Counseling Awareness Month

General

Counseling Awareness Month

As April was Counseling Awareness Month, I thought it could be helpful to take several moments to speak to mental health (some basic statistics and common contributing factors) and the benefits of participating in treatment to address mental health concerns. Mental health means our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Our mental health impacts how we feel and think as well...[ read more ]

Navigating Life Transitions

When we are young, life transitions are perhaps more likely to be viewed as exciting or empowering. We go from crawling to walking and then from walking to running. We start with training wheels but soon no longer need them. As we mature, we graduate into higher grades and become more independent. As adults, life transitions are perhaps more likely...[ read more ]

Social Media As Good For Mental Health?

Discussions surrounding the relationship between social media and mental health tend to focus on negative impacts of the former on the latter. There is empirical support for a relationship between emergence of depressive and anxiety symptoms and time spent on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But is this a full picture? There is perhaps another side to the...[ read more ]

Talk Therapy Can Help You Reach Goals

If you struggle to set/meet goals, you are not alone. In fact, perhaps as much as 92% of the population has found it difficult to achieve goals they set. This reality - the cycle of setting/trying to reach behavior change goals and failing to do so - can produce mental health symptoms (e.g., hopelessness, low mood, irritability). When we do...[ read more ]

4 Ways To Effectively Manage Anxiety

If you struggle with anxiety, the experience of a racing heart, starting to sweat, and perhaps a strong urge to escape from your current situation might be familiar. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common form of mental illness in the United States affecting approximately 40 million adults. While our mind might...[ read more ]

Adaptive Responses To Anger

Someone slides into the parking spot you had your eye on. A coworker takes credit for your work. Your spouse charges $200 on the credit card without discussing it first. These are experiences that might generate anger. And that’s okay. Anger is a natural response to many life events. Like other emotions, anger helps us understand our world and how...[ read more ]

Benefits Of A Social Support Network

Humans have a need for social connection. This stems, in part, from our ancestors needing to stick together to stay alive. Individuals who strayed from the group experienced a harder time surviving the elements and not starving to death. While it is far safer to be an individual these days, that does not mean it is healthy for us to...[ read more ]

Improving Your Self-Care

The topic of self-care has been discussed openly and often over the past decade. Despite the increased attention paid to this concept across recent years, the practice of self-care remains, for many, a bit mysterious or perhaps even confusing and misunderstood. The following is a brief attempt to conceptualize self-care as those behaviors we do that are most aligned with...[ read more ]

Tips For Coping With Social Isolation

Humans are social creatures and we do not always thrive in isolation. That is exactly why state penitentiaries punish prisoners by putting them into solitary confinement. It causes them great mental anguish. Many of us have felt like prisoners in solitary confinement over the last few months because of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. And many of us have...[ read more ]

Benefits Of Online Therapy

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in innumerable ways. But, as stressful as this lockdown has been for most of us, we have learned much about ourselves as individuals and as a nation. Another silver lining that has emerged from this crisis is a new awareness and embracing of treatment tools that have been available for some time. Telehealth...[ read more ]