If the holiday season is triggering or stressful to you, you are not alone! While this time of year can be so hard for so many reasons, we want to reach out and say we see you, and we want to gift you a few helpful ways to get through this season without being emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted by the end of it. How? Boundaries of course!
2020 has been a difficult year for many of us. People are experiencing higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression related to Covid-19, racism, and the presidential election, among other things like the environment, lack of stability, healthcare, and the economy. That’s why we want to talk to you about finding emotional balance as we near the end of 2020.
Disagreements and misunderstandings are part of any relationship (yup, even the healthy ones). Learning how to dialogue when in conflict is a learnable skill. A lot of what we know about relationships is learned in early life experiences, as early as our relationship with our caregivers (typically parents) in infancy and childhood. Yes, it is wild to believe that how we communicate and respond to disputes today is highly influenced by the relationships that were modeled to us early on in life. To help create understanding and cooperation, the Gottman’s have come up with a blueprint to manage and resolve conflict in relationships. We wanted to share a few of those tips with you. **These tips are also effective in any relationship in our lives not just romantic*”
It’s an exhausting moment in American history for most of us. There is tension in the air, the amount of uncertainty and worry feels overwhelming. It’s a stressful time for so many of us, and this is your reminder that your anxiety around this election, the general state of our country and world’s future, and the rights that are at stake is VALID. Especially for BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQ, working class, and other marginalized communities. If your anxiety is at an all time high, we ask that you take some time to care for yourself. Here are a few ways to cope with election anxiety and practice self-care.
Do you feel exhausted constantly? Are you eating well, getting lots of sleep, exercising regularly but you still feel tired all the time? You might be experiencing emotional exhaustion. Almost always, when we suppress our feelings and emotions, they tend to manifest in many different ways. Our unaddressed anxiety, stress, and/or trauma can manifest as tension headaches, body aches, chronic pain, and chronic fatigue.
Can you take a moment to think back to what feelings or anxieties you might be suppressing right now? Are you in a stressful living situation? Did you recently experience a breakup? Are you feeling the lasting effects of the pandemic, election, or racial injustice? It’s okay if you aren’t able to put a finger on the exact “reason” or specific anxiety, stressor, or traumatic event that is being manifested outwardly. Today we’re exploring the signs, symptoms, and coping tools for emotional exhaustion on the body.
We’ve talked a lot about toxic relationships and how to spot toxic behaviors in others and how to spot them in ourselves. Today, we’re focusing on how to identify, nurture, and maintain healthy relationships, how to spot red flags, and how to set effective boundaries because we all deserve to cultivate healthy, happy relationships!
We lie to ourselves for a few different reasons: to maintain comfort, to not disturb our self-image, to protect ourselves; and ultimately, to avoid suffering. As much as we try whether it be subconscious or not, our truth will come out. Holding in our truth can eventually cause symptoms like insomnia, eye twitches, nightmares, constant exhaustion, and overwhelming depressive episodes. When we deny our truth by lying to ourselves, we miss opportunities for growth and learning, and we all owe it to ourselves to be true and live our authentic lives.
Committing to living your truth isn’t easy, and you aren’t alone in your journey. We’re right here with you. Here are 5 common lies we tell ourselves and ways to combat them to live in alignment with your authentic self.
Are you thinking about quitting counseling? Before you do, reflect on these 5 things.
Welcome to part 4 of our self-compassion journal series! We’ve explored what self-compassion through daily journaling, letter writing, and positive affirmations. Today we’re cultivating self-compassion through positive comparison.
Social comparison is completely natural in the development of humans. It’s normal to compare your productivity, looks, and abilities to other people in order to place yourself in the world. With such easy access now to heavily curated lives online, it can be even harder to avoid falling into a hole of jealousy and negative comparison. But there is a way that we can empower ourselves through comparison too. The trick? Self-compassion of course!
It’s true, people love you.
Research shows the more we practice being kind to ourselves, the more we increase and strengthen our self-compassion habit. One way we can practice self-kindness is through one of our favorite mental health tools, positive affirmations. Today we’re talking about rehearsing the internalized voices of all those who have been kind to you through positive affirmations.
