Welcome to the Lightning Path Institute
Greetings and Welcome. You have reached the home practice of Gina Ratkovic M.A.C.P. and Mike Sosteric PhD. We are psychological counselors and researchers with a holistic orientation and background and expertise in healing psychological dysfunction and trauma. Our goal is your psychological health and the well being of you and your relationships, family, and children. We serve St. Albert, Morinville, Cardiff, Namao, Bon Accord, Gibbons, North East and North West Edmonton, and surrounding areas.
Gina is the principle counselor and provides both individual and couples counseling, as well as couples crises counseling, assistance with post-partum depression, and guidance with a variety of psychological imbalances and disorders. Gina has degrees in both psychology and sociology and a long term interest in healing the pathologies and toxicities of modern existence. Mike Sosteric has degrees in psychology and sociology. Both are trained to move beyond an individually focused psychology in order to provide a sociologically sophisticated, and uniquely powerful, transformative, and effective therapeutic experience
Featured
Healthy Relationships Please!
Despite our idolatrous worship of the “individual,” relations are the bedrock and foundation of human experience. We simply cannot survive without relationships. We start out in dependent relationships to our parents, experience our childhood in relation to our teachers, and our peers, enter work life in trade and/or corporate relationships, and build families in a relationship with our partners. Yet for all our experience “in” relationships we have remarkably little success with them. Relationships fail at ridiculous rates and many established relationships are abusive pure and simple. Perhaps it is time to put aside the idolatry of the individual and take a closer look at the significance, importance, and operation of relationships in our progressive and modern world.
The Christmas Lie
Why does family crises seem to boil over each year at this time? Why is the holiday season our busiest time? Contradiction and hypocrisy. You can’t be happy in that body of yours while you’re repressing the truth and living a lie. So pull up a chair and drink to forget, or make the hard choices that will bring you forward in health. Your choices, your choice, your choice.
To Student Loan or Not to Student Loan – That is The Question
Thinking about going to university? Not sure if you’re smart enough? What a great idea that is! Post-secondary education opens doors and increase income. But hold it. Not sure if you’ve got the IQ, or the talent, or the ability? Idea of massive student loans weighing your emotional systems down? Take a deep breath and relax. Ignore the nonsense about IQ and intelligence and focus on the master within! You have it within you to succeed.
Awakening
One of the biggest hurdles to successful therapy is awareness. As children we are taught to suppress our awareness, and play the game of social niceties. We learn through the years that what people want to hear is a superficial illusion. Everything is OK in our life, in our relationship, and in our childhood. Coming into therapy we often want to maintain our illusions, but that won’t work. The first step in any successful regime is an honest assessment of the environment/life you live, not as a judgment but as a way to identify what areas need attention. Here is a story that speaks about illusion, and reality. If you want to start your healing process, the first thing to do is to face the truth.
Lightning Strike
That Old Pair of Jeans – Fatboy Slim Here is a song about toxic relationships and developing the will and fortitude to say, enough is enough. Assert boundaries, expect to be treated nice, and say I’m worth the concern and the care. It is something that has to be done. You cannot heal psychological trauma, you cannot emerge from neurosis or psychosis, you cannot have healthy intimate relationships while you are still embedded in the toxic gunk of your “normal” life.
Alchohol Intervention and Treatment Drug and alchohol rehab and therapy. Two books that I have recently read deserve attention today. One is My Way Out and the other is The Cure for Alcoholism. Both are great books and both detail a pharmacological cure for alcoholism. I know that if you are someone who suffers from alcoholism or some other form of addiction, you’ll be skeptical at the whole notion of cure. For decades Alcoholics Anonymous has been advising there is no cure while preaching a powerful abstinence that just doesn’t seem to work for most people unless it is reinforced by constant monitoring and control. Traditional pharmacological therapies have been equally ineffective, helping a few but leaving most out in the cold. Needless to say this is not a hopeful state of affairs.
The Grand Illusion Mental health and happiness are elusive things, especially in a consumer world where there’s always one more thing that we need to get to be happy. Like hamsters we scramble on a treadmill desperate to get our piece of the pie, but we can never have enough. The climb is endless, unless of course you choose to unplug and step off. Something to consider, there’s always somebody who has more, and there’s always higher to climb. So, if comparing yourself to your neighbors is how you try and achieve happiness, good luck with that.
Holistic Mental Health Feeling good about things isn’t just about emotions or relationships, it is also about food and chemicals. As surprising as it might seem to you, what you put into your body effects your mind. Vitamins, minerals, preservatives, and chemicals all effect the sensitive structures of your body! If you doubt the importance of nutrition to mental health, consider alcohol. Even as little as two ounces of strong booze can impact your emotional responses! Something to consider on the road to mental health.