Consent Preferences

Lifestyle

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Social Media and Mental Health

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Social Media and Mental Health

The rise of social media has been one of the greatest changes our culture has seen over the last two decades. What began as a niche activity for younger generations has become a worldwide phenomenon for everyone of all ages, genders and backgrounds. Social media has allowed us to talk to and engage with friends and family across the globe with ease, access professional services from our homes, receive news and information with the click of a button, and engage in our hobbies and interests anytime and anywhere. However, as social media use continues to become more and more prevalent, and many users find themselves using social media more frequently, many people have found themselves experiencing harmful consequences as a result.

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Sundays Don’t Have to be Scary

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Sundays Don’t Have to be Scary

The phrase “Sunday scaries” is one that has been normalized and frequently used in our society to refer to the “fear” or anxiety that comes on a Sunday when anticipating the upcoming work week. Due to this, Sundays have slowly become less of a relaxing weekend day and have become replaced with feelings of worry, restlessness, and a sense of dread. While it is okay to begin to anticipate the upcoming work week, it becomes problematic when the “Sunday scaries” completely take control and ruin the day. Overall, it is possible to take back control of your Sunday and not make it so scary.

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The Importance Of Saying “No”

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The Importance Of Saying “No”

The word “no” is just two letters but can feel so intimidating and off putting to say to others. To some, this can be one of the most difficult words to udder. Despite the want to say “no” to another person, the words “yes, absolutely” or “no problem” can come in its place. Next thing you know, you are committed to a task or an event that you did not want to complete or attend. Saying “no” is an important skill to acquire and practice in order to begin prioritizing your own mental health and emotional needs.

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Building Insight: Open Ended Questions

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Building Insight: Open Ended Questions

While building insight about any particular idea or choice, our minds tend to have little conversations or monologues weighing all the different aspects and facts around the situation. Sometimes we look to our trusted supports in our life to help in this process and offer an outsider’s perspective. As a therapist, insight-building is often a part of the therapeutic process. Sometimes it is a clear objective and other times it is a byproduct of the therapeutic process itself. Regardless, insight refers to our ability to use our wisdom to build a complete understanding of an idea or situation. This is very important when related to making a choice or building motivation for change.

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How To Increase Your GPA Without Studying: The impact of mental health on academic success.

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How To Increase Your GPA Without Studying: The impact of mental health on academic success.

For some reason, it has been a long road for both public and private academic institutions to take this link between mental health and academic functioning seriously. We are seeing more and more robust and dedicated mental health services and systems in our educational programs, however time spent with many families has shown me that the direct link between mental health struggles and academic struggles is hardly common knowledge.

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I’m a college student struggling with stress and anxiety. What can I do?

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I’m a college student struggling with stress and anxiety. What can I do?

This may be your first year, this may be your third, regardless, it is very common for people in college to experience stress and anxiety. Is this the first time you are living away from home, or far away from home? Do you feel isolated, overwhelmed from all of your deadlines, and pulling late nights? Many factors can impact how you function and feel each day and college is an environment that presents a lot of different factors to make you feel that way. Transitioning from high school to college is difficult as is. The culture is different, the schedules are different, and it can be easier to let things pile up and prioritize other things, like friends, parties, or work.

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I’m tired of dieting but what else can I do?

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I’m tired of dieting but what else can I do?

If you are someone on a journey to learn more about your eating habits, in recovery from an eating disorder, or someone genuinely interested, this blog will discuss what intuitive eating is. Diet culture can be a difficult approach towards someone's weight loss goals. It often cycles between restriction and exercise which can put someone at risk to develop disordered eating or an eating disorder. This mindset of a transaction and “bad” food items to be earned through restriction, exercise, or calorie counting can be an unhealthy mindset towards someone's overall wellbeing. Our body is an amazing tool and vessel. Sometimes we can ignore what it is telling us it may need. Intuitive eating is an approach to shift our focus from what we know, towards a healthier relationship with food. Not one filled with anxiety, stress, guilt, sadness, and shame if we have a donut, or “ate horribly today”. Intuitive eating is an anti-diet approach where you are more mindful and connected with your body as it tells you what it needs. Through this, you learn not to judge yourself or listen to diet culture tones. Our body tells us when it is hungry, when it is thirsty, when it is starving, and what is satisfying.

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The Benefits Of Playing Video Games

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The Benefits Of Playing Video Games

Video games have frequently been portrayed in the media as, at best, a “waste of time”, and at worst, harmful to those who play them. However, there has been an increasing amount of research that not only contradicts these claims, but identifies numerous benefits of playing video games. Another common misconception of video games is that it is for children, particularly male children; however, the people who play video games has continued to become an increasingly diverse group. The age of the average video game player is 35 and it is estimated that approximately 59% of those who play video games are male and 41% are female (Halbrook, O’Donell & Mstefi 2019).

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Understanding Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

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Understanding Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Motivation is what pushes us to do and accomplish both the things we want and need to do, from going to school or work, to spending time with friends and loved ones, spending our time enjoying our hobbies. Many times, our motivation is not something we are consciously aware of, especially when it comes to thinking how we are motivated. There are two main different types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic.

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Does Food Affect Our Mood?

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Does Food Affect Our Mood?

In the mental health field, we focus on ways in which we can feel better by learning effective coping skills to alleviate mental distress. Often enough, we don’t take into consideration how the food we eat impacts not only our physical health, but also our mental wellbeing. Therefore the question is, does our diet affect how we feel emotionally? The answer is an astounding YES!!!

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The Connection Between Sleep & Mental Health

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The Connection Between Sleep & Mental Health

Why is sleep so important? Sleep is a critical aspect of our overall wellbeing both physically & mentally. There are two major phases of brain activity during sleep that we cycle through every night. These are called Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) & Rapid Eye Movement (REM). During NREM sleep, the brain slows down which results in decreased eye movement & muscle activity. This is when the brain is preparing the mind & body to enter into a state of deep sleep. About 1-2 hours after NREM, we enter into REM sleep. This is when activity in the brain increases at a rapid speed & usually results in vivid dreaming! Throughout the night we go in & out of these two phases of sleep.

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Building Insight: Pros and Cons

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Building Insight: Pros and Cons

One of the things that distress people struggling with mental health challenges like anxiety and depression is the inability to make a decision or sometimes feeling like they do not know what it is they want in a given situation. This can cause much distress and make undesirable situations even more difficult. There are many insight-building strategies that help people clarify what is important to them and what choices they want to make. In this blog, we will be going over one of those strategies in the form of a four-square pros and cons exercise. This is inspired by that from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy but includes a few differences. This exercise is designed to help you access your wisdom regarding a particular choice. Please keep in mind that when using this exercise, each time it is used it is used for the positive statement of a choice, and then the negative statement of the choice. For example, this tool would be done with statements such as “attending my friend’s birthday party” and “not attending my friend’s birthday party” instead of 2 different statements such as “Attending my friend’s birthday party” and “Going to the mall”. Now, let’s review more about how this exercise is used.

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When It Comes To Coping Skills, Perception Matters

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When It Comes To Coping Skills, Perception Matters

As therapists, an important part of what we provide to our clients is coaching and education on coping skills. This term is used a lot to describe a growing set of cognitive, behavioral, and/or emotional tools that allow for mood management and overall increasing quality of life by building new habits and responses to one’s environment. When people hear the term coping skills they may envision someone taking slow deep breaths or going for a walk outside. These are examples of fantastic skills to use and regularly help many people. However, some people, including some of those who seek therapeutic services, can perceive the idea of coping skills as a waste of time or “not real therapy”. These are sometimes folks who struggle with buying into their own influence over their daily lives or simply struggle profoundly with motivation. No matter what the reason, if one sees new and effective ways of coping with daily life stressors as valuable, then this can make treatment very difficult.

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The Dangers of Diet Culture

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The Dangers of Diet Culture

Diet culture can be harmful and put you at risk for developing an eating disorder or form disordered eating habits. Diet culture is a pervasive belief that appearance and body shape are more important than physical, psychological, and general well-being. It is more of an idea that if you can control your body, and more importantly your diet, this is normal. Diet’s emphasize limiting what and how much you eat, it can lead you to count calories or choose low fat and low carb options. You can develop more attention towards weighing yourself frequently and if you don’t reach your weight loss goals or gain weight, this can negatively impact your mood and motivation. Diet culture normalizes labeling food as good or bad and thinking it is more of a transaction. This means, you either earn it or don’t deserve it depending on how much you have exercised or how you have eaten that day or week so far. Beyond this, it can extend to labeling yourself as good or bad for eating some of these foods.

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Learning More About the Body Neutrality Movement

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Learning More About the Body Neutrality Movement

Body neutrality is a movement and approach to redefine our values and standards of ourselves, shed the pressures of societal beauty standards, and love ourselves in an entirely new way, not on appearance, but function. We can learn more about ourselves and focus on acceptance of ourselves, without an inherent focus on our bodies. Below are a few ways to move toward a body neutrality stance toward ourselves:

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Shift Your Thoughts: How To Replace Negative Thought Patterns

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Shift Your Thoughts: How To Replace Negative Thought Patterns

Negative, unhealthy, and intrusive thoughts are usually automatic, but they don’t have to take control of your daily life. With some tips, you can learn to tolerate that inner critic.

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Study Ideas for Kids

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Study Ideas for Kids

How do you learn something like riding a bike? Most likely someone gave you lessons and then you practiced. You can learn to study the same way. No one is born already knowing how to study. Learning, and then practicing those skills can build your studying capabilities.

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Navigating Friendship Breakups

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Navigating Friendship Breakups

As a society, there are often conversations that occur about the breakups and endings of romantic relationships; however, it seems that there are very little conversations about the ending or “breakup” of friendships. In a romantic relationship there is typically a conversation and formal ending, which provides some sort of closure and explanation. Whereas friendship “breakups” don’t always have the same sentiment, phone calls and texts become fewer and further between, and soon the only updates you really know about their lives are on social media. These friendship “breakups” cause unanswered questions along with some confusion as to how to grieve this ending. Society and pop culture display the grieving of a romantic relationship ending, but the friendship breakups seem to be less displayed or discussed. On the flip side, due to the lack of conversation about friendship breakups, it can cause individuals to feel an obligation to maintain friendships in life that no longer serve any positive purpose. The friendship can continue to go on, despite feelings of being hurt, because “breaking up” with a friend can be seem unorthodox.

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Taking Time for a Mental Health Check-In

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Taking Time for a Mental Health Check-In

Taking the time to check in with yourself is a very important routine to establish. Oftentimes, these check ins are completed for physical health; between routine doctor and dentist visits, recognizing when an illness or aches and pains begin. When a headache or fever begins, most will take medication to assist in feeling better. While it is important to pay attention to your physical health, it is also important to focus on your mental well-being. Sometimes you may be experiencing stress, sadness, or anger without either realizing it or taking the time to take care of yourself in those moments.

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Food Festivities & Eating Disorders: Tips & Tricks For Navigating The Holiday Season

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Food Festivities & Eating Disorders: Tips & Tricks For Navigating The Holiday Season

The holidays can be a stressful time for many people. There is much to coordinate from who is hosting, to navigating the many homes you may have to visit across family members. You may experience stress around the finances of buying gifts, worry around seeing people you may not like, or concern about that one family member that says a lot of controversial or offensive things. Stress may also arise when seeing your parents especially if you don’t have the best relationship with them. The holidays can be filled with a lot of anxiety, depression, and stress. For those struggling with eating disorders the holidays also bring up a lot of stress around food and eating. The holidays can also serve as a trigger if you struggle with an eating disorder or emotional eating. There may be a lot of fear foods for you, not a lot of support or escape and worry to stick to a meal plan or therapy goals. In a time of the year with a lot of gatherings, seeing people, and body conscious meals here are some strategies for planning ahead this holiday season: