Do you avoid taking leave because you think you are indispensable at work? Do you equate being crazy busy with being important and valued? Do you work yourself to the bone because you believe no one else can do the work as well as you? At social events, do you mostly talk about work? At…
Generalstrategies for self-care
Equipoise. It refers to a balance of interests or forces. It doesn’t diminish the importance or impact of the other. These are just a few examples of how you can actively hold and honor opposing emotional experiences with therapeutic effects. Feeling: Loneliness: Video call or meet with someone that you love and care about. Unneeded:…
anxietystrategies for self-care
The New England Journal of Medicine reported in 2017 that after her dog died, a woman experienced “broken heart syndrome”—a condition in which the response to grief is so severe the person exhibits symptoms that mimic a heart attack, including elevated hormone levels that can be 30 times greater than normal. Although grief over the…
General
Cumulative grief is what happens when you do not have time to process one loss before incurring another. In an ideal world, you would get a chance to metabolize and heal from one loss before you are tasked with facing another.With cumulative losses, painful emotions which come from the initial loss bleed into the experience…
Generalstrategies for self-care
Some clients have recently mentioned that when they start practicing self compassion, they feel a wave of pain that’s almost overwhelming. Their pain actually increases at first. You can call this phenomena backdraft, a term used by firefighters and emergency workers that describes what happens when a door in a burning house is first opened:…
strategies for self-care
Happy Bastille Day, Le Quatorze Juillet, 7/14 Most people are familiar with Bastille Day, a national celebration of independence in France, and the beginning of the French Revolution. It was marked by the storming of the Bastille in 1789, a medieval fortress that became a prison and place of torture, in eastern Paris. Ironically, on…
General
Your brain can be a trickster. Depression and anxiety create automatic negative thoughts that can become our internal dialogue. They are obstacles that influence our everyday life. Therapy is useful for identifying and giving voice to these internalized beliefs. And actively combating them. Some examples of negative thoughts that can be harmful: – All or…
Generalstrategies for self-care
Three years ago this summer, Embolden Psychology went from a dream to fruition. We emerged at the beginning of a mental health pandemic, of an enormity never seen before in my profession. In the summer of 2020, the US Census Bureau wrote that the levels of clinical depression in the United States had never been…
General
A summary of findings from neuropsychology on how to stave off dementia. Movement matters Regular physical exercise in midlife, ages 40 to 60, showed evidence that exercise physically changes the brain (neuroscience geeks: People who had aerobic exercise at least three times a week showed an increase in the actual volume of the hippocampus, compared…
strategies for self-care
For the past two decades, I have combined my passion for practicing mindfulness and eastern philosophy, with my love for neuroscience and clinical psychology. The ancient and the research; they are compatible. This is a frequent question posed to me that I deeply honor. Them: My partner and I are studying Buddhist teachings to help…
strategies for self-care
Combined with psychoeducational testing, it helps provide comprehensive information and recommendations to help children and teens six and up.
