Creating Joy in the Dark Winter Months

/
Creating Joy in the Dark Winter Months

January and February can feel like they stretch on forever, especially if you’re navigating constant sickness, a string of canceled plans and disrupted New Year’s Resolutions, icy weather forecasts that keep you stuck inside, or post-holiday blues. Many people find this to be one of the toughest times of the year, which is why the third Monday in January is sometimes referred to as “Blue Monday.” For parents with young kids, this time of year can feel especially isolating, increasing the parenting load.

Cultivating joy and resiliency in the midst of these challenging months can be essential for getting through them without seeing a decline in your mental health. There are several mental shifts that you can make to increase joy in the midst of the struggle of these months. I’m going to share with you four mental strategies to support yourself and create joy.

Read More

The Power of the Therapeutic Relationship

/
The Power of the Therapeutic Relationship

Therapy is often described as a space to process emotions, build insight, and develop tools for managing life’s challenges. And while that’s absolutely true, one of the most powerful elements of therapy isn’t a technique or worksheet, but the relationship itself.

The connection between therapist and client, often called the therapeutic relationship or therapeutic alliance, plays a central role in the healing process. In fact, research consistently shows that the quality of this relationship is one of the strongest pillars of therapeutic success. When the connection feels solid and trusting, therapy tends to be more effective, regardless of the reason someone came to therapy in the first place.

Read More

Stop Pretending: How to Get Unstuck And Move Forward

/
Stop Pretending: How to Get Unstuck And Move Forward

To sum up Newton’s 1st Law of Physics, a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Unless, however, an outside force acts upon the inertia to get it moving. Similarly, an outside force can also cause the object to slow down or perhaps change course. While we may typically apply Newtonian Law to objects in a physics lab, we may also apply them to aspects of our own lives.

Have you ever felt the inertia in your own life? The overwhelming sense of being stuck and not sure why you can’t seem to move forward in the way in which you want?  Do you feel like something is wrong, but you don’t know what to do?

Read More

4 Ways To Build A Healthy Identity

/
4 Ways To Build A Healthy Identity

It’s no lie that we are born a “blank slate”. As we grow and develop, we begin to identify who we are and what makes us, us. Our true identity is discovered prior to fostering relationships with others, having children, and beginning our careers. The unfortunate thing that occurs is that we often lose focus of our own true identity once these different life aspects happen for us. We find that our identity will adapt to our environment and sometimes we often mold our identity to fit into the life we work on creating as time marches on. As we age and our children leave the home, friends come and go, relationships begin and end, it’s important that we take time to return to focusing on our true identity as individuals to ensure we don’t lose sight of ourselves.

Read More