Category: Anxiety

  • How To Manage The Holidays (& maybe even enjoy them)

    The holiday season is upon us (in case you hadn’t noticed).  While the holidays can be exciting, memorable, and fun, they also can be a challenging time navigating family members, finances, overwhelm, depression, the political climate, and/or grief and loss, to name a few.  I thought I would pass along some holiday tips and tools to help make the…

  • Are Smartphones and Social Media Ruining Our Teenagers’ Mental Health?

    My short answers to this question are “sort of” and “not exactly”… I recently read the book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it  brought about a lot of feelings of anxiety!  It seems apparent that smartphones and social media have impacted adolescent mental…

  • What the movie Inside Out 2 got right about feelings….

    If you haven’t seen the Disney Pixar movie, Inside Out 2, I definitely recommend it!  At the time of this writing, it is still in theaters, but I imagine it’ll be for rent or purchase soon as well.  I was impressed with the way the movie presented or explained a lot of concepts grounded in…

  • Freedom from Our Stressful Thoughts – Finding Flexibility in our Anxious Minds

    I had the wonderful ‘bucket list’ opportunity to attend the School for The Work with Byron Katie last year.  Byron Katie has created a process that helps us question our own stressful thoughts.  The school/ conference was chock full of good information and experiential learning, and I thought I would try to organize my experience…

  • Dealing With Difficult People: Tips for events where there will be people you find to be difficult

    Who are the difficult people in your life?  Those people with whom you have tended to feel stress and tension when around?  Common examples are: your ex-spouse, an in-law who is more of an out-law, a family member with whom you don’t see eye-to-eye, boss, co-worker, etc.  For many of us, there are events, meetings,…

  • Mental Health Friendly Holiday Gift Ideas

    A little divergent from what therapists usually write about for holiday preparation, today I’m giving gift ideas and associated links* for gifts that are therapeutic in nature and/or are in support of mental health.  I’m in full support of gifting to oneself as well, so hopefully you’ll also find some items on this list to…