Ever wonder what it’s like to be a therapy client? As a clinician, I often get asked what’s the hardest part about being a client.
Continue reading “The Truth About What It’s Like to Be a Therapy Client”
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
The gut-brain axis, serotonin production, and why mental health is not “all in your head.” When most people hear the word serotonin, they picture the brain. Serotonin is often described as a “feel-good chemical” linked to mood, anxiety, sleep, and emotional well-being. That association is real—but it is incomplete. Let’s look at what the research says about serotonin and mood.
Continue reading “Is Serotonin Made in the Gut? How Digestion Affects Mood”
“I hate change.” All sorts of clients express that to me, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, ages, education levels or financial status. I generally reassure them it’s natural to dislike change. It’s an organic fear-based reaction triggered by the unpredictability of life; a very human biological response to potential threats to our safety, stability and perceptions of where and how we fit into the world. Coping with change is one of the most common challenges people bring to therapy.
Continue reading ““I Hate Change”: Coping with Change, One of Life’s Constants”
Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor
During this period, people settle back into the routine of a new school year. They adjust by waking up early again. They remember the new class schedules and start getting to know their teachers. But for recent graduates, life after graduation can feel very different.
For another group, the graduates who finished a few months ago see the adjustments differently. They realize they are no longer starting a new school year but are in the real world. The moment they have worked toward for many years has arrived, and emotions follow.
Continue reading “5 Powerful Tips For Life After Graduation”
Ricardo Infanzon, MSW, LSW
Grieving is one of the most painful, grueling, and confusing experiences people go through. It’s not just a moment or an episode, but a prolonged period of varying emotions with no set timeline for a start or an end. The person grieving is already overwhelmed and emotional; they could be going through a divorce, a death, or a severe loss that changed their whole life. That alone is hard enough to navigate, which is why there are so many books and podcasts on the topic, each speaking to the many ways people grieve, since there is no single correct way to do it. If you are supporting someone through grief right now, you may be wondering how to help.
Continue reading “How to Help a Grieving Loved One: 4 Simple Tips”
Associate Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Culture deeply shapes how we interpret and approach the stressors of daily life, especially in our closest relationships. Culture is the unspoken system of social rules that shapes our most basic assumptions about what we should expect of others and how to connect with them. Our own culture is usually helpful and invisible to us, until you’re doing life with someone with a different of invisible cultural assumptions – whether they’re from a different country, or even just from a different community within your own country. These differences can show up in surprising ways in cross-cultural relationships.
Continue reading “How to Navigate Challenges in Cross-Cultural Relationships”
Continue reading “The HALT Acronym: A Simple Tool for Better Self-Care”
Summer is the season of busyness and excitement. This is the season that we look forward to all year, when the snow melts away, nature blooms and flourishes green, and we get to enjoy the small window of heat that the Midwest grants us. In the season of it all comes a pressure for us to wring out every little drop of summer that we can get, which can often look like overflowing our calendars with BBQs, late nights-out with friends, road trips, and those travel baseball plans. It can feel like a whirlwind, when all of a sudden, it’s the end of August and But if we are not careful, all of that excitement can quietly turn into summer burnout.
Continue reading “What is EMDR: The Gen Z’ers Guide to EMDR”
Licensed Professional Counselor
According to Google, resiliency is defined as a person being able to withstand shock, recover quickly from adversity, or returning to an original shape after being ‘bent,’ or ‘stretched’. Another easier way I like to look at the word is being able to “bounce back”. Now, you might wonder what are some things that can test our resiliency – the things is, everyone has a different capacity to resilience. Some examples you may have attempted to overcome through resiliency include experiencing grief or loss, struggling with anxiety, depression, or low self-esteem, moving across the country, facing a job loss, chronic illness or injury, financial instability (and the list can go on). The good news is that building resilience is possible for anyone.
Continue reading “What Is Resiliency? A Simple Guide to Building Resilience”