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To ease stress, and maybe save your marriage, try doing nothing

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When it comes to making a healthier self and a happier family, doing nothing may be the next big thing.                                                                                                                                                                                     

TratakaOne of the hardest things for many of us (myself included) to fathom when we dedicate our careers to solving problems is that sometimes the best solution is no solution at all — just do nothing. Refraining from action can be just as vital a problem-solving strategy as taking action.

Michele Weiner-Davis, the author of Divorce Busting, offers a touching blog entry about how doing nothing helped her own marriage. And there’s the website that challenges you to do nothing for two minutes, which is harder than it sounds if you’re used to moving at a fast pace.

Best of all: Doing nothing can be surprisingly effective.

“Taking a moment to do nothing can be very centering and calming. It allows you to slow the entire experience down and get back to a place of rational thought,” says my good friend and Caldwell-Clark cofounder Aimee Clark. Indeed, doing nothing can be a surprisingly useful treatment for depression, which fairly quickly improves on its own in as many as 1 in 5 untreated cases. (Naturally, if you’re experiencing depression, talk it over with a doctor or mental health professional — just keep “no treatment” on the table as an option.) And doing nothing can improve family life; the tendency for kids to be over-scheduled has been widely covered. The impact of that hyperscheduling may actually be good for kids, but at the same time, studies routinely show that families do better when they simply spend time together… even if they aren’t actually doing anything in that time.

How does one go from doing a lot to doing nothing, even if for just a few minutes a day?

“Commit to one 5-minute practice per day that invokes the nothingness. You can do a simple exercise I call Choosing Your Thoughts, which engages the breath and mind to help you do just that. As you inhale and exhale through your nose, say to yourself, ‘I am aware that I’m doing nothing,'” says Clark. “You can even add a smile, which will help you to enjoy the exercise.”

CAMFT changing therapist-referral site to “Counseling”

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CAMFT is rebranding their therapist-referral site as CounselingCalifornia.com. The change, and how it was announced, continue CAMFT’s pattern of treating MFTs and LPCCs as indistinguishable.

In an announcement on November 1, the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) said it would be re-branding its therapist-referral web site as CounselingCalifornia.com. While their email described this as an effort largely to improve search engine optimization, it also fits their pattern of making marriage and family therapy (and the MFT license) indistinguishable from counseling (and the LPCC license). The change will take effect on January 4, exactly three days after the Board of Behavioral Sciences begins accepting applications for LPCC licensure through grandparenting.

Notably, not once in CAMFT’s email announcement did they refer to their own clinical members as what they are by licensure: “marriage and family therapists.” Instead, the clinicians who would gain referrals through the site (limited to CAMFT’s Clinical Members, which at this time means just MFTs) were referred to only as “therapists” or “licensed therapists.” The words “marriage” and “family” were nowhere to be found. The name change for the referral site, and the announcement of that change, certainly leave the door open for the site to be a referral site for both MFTs and LPCCs.

I can understand that, from an organizational-numbers point of view, it may benefit CAMFT to be as welcoming as possible to LPCCs as that license opens in California. However, CAMFT’s continuing efforts to make MFTs and LPCCs indistinguishable work against the best interests of both professions, who should collaborate effectively when it benefits us (lobbying for Medicare reimbursement, for example) and be able to advance our unique professions when it benefits us (publishing journals or holding conferences, for example). The constant push to make us indistinguishable, culminating in a lawsuit against the BBS, was enough for me to finally cancel my CAMFT membership. It will be interesting to see how other MFTs who value the MFT title will respond, especially if this pattern continues.

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Another reason CAMFT likely changed the name: The existing name has earned them the unlucky honor of being regularly counted among the unintentionally worst company URLs on many a list.

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CAMFT is separate and independent from both AAMFT and its California Division.