Our Blog
Stay up to date with new mental wellness activities, insights, and resources with our blog.
TikTok and Teens: A Dangerous Combination
Here’s our take on TikTok, this Documentary, and Strategies to Empower Teens to Make Effective Choices about Social Media. You can’t make effective decisions without good information.
Gaps I See In My Clinical Practices, Trainings, Talks, and Life
Below are some of the biggest GAPS I am continuing to see in my clinical practice, trainings,...
Emotional Safety: Laying the Groundwork for Emotional Well-Being
Emotional safety is VERY important for everyone, especially for anxious and sensitive people, and people with a history of trauma. Emotional safety is equally as important as physical safety and both are necessary to move through pain and intentionally create healthy patterns of coping and healthy habits.
Learning To Change the Brain and Let Go of the Fear of Throwing Up
The fear of throwing up is super common. The fancy word is emetophobia – yep, that means it’s so common they’ve come up with a name for it. Sometimes it starts out of the blue and often, it starts because you’ve had a bad experience with vomiting, either yourself or witnessing someone else vomiting.
What we’ve written below is a compilation of what we do with our clients who have a fear of throwing up. We educate and normalize, we recognize faulty thinking and associations, and we teach kids to change these through acknowledging the physical symptoms for what they are (the anxiety alarm going off), changing mindsets, and changing behaviors. They are amazingly resilient and brilliant. We provide the information and tools, but they figure out how to use them in their lives to work through this fear.
Teacher Resource Guide
As a community and country, all of our teachers need access to mental health training and practical resources that provide skills and tools to help them manage their ever-changing classroom environment and the accompanying emotional and behavioral needs of their students. Schools that serve as a primary community hub for meeting children’s needs, such as inner-city schools or schools in low-income areas, need support and accessible resources now more than ever.
Teachers have always worn many hats. The pandemic further magnified the many roles they have to maintain. Teachers are dealing with SO much, often too much. Read on for valuable, practical resources not only to support their students but also to support the teachers.
Ditching The Many Masks We Wear
It is not unusual to see someone who seems a mess on the outside and assume it’s because of how they are feeling on the inside. The same is true for the opposite. It is very easy to assume that someone who presents being “put together” on the outside as not experiencing internal struggles. To look beyond the surface goes against a fallacy that the inside and the outside self are in alignment. The reality is that looks can be deceiving. Questions that should be asked often are not. Instead, we tend to rely on assumptions made by how things look or appear. The silent masks people have been taught to wear, both covertly and overtly, contribute to a growing increase in anxiety, depression and self-doubt.
Coping with and Communicating about Traumatic Events with Your Teen – Part 3
Shielding your child from news and information is not an option. Having conversations about it though, sometimes can feel uncertain or intimidating. But, these conversations are a must. Talking makes it easier to make sense of scary things. In the absence of true information, kids’ imaginations will fill in the gaps with worst-case scenarios. Starting conversations and keeping the lines of communication are key in helping kids navigate challenging or traumatic situations. Although the “how to” part is important, the goal is to provide a sense of safety and calm while connecting and being curious. Tone, timing and delivery are as important as the words you say! Having hard conversations is hard and that is ok, they are supposed to be!! Learning to have important, but hard conversations is super-skill that builds resilience.
Coping with and Communicating about Traumatic Events with Your Teen – Part 2
If your child has experienced a traumatic event, chances are you might also have experienced a heightened reaction to this, particularly in the case of school shooting. Truly, the most important thing after a child has experienced a potentially traumatic event, is to check in with yourself to understand your own emotions and processing of events. Knowing where you’re at emotionally will allow you to support them and have conversations without adding unintentional stress. That’s because kids and teens can be incredibly skilled at reading people, especially the adults they trust. They can feel your own anxiety and fear. As parents, we know it’s normal to have your own fears and insecurities as well as need to process traumatic events on your own. We know how hard this can be.
Coping with and Communicating about Traumatic Events with Your Teen – Part 1
Trauma is often misunderstood and can be confusing to wrap your head around, not only for teens, but also for adults. It’s important to understand trauma and typical reactions; otherwise, it can feel very scary and cause added anxiety if you don’t understand them.
Once you’ve gained a better understanding of trauma, you can better support your child and teen and likely feel more confident helping your child process the event. Normalizing experiences is one key aspect of helping process the trauma.
Yes, Anxiety is Back
People are reaching their threshold and feeling anxiety creep back. While this can feel like a failure, it is normal and expected given the circumstances. It doesn’t mean you don’t know what to do about anxiety, but it does mean you might have to pause to remember those skills. Once you acquire skills to combat anxiety and optimize your mental health, these coping skills become a part of you.