Quick Tip for Therapists by Martin M. Antony, PhD, author of Overcoming Health Anxiety and Heather Hood, MA

Although exposure-based treatments can be highly effective for helping clients overcome problems with anxiety, you can enhance treatment outcomes by paying attention to the way that you conduct exposure therapy. Successful exposure therapy follows these guidelines:

by guest blogger Sheri Van Dijk, MSW, author of The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder and Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens

Mindfulness is a way of living your life so that you are in the present moment more often, with awareness, and with acceptance. Acceptance in this context doesn't mean that you approve of your experience, but that you simply acknowledge your present experience without judging it.

So what does this have to do with self-esteem? Everything! Just stop for a moment and think about this: How often do you really think about what you're thinking about? Have you ever had someone ask you what you were thinking about, and you had no idea? We're often completely oblivious to what we're thinking and feeling; and when we are aware of these things, we're often judging these internal experiences. Self-talk has a big impact on how you feel, and when you judge yourself or beat yourself up, it triggers painful emotions like anger, anxiety, disappointment and sadness; and it lowers your self-esteem.

Consider these questions to help you think about how you talk to yourself:

Quick Tip for Therapists by Martin M. Antony, PhD, author of Overcoming Health Anxiety and Valerie Vorstenbosch, MA

There are many reasons why clients are often noncompliant with homework assignments in therapy. They may face competing demands for their time, believe the assignments to be overly challenging or irrelevant, assume that the assignment will not be helpful, misunderstand what is expected for the assignment, or simply have limited motivation for change. Strategies for improving compliance depend on the reasons for noncompliance, so a first step to investigate factors that may be getting in the way of homework completion.

Huffington Post has just launched their Weddings section and we’re right there with them! Read The Conscious Bride author Sheryl Paul’s first blog piece.

It's one of our culture's last taboos. We can discuss sex; we can talk about money; we can divulge the darkest secrets about our family history in blog posts and on forums. But when it comes to the fear, doubts, anxiety, and ambivalence that characterize thousands of women's engagement experience every year, we hush up.

So the challenge is, how do we deal with the cultural injunction against feeling anything less than pure joy from "yes" to "I do"?

by guest blogger Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Just One Thing

We spend so much of our time trying to get somewhere.

Part of this comes from our biological nature. To survive, animals - including us - have to be goal-directed, leaning into the future.

It's certainly healthy to pursue wholesome aims, like paying the rent on time, raising children well, healing old pain, or improving education.

But it's also important to see how this focus on the future - on endless striving, on getting the next task done, on climbing the next mountain - can get confused and stressful.

by guest blogger Randi Gunther, PhD, author of When Love Stumbles

You've made it past 50. You may have peaked in your career and are enjoying the fruits of those labors. Your kids have established their own lives, and your parents are still living their lives without your necessary support.

You can statistically expect about 30-plus more years to live. The time has come for you to reassess your options and decide where to put your energy. It's time to either just enjoy what you have already achieved, or think about using these last precious years to commit to a new journey.

If you're not planning to do the former, I'd like you to reconsider. Given the new research on aging, the happiest and healthiest older people choose the later. They treat the last third of their lives as a brand new challenge to remap their brains, open their hearts and embrace challenges they've never encountered before.

It may mean leaving unsolvable problems behind, letting go of situations that have no current rewards, and changing the way you live your life. It may also mean letting go of any barriers that could get in the way of your new purpose. Once your new dream unfolds, you will find countless ways to challenge those obstacles, and push beyond them.

Of course, as with any radical change, you will need to consider new resources as you choose your transformation. Though the following considerations are not meant to be a complete list, they offer a good beginning.

excerpt from Just One Thing by Rick Hanson, PhD

To take any steps toward your own well-being, you have got to be on your own side. Not against others, but for yourself.

For many people, that’s harder than it sounds. Maybe you were raised to think you didn’t count as much as other people. Maybe when you’ve tried to stick up for yourself, you’ve been blocked or knocked down. Maybe deep down you feel you don’t deserve to be happy.

Think about what it’s like to be a good friend to someone. Then ask: Am I that kind of friend to myself?

If not, you could be too hard on yourself, too quick to feel you’re falling short, too dismissive of what you get done each day. Or too half-hearted about protecting yourself from mistreatment or telling others what you really need. Or too resigned to you own pain, or too slow about doing those things—both inside your head and outside it, in the wider world—to make your life better.

Plus, how can you truly help others if you don’t start by helping yourself?

The foundation of all practice is to wish yourself well, to let your own sorrows and needs and dreams matter to you. Then, whatever you do for yourself will have real oomph behind it!

Here is Shawn Smith, PsyD's book trailer for The User's Guide to the Human Mind: Why Our Brains Make Us Unhappy, Anxious, and Neurotic and What We Can Do about It. It's very quick and catchy. Check it out!