With the holiday season upon us and with many unexpected monkey wrenches thrown in my path recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to do it all. I have some news for you: it’s impossible.
Before 2020, online therapy was a bit fringe, not something many therapists I knew were comfortable with.
When I started my private practice in 2018, I knew that making a path for more people to have access to mental health services was something I wanted to be a part of. I have been doing tele-therapy since 2018 and have discovered some great added benefits to seeing your therapist on a screen.
It’s a tough time in our big world, especially for anyone who feels different from the norm. We are seeing this all over the news, social media, and in our communities. Living in a time when minorities across the spectrum are speaking up and demanding to be accepted, tolerated, and treated as equals. Young people are speaking out about violence, bullying, and mental health needs and while it is disappointing that our youth are put in a position to need to be activists in these areas, it does fill up my heart to see such confident teenagers fighting for what they believe is right and just.
It’s two weeks until Thanksgiving and I can feel the collective tension mixed with excitement and anxiety as we all begin to prepare ourselves for the upcoming holiday season.
“Can you believe it’s only two weeks away,” we ask each other with wonder and a bit of fear, realizing that soon we will be thrust into the chaos of the holidays which can be happy and exciting but is also all-encompassing and overwhelming.
“Stress” has become all too common a word for our young ones. I frequently hear middle school and high schoolers talking about how stressed they are and think to myself, “YIKES! You are way too young to be stressing about stress!” In our culture of go-go-go and childhoods filled with countless standardized tests, after school commitments, and very little down time, the truth is that without some concrete skill building to manage everything, your child is likely to be heading for (another) emotional meltdown.