While there's definitely helpful tools and advice for healthy parenting, there are some very basic principles to establish first. Before you dig into any details on reinforcements, discipline, gentle parenting, setting boundaries, etc, there are some basics that can be extremely helpful in creating a safe and healing environment for your whole family.
When I made the phone call to Solstice Pacific I really had no idea what to expect. I just knew I needed help and someone to guide me through the process.
The patient advocate I spoke to told me there were a few options available to someone like myself. Note: I had never been in a program like this and had only heard these terms for the first time from a therapist the week prior to this phone call.
Whether you realize it or not, you have expectations of yourself and others in your life - at home, at work, in your extended family, from your friends, and even from strangers! For example, when you’re changing lanes while driving, you expect someone to either slow down or speed up so you can merge.
As mentioned in our previous blog “Things We Grieve”, grief is a process that is typically avoided and can unfortunately lead to lasting health issues as a result. And in that blog, we identified things in this life that may need to be grieved that are beyond loss of life or death.
Since we’ve established what we need to grieve in our lives, what do we do next? What is a healthy way to process grief?
You get home from work. You cook dinner. You eat your dinner on the couch while watching your favorite show. You promised yourself you’d only watch one episode, but what’s the harm in watching one more? Next thing you know, you wake up at 1am on the couch, still in your work clothes and totally disoriented
Depression, hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness are some of the major symptoms that begin to present as a result of feeling stuck in the past. So how do we keep building skills to get away from this perspective?
Studies show that daily routine has many benefits for our mental health. Routine can sound boring, but efficient and effective use of time actually creates space in our day to do more of the activities that we consider fun. We talk about routine a lot– and for good reason. It is one of the most important things we can do for our mental health.
Grief is defined as “a natural response to loss” and is typically associated with distress, agony, sorrow, anger, emptiness or yearning. We commonly understand grief in its 5 stages after death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Although it is simple to write a prescription to treat a mental health condition, certain recent research and a rising chorus of voices worried about the explosive growth in the prescription of psychotropic medicines suggest that this may not always be the safest or most successful course for patients, especially for children.
Parents, are you feeling overwhelmed with how your child is struggling in school and at home? Are you seeing an increase in anxiety, meltdowns, destructive behaviors, or simply the inability to focus or process information? Are you gathering more concern about your child’s ability to meet academic goals or graduate on time?
Motherhood is a complex mixture of wonderful, exhausting, and terrifying. Nothing will make you feel more whole yet also very powerless. From conception, pregnancy, labor and delivery, toddler stages, school age, teenage phases, college transitions, to the duration of your child's life, the worry never stops.
Nowadays, especially with COVID, discord among local and international leaders, Monkeypox questions, the war in Ukraine, rising inflation, it's all too easy to become overwhelmed by the pressures of everyday life.
