. Many people make the mistake of trying to do too many things at once and instead of accomplishing them all, they just end up overwhelmed and giving up. So pick one thing to be focused on, one thing you have a burning desire to achieve.
Third: Success creates success. We are more motivated to persevere while tackling difficult challenges when we have first succeeded at smaller, easier to accomplish challenges. Consequently, it is best to start with mini-goals. When you succeed at them, this will inspire you and enable you to go the distance when you are dealing with your main goal and the going gets tough. So take your main goal and break it down to bite size, mini-goals that start out easy and become more challenging.
Fourth: Set a realistic deadline for accomplishing your goal. Having a deadline tends to keep people moving forward at a solid pace rather than slowly plodding along. A deadline encourages consistency, strengthens motivation and creates a sense of urgency. Additionally, when the task is difficult, requiring a lot of time and energy, people can remind themselves that there is a deadline and that the struggle is not going to last forever. Knowing that an end is in sight tends to increase motivation and decrease discouragement.
Fifth: Keep the feeling of accomplishing your goal in mind. A way to stay positive should discouragement set in is to imagine how wonderful it will feel when you accomplish your goal. Similarly, if you start to procrastinate, telling yourself you don’t need to do it today, you can start again tomorrow, by focusing on how exciting it will be when you have succeeded, can get you back on track, full steam ahead!
Sixth: When you set goals, be very clear as to how much they matter to you and the overall positive impact your goal is going to have. Think about how they’re going to change every aspect of your life in a positive way: your self-esteem, your relationships, your work, your health and vitality, including the impact the changes you make will have on your family, your friends, your community, and your world! Visualize yourself living your life with your goal accomplished and what your life will be like. Research also shows that visualization helps us reach our goals as well as motivates us.
By staying very aware on a daily basis of what you want and why you want it, you increase your odds of keeping your New Year’s resolutions and effecting permanent, positive change in your life! If you need additional help, working with a coach or a therapist can be useful to create the changes you want to see in your life.
by Marina Edelman, LMFT | Oct 17, 2017 | Blog, mediation
Most people are drawn to mediation because they believe it is a means to dissolve relationships such as divorce or to resolve conflict amicably.
Meditation can help individuals, families, and couples in the following ways:
- It can help all parties better understand what they want
- It can help them clearly communicate their preferences in a non-polarizing manner
- It can help resolve conflict efficiently and effectively
Most people believe that accomplishing these goals will allow people to achieve closure and move on in life. They now see it as an alternative to therapy when they don’t want to seek treatment from a mental health professional. Therapy usually involves multiple sessions where as mediation can be as brief as one visit. Therapy helps bring awareness to an individual or group of individuals where as mediation is more focused on solutions, communication, and implementation.
Our society is now a place where every problem is directed to a mental health professional. Whereas a lot of problems have absolutely nothing to do with mental health. Rather, most of them have to do with uncertainty, confusion, lack of communication, expectations and goals, problematic societal dictates, conflicts between social norms, conflicts between personalities, conflicts between individuals, prejudices against personality types, orientations, racial groups, and temperaments, etc.
A lot of people are looking for alternative ways to address their issues without going to a mental health professional for “treatment,” but they don’t know where to go. Mediation by skilled and trained mediator can provide these people with what they are looking for. Mediators that maintain the principles of being solution focused, empathic and neutral encourage individuals to problem solve, freeing them from their preconceived notions about what is possible and facilitate communication among both parties. Mediators can even do one on one meditation with individuals. It can be referred to as coaching, or it can be seen as mediating within the conflicted mind of an individual.
Mediation can be seen as a process in which a neutral helps individuals come to a resolution; it can also be seen as a process by which a neutral helps parties move to the next step, whether it’s communicating with others, clarifying a thought, or organizing logistics. Mediator can be a sounding board, brain storming partner or voice of reason. Providing solutions is one part of mediation, another is facilitating clean communication between all parties, and lastly helping identify options and negotiating implementation of them.
Through out the mediation process one feels empowered to unlock their beliefs and confident to share them with others who they are negotiating with. The mediator can focus and support thinking of the individual, couple, or family but the parties are ultimately in charge of what they are comfortable living with.
