For most age groups, the overall rate of divorce has flattened over the years. However, older Americans in long-term marriages have been seeking a divorce, and this has increased the gray divorce rate. This phenomenon is referred to as gray divorce. Irrespective of how old you are or how long you’ve been married, divorce is always a difficult situation. However, there are some warning signs of gray divorce if you are an older adult considering …
Looking to improve your relationship? For many, couples therapy is considered a last-ditch effort to save a relationship. But what if couples therapy was also used to prevent problems instead of just fixing them? No matter the stage of your relationship, couples therapy is a great resource across the board. Some couples go to therapy in order to identify issues or differences before they become problems; others go to improve their communication and increase intimacy …
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With therapy is growing in popularity these days, it is good to know about individual versus couples therapy. More people are accepting therapy as an essential part of our well-being, and more people are going to therapy as a treatment for mental and emotional health. And, while more talk and acceptance of therapy can only be a positive thing, it is important for all of us to understand the difference between individual and couples therapy. …
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How To Set Realistic Expectations For Therapy As humans, it’s easy to fall into the trap of setting high expectations for an experience and then feeling let down when we fail to meet that expectation. Therapy is no different. But setting expectations that are too high or unrealistic in therapy can be detrimental to your experience and take away from the progress you are making. It is essential, therefore, to learn how to set realistic …
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Choosing a great therapist is the secret to making therapy work. But how do you find the right one for you? Here’s what we recommend. Begin by identifying why you are going to therapy. Are you going alone or with a partner? Do you want to work on overall mental and emotional health, reducing depression or anxiety, creating meaningful relationships? Or are you seeking treatment for a specific experience such as a trauma? Knowing why …
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At the start of a new year is the opportunity to take stock of what is going well in your life and the world around you. Although 2020 was a year for the books – with the upheaval of a global pandemic and the uncertainty that followed – it is essential to our mental and emotional health to acknowledge the things that are going right in our lives. Even on those days, or years, that …
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Today we are talking all things emotional health – what it is, signs yours needs a tune-up, and how our relationships affect it. Emotional health is having self-awareness and an awareness of your emotions. It is the ability to navigate what you are feeling in a healthy and age-appropriate way. If mental health is our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, then emotional health is the way we operate and put those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors into …
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This past Wednesday our country shared in collective shock and sadness following the events that occurred in the US Capitol. Never before as a country have we had to experience so many losses and mind-bending concepts about who we are as Americans. How do we explain these types of events to our kids when we don’t really understand them ourselves?
I had the privilege of speaking with Kelsey Christensen of Fox 5 News about how to best help our children understand why this happened and what it means to them. One of the take-aways from our chat was how important it is that we not minimize our children’s fears and that we give them the space to talk about their fears as often as they need to.
We should normalize for them that these big feelings are real and that it is important for them to talk to their parents to help them better understand what they are experiencing. This means that parents need to be willing to have these conversations even though they may not know what to do or say. The important thing is that parents should be a safe space for their children and let them know they will never judge them for having their feelings – even if their children’s thoughts and feelings differ from their own.
Even before 2020, the year we began to shelter-in-place and socially isolate, social anxiety was one of the most common mental disorders that people experienced. Today, after almost a year of staying home and with far fewer social interactions than ever before, many more people than ever are nervous about interacting with others. What is social anxiety? Many people experience social anxiety disorder to varying degrees. It is a psychological condition that affects someone’s thoughts, …
This has been a crazy year for everyone, and navigating life and the holidays is a bit more challenging. People are looking for ways to enjoy the holidays this year given our limited physical connection with friends and family.
I had the privilege of sharing my thoughts for enjoying the holidays with Cheryl Nelson and Danielle Alvari on a recent episode of Main Street Living. You can watch the clip here.
It’s ok to feel your feelings, but you should also look for the silver lining in your current circumstances. Things won’t always be this way.
Here are some of my tips for staying connected during what could otherwise be an isolating holiday season…