Blog
Small Changes With Big Results
What is Depression?
What is depression? The most common mental disorder in the world, one in five Americans will experience depression in their lifetime. Depression should not be defined as just being very sad, because it is so much more than that. Think of sadness that is overwhelming...
Creative Ideas for Improving Communication in Your Relationship
Whether conducted in the United States or far off lands, many surveys find the number one reason for divorce is poor communication. Beyond having different communication styles, issues often arise when both partners are not comfortable talking about their feelings....
How to Reduce Fighting Over Money & Budgets
If you and your partner fight about money, you’re not alone. According to a recent survey, 27% of Americans said that disagreements about finances tend to erupt into full-blown arguments. This means couples fight more about money than they do about work, chores or the...
Are You Playing the Blame Game? Here’s Why You Need to Stop
Blame and game – two words that should never be joined together. The truth is, the blame game is no fun to play and there are never any winners. And, perhaps, the biggest loser of all is the one who is doing all the blaming. When we blame others, we lose our power....
Mental Exercises to Help Athletes “Get in the Zone”
For many athletes, being “in the zone” is an immersive moment of super productivity; a type of tunnel vision, where one is hyper-focused on something to become our best and most powerful self. Professional survival expert Mike Horn had this to say about “the zone”:...
How Meditation Can Help Manage Symptoms of Trauma
Meditation offers practitioners powerful benefits, yet many people are confused as to what exactly those benefits are. In a nutshell, meditation focuses attention in a deliberate manner, taking you from a state of noisy mental chatter to calm and quiet inner peace....
5 Ways to Recharge Your Energy After a Rough Day
Few things zap your energy the way a stressful day can. Stress is known to reduce our levels of serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters that play an important role in our mood, energy and motivation. After a difficult day, you might be tempted to lounge on the couch...
Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks! Tips for Starting a Later-In-Life Hobby
Most of us, when we were growing up, had hobbies. Some of us collected stamps or coins, others rode horses, and still others liked to draw or bake. But then we grew up and our world became filled with work and family responsibilities, and we had little time to do the...
Let’s Go for a Walk: How Regular Exercise Can Aid Mental Health
By now, most of us know that exercise offers numerous health benefits. From maintaining an ideal weight, to reducing the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis, moving our body every day improves the length and quality of our lives. But not all of us...
6 Signs it’s Time for a “Mental Health Day”
Many of us think of “the workday” as starting the moment we set foot in our place of work, but it actually begins the moment we open our eyes. Beginning our day mindfully and extending that sense of being present into our workday can make a significant difference in...
7 Self-Care Strategies for work/life balance
Many of us think of “the workday” as starting the moment we set foot in our place of work, but it actually begins the moment we open our eyes. Beginning our day mindfully and extending that sense of being present into our workday can make a significant difference in...
When Someone You Love is Battling Addiction
When someone we love and care about is battling an addiction, we often feel powerless. The cycle of addiction causes intense pain to both the addicted person and those around them. It feels impossible to simply observe the damage to a person’s health, financial...
3 Ways to Manage Anger
Anger is commonly referred to as a surface or secondary emotion. On the surface we present as angry, but underneath there can be a gang of other emotions driving the rage truck. Anger is so extremely functional for us as humans; it allows us to defend ourselves from...
Finding Balance
One of the first things I like to explore with new clients is the balancing the roles of their life. We all have things: partners, kids, jobs, etc. and it’s easy to let our lives become defined by one thing. What roles do you serve in your life? Sally is: mother,...
Take Accountability for How You Feel
There is one sentence I preach to all my clients: “You are responsible for how you feel.” Part of the break down in today’s culture is everyone is finding something to blame for their own emotional state. “He cheated on me, so I’m crushed.” “She irritates me.” “If I...
The Sum of Depression
Someone once explained their experience with depression to me in the following way: “It feels like being underwater in a swimming pool… and I can see people on the pool deck, but they’re blurry and just out of reach, and I can hear them, but what they’re saying is...
Anxiety & Your Brain
Over 21 percent of American adults between the ages of 18-64 will experience diagnosable Anxiety Disorders in a given year (over 42.5 Million people). To give you some perspective, that is more than the number of people who subscribed to Netflix™ in 2015. What is...
Summer Recipe: Kale Pesto
Looking for a light, easy to make, summer snack that’s also super nutritious? Check out this delicious twist - Kale Pesto! A refreshing taste, perhaps served on apple slices, sliced tomatoes, crackers or even as a spread or dressing on salads, vegetables or...
Boundaries
“Boundaries are, in simple terms, the recognition of personal space.” ― Asa Don Brown, The effects of childhood trauma on adult perception and worldview Have you ever heard the saying, “Good fences make good neighbors”? It’s the idea that a tangible boundary between...
What’s the Buzz about Essential Oils?
Essential Oils have recently been featured on many newscasts and online reports as a “trend” in alternative healthcare. In reality, essential oils aren’t as much “alternative” as they are “natural”. Essential oils are volatile aromatic compounds extracted from plants...
What is Trauma?
With growing research in the field of trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), we are seeing more clearly now than ever before that trauma does not just occur for the war-time veteran. In order to understand how broadly it impacts society at large, we first...
Spice up Your Life
Health is the Spice of Life, but could Spice be the Life of Health? What you add to the spice rack in your kitchen could actually provide you with a cornerstone for health and healing. Spices come from seeds, fruits, roots and the bark of plants and are used in dried...
Avenues to Recovery
Author: Natalie Gomes MA, LPCS, LCAS I read once that recovery is like a huge, beautiful, elaborately wrapped gift that when you open, contains thousands of other, smaller, beautifully wrapped gifts. Over the course of my career as a mental health and substance use...
Misdiagnosed Trauma
Author: Buffy Andrews MSW, LCSW Trauma is a tricky animal, and it rears its ugly head in many different ways. More often than not, individuals who’ve dealt with trauma in their past, commonly get misdiagnosed with other mental health disorders or illnesses. According...
3 Steps to Overcome Anxiety
Author: Buffy Andrews MSW, LCSW We’ve all been plagued with it at some point. Anxiety sometimes wreaks havoc like a cancer in our lives. Maybe you, or someone you know struggles with feelings of anxiety at times. I myself feel caught in throws of anxiety in moments...
Listening to Our Bodies
Author: Buffy Andrews MSW, LCSW Listening to our bodies can be really hard when we have the voices of society telling us all sorts of untruths. Things like: be vegan and you'll live longer, don't eat gluten it's the enemy of everything, don't be so sensitive, look...
10 Ways to Send Your Kids Back to School with Confidence
Author: Jennifer Witkowski MA, LPC The count down to the end of summer is here! While many parents rejoice at the thought of their children going back to school, and the quiet of the house returning, we often forget what a large transition this can be for some...
Self Care vs. Selfish
Author: Jennifer Witkowski MA, LPC I overheard a really disturbing thing the other day in the checkout line at the grocery store. Now I’m not usually one that ease drops on conversations, but this woman was so loud, one could not help but hear her. “Oh my god, what a...