Have you been dealing with a lot of emotions lately? Supporters of both candidates feel a variety of intense emotions after an election. Both the thrill and excitement of a win and the disappointment and frustration of a loss can have lasting impacts post-election. While it’s okay to feel your feelings in the moment, it is important to know when to let go of those emotions. The tricky part of any emotionally-charged event is determining when to let your feelings pass, and how to move forward without allowing your emotions to overtake you. If you’re unsure about how to proceed during these days and weeks following the election results, don’t worry! Transition from intense feelings to a place of calmness and composure with these useful strategies…

How to Cope with Election Anxiety

It’s possible that you’re facing election-related stress. With November 3rd just around the corner, most Americans are understandably anxious. The uncertainty of who our next president will be has everyone on-edge. The first step to coping with any kind of anxiety is to acknowledge how you’re feeling. Recognize that you are feeling increasingly nervous, or more easily frustrated, or more emotionally volatile. Next, develop ways to address the impact of your emotions today, before the election, and after the election results are announced as well. What can you do to remain emotionally resilient in the days ahead? Here are some helpful tips…

Fostering Teens' Emotional Resilience

Does your teen have trouble adapting to change or bouncing back from challenges? Teenagers don’t have it easy during a pandemic. Their lives were already full of physical, social, and emotional changes every day. With the added stress of COVID-19, it’s understandable for teens to struggle with changes or setbacks. A mistake as small as spilling their glass of water or a problem as big as doing poorly on a math test could negatively impact their mood for the rest of the day. In today’s world, it’s more important than ever for teens to cultivate emotional resilience. It will help them deal with life’s changes and challenges without all of the emotional suffering. Share these helpful tips with your teen so that they can cope with adversity effectively…

Mindfulness Tips to Help Teens with School

Does your teen struggle to stay focused on schoolwork? School was challenging enough before the pandemic. With online and hybrid learning, it has become even more difficult for teens to manage the responsibilities of being a student. It’s tough to focus in class when the classroom has become their bedroom. It can be a hurdle just to get started on homework when your teen is anxious about the workload. When teens get stuck in overwhelming feelings of anxiety, mindfulness skills help bring them into the present moment. Practicing mindfulness can really make an impact on your teen’s learning experience. Here are some mindfulness tips to help teens succeed at school…

Adolescence, Helpful tips, Teenagers, Tips for Your MindEmily ZemanOctober 11, 2020teens, school, mindfulness, focus, good habits

How Parents can Promote Patience at Home

Do you get easily frustrated with your family? Maybe it’s the way your kids chew with their mouths open or the way your partner stacks the dishes in the sink that gets on your nerves. These minor bothers can get exacerbated during a pandemic. Your emotions are only heightened with the added stress of health, financial, and social concerns. With so many things to worry about, it’s understandable that the little things might put your emotional state over the edge. One of the best ways to keep your cool during a pandemic is to practice patience. Patience is more than being able to wait for something or someone. It’s also the ability to tolerate unpleasant situations without getting angry or upset (without getting into Emotion Mind, as it’s called in DBT). Parents who are patient are better able to handle daily challenges within the family without losing their cool. Like playing the piano or riding a bike, patience is a learned skill that you can strengthen over time. Here are some ways to cultivate patience…

What's Causing your Teen's Problem Behavior?

As parents, we know that something is wrong when our teens lash out, act up, or isolate. The tough part is figuring out what they are struggling with and how to solve it. And when the issue at hand is procrastination, anxiety, self-harming, or other problem behaviors, many parents at a loss for where to begin. This is where DBT comes into play. DBT skills like Behavioral Chain Analysis can help you and your teen identify and prevent problem behaviors before they get out of control. With the uncertainty of the school year just around the corner, now is a great time to get a handle on negative patterns of behavior so that they don’t escalate in the weeks to come. Here’s your teen’s guide to identifying and preventing negative behaviors…

Managing Emotional Ups and Downs

Has your child been emotional lately? Do certain things make your teen feel angry, upset, or on-edge? Maybe the tone of your voice sets them off, or a passing thunderstorm dampens their mood for the day. It’s understandable that some things will make people feel one way or another. Sometimes (especially with added stress of a pandemic), experiences can be very emotionally triggering—so much so, that they cause teens to get stuck in negative emotions for longer than necessary. Do you wish there was a way to help your teen not feel as frustrated by a friend who canceled Facetime plans or as anxious about ? Try using DBT skills, specifically emotion regulation skills! It’s simpler than you’d think…

How to Transform Mundane Daily Tasks into Mindful Ones

Do you feel like you’re stuck in the same quarantine routine? If you and your family have been following the same cycle since quarantine began, it might be time for a change. Following the same patterns of behavior can make you feel anxious, hopeless, or frustrated. You’re often on autopilot, going through the motions of typical tasks while your mind wanders and worries about other things. Luckily, there is a way to break out of these patterns of behavior and have an improved connection to daily experiences: mindfulness! Mindfulness helps you break the cycle of passive “autopilot” behavior. You build awareness of what’s happening around you without letting your emotions take control. Mindfulness isn’t as complicated as you might think. Here are some simple ways to incorporate mindfulness into your routine and find meaning in mundane experiences…

3 Ways to Help your Family Transition to a New Normal

As quarantine measures relax and things begin transitioning back to a “new normal,” it may be time for your family to begin painting a picture of what this transition could look like. We have been through a total of 3 massive and immediate changes in less than 4 months, which means that our brains have been working overtime to adjust time and time again. That’s a lot to cope with! Therefore, it’s understandable if you’re feeling hesitant, confused, or unsure about how to proceed. Here are 3 ways you can help your families (and your minds) prepare to transition to your “new normal” in the weeks ahead…

3 Ways to be a More Effective Parent during COVID-19

As parents, we all have unique ideals and expectations of the experience of raising our kids. We set schedules, we create routines and we teach lessons to instill those ideals in our children as we try to meet our own. So, how do we manage when our children change, when we change, and when life changes? It’s challenging to parent your children the same way that you were months ago, before the pandemic began. Therefore, it is crucial that we adapt to changing circumstances. How can we maintain a flexible stance with our parenting and create a calmer home environment? Here are 3 ways to help you become a more effective parenting during this crisis…

Using Dialectical Thinking to Manage Emotions

Dialectics are two opposing forces, feelings, or situations that happen simultaneously. For example, quarantine is hard AND we will get through it. By thinking and acting dialectically, you can keep your emotions calm AND you can look through a new lens to see two truths in a situation. Dialectics is the foundation of DBT. It teaches us that there is an opposite of everything and we tend to be most effective when we find balance between opposites. In DBT, it is particularly important to balance the idea of acceptance and change. However, it’s very difficult to stay in a neutral or calm emotional state lately if you use the word “but” often or if you tend to discount positives with negatives. Manage your emotions more effectively and keep your cool by practicing dialectics! Here are some tips on how to think and act dialectically right now…

Why Bad Habits are so Hard to Break

Do you wish you could break a bad habit, but you don’t know how? Habits like nail biting, procrastinating, smoking, or spending too much time online often impede on our daily productivity. They make us frustrated with ourselves and in the end, they do us more harm than good. Don’t keep wondering why you simply cannot stop your bad habit. You can break the cycle of negative behavior and save precious time. Explore these three helpful tips to learn why it is so difficult to break these bad habits and discover what you can do to make a change today…

Rewire your Brain for Improved Well-Being during COVID-19

As humans, our brains are wired to respond to internal and external triggers so that we have the proper response to keep us safe. If we sense danger, our brains automatically shift into FIGHT OR FLIGHT mode. Panic and fear automatically trigger your brain’s threat detection, so during COVID-19, your system might go into overdrive. This is okay in the short-term, but it can take its toll on your body in the long-term. It is not healthy to be in fight or flight mode more often than necessary. Luckily, you can rewire your brain so that you’re not constantly overwhelmed by anxious or fearful thoughts or you’re not stuck in a state of mind that makes it tough to think clearly. Improve your physical and emotional well-being during this stressful time with these helpful tips…

Practicing Gratitude to Help Cope with Crises

We’re in the midst of anxiety-provoking times. Whether you’ve dealt with anxiety before the pandemic or you’re experiencing anxious thoughts as a result of these changing times, it’s normal to experience heightened anxiety. We’re all worried about our health, the health of our family and friends, our jobs, the economy, and what the future will look like, among other things. How can we deal with all of these anxious thoughts without letting them overwhelm us? Try practicing gratitude. Gratitude is all about showing appreciation. It’s not something that we’re hard-wired to do, but it is something that we can incorporate into our daily lives in order to reap the benefits. What is gratitude all about, and how can it help you? Let’s explore…

Your Family Plan for Managing COVID-19

We are ALL navigating uncharted territory together and it is important that you create a plan for YOUR FAMILY that effectively manages anxieties, scheduling and completing of tasks while staying both physically AND mentally healthy. There is hype. There is hearsay. There are opinions and beliefs. And then there is WHAT IS BEST FOR YOUR FAMILY? Here are some tips for helping your family effectively navigate Coronavirus…

How to be a Dialectical Parent

Do you have trouble keeping your cool when parenting your teen? It’s not easy dealing with teens emotional up and downs while keeping your own emotions in check. Therefore, taking a dialectical approach might be helpful for you. Being dialectical means finding balance—specifically, balance between opposites. There is an opposite to everything in life, and we tend to be most effective when we balance those opposing ideas. By finding balance between things that seem completely opposite to you, like a draining day and a calm mind, you can manage your teen without the emotional strain. Are you ready to apply dialectics to your parenting approach?

Rewiring your Brain for Success

Do you ever wish you could break free of old habits that aren’t working? Making a change is easier said than done. Luckily, recent studies in neuroplasticity are proving that the seeds of change live in all of us. We all have the ability to rewire our brains for success because of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is a medical term that describes the brain’s ability to continually create new neural paths, as well as disconnect the paths that are no longer used. Research indicates that these pathways are not set in stone; they can be changed at any time or any age! By rewiring your neural pathways, you can let go of old, unhealthy habits and create new, healthy ones. Here are some ways to harness the power of neuroplasticity and form new roads to success…

Cultivating a Healthy Body Image

Are you happy with the body you live in? Do you often criticize your appearance? These are all questions related to body image. Body image refers to your personal relationship with your body, not what you actually look like. It is connected to your beliefs, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and actions surrounding your physical appearance. It’s more challenging to accept yourself when you have difficulty liking your physical looks. Body dissatisfaction is a common problem; in fact, millions of people struggle with body dissatisfaction or issues with body image. There is good news though! An unsatisfying or negative body image can be changed to a positive one. There are ways to achieve self-acceptance. Here are some tips you can use to work towards a healthier body image…

Maintain Self-Respect in your Relationships

Relationships are all about compromise and balance. They require us to listen to others, to voice our point of view, and to engage in a give and take. However, not all relationships are balanced. Sometimes we overstep our roles. We may assert our point of view so strongly that we cause others to act in ways that make them uncomfortable. Other times, we don’t stand up for ourselves. We follow along with what other people want to do, even if it does not align with our values. In relationships like these, it may be helpful to use the FAST skill to navigate difficult interpersonal situations—like setting boundaries, for example. FAST helps us keep our self-respect so that we feel good about our relationships.

How to Follow Through on Your 2020 Goals

We all strive for a better and healthier year ahead. We aim to lose weight, get more sleep, be present in the moment, or have more quality family time, among other goals. No matter what your goal is, it can be difficult to stick to it. Check in with yourself and ask yourself, “How am I doing so far?” If you’re not making the progress you’d like, or if you could use some support in following through on your resolutions this year, look no further! Use these helpful tips to stick to your goals for 2020…

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