Stress is an inevitable part of our lives (especially these days). To many, it may be obvious that how we handle stress, can make a big difference in our mental health. It’s perhaps less obvious, how proactive stress management, can support our physical health.
Family's Here...to Stay: When Extended Family Moves In
There are a lot of advantages to having extended family close at hand (it takes a village!), but it would be helpful to understand that it will also bring some challenges. Here are some tips for mindfully navigating a smooth transition.
1. Self-Compassion…
2. Nuclear Family Meeting…
3. Establish Ground Rules…
Mother's Day Tribute and COVID Poetry
The New Yorker Curates COVID Levity
It is not always easy to locate joy these days, but we must keep trying. Our spirits must be fed, not only so that we may persist, but so may help help other to do so. To that end, I’m sharing some examples that make me laugh/cry (craugh?). The New Yorker artists are brilliant at creating poignant levity from the ineffable. Here are my current favorites…
Boosting Emotional Resiliency During COVID-19
The COVID-19 crisis, with its mandated social isolation and pervasive threat of infection, has created a kind of atomic fusion, a clash of mind-numbing monotony mixed with a steady undercurrent of existential crisis.
With the widest lens, this pandemic is a clarion call to see the deep roots of our interdependence. On a smaller scale, it shines a spotlight on the best and worst of our social structures; from the heroic dedication of our first responders, to the disproportionate deaths of our most vulnerable. Finally, on a personal level, we are all connected in the quest to stay flexible in mind and resilient in body, while we the illusion of certainty shatters around us.
The following are some mental health directives to help adapt to the daily (hourly!) seismic shifts in our internal microcosmos, without succumbing to despair.
Therapy as Emotional Coaching
One myth, stubbornly persistent in our culture, is that needing therapy means one’s mentally ill. In reality, most people seek out therapy for what I like to call emotional coaching. A holistic therapist serves as a translator between heart & mind, helping create a pause, between stimulus & response. Therapy does not have to be about what’s wrong, but about uncovering all that’s right.