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 I am a firm believer in gratitude practices, not just for individuals and adults, but for whole families. And while I am sharing this blog the week before Thanksgiving, I think we can practice gratitude all year long. Here are some of the favorite ways I have heard of families doing just that!
Something I try to keep in mind is also that how we approach spending money can impact gratitude and our feelings about what we have. Kids are much more likely to keep good care of their belongings if they are not easily replaced when something happens to them. So, when a child accidentally breaks a toy, it can be easy for many of us to quickly replace it (and often with Prime Shipping!). I would encourage you to consider waiting to replace things so that your kiddo can learn that when things break, it is not readily replaced. This can lead to more gratitude for the things we have. I hope this quick post is helpful for you and your family! In the days of easy technology and quick everything (2 hour delivery anyone?), it can be easy to fall into the trap of not remembering just how wonderful these things are. I personally keep a gratitude list daily where I write 10 things about my life or my day that I am grateful for. I notice that this practice helps me notice more throughout the day that is going well or enjoyable and I end up enjoying those moments more. Plus, I reflect on the day before bed in a positive way which is helpful in terms of managing stress particularly during a year like 2020. 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.
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 So often, there are messages all around us that we take in unconsciously. These are messages about gender roles, what life “should” be like, perhaps what people “should” be like, and even more insidious messages about people who are either different from us or who live their lives differently than we do. The idea of understanding our unconscious biases and “programming” seems to be a hot topic and popular idea lately particularly with the rise in awareness about the divisions in our country and resulting reckoning many of us are having about race and privilege. Interestingly for me as a psychologist, helping people work on their programming is something I have done for a long time. We learn in undergraduate psychology classes that we are influenced easily by the world around us. I remember this being discussed a lot around topics like violence in the media as well as body image. However, in my day to day work with clients, the topic of messages and narratives we have taken in from the world, our parents, our communities, the media, etc. comes up all the time. The truth is, on a personal level, we all have some unconscious ideas of what we should or should not be doing or what we should or should not be like. The programming around being “good” or “bad” is something that I have talked about for years as I find it to be so problematic for kids and teens to feel shame around their mistakes or challenges (which is often what “bad” behavior is). If you are someone who is interested in doing deep work about your unconscious bias or programming you might have taken in about others or yourself, good news, therapists are here for you and can definitely help. If you want to try to do this work on your own, here are some suggestions to help you get started.
For example, my parents were not always great at managing my willful spirit as a kid. I mean, the book “raising a difficult child” was often on my mom’s nightstand and we had numerous power struggles a day. So, here I am years and many hours of therapy later plus experience working with parents and kids in therapy… you might think I would have this figured out and know just exactly how to approach my son, who is also quite willful. And here it is… I don’t. I think sometimes I do a great job at understanding him and sometimes, it is harder than I like to admit. I realized when he was a baby that I had this unrealistic expectation of myself that because I am who I am (therapist, fellow sensitive human, parent “expert”), I would never screw up particularly around managing his behaviors and emotions, or even just my reactions. And the truth is, nope. I screw up too. The important thing is that I know this is okay and have recognized that the shame I feel is just because I have programming around both being willful and sensitive as a child, but also around who I should be as a mom. All of these concepts are a lot to put in one blog but I wanted to try! I think it is so important that people not familiar with therapy can understand a lot of what those of us practicing deep work with our clients are working on week after week. Building self-awareness is honestly really intense and challenging work but so rewarding. I have seen so much growth and change not just in my clients, but in myself by challenging myself to become as integrated of a person as possible. If you would like help doing the same, please feel free to call us at Thrive! 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.  What does that even mean? Let me go back a bit to the beginning of my career in the field of psychology to share more about how I learned to relate to struggle, chaos, and challenges a bit differently. I still remember sitting with one of my first mentors and discussing some of the challenges I was seeing in the homes I worked in with parents of autistic children. I was at times so overwhelmed with the struggle I witnessed and the limitations of what I could truly do in the time I spent with them each week. This feeling of powerlessness in the face of humanity and deep struggle was something that was not new to me and was actually the reason I went to grad school at all. So, finding it yet again while I was in grad school, trying to learn how to fix things for people, was a surprise. You see, I was pretty young and pretty unfamiliar with how change actually works. My mentor, with so much compassion and grace for me and my immaturity in this area, had so many long talks with me about chaos. What he taught me was that chaos creates change. Change doesn’t occur in a vacuum where things are going so well that we just decide to make positive changes. Change often is bred on the wind of conflict, pain, and deep struggle. What he explained was that change is so difficult for us as humans, that we have to literally be forced into it by the nature of our situations being so deeply unmanageable or painful that we just have to change. This framework and way of thinking about struggle was different than I had been taught to think about suffering. You see, I, like most Americans, was taught to consider struggle something to overcome if not to avoid entirely. Even my deep and complicated feelings were considered something I should suppress or not have. I was never taught that our struggles, pain, feelings, and suffering are guideposts to help show the way towards something different. Towards change and new possibilities. Time and time again, I have seen this in practice. Chaos truly does lead to change. This is a belief that has helped root me in optimism about my clients, about myself, and about our world. I truly believe that by leaning into our challenges and simply just seeing them as messages about what we need or want to cultivate in our lives, we can lean more strongly towards change in a positive or healthy direction. This is the hope that roots me even when our world feels so tumultuous, challenging, and overwhelmingly chaotic. Days like today, Election Day, this is my mantra. Chaos creates change. 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.  For so many parents, it is so hard to cultivate a mindset of positivity towards ourselves. Particularly for those of us who are super perfectionistic and are truly trying to achieve that super-parent life that we seem to believe everyone else is living. You know, doing all the things, all the time. It’s easy to feel like we are failing when our standards are unrealistic. I find that the pandemic has exacerbated this situation for so many of us and while in the beginning, I think it felt acceptable to release expectations and let our lives be a bit different - you know, messier, or less grinding towards goals - now, 7 months and counting, I think many of us have ramped up those expectations again. I think it is important to always keep in mind the fact that being hard on ourselves is the least productive thing we can do. You see, when we are hard on ourselves about everything and truly feel like if we are not perfectly doing everything that we are failing, we end up adding unneeded guilt and shame to our lives. These feelings not only take a toll on how we are feeling but they also add in a lot of emotional labor to engage in. We either spend time avoiding those feelings, projecting them onto others, or trying to heal them. I would suggest that our time is better used by spending it on working on the way we talk to ourselves. Rather than demanding more of ourselves all the time and being relentless in our guilt when we screw up, what if we talked to ourselves the way we would talk to a small child, baby, or even kitten or puppy? Most of us, particularly parents will be kinder to others than ourselves and using a dose of self-compassion can be infinitely more helpful than anything else in terms of helping us feel calm, grounded, and confident that we can do hard things. Here are some ideas for putting this into practice… “I see that you are struggling with that, let’s take a break and come back to it.” “It’s okay to be sad, overwhelmed, angry (etc.)” “What can we do to make this situation better” “You can do this” “Eventually, things will be okay” “This feeling is temporary” The more we can approach ourselves with loving, kindness the better we will feel. And guess what, then we can also approach our loved ones with even more loving kindness as well. Plus we are then modeling for them how to manage their emotions a bit more effectively! 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.  As the pandemic has progressed and for many has been either a process of very gradual expanding of our social networks and for others, a process of opening our lives back up and then reducing again, it has been really tough to know what to expect of events anymore. Particularly events like the holidays feel different right now. While I am not personally even the biggest Halloween fan, I found myself feeling a bit sad about Halloween and not being able to take our toddler trick or treating this year. I imagine that we are not the only family in this situation either! I was thinking about how our family has approached things as well as what other parents might be struggling with, such as how we handle the conversation with our kids about holidays and holidays not being what we expect or anticipate. I think one of the most important things we can do as parents is be clear about what our plans are. I think at this point, two weeks away from Halloween, most families should come up with exactly what they are going to do. Are they going to trick or treat in their neighborhood? Are they going to any small events? Are they dressing up at all? Are they going to the pumpkin patch? All of the things you would normally do should be considered to see if you plan to do them this year. Once you and your parenting partner(s) decide the plan, I think it is best to clearly share it with your kid(s) so everyone knows what to expect. Next up… we need to be really understanding about our kids’ feelings and spend time validating them and listening to how they feel about the change. Remember that a big part of holidays is the tradition around them and the expectation of the fun things we get to experience as a family. Whatever is different this year will likely be challenging in some way and we don’t want to brush off our kids’ feelings. Try asking them what they are really missing the most and see if it is possible to recreate it in a safe way! Finally, if there is anything in your conversations with your kids that comes up as safe alternatives to the usual plans that involve lots of people, try to see if you can work that into your plan. Perhaps you can trick or treat between a few neighbors houses over and over. Perhaps you can do some extra zoom calls or “boo” treat bags for friends. While this year is not going as we had hoped it would in January, I do think we are all getting a bit better at rolling with whatever life hands us! While we can hope the same of our kids, we need to be sure to allow them the space and time to be upset, sad, or disappointed when things don’t go how they want. They are kids after all and they have much less experience at managing expectations than adults, despite 2020 giving them so many opportunities to do just that! 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 know that might feel like a dramatic title but from what I am seeing and feeling in the world, I’m sadly not sure it is that off base or dramatic. So many of the people, particularly parents of young children, feel like they are just drowning. Drowning in zooms, drowning in snuggles, drowning in needs, demands on their time and attention and love. The list just goes on and on. We are also drowning in our emotions right now. I know the holidays coming up has brought up a new awareness of just how much we have had to give up or sacrifice for this pandemic and to try and protect ourselves and others. There are a lot of words for what we are feeling, pandemic fatigue, compassion fade, but most of us just feel plain exhausted and overwhelmed. And on the worst days, it’s hard to feel hopeful that we can get through this. Particularly for people with the most unsustainable situations. The parents who are juggling stay at home learning while also working from home. The parents of kids with special needs without the services they normally rely on for support. The teens and young adults who don’t know how long it will be until they can make more concrete future plans again. As a therapist, so much of what I see and am spending my sessions on are topics that are just not “easy.” And that’s in normal times! But right now, during a pandemic, sessions are so often about big systemic challenges we are dealing with that just feel unsolvable. Inequity… the pandemic… how can we possibly change the world when we are so tired from our day to day lives to do anything else? This is such a tough place to be right now and what I wanted to consider is a way to frame it differently. I think most of us recognize just how tough this is and have been using every possible coping skill to try and make it better somehow. However, I think that perhaps we aren’t really going to make it better. We are just going to endure and persist through this challenging time in our world. The analogy that I found myself reaching for this week in particular was that we are essentially all on sinking ships and we are just trying to plug as many of the holes as we can so that we can not sink before help arrives. You see, I don’t think it is realistic for our goal to be that we are going to be at pre-pandemic levels of happiness or joy or anything like that. I think we can hope for some days that are reasonably good and less days that are terrible. That seems like a doable and realistic expectation. And it’s also less overwhelming to think of the small things that we can do to fill our small holes causing our ships to sink. For me, I fill them with daily walks and gratitude practices, trying to stay present with my kiddo and new kittens, making lists of things to do but not being overly focused on doing them if I don’t have it in me, reading books for fun, and limiting my news and focus on the world. So, while I am not sure I have any real answers to the challenges we are facing, I propose that each of us may have within us some small answers to how we endure until we can actually solve more of these big picture problems. I think focusing each day on ways we can slowly stop our boat personally or our families boats from sinking might be a start! 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.  The world just seems like a tough place to be a person these days. Or at least our country does. Things are so divided and people really seem to believe that anyone not on “their team” is the true enemy and some sort of bad person. While I could probably go on and on a bit about the social psychology behind this (in group/out group bias anyone? Black and white thinking anyone?) OR about how this is all encouraged by social media, I think it might be more helpful to share a bit about how I try to make sense of things to help myself cope when things feel challenging. For me, the key is this… Even when the world feels like an awful place, I believe that people are doing the best they can in their situation. I try hard to remember that people are just people and that most people are genuinely trying to do the right thing, whatever they think that might be. The follow up is this… the best they can does not always look like the best that you think they should have been able to do or the best you believe you would have been able to do in their position. Sometimes the best you can do on one day is not the best you would be able to do on another day. As people, our performance, decision making, and general abilities are not always consistent from moment to moment. And for me, this is an important principle to think about more in reality and less theoretically. For example, when you hear a story about someone on paper making a mistake, it is easy to theoretically think, “well they should have done this.” Or it’s easy for a sports fan to be a critic of the plays called and the mistakes made that led to their team losing the game. However, it is a much different thing to be the person out there making those mistakes or decisions under pressure and with a million other variables that are going to impact performance. While I would most likely not be willing to bet that even a top performing player will always come through in the end when it counts, I would bet anything that they would try their best because they are working for something of significant value to them. The thing is that I also believe that people generally try their best to do the right thing… we just might not agree about what “right” means. Sports are easy examples because the goals are obvious - to win as much as possible. Life is generally more complicated than that. Our values and personal goals are not always so easy to communicate, identify, or even in our own awareness. Here’s what I have come to also believe given my line of work, there is always a reason why people do things the way they do. Plus, we are more alike than we are different. While this lens can be challenging at times, particularly in our current climate socially and politically, I find that this lens helps me make sense of things and helps me keep more of an open mind and a kind, compassionate hard with everyone even when we don’t necessarily agree about things. To help me with this, I try to ask myself what is the most generous or compassionate interpretation of this situation? Especially with the people I am closest to, I find that this is the lens that helps me understand them but also how we can connect and understand each other better. It's way better than creating a narrative in my head about how I am right and everyone else is wrong. And when I say it is better, I mean that it is better for me, my peace of mind, but also for my relationships. While we all face the upcoming turmoil that seems anticipated for the coming election season in addition to the unrest already at play in our world, I hope this is a helpful reflection for some of our readers! 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.  So often, our expectations in life just don’t quite work out. Especially during 2020! I find myself adjusting my own expectations a lot about our life, my family, parenting, and what I am able to accomplish. While this is stressful and at times challenging, I think it is extremely important to work on particularly since so little of this situation is truly in our control. The main thing we can control right now is how we cope and how we respond to the situations we are in. Most parents did not elect to become homeschooling, often simultaneously working, parents. This situation has just been thrust upon us and the feelings of frustration, despair, fear, anger, etc. we might have about this mess we find ourselves in are totally valid. I have been witnessing firsthand just how hard this virtual learning life has been for the families I work with, but also for those doing it in my personal life. While this situation is immensely challenging, one thing that I think can help is to work on adjusting our expectations of both ourselves and our children. While that might look different in different situations, and I honestly would expect it to, there are some steps to help walk you through this process.
While the process of letting go of what we would like our lives to be like can be difficult, most people feel a sense of relief when they realize they are trying to do something that is actually not possible. This usually can help us realize that if we approach the situation differently, we will most likely feel better about it. For example, we recently transitioned our son into a toddler bed and I kind of expected the transition to be smooth and for him to stay in bed all night. This way, I still would have my downtime in the evenings that I have come to rely on for self-care. As you can imagine, our son had his own ideas and it quickly became a game to launch out of bed at all hours. While we worked on a solution and ways to help keep him sleeping, I had to release my expectation that I would be “off parenting duty” after 8 pm. That just wasn’t realistic and caused more frustration for me to want something that was impossible for us for a period of time. I just accepted that this was a period of time where we might sleep less and tried to remember that it is a temporary season of life. While not fun, I do feel that changing my mindset was helpful and the only thing I could truly control. 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.  As I mentioned in past blogs, time has been an interesting element in my life since the pandemic began. In so many ways, time has slowed down. I should mention that prior to March, despite often encouraging families not to be overscheduled themselves, my family was pretty overscheduled. I would often tote my toddler to a playdate and then the children’s museum all before our mid-day nap. I think I was often afflicted with a feeling of restlessness of sitting still and just being. Despite my history as a play therapist, I struggled to just play at home and let Luca enjoy our time together there. I loved a good, overscheduled weekend. Time is much different for us now. Now that we have been living this life for about 6 months, I have found that there are still certainly many challenges… I mean, I don’t need the volume of plans I had before but I would love an occasional playdate or night out with my husband! In addition to the challenges, there have also been some real learning opportunities for me at least. Since I share so much of my parenting journey in this blog, I thought it would be helpful to share these thoughts too!
I hope this might help some of you who are also wading through the pandemic parenting part of our lives! My biggest goal is to always let parents know that they are not alone. We are truly all in this together and now more than ever, I believe we are all doing the best we can and that we are incredibly human and will make mistakes along the way. That’s okay. We can get through this one moment at a time! And of course, if you or your loved ones are in need of support, we are now accepting new clients throughout California via telehealth at Thrive! 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 can still remember the complex mix of emotions I felt after having my son, who is now 3. The love, adoration, and awesome responsibility of having this tiny human in our lives was overwhelming. That responsibility in the beginning at times manifested as fear. I still remember wondering why on earth anyone would trust me with this perfect tiny person… Surely there are more “adult like” adults around to take better, more perfect, care of him? I also remember thinking to myself, wow, if I am feeling this way as a person with decades of childcare experience plus a doctorate degree which I use daily to work with children, parents, and families… This is a crazy parenting world I am entering. I remember reflecting on parenting culture prior to having a child myself and having some semblance of understanding of the intense pressure on parents. But man it sure sank in once I had our son and felt the intensity of the weight of the pressure on parents myself. This pandemic has been, for me, most similar to either my very raw and emotional teen years or my new motherhood months. I have felt so much more aware of the responsibility I have of keeping my son safe but also keenly aware of his development and how each and every choice we make impacts him. It has been emotionally overwhelming at times and it has become easy to fall into the trap of thinking that someone out there must have the answers of how we get through this and protect our children from harm at all costs. I can recognize now the fear and sincere worry for his well being that has been underneath all of this. I also am the first person to say that parenting from fear is truly never the way to go. Our fears, particularly during a pandemic, need to be recognized, acknowledged, and then given the energy that is warranted. But no, we can’t live in the fear and we certainly don’t want our kids to either. This brings up the question, if keeping my entire family home in a bubble is not the thing to do, what should I try to do instead? This brings up an even bigger question for parents, what do our children really need from us, particularly now in a pandemic?
What all of this boils down to is that our kids need a parent who is emotionally connected and attuned to their experience to help them get through this situation as best we can. We need to help them feel safe and secure while not doing things we would normally do and this can be accomplished simply if we have released our own fears about “what if” and “what could be” and just live in the moment with them. We need to let ourselves know that, now more than ever, they just need us. They don’t need some different, more perfect version of us that can somehow fix all of this for them, they just need US. Our messy, emotional, challenged, tired selves. I am a big believer in the idea that there are no perfect parents but even more so now. None of us will weather this storm making perfect decisions and preventing every challenge. It is just not possible. All we can do is emotionally meet as many of our kids’ needs as possible and ride this out together. I have been enjoying a few podcasts recently that I wanted to mention here for any of our readers who are looking for more support in an audio version! Janet Lansbury - Unruffled Ask Lisa - The Psychology of Parenting Both of these present helpful parenting tips and tools while also understanding that parents are human and going to struggle, especially right now. This is a tough world to live in as a parent and we can only take it one day at a time right now. If you or your loved ones would like more support, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at Thrive! We have space for a few new clients and would love for that to be 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. |
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