This blog is written by the clinicians at Jonah Green and Associates, a mental health practice based in Kensington, MD that provides quality services for children, teens, families, and adults. It is intended as a resource for families who are seeking to expand their knowledge about mental health and mental health services, and also as a resource for families who are seeking quality mental health services, especially in the mid-Atlantic region. Please feel free to post questions and comments on any of the entries as well as on any topics or articles from our companion web site www.childandfamilymentalhealth.com.
For many children, moving from one activity to another can be a great challenge. Managing expectations during transitions and using specific strategies can decrease battles and increase harmony when moving shifting tasks. Below are several ways to ease transition time both inside and outside of the home.
Sometimes it can be difficult to know how to respond when someone experiences strong or negative emotions. Often we feel awkward, uncomfortable, or even nervous, and may be unsure of how to respond. This is made more challenging because the socially acceptable response to someone asking us how we are is often “Good, and you?”. Whenever someone answers with a genuine response, such as “I’m actually having a tough day today”, our mental gears come to a halt and panic sets in.
This doesn’t only happen with co-workers or acquaintances. Even with close friends and family, we tend to be most comfortable around expressions of joy, happiness, and excitement. So how can we support someone experiencing a strong negative emotion?
One effective strategy is “Being With”, a core concept of the world-renowned “Circle of Security” attachment-based parenting model.
When I meet a parent and family whose teen is engaging in self harming behaviors the revelation is almost always met with high anxiety, sadness, and a whole lot of fear. It makes sense that finding out your child has been harming themselves would lead to a great deal of confusion and concern for most parents. However, learning how to talk about this painful subject is one of the most effective strategies adults can use to reduce shame, end stigma, and help their adolescents to find a healthier way to cope with negative emotions. But the question remains: How do we talk about self-harm?
Here’s a neat original post written by one of our colleagues, Joanna Townsend, at Bethesda Counseling Services. Here’s a link to the original post:
https://www.bethesdacounselingservices.com/blog
Self-care is surely a buzzword these days. We hear about it on the news, in social media, amongst friends, in advertising, apps, and most likely, in therapy, too. It’s encouraged as a way to relieve anxiety and stress, to make time for oneself, and to handle all of the daily challenges that life brings us.
But what is it really? Or rather, what is it not?
We typically think of self-care in terms of rest, relaxation, movement, massages, or taking time off. Maybe we even classify that online shopping splurge, booking that trip, or that extra glass of wine as #selfcare. But just because something feels good in the moment, does not necessarily mean it’s true self-care. There is a difference between numbing and restoring. And too often we’re missing the point and facilitating unhealthy cycles of stress and reprieve.
What self-care really is is the things we do on a consistent and ongoing basis to care for our mental, emotional, and physical selves. No amount of food, sleep, exercise, facemasks, or television will help us long-term if their purpose is to distract from or avoid negative emotions. Sure, maybe these things help temporarily and produce a short-term dopamine burst. But chances are, unless we’re revisiting, and exploring the roots of our lows and woes, we’re not going to get far. And we’re going to think it’s self-care that’s the problem, that it’s not working, instead of considering it’s actually about how we’re using self-care that is either keeping us stuck or helping us move forward.
Sometimes self-care is the hard stuff—accepting our feelings, honoring our needs, creating boundaries, being assertive, making an informed decision to take medication, or prioritizing our financial health.
Self-care can also look different depending on the day and the person. Sometimes it does look like taking the day off, going to the gym, a night on the town with friends, or turning off work email alerts on your personal phone. On other days, it’s showing up for life and your responsibilities. The fine line between restoring and numbing has to do with the “why”, not the “what” of what we’re doing. Why are you on Facebook, buying things, baking, or logging miles? Is it to escape, numb, or comfort? Or is it because you’ve made a conscious decision to engage in a habit or action in support of your mental, emotional, and physical health?
Whatever self-care practices you decide to use, take a moment to first think about why you are needing self-care—are you anxious about work? Unsettled about an argument with your partner? Feeling down? It’s important to always try to identify your feelings before acting on them. Then, see if you can pair self-care as you work through your emotions. Think about what will help you and leave you feeling restored and nourished versus simply indulging to buffer your emotions.
The more we pay attention to our thoughts, engage in consistent and adaptive self-care habits, the more at peace we can be with our emotional worlds.
Calling upon and accessing cognitive resources when managing feelings of anxiety and depression is hard, to say the least. We often intellectually understand strategies for dealing with these feelings, but utilizing those tools when in a state of emotional strain can feel impossible. When helping clients manage feelings of anxiety and/or depression, I often try to provide pneumonic devices or mental shortcuts in order to simplify the process in order to help remembering, and employ, their strategies. One such shortcut is the mantra, “relax, distract, cope”.
