Jon Frederick, PhD

Sometimes, what makes us miserable is not the situation but how we think about the situation. There are also legitimate reasons to experience sadness and grief, but these feelings become less overwhelming as we learn to treat own emotions with compassion, curiosity, and acceptance. I want to help you break free of self-destructive, habitual ways of thinking, to learn skills for coping with distress, and to identify and expand your strengths and sources of positive emotion in your life.

I learned cognitive behavioral approaches—improving our feelings and behavior by modifying our way of thinking—in my graduate training at Lamar University and my internship at Nystrom & Associates. Behaviorism, the scientifically rigorous method of shaping behavior through identifying and modifying the consequences, also played a significant role in my training for PhD in psychology and many of my research publications.

Mindfulness-based therapy was strongly emphasized in my internship at Nystrom & Associates, and I have since built my mindfulness practice with many books and workshops. Mindfulness can teach us not only to value and nurture the quiet spaces between our thoughts, but a peaceful way of stepping back and witnessing turbulent thoughts, feelings, and experiences with compassion, curiosity, and nonjudgmental acceptance.

Person-centered, client-centered, or humanistic therapy was strongly emphasized in my graduate program at Lamar University and my clinical internship at Nystrom & Associates. The person-centered perspective says that the client is an equal partner in the therapeutic relationship; the therapist models empathy that the client learns to practice toward themselves and others; and the therapist doesn't change the client but facilitates the emergence of the client's own potential for growth.

Worrying is a “coping skill” for anxiety, just not a very helpful or effective one, like drinking alcohol. The good news is that worrying is a learned habit that can be unlearned.

The most important skill in coping with distress is to maintain the insight that we can always “click on a menu" with four types of skills. I can help you to learn and confidently practice skills to (1) soothe and relax intense emotion; (2) change behaviors and solve problems; (3) challenge disempowering thoughts with more accurate ways of thinking; and (4) let go of expectations, judgments, and demands rather than resisting the inevitable realities of life.

Sometimes, what makes us miserable is not the situation but how we think about the situation. There are also legitimate reasons to experience sadness and grief, but these feelings become less overwhelming as we learn to treat own emotions with compassion, curiosity, and acceptance. I want to help you break free of self-destructive, habitual ways of thinking, to learn skills for coping with distress, and to identify and expand your strengths and sources of positive emotion in your life.