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Comparing Body Positivity and Body Neutrality: Is There A Difference

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Comparing Body Positivity and Body Neutrality: Is There A Difference

It can be difficult to love how we look, love the shape of our body, our current weight, or natural hair color. It is often easy to compare ourselves to our favorite celebrities, models in fashion and beauty magazines and their photoshopped pictures , all of which can make us feel inadequate. However, the way we view ourselves has begin to shift with more focus on the body positivity movement. This movement focuses on loving all bodies, shapes, sizes , colors, genders, and abilities. Another movement that is becoming more prominent is body neutrality which focuses on appreciating what the body can do, not the appearance.

Let’s talk about both movements and how these viewpoints can allow us to make peace with our bodies.

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The Fun With Fear: Why We Like To Be Scared

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The Fun With Fear: Why We Like To Be Scared

Halloween is around the corner, and some of us willingly put ourselves through fear and suspense. Pounding heartbeat, heavy breathing, having a cold sweat, butterflies in your stomach; these don't sound like a fun experience, but we endure them when we feel fear. So why do you think so many people like to feel scared?

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Supporting Others Emotional-Wellbeing: Ways To Support Someone Struggling With Depression

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Supporting Others Emotional-Wellbeing: Ways To Support Someone Struggling With Depression

Depression is ubiquitous, and unfortunately, a loved one in our life may struggle. When someone we love is having a difficult time, all we want to do is help, but many ask how? You can let them know you have noticed the change and express empathy.

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Treat Yourself! Take a Break

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Treat Yourself! Take a Break

Taking on a challenging work project, school paper, workday, or studying can feel overwhelming, so much so that it sometimes causes you to push through without stopping until the task is complete. While in this process, taking the time to pause can bring feelings of guilt. Often, having this mindset can make the thought of taking a break as being “lazy” or “unproductive.” However, taking a break is the opposite of this, as there are many benefits that you will experience from doing so. Adapting the mindset of viewing breaks as a productive way to better help complete your tasks is essential.

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Tough Talk: Communicating Difficult Emotions

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Tough Talk: Communicating Difficult Emotions

Communication is vital in any relationship (romantic, workplace, family, friendships). Communication helps in sharing expectations, feelings, disappointments, and opinions. Being open in these relationships helps to strengthen the bond between them. This communication is essential when you feel disappointed or after your feelings are hurt; however, these situations are the most intimidating to approach due to fear of rejection or an argument. When approaching these difficult conversations, it is important to enter with a soft startup to lay the foundation for a productive, calm conversation.

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Filling Up Your Positivity Gas Tank

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Filling Up Your Positivity Gas Tank

Filling up your positivity gas tank is a term that can be used to help convey a similar idea as when one fills up their actual gas tank in their car. When you know you will need to drive your vehicle, and it needs to get you places reliably, and the gas tank is running low, you ensure that you stop and fill up the tank so that your car may perform as you need it to when you need it to. This metaphor is fitting for how our tolerance works in our daily life. Many people who suffer from common mental health challenges struggle with a thought distortion referred to as “filtering out the positive .”

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Do’s and Don’ts When Achieving Relationship Goals

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Do’s and Don’ts When Achieving Relationship Goals

On social media or in conversation, the term “relationship goals” has gained popularity as a term used in response to an example of a relationship that one feels represents the desired relationship in their life. In couple’s therapy, goals are crucial to establish and continue to interact with and update throughout the process to help keep the treatment focused and productive for the couple. Being able to develop genuine and wise-minded goals is more challenging than you think.

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Ways To Cope With Divorce

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Ways To Cope With Divorce

While healing from a divorce, you may experience a grieving process and there are things you can focus on during this time. Exhaustion, overwhelming feelings, negative and painful feelings may arise and while these can be scary, they are also normal and can be worked through. Here are some ways to cope through the process of moving forward from a divorce.

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Feeling Stuck In Therapy?

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Feeling Stuck In Therapy?

When you are feeling stuck in therapy it's usually due to wanting to make changes yet struggling to do so. Feeling stuck in therapy shouldn’t automatically feel like a bad thing. Some people consider this moment a “tipping point.” You may be asking what's next and where to go. Here are some ways to get unstuck within the therapy space.

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Respecting Boundaries: How To Approach a Boundary When It Is Set

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Respecting Boundaries: How To Approach a Boundary When It Is Set

When someone sets a boundary, it can feel sudden. To you, it may not even feel as though you were acting or speaking in a way that made this other person feel as though they needed to set a boundary. You may freeze up, become upset, or even start an argument. Oftentimes, there are conversations focused on the importance of setting boundaries and how to do this, but there is not much discussion on how to navigate boundaries that others are setting with us. Read along to find out answers to some of the questions you may have.

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Transitions and Changes: Coping with Change

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Transitions and Changes: Coping with Change

Change is inevitable, it is something that will always come at some point in your life. However, change can bring up varying emotions and thoughts. There may be feelings of anger, shock, sadness, excitement, fear, overwhelmed, grief, relief, and/or even acceptance. The range of emotion is a natural part of the change process, even if it may be a positive change. However, it is important to make sure that these emotions do not take control of the situation. The following are some useful tips on how to more easily cope with change.

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Using an Imagined Force Field to Reduce Conflict in Your Relationship

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Using an Imagined Force Field to Reduce Conflict in Your Relationship

There are many ways that people strive to conceptualize their relationships and that of others around them. It is hard to apply a framework to something so complex, so what is being offered in this blog post is not a full framework but rather a device to use to help side-step being defensive, reduce co-dependency, and increase your commitment to your personal values while in the context of a relationship.

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Time for Change: How To Build Up Motivation For Change

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Time for Change: How To Build Up Motivation For Change

Many people struggle with making changes in their lives. Some people may not be convinced of the need for change. Some people may understand the change required but may be unable to act due to resources or timing. Some people understand the changes that they want in their lives, have the capability and resources, and yet still struggle with activating that change. It is this third group of individuals with which many folks suffering from mental health difficulties can identify. While working with individuals who list a “lack of motivation” as a reoccurring symptom that is significantly affecting their life, building motivation is one of the first steps needed because motivation is needed to cope, to change symptom-reinforcing habits, and to eventually experience a more desirable mood and quality of life. The next few steps would be one of the most effective ways to help build motivation for change, even for those who particularly struggle with this challenge.

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Understanding Myths Around Eating Disorders

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Understanding Myths Around Eating Disorders

Eating disorders can be complicated, confusing, and overall a frustrating truth for some people. Recovery is not linear, easy, or as simple as “just eat”. It’s not simply “just buy clothes that fit you”, or “maybe you should start going to the gym?”. Some of these comments can be incredibly hurtful, triggering, and lead to a relapse and worsening symptoms. There are some myths about eating disorders that can lead some people to not take the diagnosis seriously. Recovery is the most successful when you and your family and/or support system learn about common eating disorder myths and accept a new way of thinking. Eating disorder recovery may challenge common beliefs you have learned over your lifetime, generationally through your family, society, or medical professionals. Let’s take the time to get familiar with the truth!

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The Road to Recovery: A Recovery Journey With My Daughter.

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The Road to Recovery: A Recovery Journey With My Daughter.

If you are a parent seeking out help and to better understand how to support your child, male or female, living with an eating disorder, below are some strategies and resources for you. Maybe you just started to learn more, or you are here because you suspect your child is struggling with unhealthy eating habits, or maybe something more severe.

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Eating Disorder Statistics- What Are some Of The Risks?

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Eating Disorder Statistics- What Are some Of The Risks?

Now you know what an eating disorder is, but you want to learn more facts about how prevalent they are! Wonderful. You have come to the right place. There are many resources out there to help you understand more about eating disorders.

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What is an Eating Disorder? How Do I Know If I Have One?

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What is an Eating Disorder? How Do I Know If I Have One?

People who struggle with eating disorders experience a significant preoccupation with food, body weight, shape, on a routine basis that has been perpetuated over time. Common eating disorders can include binge-eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and avoidant restrictive intake disorder (ARFID).

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Coping Strategies: What To Do About “Overthinking”

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Coping Strategies: What To Do About “Overthinking”

Part of some people’s mental health challenges, especially if they struggle with anxiety and/or depression, is an experience referred to sometimes as “overthinking”. Many people struggle with long strings of thoughts about one or many topics that end up effecting their daily lives. Overthinking can make you late for appointments, generate unreasonable anxieties against your own goals, or put a halt in your basic motivation which is sometimes casually referred to as “analysis paralysis”. These habits can chronically effect someone’s quality of life, but they are still just habits. As habits, they can be broken, and new habits built up in their place.

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The Anger Iceberg

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The Anger Iceberg

Anger is one of the emotions most people would put in their list of fundamental feelings that they, and most others, would experience regularly. There are entire treatment modalities and services specifically dedicated to anger management that help educate and coach individuals in recognizing anger triggers and reducing the spikes in distress in the moment. This does lead to the idea that anger is one of the most common emotions that people do struggle with in ways that directly effects their lives. Though anger is a very strong feeling and one of the ways we may choose to express how we feel in many situations in our lives, it was during my start as a therapist that I was taught, and then reaffirmed through my experiences, that anger almost always comes second. This is means that it is rarely a primary emotion and is often then referred to as a secondary emotion. A secondary emotion refers to a feeling one has about another already existing feeling. It is here that the iceberg idea begins.

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Mornings & Mental Health: Starting Your Mornings Off with Routine

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Mornings & Mental Health: Starting Your Mornings Off with Routine

The way you begin your morning can have a huge impact on the rest of your day, whether this be a positive or negative impact. The first moments of the day have a correlation to your productivity and your mood. Starting the day off on a positive note helps to set you up for success to conquer the day. This all begins with a morning routine that sets a positive tone.