Worry is a common experience for everyone. It serves a function to identify a problem in the future so that you come up with a solution to solve it. This can help make the future more predictable and under our control: to reduce potential anxiety. For more information on how our DBT group can [...]
Experiencing stress in our daily lives is unavoidable. Stress is a much broader concept than anxiety in that it refers to the response your body has when you are facing situations that force you to act or adapt to your environment. Stress serves an important function in that it communicates to you that your body’s [...]
Toxic relationships can develop in both our personal lives, such as parent-child, siblings, friendships, acquaintances, tenant/landlord, and so forth, as well as in our professional lives, as in supervisor-employee or vice versa, and co-workers. Toxic relationships are typically defined by an imbalance in the ratio between what you invest in the relationship and what you [...]
Parents and Teenagers need to have a comphrensive understaning of each other. Having an understanding of how a teenager’s emotions develop can give parents useful strategies to better parent and avoid a situation from elevating. Using the scenario below, we can analyze how a teenager’s emotions develop and figure out a way to retell the [...]
Many parents struggle with determining the most effective way to respond when their child is distressed and provide validation. Sometimes what might feel like the best response can actually make the situation worse. The scenario below highlights such a situation: David is 15 years old and later his parents have noticed him acting out in [...]
Maybe you’ve had this experience: a friend, relative or significant other makes a complaint about something you did, and all of a sudden you are in a no-holds-barred war of words. It is very common for simple complaints to turn into a win/lose power struggle. Many times when we get into these situations, the importance [...]
Everyone at some point in time experiences distressing emotions. It could be related to the loss of a job, a relationship, a changed lifestyle or even having a new president. Often, the strategies we use to manage these feelings do not help. Some people try to avoid their feelings by distracting themselves with other activities [...]
It is time to learn how to get the most out of therapy. It is fair to say that in this day and age no one wants to waste their time. Therefore, it is a good idea to address how to get the most out of therapy and your time while in a counseling session. [...]
Regardless of your political allegiance, there is a great deal that can be learned about effective communication by watching how the presidential candidates interacted with each other this election year. More importantly, the way in which many ideas that candidates expressed were invalidated by their political opponents gives us valuable information on the importance of [...]
Now that the winter season is ending, there is much we can learn from it about factors that impact our emotional health. In the winter, the temperatures are (generally) low, there’s less sunlight and often people are required to stay inside for longer periods of time. As a result, we can sometimes find our emotions [...]