Expert mental health care with compassion
Mother’s Day is a holiday meant to honor and celebrate motherhood. It’s supposed to be an opportunity to shower moms with signs of appreciation and love. Yet many mothers find ourselves working as hard as ever on this holiday, hosting events and accommodating everyone else’s schedules and needs. We expect moms to do it all, all the time, for everyone else without having needs of our own. It should be[…]
Many people have excitedly awaited the COVID-19 vaccine as a step toward feeling protected and safer to return to a life that looks a bit more “normal.” The idea of getting vaccinated to prevent serious illness and death from this virus holds great promise as a relief from so much stress and worry of the past year. Yet many people are experiencing a new kind of stress after receiving the[…]
Many highly sensitive people struggle to understand and accept this part of themselves. They tend to undervalue the positive aspects of this sensitivity and instead keep wishing to be less emotional, less reactive, less hurt. Learning to understand and embrace your highly sensitive self is the key to emotional freedom. When we befriend this part of who we are, we can feel so much better about ourselves, our relationships, and our world. Understanding the Highly[…]
Emotions are running high these days. It can feel like a rollercoaster with quick shifts and sudden drops that turn your stomach. Other times it can feel like relentless challenges continually crashing into you, like waves in a rough sea. We’ve all experienced losses in the past year, big and small. And these losses may spur feelings of sadness, anger, resentment, longing, loneliness, or fear. These are painful feelings we often try to avoid or ignore. Understanding why[…]
We all want to feel safe and loved in our relationships. We want to feel free to share our deepest emotions and feel understood. Yet we can sabotage this very safety by taking on the responsibility for our partner’s emotions. Our efforts to care for the people we love inadvertently creates conflict, distance, and misunderstandings. The problem is often based in romantic ideals we have that intimate partners should be[…]
Coping with chronic stress doesn’t mean you need to add more to your life: more self-care activities, more responsibilities, more work. In fact, for most people, this is the time to let go and do less. As we settle into the realization that our lives are going to remain disrupted for some time to come, many of us are left feeling exhausted, drained, and depressed. The uncertainty about what our[…]
After two weeks of psychotherapy sessions largely focused on how to cope with the impact COVID-19 has had on our lives, I’ve decided to summarize the advice I’ve given and share it in hopes that others might find it helpful. Acknowledge the stress. These are very strange times. We are all adjusting to living our lives in new ways and significantly altering our plans for the near future. The layers[…]
Most of us are extremely hard on ourselves. In the privacy of our inner thoughts, we spend a lot of time judging ourselves harshly, pointing out our failings, and beating ourselves up for every misstep. We say things to ourselves, about ourselves, that we would never utter about someone we loved. And this dark voice in our heads contributes to depression, anxiety, low motivation, and relationship troubles. Most of us[…]
Are your to do lists robbing you of joy? Do you give yourself permission to rest and feel satisfied only after completing every single task at hand? You are not Cinderella and there is no ball! If you are among the many people who go through their days focused on accomplishing a lengthy list of tasks and projects in the hopes of feeling relaxed and happy at the end of[…]
Mom rage is something no one really wants to talk about. It defies our notions of what motherhood should look like, what motherhood should feel like. Moms aren’t supposed to get fed up with their children, their spouses, their lives and actually express it in a fury. And yet woman after woman sits down in my office tearfully confessing their struggles with rage. They feel ashamed and out of control. […]