Welcome to the Oliver Counseling blog.  This blog is dedicated to providing you with weekly insights into mental, emotional and relational health.  It is also a place that you can bring your questions about mental health, relationships or counseling in general.  We can take your questions through email and provide answers to them in the form of future blog entries. 

A great place to start as you pursue health in your life is to ask yourself this question, do you value  yourself?  Furthermore, do you value yourself enough to take care of yourself in the ways that you need to?  If you do not value yourself as a person then it will be very difficult to pursue health in your life.  It is also very difficult to show love to others if you don't first love and take care of yourself.  Consider someone stuck in addiction, or overwhelmed by anxiety, lost in depression, or feeling hopeless in a relationship.  In order to take the steps to heal in these areas, you first must believe that you deserve health and healing in your life.  This may sound obvious, but you would be surprised how many of us don't fully believe this based on the daily decisions we make that don't reflect a value for health in our lives. 

A first step in learning to value and take care of yourself is to ask yourself one of two simple questions throughout the day, "am valuing myself as I make this decision/action/belief?" or "does this decision/action/belief represent health in my life?"  The goal of these questions is not to promote selfishness.  The goal is to promote health through living present and self-aware.  As stated earlier, as you learn to act in ways that show you believe that you deserve health in your life, you will be able to love and care for others more.  In many ways the end result is a true selflessness. 

We encourage you to ask these questions to yourself throughout this week.  You will begin to see things in a new way.  Over time, you will begin to see a difference in the decisions you make and the beliefs you have about yourself.  That difference represents growth in the area of valuing and taking care of yourself; which opens the doors to then pursuing the mental, emotional, relational and spiritual health you deserve in your life.

For more information on pursuing mental health in your life, we encourage you to explore our listed services on www.olivercounseling.com.  Thank you!