Featured
re you or your youth a fan of social media? Particularly Tik-Tok? If so, this article is for you. There has been a recent trend of discussing mental health on social media platforms. As the typical youth spends roughly 7-9 hours a day on a screen, it is likely that they may have been exposed to the #MentalHealth side of Tik-Tok. There are roughly 18 billion views under this section of Tik-Tok alone.
A new group called S.T.O.P, Suicide Training On Prevention. A Psychoeducational group to help parents talk to their kids about suicide and self-harm.
Many of us have read the parenting books that discuss types of parenting. Most of the time, parenting will be broken down into four distinct categories: neglectful parenting, permissive parenting, authoritative parenting, and authoritarian parenting. What if I told you that it could be simpler than this? As simple as trust and fear?
Play therapists are trained to not only assess the needs of the children we see, but to also observe their behavior, teach new skills, and support them as they communicate their worlds to us in the most comfortable way for them, which is play.
This is a phrase I hear often, not only in my professional life, but especially in my personal life. So many of my clients, friends, and loved ones voice their frustrations in attaining “the right” mental health care provider. And we all (us providers included) have a right to feel that way.
Do you ever get to the end of a truly exhausting day, having worked 10 plus hours, taken the kids back and forth to practices, cooked dinner, made an attempt to straighten up the house and FINALLY gotten to bedtime and then, instead of falling blissfully asleep, you stay awake on your phone or watching TV or doing something (for yourself finally!) until the wee hours of the morning?
Have you ever found yourself constantly thinking about a stressful event after it has happened? Do you find yourself thinking about a problem repeatedly until it exhausts you? You are likely dealing with rumination of thoughts.
When providing treatment, I believe it is imperative for clients to not only develop subjective insight into themselves, but also to objectively understand what is going on in the brain. Neuroscience explains the physiological barriers (and opportunities), behind difficulties in changing undesirable behavior.
It can be hard to not feel angry, hurt, and invalidated when our medical needs are not being met or taken seriously. Our emotions are always valid, but that is not an excuse to act out irrationally at an individual who is trying to help.
Imagine you’re attending an event surrounded by other professionals in your field. Do you feel that you belong there? Or does this image fill you with dread and you think “I don’t deserve to be here. I’m not like everyone else. They’re so accomplished and knowledgeable and I’m not”.
A child who loves and idolizes his father loses his parent and is made to believe that it is his fault. He runs away, withdrawing from everything and everyone he has ever known. Every great story begins with trauma. The truth is, the above description may fit many stories you’ve heard, but the particular story on my mind is Disney’s The Lion King.
As we try to raise awareness for Mental Health Issues, we are fighting the stigma, support to educate the public and advocate for good supportive policies for people with mental health illness. Each year millions of Americans are faced with the reality that they or someone they know are living with a mental illness.
So you decided you wanted to go to therapy, and have begun the search process to find the right clinician. While this is an important first step, many find that the multitude of phrases that therapists, counselors, and mental health practitioners use to describe their styles can be confusing. The good news is that clinicians generally use the same or similar terms to describe the various aspects of their individual styles.
Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD is a type of depression that displays a recurring seasonal pattern, usually in the winter¹.
Christmas is a chore when you have five children. When they were young, like very young, it wasn’t as difficult. But as they got older, the toys and needs got much more expensive. When we were not so wise with our money, we would easily put 2000.00 on a credit card and not have it paid off till the spring. We have tried many different way to do Christmas gifts without breaking the budget.
This May we will be celebrating our 30th year anniversary. We had 5 children and 2 are married and one is about to get married. Our married children often share with us the issues they struggle with. We laugh and think; “We haven’t fought about those things in years”.
Have you ever avoided going to family functions because of that one irritating family member or friend? Do you keep to yourself because Uncle Dave brings up politics with you even though you have nothing to say to him? Do you have that one friend that constantly shares their beliefs and world view on you, instigating you into a conversation which inevitably ends up in an argument in which you feel exhausted and stressed?
I first want to say that even after five children, I don’t think I am an expert, but after 8 years of therapy, 5 children and being a teen myself, I feel I do have some insight to what they are feeling and going through. Maybe that is why I like working with teens so much.
In many of my quests to embrace what life has to offer, I have learned how to do some awesome things that create a sense of happiness and contentment.
I see many clients whose biggest issue stems from failure. This doesn’t surprise me, as I try to avoid failures in my own life too, as they are seemingly more painful than I would like to experience. When talking to my clients, I have deducted that for most of them, failure is something that they would like to avoid or experience if possible.
I recently completed a seminar on Autism, specifically on evaluating and managing meltdowns. I found it very interesting that far too many people, including professions interchange the terms meltdowns and tantrums. They are actually vastly different.
I attended a training this past week on how to “Rewire the Anxious Brain” by Heidi Schreiber-Pan, PH.D, LCPC. I had heard much of the information in a previous training by Dan Siegel. But what I forgot was a study of "Mirror Neurons" where the neurons in the brain show activation of mirroring qualities such as eye contact and sound.
I have lived a while now, 50+ years. I have some experience and several years of counseling myself. However, I wasn’t always happy. In fact, it would have seemed I enjoyed my sadness. When I was young, maybe even a child, I experienced shame, hate and even some physical and emotional abuses.
We have all heard the saying, Fall Back and Spring Forward to remember how to change our clocks for Daylight Savings Time. Does changing the clocks have any effect on mood? When we change the clocks in the fall (fall back) we get an extra hour of sleep for one Sunday, but night time seems to come very early the next evening.
This time of year can be stressful for everyone. Whether it is searching for the perfect gift, or planning a family gathering in your home, the sources of stress can feel endless and overwhelming. Since the things that stress you out cannot be always be avoided, it is important to find healthy ways to cope with the pressure of the holiday season.
Walk away for 20 minutes from your stress. Sometimes stress is addictive and we get sucked into hanging out with it, thinking we will resolve it. However, taking a 20 minute break from thinking or working on the issue can bring new perspective and calm.
According to Jim Haggerty, people have been telling their problems to someone for centuries. It didn't always look the way it does now. Treatment for emotional problems can be traced to antiquity. The ancient Greeks were the first to put a label on "mental illness" as a medical condition rather than a sign of an evil spirits.
We all want to know more about ourselves: our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, obstacles. Hey, that’s why you clicked on this article, right? It’s natural to want to get to know yourself, as self-awareness is the key to unlocking potential in your life in many different areas. As Aristotle says, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”