Jennifer Jeter, MFT, Marriage and Individual Therapist

Starting a FaceTime promotion for new clients who want to access therapy from the comfort of home. I am decreasing my hourly rate from $120 to $80 for cash/credit card costumers until January 1. I also accept Anthem Blue Cross and Health Net insurance plans.

Everything will be ok in the end and if it’s not ok, it’s not the end. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

"Die while you're alive and be absolutely dead. Then do whatever you want: it's all good."... Zen master Bunan

Gottman is the best.

Talk Show "Therapy"--How Our Generation was Negatively Impacted Occasionally, during a session, a client will say something that they believe is a truth. These statements will be reiterated to show an awareness of things learned...and likely not heeded in the course of their relationships. They are often repeated with shame--an admitted failure. The testimony might be something like, "I know couples aren't supposed to go to bed mad... but..." or, "Of course, blood is thicke...r than water, I know...but..." These are the statements of our generation--the gospel spoken from the middle of a live studio audience: repeated points that we heard over and over again on our television sets while the rest of the audience would nod, clap and yell "hallelujah." We believed these statements, learned them by heart and have carried them around as part of our fact systems. We are the generation that got our therapy from Phil Donahue, Montell Williams, Jenny Jones and Maury Povich. Some of us even watched Jerry Springer. It is time to challenge every one of those beliefs. Many of them were uniformed, untrue and occasionally dangerous. Most of these proclamations were shouted by non-professionals (certainly not therapists) to a show "guest" who needed help. It's unclear whether any of the people who put their vulnerabilities on stage were ever actually helped at all. Most of us are performing, behaving, even making decisions for the audiences that live in our minds. This social awareness is something that develops early in our lives, as we start to realize that we don't live in a vacuum. Once we experience the pros and cons in response to our behaviors, we begin the process of being shaped by others. This phenomenon certainly benefits us greatly--through the experience, we learn social skills, we develop beneficial life skills. We grow and sometimes conform as it benefits us. Our initial audience members may be our mothers, fathers, siblings, teachers or pastors. But as we step out into the world, this audience begins to grow. We are influenced by friends, bullies, commercials, movies and yes, talk shows. Our concepts of successful society are the biggest "audiences" we are working to impress. Talk shows became successful and pulled us all in because they promised us something we hadn't seen much of on tv: real people with real problems. But the hosts and the audiences were the uninformed voices that guided our generation. "That's your mother, she gave birth to you so you respect her no matter what..." No matter that she beats you? No matter that she abandoned you? No matter that she does drugs or abuses alcohol in front of you? The simple "truths" of the talk-show audience members missed valuable and life-altering information. In the aftermath, we are left to clean up distorted beliefs of the 80's and 90's. Therapeutic work can help clients re-write their personal beliefs and tidy up the facts of their own lives. It's a challenge that's worth it.