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 By: Dr. Erica WollermanWell, here we are facing yet another week of social distancing and living with the challenge of parenting during a pandemic! As many other writers have also commented on, this is a time where we are all likely to have a variety of reactions but most likely we are also feeling exhausted. Exhausted with the daily changes we ae having to make and the dramatic impact staying home, often with our entire family, is having on our emotional health. The reason for this is because we are all experiencing collective trauma and anxiety from the fears we have for our world, ourselves, our families, as well as grief related to what was and what we are unsure about for the future. Most of us have not experienced a struggle like this in our world, especially one without an end date. I have to say, this is hard. It’s hard for all of us and it seems to be impacting people in such a variety of ways that I thought it might be helpful to share a bit about what I feel might help our teens and the parents of teens get through this. As I have mentioned in past blogs about the Covid-19 pandemic, we need to come to a place where we can embrace this new reality so that we can learn to cope with it. Unfortunately, our teens may struggle with this even more than we do at times. I can tell you, a cooped up and isolated teen is not a fun person to spend time with. Here are some ideas specifically to help parents with teens at home who are practicing social distancing.
I hope this is helpful for our readers right now! As always, my goal is to be a calming and helpful voice in the storm that can be parenting and my office is here to help for those who would like to talk more about parenting or who would like support for their teens. We are accepting new clients for video therapy sessions today! Click here to download our Free Guide that goes along with this Blog! At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy via video sessions, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL. "I don’t know about you but this is my first f****** global pandemic". -Brené Brown I was looking for a podcast this morning and stumbled on Brené Brown’s new podcast, Unlocking Us. For those of you who don’t know, I am a bit of a fan or her work. Okay, I’m totally obsessed with it! Her above statement perfectly captures what we are all dealing with and the inherent complexities of living through this time. I wrote the below blog post all about the grief process as it relates to the coronavirus pandemic. I hope you all enjoy it as it is a bit more open and vulnerable than my usual (which is great that I found a perfect Brené Brown quote to go with it considering she is my go to champion of vulnerability even when you don't want to. As I have been working with my clients, consulting with my family, friends, and colleagues, and checking in with my own emotions, I have recognized that the process of adjusting to our new normal as we try to #flattenthecurve and engage in social distancing reminds me so much of a grief process. As a therapist, I am familiar with grief and how it pops up in our lives during times that do not necessarily include death. Grief is involved in any sort of ending, new beginning, phase of life, and even happy days. For example, when you become a parent you are overjoyed at the gift of the precious baby you now have but you might also feel overwhelmed with grief for the life you used to know. As I have sat with my own emotions and explored those of others during this unprecedented time in our world, there has definitely been a process of grief and loss. I remember just a week or two ago, which feels like MONTHS ago, feeling like everything was happening so quickly and everyone seemed so anxious and I felt like it was not even happening. I now recognize my feeling that this might be an overreaction both as a product of my own misinformation and lack of understanding of the situation we were in but also as a process of denial. I honestly have been working so hard in my life on so many of my goals, that I didn’t want any of this to be real. Particularly as a business owner, this situation was enough to make anyone want to hide with a blanket over their heads. The next wave of emotions was definitely some level of resentment. I honestly resented the people around me, even my husband whose judgment I trust, for telling me life as we knew it was over and would be for a longer time than any of us are prepared to sit with. Taking my son out of daycare and moving my therapy practice online have been changes that it truly took a lot of time to process. I found that I personally needed to allow myself some space to just be sad and to grieve all of the things I feel like we are losing…. My son’s experience with his trusted and beloved daycare providers, our upcoming vacation, all of my client’s progress and consistency in sessions and in therapy, my own progress in building our business, and our freedom to do what we enjoy doing – which is generally not staying home. I also felt like I needed some time to readjust from “building and improving” my life and my business to “survival mode.” Simultaneously, I have recognized my privilege in this situation. I work in a business that can use video and telehealth for sessions and our business will continue. It will continue differently but we are able to cope with this. So many businesses and people are not and I feel that sense of injustice in our world keenly. I have also been so grateful for my family situation and feeling so well supported by my colleagues, family, and friends. Never have I cherished our new home and backyard more than I do these days with a toddler to entertain! Never have I been so grateful for all that I have in the world. I found that my path to acceptance of our situation came from allowing myself time to just feel all of these things. To feel overwhelmed, sad, and to truly grieve everything that is happening. The loss of life, people’s livelihoods, and our ability to move through our world freely. I needed to let myself just feel these things and my feelings about them. During this time, I tried not to think too rationally about how I do believe that we can figure these things out. I just let the feelings come and embraced them willingly. I let myself cry freely and think all of my biggest fears and just let my awareness sit on the fact that we don’t know how long this will last. I repeat, our futures are not known and we honestly can’t do much in terms of planning. While some may find this freeing, many of us are going to find this anxiety provoking. To go from working towards goals and planning events to just getting through the week is going to be a challenge and struggle for many. It certainly has been for me. While I truly believe in our ability to come back from this both as individuals and as a society, that is truly so scary to not know so many things about what that process might look or be like. I feel like many of us are even bargaining in this grief process. I’ve said it myself, and heard many others say things like, “I can do this for 2 weeks but no longer.” Guys, we need to sit with the truth in this situation to allow ourselves to come to a place of coping. The more we fight reality, the more we are also delaying our own acceptance and coping. The world as we knew it is changing and it is now up to us to accept this, figure out a new normal, and allow ourselves to recognize that we don’t know anything about what the future will hold. This is a wave that could crush us if we are not careful. We could get lost in the unknown and fear. I encourage you to know this and choose to dip your toes in the pool of your emotions but to then also let yourself allow some light in. Other than days when the grief wave just takes hold of me, I am going to be mindful of my thoughts and choose to believe that we will get through this and that our resilience as a people will be a powerful force in light of this pandemic. I truly believe that our struggles can bring about change and growth and am hopeful that this might not be different even now. If you or your loved ones are struggling to cope, our office is still offering telehealth (video) therapy sessions throughout California. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you feel we can be supportive during this time. Our therapists have availability and can offer flexible schedules even for those who are working from home while trying to learn how to homeschool your kids. From the bottom of my heart, I hope all of our readers are hanging in there and adjusting during this time. We will continue to post resources and tips for our readers to help us all cope with the days ahead! At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy via video sessions, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL.  By: Dr. Wollerman As many people are making dramatic changes to their lives to try to #flattenthecurve in our country while we deal with this pandemic, therapists are making changes as well. Most of us are moving towards video session and our practice is no different! Starting next week, we are going to be only offering video sessions for our clients until it is reasonable to start up in person sessions again and we feel comfortable doing so without concern of transmitting Covid19. As the leader in our practice, this was a tough decision for me for many reasons. One, I really want to support my clients and love doing so in person. Two, I really didn’t want this choice to impact people’s access to care particularly during a time where so many of us are understandably feeling stressed, anxious, and even depressed. Three, I also genuinely believe in how calming it can be to have some normalcy in our lives when the world feels like it is falling apart. Upon reflection, I realized that while I am feeling all these conflicting feelings about it, people might be feeling conflicted even about attending sessions. We all know that there has been a variety of responses to Covid19 and some people continue to feel that we are all “over-reacting.” However, there are also those who are working hard to change their lives in the interest of protecting the most vulnerable in our society. Once I got used to the idea of changing our life and the way we offer our services, the more I realized that this is valuable coping in a time when things are unstable. Perhaps the more we learn to roll with the challenges life hands us, even when they are HUGE like right now, the more we all learn how to refocus on what mattes and how we can connect and cope together through this unprecedented time in our world. So, I had my first client video sessions in the past few days and realized that this is actually such a great way to connect with my clients! We luckily had very few tech related issues and the sessions felt almost exactly the same as in our office. My clients loved it and I felt thrilled to be able to continue to provide services without feeling any conflict around if I could possibly be exposing my clients to something dangerous. For those of you on the fence about telehealth, I thought I would share some pros with you!
These are just simple things that were fun today. The most important reason to continue with telehealth is that you don’t need to cancel your personal growth just because everything else in our world is cancelled. You can still work on yourself, how you are managing the unknown of this situation, and find support. Plus, we are all not sure how long this situation will last and it is going to be important for all of us to schedule in self-care. I feel that many parents in our world who are suddenly home schooling while working, are going to feel the pressure to be in survival mode throughout this situation. I would encourage you to consider the harm and stress of that. Carving out an hour a week to find support and a time for you, is most likely going to be crucial in maintaining this situation as long as we need to. We at Thrive would be thrilled to help any Californians during this time and are no longer limited to the bounds of who can drive to our office. We are hopeful that this will help extend the people we are able to help, particularly during a time of such challenge and uncertainty in our country. We are even working on strategies of things to do with younger kids in telehealth and ways to continue our work with the whole family! From our Thrive family to your family, we hope everyone is hanging in there and we look forward to supporting you! At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy via video sessions, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL. We will be posting ongoing information to support our families and community during the Covid19 pandemic. Please stay tuned and let us know if there are questions we can help answer!  By: Dr. Erica Wollerman Wow. Things have been moving at lightning speed for the past week! In light of the challenges families and parents are facing as many of them, especially in our community in San Diego, are being asked to work from home and care for kids who are now home for the next three weeks unexpectedly. I know I, as a business owner and mother myself, have been feeling the pressure and stress lately and thought it might be helpful to write a post about how parents can support their kids during this time. I felt this was important particularly because even young children will sense something is going on due to being able to feel the anxiety and stress their parents are feeling. In a time like this, where everything feels out of control, I think it is important to consider that what we can control is our reactions and mindset. I believe that this is going to be the most important way to support your child also. Here are some of my thoughts about how parents can set the tone for the coming weeks in their family: Try to stay calm I know, I know, this is like asking the impossible of people right now! I know parents are worried about their health, their kids, maybe even their aging family members as well as finances, how this is going to impact our world long-term, and just how they are going to survive the next few weeks or months. I know. I feel all of that stress and anxiety too, believe me! What I realize though is that the way we handle this situation is going to significantly impact how our kids manage it. If we are able to model healthy coping in an unmanageable situation, consider how much our kids will learn about coping from us! Plus, they might cope better even now - which is a win for all of us. I believe the first step is to recognize that none of us, I repeat, none of us can control this situation anymore. All we can do is try to manage our response and keep our cool to some extent around our kids. Of course you are worried and scared and it's great to acknowledge that and to even share it with them, but to also give your kids a message that we are in this together and you will still do everything you can for them. Consider the positives I know that this situation feels dire and is dire for so many people. I would NEVER EVER say that this is in any way desirable or a good situation for us as a country and in our world. However, I think that our mindset really impacts how we experience something so I would encourage you to find some positive in this. Maybe it is that you were hoping to work from home in your job and now you have the opportunity to show your boss you can do so. Maybe it is that you were feeling like you needed more time together as a family and less structured time with activities. Maybe it is that you needed time a home to accomplish some things (I might even potty train my toddler if we end up home for a long stretch!). Even when talking with your kids, help them notice the positives of communities coming together to help the least strong of us get through this. In every disaster and crisis, there are going to be heroes and it is up to us to point them out to our kids and to ourselves. Please don’t ignore the fact that this is all very scary and serious, but let’s not focus too much on that part as it will not help us through it. We need to bond together and get through this with the least panic and anxiety as we can. Set your expectations appropriately Please be mindful of what you are asking of your child. If you are expecting them to sit at home all day with you while you work, that might just be asking too much. If you are expecting to get as much done as you usually would with a younger child home now, you might be expecting too much of yourself. Be mindful that most of our frustrations come from unmet and unspoken expectations and we can avoid them by going into unknown territory like this situation by setting the bar low. Consider ways to bond and connect as a family If we are going to be home more, I think it is helpful to think of how to enjoy that time. I know at my house, we have been enjoying a less structured schedule this weekend and spending a lot of time letting our toddler guide play rather than squeezing in activities around errands. We have been spending time creating new games and exploring toys that we hadn’t played with in a while. Try to focus on enjoying this time we have together and find a way to be a team with your partner (if you have one), or with your kids. We are going to get through this together! Remember that your child is probably scared too. We need to be mindful of how much information we give them about what is happening and what we need to do to help buffer that information. We have had children at our office who are very worried and feel like they might die. Try to reassure your kids that we are doing everything we can to protect all of the members of our society and try not to focus on the fear too much. Also, remember that kids do not often say they are scared; they might act out, become distant, become overly controlling, or act in other ways that can be really frustrating for parents. I know this is hard and parents are already stressed but we need to have some grace. For ourselves and for our kids. Give everyone some grace We will get through this situation as best as we can but I am sure we will make mistakes along the way too. When parents are stressed, those mistakes are often in the way we respond to our kids when they are struggling. Making sure you repair things if you get overly upset with your child is more important than ever. It’s okay to let them know you are worried and possibly reacting in ways that are not helpful too. It’s okay to explain that you are worried because we have not experienced something like this before and the unknown is scary for most people. Normalize the fact that they are probably feeling the same way and connect with them through the shared experience. Let them know you will do everything you can to make sure your family is okay and that it is going to be okay because you will get through it together. This is a great time to let them know all feelings are okay and understandable. Of course they are frustrated and angry that they can’t play with their friends but they might also be happy that they have extra time to play at home. This is a great time to teach them to make the best of things and about how to interpret others’ actions with generosity. These are challenging times for our community. Let’s try to be mindful that everyone is struggling with fears and some may cope by well, buying all the toilet paper out there. Some other may cope by living their life as though nothing is going on because it is just so scary to consider our lives are changing as we know it. As parents, it is up to us to try to find the middle ground and acknowledge the fears and challenge we are facing but to communicate a message that we will rise above this and cope together. Yes, this is hard and yes, we do not know what exactly is going to happen, but we know we will figure it out together. That is the message we all need to hear right now, especially the littlest of us! At Thrive, we will continue to support our clients and any new clients during this time of crisis via telehealth (video sessions). Call us today if you would like to discuss this as an option! At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL.  As our readers may have noticed, I have been particularly focused on writing about parenting teens recently. While there are many reasons for this, including my passion for supporting teens and their parents, another reason is that teens are often particularly difficult to parent. So, the next part of our blog series is going to address just this topic. Each week I will share a tip in detail about how to parent your teen more effectively. Today, I want to share more about the foundation of parenting a teen (at least in my eyes). To me, the most crucial part of parenting teens is that you lead with your connection and relationship with them. As a therapist who specializes in teens, I can’t tell you how often teens complain that their parents seem to only care about what they are doing, rather than who they are and what they are learning about themselves. I believe that the most important tip I can give parents is to work hard to connect with your teen in a subtle but present way. This is one of those areas that can be so tricky to get right, but very valuable if you can manage it! See, I know that teens are super prickly people and one day they want to hang with you all the time and think you are actually not a horrible person. And then the next, they seem like they hate you. It is so hard both to receive this inconsistent feedback but to also manage your own emotions and reactions in the relationship with them. Especially if you are parenting a teen who is more difficult than you were yourself as a teen. This inconsistency can just be so frustrating and hard to relate to if your own transition to adulthood was a bit smoother. I want to mention that it is actually an important developmental step for teens to start pushing their parents away. This is all a part of them individuating and becoming their own people who will move out of your home (on the particularly prickly days I am sure this is a goal you can get behind!). It is totally normal for your teen to vary daily in how much they want you involved in their life and totally normal for you to feel frustrated by this inconsistency. However, it is crucial to try and handle your feelings about this privately as teens do not often respond well to their parents telling them just how difficult they are making their lives. Teens are pretty self-centered (we call it ego-centric) by nature and this is a part of their brain development to be that way. So, they really aren’t going to relate much to their parents’ experiences particularly if their parents are sharing their experiences in any way that sounds like a guilt trip or like it is all about them! So, how do I connect in a subtle but present way? Let’s call this one, the 3 C’s:
What do I do if my teen keeps pushing me away? I don’t know if I can underline or say this enough. Just keep showing up. Be there, present in a caring way but not overbearing. If they get in the car with you and don’t want to talk, see if they want to just listen to music or allow them to be quiet. I have found that parents are often so interested in connecting that they don’t give their teens enough space. This is a crucial part of parenting teens, showing up to connect through consistent, caring, and compassionate parenting but also letting the teen guide things a bit. If they want to talk about anything, I would listen. And don’t lecture. Just listen and keep all your super helpful parenting advice to yourself sometimes. If they don’t want to talk, give them space. Don’t force it as that rarely works at this age. Let them know you are there and you care and all the times you have listened and connected using the tips I’ve already shared, will lead them to want to share with you sometimes. Remember, it is totally normal and natural for teens to have secrets and boundaries and to share limited info with parents. That’s okay. Just try to be there for them as best you can while you meander this often difficult road to adulthood. If you would like to talk more about parenting your teen with a Thrive therapist, contact us today! We love talking about how to increase positive connections between teens and their parents. At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL. |
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