Steps to boosting your resilience and feeling like your mental health are manageable this season.

One of the simplest, yet most powerful tools a parent can use to influence their child’s behavior is praise. Praising your child is one of the many valuable skills that are taught, reinforced, and coached during Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Praising or complimenting your child’s behavior has many benefits for both the parent and the child.

The year 2020 has brought us a worldwide pandemic, physical isolation, a contentious election, and an overall sense of uncertainty. So, this holiday season, as we balance COVID-19 safety, and political landmines with family, it's essential we talk about the anxiety, depression, and apathy we may be feeling this year as well. 

Have you ever thought about going to therapy and worried about “what if it’s not a good fit” or “what if I want to stop therapy, how would I tell them that?” Then you’re not alone. This is a common barrier to people starting therapy altogether or ending it in a therapeutic way. 

Have you ever experienced a situation that left you feeling helplessness, fearful, threatened or overwhelmed? You may attribute these feelings to “normal” stress, but you may actually be experiencing traumatic stress. Traumatic stress results from two types of traumatic experiences, a genuine personal crisis or a crisis ridden experience.  

The past year has been challenging, to say the least. We're all adjusting to constant changes and doing our best to navigate these uncertain times. Recently I’ve had several clients reach out to me and ask if I know of any organizations in the area that provide free or discounted services for health care, behavioral health, psychiatry, or medication management. 

Everyone who comes into the therapy room has standards, a moral compass that guides their individual and family lives. Those compasses differ but they are every person’s reality. 

Everyone’s relationship to forgiveness is different, just like everyone’s reason to forgive is different. Forgiveness is a state of consciousness, not an action. Meaning, forgiveness is not about forgetting, but more about releasing the power of the pain that was caused. We might think that by withholding forgiveness, we hold the power.

STRESS. This word has probably buzzed through your head throughout majority of 2020. Teenagers, similar to adults, most likely experience stress every day and can benefit from learning healthy stress management. Most teens experience stress when a situation feels dangerous, difficult or painful.

When she was a little older, she realized that her brain being wired in a different way actually meant she had ADHD. When she had this revelation, she was shocked. All the kids that had THAT were troublemakers, spacey, impulsive. They were people she did not want to be. So, she held onto that fact like a secret. She worked even harder to change how her brain worked

Ever wonder why we can have such strong, opposing views and needs from those closest to us? Have you experienced recurring conflicts with partners, parents, or friends that leave you feeling misunderstood?

We all know that following a healthy diet can positively impact our physical health. But did you know that it can also help to improve our mental health? Serotonin is considered our ‘happy chemical’. Serotonin is created throughout the body, including in your GI tract and our brain, with most of it being produced in our GI tract.

If you’ve heard of Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), chances are you’ve heard that PCIT is for the “bad” kids. The kids that are the troublemakers in class, who don’t listen to anyone, have extreme temper tantrums, and the list goes on and on.

We’ve all been there, everything seems to be going wrong and we can’t seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel… sounds like 2020, right? These are the moments when it is most important to remember “It’s a bad day, not a bad life.” No single moment, series of interactions, or an entire year should hold enough power to determine the quality of your day or your life overall.

Many people understand that trauma can have a significant impact on a child’s view of life, their ability to trust others, or how safe they feel. But one area of life that many people seem to forget is that trauma can affect a child’s ability to learn in the classroom.

Dyslexia and other learning disabilities can be a long, hard haul for kids as they navigate school, home, peers and higher education. A learning disability not only affects the child, it affects the family. Thankfully, so much more is known about learning challenges; schools and parents are more equipped now than ever before to find ways to best help the students learn-to-learn.

When experiencing emotional discomfort, we either cope through behaviors that numb or distract us or allow us to feel into the emotion. The behavior is either helpful or healthy.  

Many parents are struggling to adapt to the new norm of raising children during a pandemic. Between a decrease in childcare options, kids attending school virtually from home, and concerns of keeping families healthy, parents are finding it difficult to navigate the chaos.  

There is so much to consider when it comes to boundaries. Do your boundaries differ from person to person? Are they tight? Loose? Have you considered the difference between your psychological, emotional, and physical boundaries? How have your boundaries been crossed in the past? What does it look like to communicate your boundaries to others? It can feel overwhelming to explore what boundaries mean for us.

If you are like many other individuals experiencing life in this pandemic, you are likely feeling elevated levels of stress. In a recent survey done by the CDC comparing reports of adverse mental health outcomes in 2019, respondents reported experiencing 4 times as much depression, 3 times are much anxiety and 2 times as much suicidal thoughts in 2020. This is clearly a difficult time to be a human.