Be a Garden Well Tended
Springtime is around the corner. I have noticed more trees flowering, grass growing taller, and many in my social network are getting their flower beds ready for new growth this year. When I look at my own yard, I see dandelions, an unpruned hedge, weeds in an unkempt flower bed, and splotchy brown spots in the grass. I couldn’t help but make this analogy: We are all living a life where the garden is either well tended or an unkempt and overgrown lot. I could write many excuses as to why I haven’t put on the gardening gloves or picked up the rake/tiller, but I think all those excuses would lead to one simple conclusion, it seems like too much…WORK.
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New Year’s Restoration
While many are familiar with New Year’s resolutions, my life experience knows them as the light and fluffy uncommittable goals that I say once and never follow through. I know that for some, maybe many of you, the pandemic was just last year right??? Nope, it will be four years ago this year, and it still feels like my brain and body are in recovery from the trauma. Each of us has life stressors, traumas, and insurmountable obstacles that either come and go or compound as time progresses.
For this blog post, I would like to shift attention away from the problem itself and possible solutions and redirect it inward. I ask you to reflect on the questions below and what they mean to you.
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Lots of Grinches in Your Life This Holiday Season?
With the holiday season quickly approaching, I wanted to post some quick reminders about how to prepare yourself for the plethora of gatherings over the next few weeks. Whether at home, school, work, or in other communities, I am sure everyone can identify at least one person that stifles your joy.
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Getting into The Feels: Just Let it Go!
I am sure some of you just now screamed, “But I can’t!” That is a highly common reaction to the feedback, “Just let it go already!” One of the central understandings about emotional experiences is that no two people will be alike in how they react to the world around them. For one person, getting cut off on the highway is no big deal, yet for the other, they are blaring their car horn and screaming profanities. The same is true for any of us who experience…
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Getting Into the Feels: #Triggered
Trigger Alert! Trigger Alert! Trigger Ahead!
Welcome again to the Blog series on Getting into the Feels. Today, I am going to focus on triggers and hopefully bring more clarity as to why you might be noticing more trigger warnings on social media and through other media outlets.
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Getting Into the Feels: How Can EMDR Help?
What is this therapy I keep hearing about...EM–something???
Acronyms never fail to confuse haha! Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidenced based modality of therapy developed by Francine Shapiro, PhD in 1987.
EMDR works on a psychological and neurological level by providing adequate resources for persons to process stressful life events and emotional experiences without the requirement of dictating every detail or aspect.
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Getting Into the Feels: Embracing vs. Numbing
You’ve made it to another blog post on emotions! Give yourself a woot-woot and a high five because diving into feelings is no easy task! This post will be exploring polar opposite approaches to emotions, and my hope is that by the end of the post, you will increase insight about your willingness to approach or avoid emotions.
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Getting Into the Feels: Is it Shame or Is it Guilt?!
Welcome back! Give yourself a pat on the back for continuing to lean into curiosity and vulnerability and taking a deeper dive into feelings. This post is going to help you discern whether an emotional experience is shame or guilt.
Quite often, many people use these terms interchangeably. In reality, these emotional experiences refer to two distinct emotional states. When we experience guilt,…
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Getting into "The Feels": An Introduction
Feelings for many of us are messy, annoying, and/or overwhelming.
Throughout this blog series, I will be sharing my clinical perspective about why we have feelings and emotions, their purpose, and specific tools we can use to work through these experiences.
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May is Mental Health Awareness Month
True North Counseling and Development wants to help you celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month.
Why celebrate?
Because good mental health provides a foundation for living lives with the following characteristics:
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What Comes After an ADHD Diagnosis?
Medication, Adjustment to the Diagnosis, Psychotherapy, Skills, Community
These are the areas that need to be addressed when you receive a diagnosis of ADHD:
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Women and ADHD - Some Pertinent Points
While the condition may be the same, the experience may be different for women and call for different responses in treatment.
Women are more likely to have ADHD, inattentive type, while boys and men often have ADHD, with hyperactivity.
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Confused about ADHD?
You can find a lot of information about ADHD, and it can be confusing.
Is it a fad? Is it real?
Do adults have ADHD or just kids?
How do I know if I have it?
They say you have to have had it in childhood, but what if you weren’t diagnosed with it then?
Why are so many adults, especially women, getting diagnosed later in life?
This brief summary will address these questions and concerns.
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Grief and the Holidays
Holidays and other special days evoke memories, and memories for those who are grieving may bring pain. As we enter into this time of the year, with the friends and family gatherings that are so much a part of life, we at True North wanted to share some ideas about how to get through the rough times that may be ahead for you.
THERE ARE NO RULES TO GRIEF. EVERYONE GRIEVES THEIR OWN WAY….
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Grief Is Normal-- Even Though it Doesn’t Always Feel Normal
A brief look at loss and grief
Grief is a normal response to significant, meaningful disruptions and changes:
Loss through death of a loved one.
Loss through changes in relationships—divorce, separation, end of friendship, changes in work situations.
Loss through physical and other changes that come from illnesses, accidents, and aging.
Life transitions such as retirement, aging, empty nest, relocations.
Loss through change in spiritual/existential values.
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How to Know if You Need Grief Counseling
Grief is the sorrow or sadness we feel when we experience a loss. Mourning is the process by which we adapt to the loss. While grief is usually a normal reaction and response, our mourning process is influenced by our family and cultural beliefs and traditions.
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How I Learned to Grieve
I grew up in Kansas where the people who tamed the prairie knew all kinds of hardships. They faced an often-brutal climate of hot summer days, dust-filled winds, and winter nights that chilled them to the bone. The long distances between family farms or between small towns led to lives of isolation and self-reliance.
They shared a sense of community and purpose and supported each other when trouble came. Much of their strength came from belief in the sanctity of the individual. And much of the support came as a bolstering of the spirit to stand up, stand for, stand against, stand alone, and just keep ‘standing it.’
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Imposter Syndrome
Last week I gave a presentation to a room of 160 accomplished, impressive, amazing women leaders, and there was a part of me that felt like I had no business being on that stage. Let me explain.
Part of my job as the director of True North is to get out in the community and let people know about different ways we can be of service by assisting people in living a life that’s closer to or even surpasses their ideal, but when I dreamed of being a psychologist, I didn’t dream of standing on stages or providing webinars on Zoom, or giving my professional opinion to reporters.
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Anxiety During the Coronavirus | Lexington, KY
The coronavirus is a breeding ground for anxiety, when our health, economy, and daily life as we know it feel threatened. Anxiety is a natural response during times of uncertainty, with our brain alerting us to potential threats and helping us to keep ourselves and loved ones safe. Our thoughts significantly impact our anxiety level, and keeping a healthy perspective during a prolonged period can be hard. Here are 6 ways to reframe our thoughts to decrease anxiety:
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Hear from an Anxiety Therapist | Lexington, KY
It was a ridiculous kind of a day. On a recent 100 degree day, I found myself delivering over 50 mums all over town for a school fundraiser, scouring stores for acorn flour for a school project needing to be completed that night, ordering solar panels/materials for a science project, with runs to soccer, trumpet lessons, cross country, a doctor’s appointment, on top of overseeing homework, a house painting project, work, and several other dozen things. Far too often, this type of day has repeated itself…
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