Look For the Good: Staying Positive (While Still Being Informed)

If you’re an informed person who tries to pay attention to what’s going on, then you’ve probably noticed that we’re making less than our parents made to do more, the notion of peace seems to be on the verge of intellectual collapse, and the world is on fire. 

So what are we supposed to do with all that? Is there anything we can do with that? 

It is that impulse in you which is curious and empathetic that drives you to understand the world, but it is this same curious and empathetic part of you that is most wounded by what we can discover. How can we authentically understand the world while also maintaining non-delusional hope? 

“The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it.” – Joseph Campbell

What Is An Example Of Depression Treatment For Doomscrolling? 

Your phone is the most despair-inducing item that’s within your immediate field of vision. We turn to it as a security blanket-esque object of comfort, but in the endless scroll of miserable clickbait we self-traumatize in our most vulnerable inward moments.

You’re searching for clarity, for resolution, for a sense of control. But instead, you’re repeatedly exposing yourself to distress without relief.

In counseling, we often approach this with both behavioral and emotional strategies:

• Create intentional limits for our phone use. 
• Replace mindless scrolling with active engagement.
• When you do scroll, acknowledge how it really makes you feel. 

Do you feel soothed by your timeline, or is it more like scratching an itch until it bleeds? When we tune in to our true feelings, we can learn the lessons that our feelings are here to teach and use the internet as a tool for information, not self-harm.

Can Counseling Help Us Pay Attention Without Going Numb? 

Numbing out is often a protective response. If everything feels urgent and distressing, your mind may decide that the safest option is to feel less of everything.

This can alleviate our stress in an emergency, but over time, it dampens more than just our anxiety. Your feelings are a complicated network of automated coping strategies that your body uses to process complex stimuli. Because your feelings are all in relationship with one another, you cannot numb one emotion without numbing them all.

And so, that leaves us with no choice (AKA: one choice) but to pay attention. And the right therapist gives us the tools to pay attention with stability and calm.

Counseling Can Help You Transmute Setbacks Into Success Stories

When we pay attention to our bungles, failures, and setbacks, we can learn from and integrate them into life narrative. This can be especially transformative for individuals who are seeking depression relief, for which narrative therapy has shown impressive results. 

Instead of seeing your life as a series of disappointments, counseling can help you recognize themes of resilience, adaptation, and meaning.

The right therapist can provide the framework to understand catastrophe and learn the lessons that pave the way to future success. Counseling helps you build tolerance for difficult emotions without needing to escape them. This might look like:

• Learning grounding techniques to stay present with distressing information.
• Practicing emotional regulation so feelings don’t spiral into helplessness.
• Identifying what is yours to carry and what isn’t.

You don’t have to choose between caring deeply and functioning well. Your story doesn’t have to be completely rewritten. Instead, it can be reinterpreted in a way that gives you back a sense of authorship and as a result, more empowerment.

A Right-Fit Counselor Can Teach You How To Find Your Place Through Ritual

Ritual is one of the most important ways that human beings process daily life. We do this through spiritual rituals like meditation or prayer, social rituals like family dinner or a night out, and daily rituals like bathing, grooming, or cooking. 

What are the important rituals in your life? Where could your routine be improved by a dose of ritual?

How Your Counselor Can Help You Learn From Failure

Failure is inevitable. Failure is the missed connection. Failure is the bungled opportunity. Failure is the rookie mistake. But what failure gives, better and more vividly than anything else, is the ability to learn. 

Many people either over-identify with their failures (“This proves I’m not good enough”) or avoid them entirely (“I just won’t think about that”). Neither approach leads to growth.

A counselor can help you:

• Break down what actually happened versus the story you told yourself about it
• Identify skills or insights gained through the experience
• Develop a more balanced and compassionate internal dialogue
• Re-engage with challenges instead of withdrawing from them

When we live  in denial, failure is a ruinous stain on our favorite garment. When we process failure, it is the uphill climb before an easy descent.

What Is Spiritual Bypassing? 

Our relationship with the unknown (whether we call that religion, spirituality, superstition, or family) helps us to make sense of the senseless. When the news is full of tough subjects, and the world doesn’t go the way you’d hope, that relationship can be a source of wisdom, resilience, and hope. But our minds are equally capable of using our spirituality to escape from uncomfortable realities. 

What Are Some Examples Of Spiritual Bypassing? 

• Minimizing pain with platitudes. Saying things like “everything happens for a reason” or “it’s all part of a bigger plan” to avoid sitting with grief, anger, or confusion
• Forcing positivity. Believing you should only feel gratitude, love, or peace—and suppressing emotions that don’t fit that narrative.
• Avoiding responsibility. Attributing harmful behavior or patterns to fate, karma, or divine will instead of taking ownership and making changes.
• Detaching instead of processing. Using ideas like “non-attachment” to distance yourself from relationships, consequences, or emotional experiences. 
• Judging yourself for struggling. Interpreting anxiety, sadness, or doubt as a personal or spiritual failure rather than a normal human response.

What Are Some Examples Of Healthy Spiritual Coping? 

• Using spiritual practices as grounding tools. Engaging in meditation, prayer, or reflection to regulate your nervous system can be a healthy way to process your feelings rather than escape them. 
• Stay in touch with your true values. Spirituality can remind us to pay attention to the things that are truly important to us. To make time for the esoteric and the emotional. 

• Combining inner reflection with real-world action. Pairing spiritual insight with tangible steps, like setting boundaries, repairing relationships, or making changes in your life. 

Can Therapy Help You Find The Beauty In Truth? 

Yes, but not by convincing you that everything is great, or even okay. 

Therapy helps you develop the ability to hold two truths at once: that the world can be painful and uncertain, and that there is still beauty, connection, and meaning available to you.

“Looking for the good” isn’t about pretending things are better than they are. It’s about training your attention to notice what is still working, still meaningful, still alive.

Alli helps you compassionately meet and understand your authentic self.

If you are ready to move toward a more curious, grounded way of being, you can begin that work with Alli.

When you stop bracing against the world and start becoming curious about your own inner self, you become more stable without depending on external circumstances to be “okay.” If you are ready to stop acting from a dysregulated nervous system and start responding to life in a more grounded and curious way, you can begin that work with Alli.

Click here to schedule your complimentary 15-minute consultation to see if it’s the right fit.

Sunny Ebsary is an educator, multi-modal artist, and writer specializing in the intersection of myth and mental health. Sunny’s writing walks the line between poetic and logical, giving readers a chance to interface with the mind and imagination. Sunny’s been putting pen to paper since he was a child, writing everything from albums, novels, and plays, to essays, interactive games, and of course, many articles! While studying both psychology and writing, he realized his real passion in life was helping others unlock their creative spark. Whether he’s leading a D&D game, directing a production, or diving deep into the brain, you can be sure Sunny will be ushering you toward finding meaning in your life.