Thrive Therapy Blog

Grateful for our Thrive Team!

11/26/2019

All the reasons why I love working with each and every one of the therapists at Thrive!
By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

I had the distinct honor of being given an award last Friday by a dear colleague of mine, Dr. Julia Rosengren. Julia was given the responsibility of choosing someone she wanted to publicly honor in our San Diego mental health community and I was flattered that she chose me! In our line of work, it can be rare to be publicly recognized for what we do and the differences we can make in our communities. The whole event nearly brought me to tears it was just so kind, thoughtful, and uplifting. At the event, they asked those of us being honored to “pay it forward.” This led me to think about not just the many colleagues I respect, admire, and cherish in our community but the colleagues that I am lucky to work with at Thrive. My team, my favorites really J

So, I thought I would follow up my gratitude post from last week with a gratitude post all about them to share with all of our readers just what makes Thrive such a special place to be and work.

Angela Bianco, ASW
I have so many things I could say about Angela but most of all I am grateful for her ability for introspection and experiential learning. Angela has been such a gift as an employee as she is just so creative and talented at helping all of us access deeper parts of ourselves. Though she only works with us a small amount, she brings huge value to our team.

Dr. Maria Fowlks
When I think of Maria, I can’t help but think of all the times we have laughed together. She has been a guiding light for me especially in my own transition to being a working mama. Maria is someone who is just all heart and gives everything to her friends, her family, and her clients. She is fierce in the most loving and compassionate way and I am honored to have her in my life!

Jennifer Gonzalez, LMFT
Jennifer was my first therapist that I hired who I was not supervising and who I did not know before interviewing her. I am SO grateful for her and that I took that step! She has been such a rock for me since we started working together. She is someone that I can count on to be a grounding presence of support, compassion, and leadership. The more we work together, the more I value Jennifer and the ways we balance each other out!

Panicha McGuire, LMFT, RPT
A colleague once told me that Panicha is “such a light in the world.” I have to say, I agree. She cares with her whole heart and truly wants to help everyone she meets. She is also business minded and ambitious in what she hopes to do at our office – which is so nice for me! I can always count on her for more ideas and ways to help more clients in our community!

Lauren Spinelli, LCSW
Lauren is one of the warmest and kindest people I have ever known. She brings a sense of joy to everyone she works with and can just light up a room with her energy and joy. She has a way of making everyone at the office feel seen and cared for while also laughing off the challenges of our job.

Anoushey Nazir Khan, AMFT
All I can say about Anoushey is one of the most kind and grounding people I have known. She is truly gifted in her ability to bring a sense of calm and warmth to every situation she is in. She was our most recent addition to our clinical team and after meeting her, we felt sure that we were complete as a clinical team!

Special Shout Out to our newest addition – Jessica Felix-Acuna
Jessica is our most recent addition at Thrive and is our new administrative assistant. I already have been appreciating her willingness to dive in and take things on to help us all out.

As you can see, I am truly lucky to be part of such an amazing team. We spend so much of our time together supporting each other as well as laughing together and just enjoying our time. I can’t help but think that this is how every workplace should be! I know it would not be possible without teach and every one of them. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all for making Thrive what it is and making my dreams of owning a group practice with a great work environment a reality!

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Gratitude, even when our kids are struggling

11/21/2019

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By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Around this time of year, the idea of being thankful and grateful seem to be pretty popular. While I am definitely a believer in practicing gratitude and even developing family practices around gratitude, I think there is an area we can all practice gratitude in that is often missed. This is with our children.

Like I said, I do think that practicing gratitude with our children is incredibly helpful for them and for us. But what I want to talk about today in this blog is practicing gratitude FOR our children.

Often, I find that by the time parents have reached out to me for support either for themselves in parenting or for their child(ren) or teen(s), they have become quite overwhelmed, frustrated, and sometimes even kind of fed up with their kids. Similar to couples therapy, where often couples call when it is seeming to be “too late” for their marriage, parents call when they feel there is nowhere else to turn for their child or teen to get help. Then, they call us with a HUGE list of things that they would like their child/teen to work on. They need to eat better, show better behavior, clean up after themselves, do their homework, be respectful, work on their social relationships, work on their family relationships, play video games less, play outside more – and the lists go on and on sometimes.

While I think this is a totally relatable and understandable situation to find yourself in, I think that we do not necessarily talk about how to shift the dynamic that can happen in a family when it seems that parents are focused more on what their child/teen needs to work on and less on who they are and how great they are already. Practicing gratitude for our children and who they are in an active way each day can certainly help shift that attitude and somewhat negative dynamic.

I would encourage any parent who is feeling frustrated with their child or teen to consider trying this out. Take aside 10 minutes a day to make a list of 10 different things they are grateful for about their child. Perhaps try this out for 21 days (as that is the number of days research shows to be habit forming) and see if it shifts your perspective and even your relationship with your child. It would be even better if you keep going after the 21 days and if you share your list with your child/teen!

What I find is that often, a child who is struggling KNOWS they are struggling and difficult to be around even if they won’t admit it to their families. The more parents focus on the challenges a child is having, the more the child feels like the “problem” child. Expressing and showing gratitude for the things they do well but also who they are as a person helps to teach them that they have worth outside of their accomplishments and that they are more than their areas of difficulty. This is valuable beyond measure in our world so focused on what we do and accomplish!

We at Thrive wish you and your families a very happy holiday season! Our blogs will be posted less frequently this time of year but we will do our best to keep them coming as much as we can!

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.

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Parenting Teens Blog Series: Focus on Happiness and Achievement

11/13/2019

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By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

As a therapist, I find it fascinating that parents often tell me that they just want their kids to be happy. In our culture as a whole, we are immensely focused on happiness as well as achievements. I think parents are often surprised when I tell them that these are actually not my first concerns or priorities when it comes to their children and their mental health. Of course, it is nice if people feel happy. However, I prefer that we focus on helping children and teens become resilient, resourceful, kind, compassionate, responsible, and emotionally aware people. I will add on that I hope for all of them that they find success in whatever way they define it.

In my eyes, happiness is the wrong thing to focus on. And achievements are even more wrong. Here’s why…

Happiness:
I have many issues with the focus on happiness but I will try not to bore you with a lengthy description of all of them here! My big issues are as follows. Happiness is not a permanent state. Happiness is not something you can check off on a list of things to do. Happiness is an amazing, but often fleeting, emotional state that is while lovely, not realistic to last very long at all. When we focus so much on helping our kids be happy, I believe that we may forget to teach them that it is entirely okay and needed at times to feel other things. More uncomfortable things like sadness, disappointment, frustration, anger, loneliness. Our enjoyable emotions (like happiness) are the flip sides of the same coins as our less enjoyable emotions (like sadness). One does not exist without the other and the message that any one emotion is most important, skews our perception of all emotions and their role in our lives.

Emotions are so important for us to experience and this includes all of them, not just the pleasant ones. Emotions are cues to our environment and can be extremely useful depending on the situation. For example, your anger might help you recognize you are in a situation in which you are being mistreated or taken advantage of. It might be important to use your anger to help you muster up the courage to leave that situation. If you’ve been taught that the only okay emotion is happy, it might be harder to identify, access, and express that anger as you might naturally repress it and avoid it.

Achievement:
The focus on achievement in our society worries me as well for slightly different reasons. I believe that when we focus too much on achievement and productivity, we give our children the message that their worth and value is in their accomplishments, rather than in who they are as people. While they are performing well, this will work out okay for them. But when that stops or something shifts for them, they will no longer feel that they are worthy people. It is so important that we show our children unconditional love and appreciation just for their existence in our lives. We need to tell them that they matter, no matter what they do or don’t do. Our love should never be contingent on achievement.

As a culture, we all could relate to our emotions and our achievements (or lack thereof) a bit better. I believe that it is incredibly important for parents to work on their own relationship with their emotions and their achievements so that they can work on passing down messages that they want to pass down to their children, rather than unhelpful ones like “the most important thing is to be happy,” or “you are as good as your accomplishments.”

We could pass down more messages like:

“You are important”
“I will love you no matter what choices and path you take in life”
“All of our feelings are okay, even the tough ones”
“Feelings will come and go, as will our achievements, but who we are lasts forever”
“We are human BE-ings, not human DO-ings. It’s okay to just be sometimes”

If these are not the messages your teen is receiving from you, I invite you to consider how you might communicate these things to them - or call us at Thrive so we can help you and your teen.

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Parenting Teens Blog Series: Pressure of College Admissions

11/5/2019

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By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Did you know that there is a topic that comes up with every teen, and some pre-teens, that I work with? One topic, with nearly every client in this age range. You might be tempted to think that I am referring to sex or friendships or how much they hate their parents. Nope, that’s not even close. College admissions comes up across the board with every single kid I work with. Not just the super high performing ones but even the ones who are clawing their way, or napping their way through high school.

I find it fascinating that not only does every kid talk about this, but most of them feel some level of pressure to get into an Ivy League or very competitive school. This is even with kids who would not necessarily even enjoy that level of education as well as those whose parents have told me in no uncertain terms that they absolutely have not put this pressure on their kids (and I truly believe them!). I have come to the conclusion that the pressure of college admissions is essentially in the air we breathe. Any kid attending school is hearing very early on about how to strategize their admissions for college to optimize success. I have kids who are playing sports they hate, completely overscheduled, not sleeping to take more advanced classes, and are so stressed out and exhausted by graduation that I can’t help but wonder, what are we doing? I wonder this particularly when talking to my colleagues who work in college counseling centers and who are telling me that the students they see are more stressed out, burned out, suicidal, and prone to crises than ever before. I repeat, what are we doing??

While I recognize that this is a totally systemic issue in our country that is not actually led by or driven by MOST parents, I believe that we really need to take stock of what is happening and consciously choose how we respond. We need to really sit with the idea that our teens fundamentally believe that their entire life and future is determined by their high school choices and the college they attend. I believe that we live in a world of dualities. Yes, our choices even in high school are important. No, they do not have to define our world, future, and identity. Yes, we should strive for high achievement. No, our worth does not depend on our achievements. We live in a world where teens are struggling. The pressure they are facing is daunting and leading to increasing rates of anxiety and depression as well as suicide.

Every teen that I work with needs to hear the following things from their parents as well as their teachers and anyone else involved in their education, development, and daily life.

You matter, regardless of your grades, achievements, and standardized test scores
I will love you and support you no matter what happens
All paths in life are valuable and okay – not just those involving college
The most important thing is that you enjoy what you do
Choose things you love and follow that path – don’t do things just to put on college applications
Your worth is not dependent on academics, college, or any form of achievement
It is all going to work out in the end
I’m proud of you
I love that you are (insert a quality not related to school or academics)

If these are not the messages your teen is receiving from you, I invite you to consider how you might communicate these things to them - or call us at Thrive so we can help you and your teen. As the person who listens to teens daily, please believe me that this is important and that they want more reassurance from you than they will ever let on.

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Grateful for our Thrive Team!

All the reasons why I love working with each and every one of the therapists at Thrive!
By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Gratitude, even when our kids are struggling

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Parenting Teens Blog Series: Focus on Happiness and Achievement

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Parenting Teens Blog Series: Pressure of College Admissions

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Blogs from the Thrive Family!

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Call Today! 858-342-1304

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Grateful for our Thrive Team!

All the reasons why I love working with each and every one of the therapists at Thrive! ​By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Gratitude, even when our kids are struggling

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Parenting Teens Blog Series: Focus on Happiness and Achievement

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Parenting Teens Blog Series: Pressure of College Admissions

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Blogs from the Thrive Family!

Categories

Archives

Call Today! 858-342-1304

Contact Us

All the reasons why I love working with each and every one of the therapists at Thrive!
By: Dr. Erica Wollerman