How to Set Realistic Goals

Do you find yourself accumulating numerous goals to accomplish throughout the year that you still haven’t gotten to? It’s important to have goals; it shows your ambition, and it feels wonderful when you accomplish and even surpass your goals. However if you load too many goals onto your plate at once, it can start to feel overwhelming. The feelings of overwhelm lead to stress and anxiety, which can cause you to lose motivation and abandon your goals altogether. So, what can you do to achieve realistic goal setting?

Getting Your Family Ready For Back To School

As summer winds down, the new school year is almost here. This time of year brings a sense of nervousness and dread for many families as they think about the daunting task of prepping for back-to-school. The summer days are full of relaxation without much structure, but now as the school year looms closer it’s time to get back into routine. Here are a few tips to get yourself and your family ready for the school year ahead…

Recharge Your Emotional Batteries This Summer

Are you feeling burnt out? Are your emotional batteries running on empty? This summer is the perfect opportunity for you to take time for yourself and recharge your emotional batteries. After long days of fulfilling all of life’s responsibilities, it’s easy to forget to care for yourself. However self-care is a key part of healthy living. Making time for the things that you enjoy on a routine basis, even if it’s only for a few minutes each day, will help you to feel better. Here are some tips to get yourself feeling 100% charged again…

How to Cultivate Your Attention with Mindfulness

Every moment of every day, you’ll find a number of things fighting for your attention at once. Whether it’s your phone going off with another notification, your children asking for you, or your co-worker sending you a question via email, it’s understandably tough to stay on task. With so many distractions, your attention is often split between multiple things at once. When your attention is divided, you’re not as focused in the moment. How can you focus on what’s right in front of you, avoid distractions, and actually get things done? Try using mindfulness to cultivate your attention and enhance your experiences. Let’s explore how to go about this…

Focus on your Mental Health AND Have Fun this Summer

Is it tough for you to balance having a good time and prioritizing your mental health? Does one have to come at the expense of another? The short answer is no: you can keep yourself busy with plenty of enjoyable experiences while making time for taking care of your health. Here is the key to keeping your focus on both: having fun is a part of self-care. It can become an integral part of prioritizing your mental health. If you need some inspiration to find your positive summer mental health vibes, here are some tips…

How to Respond to Your Child who Self-Harms

It can be scary to learn that your child is self-harming. It may make you feel anxious, concerned, and confused. You may not know how to respond to self-harm behaviors. Fortunately, you are not alone in helping your child who self-harms. Many licensed therapists are specialists in working with teens who self-harm. There is hope! Seek help immediately if you think your child might be engaging in self-injurious behavior. Here are some steps you can take as a parent to support your child during the process…

Reducing Work Stress with DBT

Has your work been stressing you out lately? Do the demands of your job cause you to feel exhausted by the end of the day? If you’re looking for relief from work stress, DBT skills can help! Learning how to manage stress associated with work will not only improve your work environment, it will also enhance your quality of life overall. Start with these three DBT skills to cope with the intensity of your work…

How to Share Concerns with your Child's Therapist

Is your child currently in therapy? Are you interested in therapy for your child? If so, it’s likely that you’ll want to share your concerns about your child with your child’s therapist. You may have concerns surrounding how they’re performing in school, behaviors that you’re seeing at home, or just general information you feel the therapist should know as the therapeutic process unfolds. It is completely normal for you to want to share, and there is an appropriate way to do so. The goal is to be able to articulate your point of view with their therapist while respecting your child’s perspective as well. Consider these three points when discussing treatment with your child’s therapist…

Red Means STOP: How to Manage Distress Effectively

When you’re in a crisis situation, it’s easy to act on your emotions. You may react on an emotional urge without even thinking about it. However, the intensity of emotional urges can often affect how you respond and as a result, cause negative consequences. When you feel yourself becoming frustrated, it can be easy to begin raising your voice or yelling. When you feel upset, you may likely isolate yourself rather than dealing with the issue at hand. While it’s natural to experience a variety of emotions (even powerful ones), acting on the emotions without thinking can negatively impact your mood, your actions, and your relationships. Luckily there is a DBT skill to help you when your emotions are running high: the STOP skill. Learn about STOP so that you can navigate emotional situations more effectively…

How to Find your Calm

Did you know that you’ve had five skills to help tolerate distress your whole entire life? These are skills that everyone has at their fingertips, yet many people don’t know about them! All you have to do is integrate your five senses. Through self soothing, you utilize your five senses in order to cope with stressful moments. Instead of looking for comfort externally, it is important to practice and learn how to comfort yourself. This skill can be used in any situation. Whether you’re in an argument with a friend or becoming frustrated with your partner, use vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to lower your distress level. Here are some ways to incorporate self soothing with the five senses into your daily schedule…

Cool Down When You're Emotionally Overheating

Did you know that changing your body chemistry can help calm your emotional state? When you’re in a crisis or difficult situation (whether internally or externally) your state of mind can cloud your ability to make wise decisions. By learning to tolerate distress, you will improve your ability to regulate your emotions and act accordingly. In the distress tolerance module, the TIPP skill helps to create a bodily reaction lowers your emotional response. By activating your parasympathetic nervous system during distress using TIPP, you’re able to process and respond to your emotions more rationally. Here’s how TIPP works…

Showing Up With Compassion

As parents, it is possible that you’re incredibly hard on yourself; this kind of behavior can be destructive. It is easy to imagine demonstrating compassion for those that you love. However, it’s far more difficult to show compassion towards yourself. The mindfulness practice for self-compassion will help you learn to practice self-compassion in your daily life. Practicing self compassion is one of the best ways to improve your wellness and your mood, as well as strengthen your relationship with your family members. Learn how to practice a self-compassion break in order to show yourself kindness, alleviate stress, and help you cope with the challenges of parenthood…

Fact or Feeling? What's Really Going On

As a parent, it may be difficult to separate facts from feelings. You sometimes find yourself acting on a temporary emotion when the evidence does not support this response. Consider using the skill, “check the facts,” next time you’re feeling that your reaction isn’t matching up to the situation. Check the Facts helps you to modify your response to a level that is appropriate for the situation, or to respond with a more fitting emotion. Before you act, ask yourself, is the way that you are feeling and thinking about a situation factual? Let’s explore how you can find the proof first…

What Went Wrong? Understanding Your Child's Reactions

Have you had trouble seeing eye to eye with your children lately? As your children get older and navigate increasingly complex emotions and situations, you may feel like you’re on totally different pages. One thing leads to the next, your emotions begin to spiral, and you’re in another full blown argument before you know it. You don’t have to be stuck in a cycle of chaos and confusion. By mapping out the chain of events and analyzing each step of the way, you can find points in which you could act differently and then change the outcome. The DBT skill Behavioral Chain Analysis walks you through the process. Behavioral Chain Analysis helps you determine what you could do differently when dealing with problematic behavior with your child. All you have to do is follow these steps…

Parenting Without Judgment

Do you ever find you’re hard on yourself as a parent? Do you tend to assume the worst about yourself when the situation unfolds differently than planned? Judgments are FUEL on emotional fire. Although you need judgments in order to stay safe, negative judgments may impact your self-efficacy and how you view yourself in the parenting role. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy, acting non-judgmentally is essential to avoid mistaking your opinions or emotions as facts. Take a vacation from judgment and parent effectively by adopting a non-judgmental stance. Let’s explore how you can identify your judgments and replace them with a non-judgmental, neutral stance…

How to Ask for What You Need

The pandemic certainly has impacted our well-being and our relationships as a result! We’re being emotionally and physically taxed in a variety of new ways. They can lead to heightened emotions, feelings of overwhelm, and emotional instability; these all make it difficult to navigate interpersonal relationships. In order to feel validated and heard while also successfully asking for what you want during this difficult time, try using a well-known skill from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, DEARMAN. DEARMAN is a DBT skill that helps you be effective in getting what you want or asserting “NO.” Here’s how it works…

3 Foods to Help Manage the Stress of the New Year

A new year is a time for new goals. It’s a time to plan for self-improvement and aspire to achieve more in the year ahead. You may aim to learn a new skill, be more present, lose weight, etc. With all of these new goals comes new stress. This year, take a nutritional approach by integrating foods that help with stress reduction. Fuel your body with foods that help you work towards your objectives without suffering from as much stress. Below are three foods to incorporate in 2021 that help manage stress…

GOODBYE 2020!

Many people are taking stock on the past year it comes to a close and we get ready to ring in 2021. I’ve heard people say 2020 was “crazy” or “horrible” or “the worst” year. In many respects, this is true. The pandemic sideswiped our stability, knocked us off our game, stole family members from us and basically forced us to rewrite our visions and redo our schedules. It makes sense that we are sad, that we have FOMO, and that we grieve for all we have lost or for what could have been. The pain is real and deserves to be acknowledged and felt. Without pausing to acknowledge our feelings, we might get stuck in them and worse, bring them forth into 2021. Here are 3 ways that you can effectively say GOODBYE to 2020 and welcome in 2021…

Prioritize Your Gut Health for Optimal Well-Being This Winter

As we enter another few months of colder weather, shorter days, and an unfortunate rise in COVID cases, it’s essential that we continue to implement wellness strategies to nourish both our mental and physical health. Gut health is imperative to overall wellness—especially to your immunity and brain function. The gut is often referred to as the “second brain” as it communicates with the brain, and it is the home of nearly 80% of your body’s immune cells. How can you best take care of your gut health? Here are some helpful tips…

3 Ways to Avoid Holiday Self-Punishment

After a delicious Thanksgiving meal with loved ones, does your mood feel lower? Are you hit with negative feelings that weigh you down? The holidays are a time of celebration and enjoyment; so why is it that once the festivities have ended, we’re met with a sense of sadness or regret? It’s more common than you’d think to experience post-holiday self-punishment. After the thrill of a positive experience, we’re susceptible to succumbing to negative emotions. Avoid punishing yourself and stop getting stuck in negative feelings by following these simple steps…

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