This website, StepsForChange.com, explores the underlying concepts, skills, and tools for personal change and enhancement of relationships. The phrase “steps for change” implies a path that is clear. If your destination on foot is at the top of a steep bank, you can probably get there without using the brick stairs that are built into the side of the hill. But you will expend a great deal of extra effort. Your risk of getting discouraged and turning back is higher. Even if you make it to the top, you may arrive with unnecessary cuts and scrapes.
On the other hand, if you take the brick steps to the top, you will be leveraging the hard work of other people for your own benefit. These are people who built the brick stairs into the side of the hill. They created a path without even knowing who you are. You also benefit from the fact that your efforts are modular: one step at a time and each step is the same size.
Psychologists and life coaches are people who have spent a lot of time scoping out where the stairs are. Sometimes these steps are solid and clean. Other steps are wooden and have some missing pieces. Some have handrails. Some don’t. Some steps are brick, but they are so overgrown with vegetation that it takes some work to uncover the steps.
On this website I try to provide a kind of GPS for finding the steps for change. Most of my experience has been with things like overcoming trauma, depression, anxiety, panic, grief, and all kinds of relationship problems. Therefore these are the issues that I discuss on this site. However, it’s more about education and empowerment than about therapy. When people see clearly where the stairs are (knowledge), they can often make the changes without professional coaching or therapy. Knowledge empowers because it aligns the map of reality in our brains with the way things really are in life, in the world, and in relationships.
On the other hand, sometimes we find ourselves in a mountainous jungle and we need a guide. If we have some basic knowledge of how people make real changes, then we can know when it is time to hire a guide so that we don’t keep going around in circles in the jungle. My hope is that people spending a fair amount of time at this site will discover that their judgement calls about when to hire a guide are getting better and better.
Over time my intention is to address a wide variety of issues, concepts, and tips for dealing with depression, managing anger, conquering fear and excessive anxiety, and smart grieving. I am especially interested in marriage relationships and the relationship of Dad with his children or a Mom with her children. I was originally trained as a child psychologist and I my interest in developmental stages of growth has often helped me find solid steps and pathways up steep hills of family problems.
But even as I attempt to grow this website with useful content, I recognize that I cannot address everything at once. Therefore, initially I am focusing on how to help someone with depression. People who suffer from depression need to be understood and the people who care about them need to find steps to climb, lest they throw up their hands in frustration. Since depression is closely linked with anger, stress, anxiety, and trauma, those things must be part of the discussion along the way. But I am trying to make everything play together for the man or woman who is involved in helping someone with depression.
Where possible, I intend to present the concepts, skills, tools, and steps in the format of mini life coaching courses. In other cases, I will confine myself to blog posts of articles, audios, or videos. I have started creating specialized topical websites. The first child website is Depression Quiz. It focuses on a depression quiz that I created and how it can be used to understand the symptoms of depression. How many child sites will there be? At this point, I will add a child website (subdomains) as the need arises. A big part of this decision will be the feedback I receive from my readers, namely, you! I welcome your comments on articles, videos, and other content. Also, I welcome your questions.