Pat LaDouceur
MA Clinical Psychology, PhD Sociology, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Free
Help for Anxiety, Worry, and Relationship Stress Expert
Pat LaDouceur Quick Facts
- Main Areas
- Helping People Build Great Relationships
- Career Focus
- Licensed Marriage and Family Counselor, Author, Speaker
- Affiliation
- Private Marriage and Relationship Practice in Albany, CA
Pat LaDouceur, Ph.D., helps middle, high school, and college students study smarter, get better grades, and still have time for friends and fun. As a former credentialed teacher, has taught middle school, high school, and college, so she knows the skills students need to succeed to succeed. Pat's background as a Family Therapist and Neurofeedback practioner, has taught her a lot about learning, executive functioning, and the brain. She is the mother of college-age twins, and provides Academic Life Coaching online and in Berkeley, CA. Pat can be reached at AcademicCoachingWithPat.com or CoachingwithPat@gmail.com
Articles by this expert
SelfGrowth articles and saved writing connected to this expert.
Article
What We Fear More Than Death
You've probably heard that public speaking is feared more than death itself. It sounds crazy, but that's what people say. Is there any truth to this? Certainly the vast majority of people rank fear of public speaking as number one – 75% according to the National Institutes of Mental Health. For some people, this means a fear of speaking to large groups. For others, it means speaking to even a single person if that person has the power to evaluate you, as in a supervisor, interviewer, or professor giving an oral exam.
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One-Minute Stress Management Tools: 5 Simple Ways to Keep Your Cool
Stress can help…to a point Stress management tools are part of your early warning system. Feelings of tension alert you to things you need to take care of, so you can move on to more important things, like getting your work done and having fun with your kids. When your early warning system doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, it’s less like the whirring of a well-functioning motor and more like the annoying high-pitched beep of a super-sensitive smoke alarm. Stress management tools keep your warning system working at its best.
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Does Worry Wake You Up? 5 Simple Ways to Help When You Can’t Sleep
I can’t sleep,” Shelly said. “I mean, I don’t have much trouble falling asleep. But then I wake up at three in the morning and can’t get back to sleep.” For Shelly, it started with a combination of a fast-paced job and the hormonal changes of pregnancy. While those things started her insomnia problem, it was worry that kept it going. In the wee hours of the morning she was solving problems, rehashing conversations, and making plans. One of her biggest worries was about whether or not she was going to get enough sleep. The cycle was self-perpetuating. A sleep-deprived nation
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The Relationship Dance
A dance teacher once told me that she could see a couple's entire relationship on the dance floor. When someone's toes got stepped on (and they did - we were all beginners) - she could see how how some people blamed their partner, while others apologized and let it go. Some stopped the lessons before they got to be good at it, while others had fun learning and adjusting to how their partners moved. Every Relationship is a Dance In the beginning, it can be easy to move to the music with your partner. But over time, things change.
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The Fastest Way to Boost Your Mood
Do you ever feel stressed out about the demands of day-to-day life? My clients Ava and Leo were doing their best to balance high-pressure jobs with the needs of two school-aged kids and time for themselves. Their work got done, and well. But the number of tasks they juggled every day made it hard to stay connected to the people they cared about most – their daughters, their friends, and each other. They started feeling less like marriage partners and more like roommates, and weren’t sure how to stop the sense of drifting apart.
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Different Styles or Money Problems? Here Are 5 Ways for Couples to Tell
Money is one of the leading topics of marital arguments, and it’s not surprising. We each have a money style – a collection of feelings, beliefs, and behaviors that we learned from our parents and other significant people in our lives. When two people make a commitment together, these money styles can clash. How they come together determines whether the result will be frustration or teamwork. So how do you tell when disagreements are just difference in money styles, and when they are creating a serious problem in a relationship? Here are five things to look at. 1.Communication.
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How to Say No to People You Care About
“I want to learn how to say No so it doesn’t turn into an argument,” David said. He’d been married about two years, and came to my office asking if I could help him learn to talk with his wife “without getting so upset when we disagree.” “I’m fine doing things her way most of the time,” he said, “but sometimes I feel pretty strongly about what I want. This time it’s about a dog – she wants one and I don’t.”
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The Truth About Stress
Stress has a bad rap. Stress can create problems, to be sure. Some of the more common ones are include difficulty concentrating, trouble with focus and memory, moodiness, frustration and overwhelm. There are physical symptoms as well – low energy, headaches, trouble with digestion, aches and pains, and trouble with sleep. In fact, up to 80% of doctor visits are for “stress related ailments and complaints”. These things seem undecidedly bad. But here’s the truth about stress: sometimes, part of the problem is how you think about the problem. Stress isn’t really one thing; it’s two.
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Neurofeedback for Anxiety: How Does it Work?
What's possible with neurofeedback for anxiety? Imagine you're driving through the countryside on a beautiful day, but your car isn't working. The gears keep getting stuck, and the gas pedal is jammed down. It's pretty scary. When you can't shift gears, you can't respond well to the bumps (or the boulders) in the road. So instead of enjoying the scenery, you're constantly focused on what might go wrong and how you can prevent it.
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Mindfulness for Busy People
Elizabeth knew that something was wrong at work. She was being interrupted during discussions, ignored in conversations, and excluded from meetings. She didn’t have a clue what it was about, but the stress of not knowing was undermining her confidence. Elizabeth felt confused, disoriented, and afraid for her job. She called me because, not surprisingly, she couldn’t sleep. And she wanted advice. Should she work every weekend to really impress her boss with her dedication? Meet with her boss and demand an explanation? Resign? Work from home? Hire an atto ey?
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3 Ways to Know If You’re Saying Yes Too Much
Life is full of opportunities. There’s work of course, or school if you’re a student. There are chores, and errands, but also workout time, evenings with your family, organizations you want to support…so many things you can take part in. But if you end up saying yes to all of it, then before you know it you end up, overcommitted, stressed out, or just plain fried. You also need to know how to say no. The clues… How do you know you’re saying yes too much? Here are a few of the warning signs:
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Insomnia: What to do When Pills Don't Work
“I can't get enough sleep,” James told me. “I had some medication, but it doesn't seem to work anymore.” It's a common problem. About 30% of the U.S. population reports having trouble sleeping in a given year. About 12% of those turn to pills, and fill about 60 million prescriptions annually. And for many people, they seem to work...for awhile. * The problem with pills
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Contacting Pat LaDouceur
Read and download complimentary articles on anxiety, stress, and relationship stress at www.Berkeley-Neurofeedback.com