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Health

Relationship expert shares her advice on how to 'stop an argument in its tracks'

She has the perfect question to ask once your partner gets defensive.

Therapist Lauren Consul has one trick to stop arguments before they begin.

Arguments start to take off when one partner begins to get defensive. So, therapist Lauren Consul shared her relationship-saving tip to "stop an argument in its tracks" when one partner goes into self-preservation mode.

Lauren Consul is a couples and sex therapist who’s developed a following of nearly 160,000 people on TikTok and has received over 5.4 million likes. She is an infidelity expert and hosts retreats to help people "survive and thrive" after one partner has strayed.

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Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

A greater demand for therapy is putting strain on therapists and creating avenues that might not be all they seem.

Given the state of the world we have all been living in for the last two-plus years, it’s no surprise that therapists are in high demand right now, and have been throughout the pandemic. Many therapists have long waiting lists and are taking on more clients than they normally would just to meet the need. New private practices are opening frequently to provide quality mental health care that people so desperately need in these (still) unprecedented times. But something else is happening simultaneously. Large tech companies have cropped up promising mental health care, and even promising to get patients in with a same-day appointments. On the surface, this seems like it should be a good thing. After all, these companies are helping to meet the growing and overwhelming demand for mental health care, so we should make room for them, right? At least that’s what most would think.

I’ve been in the mental health field since 2006, and have been in and around mental health from a professional standpoint, and therapists have been raising concerns about these large platforms for quite a while. In fact, one therapist made it his mission to show his followers on TikTok what the fine print of one mental health platform’s terms and conditions said. Viewers were shocked to hear, and read, as the therapist pulled the information from the company's actual website in real time, that clients' information was being sold to third parties for advertising purposes. This wasn’t hidden in microscopic print, it was there within the terms and conditions in plain print. But some companies bank on consumers not reading the terms of their agreement. Many people will quickly scroll through to get to the bottom of the long legal information and click the button to simply move to the next part of the process.

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It’s no secret that the field of mental healthcare attracts individuals who’ve receivedmental healthcare themselves. Most of us become therapists because we’ve either needed therapy or benefitted from it. (Or both!)

I’m a child and family therapist. I also happen to have my own mental illness.

While some may argue that my mental illness impacts my work in a negative way, I believe it provides me with additional insight and skill. I’m a therapist with mental illness and, while my work is challenging, I’m better because of it.

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