Thrive Therapy Blog

Thrive in the Media!

3/18/2019

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Since I am at times quoted in different articles, I thought it would be fun to post all of those articles in one place! Check out the following articles, videos, and posts about Thrive Therapy Studio since we started 2 years ago!
Here is our feature in SDVoyager which talks about the beginning of Thrive and my vision in creating our practice.
Here are some tips about homework completion for parents, as soon on the website Learning Success System.
Check out this video where I present about Parenting with Anxiety to parents at a local private school!
In this article, I shared my thoughts about how it seems that people are always "fine" in response to being asked how they are doing.
Check out my contributions to this Romper article, discussing how spoiling your kids affects them later in life!
This article discusses social media use and those who don't necessarily want to use it.
Check out my thoughts about divorce and how parents can mitigate its' effects for teens in this article!
And this article highlights Thrive's accomplishments in our first year of being a group practice!

Call today to see how Thrive can help your family!

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/cvGx5n.

Parenting and Anxiety Blog Series (Part 3)

3/7/2019

The Dark Side of Parenting Anxiously
By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

For our final blog in this series, I would like to continue expanding our discussion of anxiety and parenting to explore what happens when we parent in such an anxious and possibly controlling way. As noted in the previous blogs in this series (check them out here and here if you missed them!), modern parents receive an overwhelming amount of information about parenting and this information combined with the belief that we control our child’s fate leads many parents to feel very anxious about parenting. When you combine parents who feel pretty anxious about parenting with the idea that we can curate our children to be different, it is my observation that this can lead to parents being very controlling and micro-managing of their children’s lives and choices.

I can completely relate to why parents want to control their children’s lives. Modern culture tells us, pretty much daily, that the world out there is scary, more competitive than ever, and that resources are scarce. Parents genuinely care about and love their children and just want to give them the very best chance to be successful in this world. So, they often work very hard to help them develop all the skills they might need to be successful and accidentally avoid having their child learn tough lessons along the way. What starts as bringing a forgotten lunch to school becomes bringing homework, which then can even become doing homework. Even worse is that as kids get older, doing homework can become applying to college for them or even applying to jobs for them.

One challenge I see is that we don’t really want to accept that we actually have very little control over our own lives, let alone our kids’ lives and futures. We love to believe we can make sure our kids will be okay and the truth is, we can’t. There are no guarantees in this world and I find this to be something incredibly difficult for many people to accept, especially when it comes to the wellbeing of their children.

Underneath this hope that we as parents can “curate” our child to be all the kinds of success we hope for, is a more subtle form of avoidance. Essentially, by believing we are responsible for everything our child will do in their lives, we avoid feeling anxious about their outcomes. Control is often a mechanism of anxiety management and relinquishing control and acknowledging just how little we do control in our lives, especially as parents, is incredibly uncomfortable.

Another challenge is that if we let our children grow accustomed to us rescuing them all the time, they don’t learn how to rescue themselves and as time goes on, the potential consequences get much bigger and more problematic. A forgotten lunch is a pretty easy problem to solve but getting kicked out of college is pretty tough to recover from. This is why I often advocate for parents starting early with setting boundaries and helping their child(ren) learn to tolerate, face, embrace, and recover from failures they may experience. We can support them along the way, but we need to do better at letting them find their own solutions.

So where does this leave us? As parents, I think it is important to recognize our own experience and notice if we are feeling anxious about our child’s future and how that might impact our parenting approach. We need to consider what our child’s needs actually are and how we can help them develop more skills and resilience without obsessing about it and feeling that it is our responsibility.We can stop taking all the accountability for how our child’s lives turn out and let them make more choices that lead to different outcomes, positive and negative. Most of all though, we can learn to surrender to the uncertainty of parenting and our world and accept that while we can’t control a lot, we can always work to control how we handle things and react.

Parenting Tip of the Day: Accept that we can’t control how things turn out for our kids. Control less. Let them develop more on their own and stop having them be the gage of our successes or failures.

Thank you for reading our Blog Series on Parents and Anxiety! I hope you enjoyed it!

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/cvGx5n.

Parenting and Anxiety Blog Series (Part 2)

3/1/2019

The Curated Child
By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

As discussed last week in our first blog of our Parents and Anxiety Blog series (check it out here if you missed it!), one reason why I believe that parents are much more anxious parenting in our modern world is that we have so much advice and opinions about how to raise our child(ren). Not only do we not have strong foundations of a more central “American” parenting style that we all can believe in, we have what seems like millions of books, blogs, and opinions out there.

For this blog, I wanted to talk about another effect of all of these opinions. Many of these books and articles give the message that if parents just did “x”, their kid would turn out a certain way. For example, if you just phrase your praise correctly, your child will be internally motivated towards rewards. I think the challenge of this is twofold. One, parents have the pressure of feeling that everything that happens for their child is completely under their control as parents. Two, we genuinely seem to believe that we can curate our child. We can decide that there are qualities we want them to have and then almost force them to have them by our own actions and choices.

While I think a lot of this advice is well intentioned and probably extremely helpful, in our competitive world of child rearing, it is also only increasing a sense of anxiety and sense of guilt when things don’t turn out how we had hoped. For example, some children struggle with frustration tolerance and grit even though their parents are doing and saying all the “right” things to help them develop these traits. I meet with parents who are often doing “all the right” things and their children still struggle. Unfortunately, this leads parents to feel a lot of guilt and often, shame, around their child, parenting, and identity as a parent.

The challenge here is that the advice we are getting is usually very general advice that completely ignores the nature component of the nature v. nurture debate. And while as a therapist, I do believe that nurture is very clearly important, I also believe that it is not everything. The way our children are wired really does matter and lead them to make different choices. For example, some children learn well by being told information. Many others just seem to need to learn by doing themselves, or the “hard way” as some adults would call it. All of our personality traits that make us who we are impact our later choices and sometimes, no amount of parenting differently is going to affect that course.

I wanted to discuss this today not because I want to tell parents to stop trying to help their children develop different traits. I want to instead reduce the pressure that the parents might feel to have their children be the gage or report card of their parenting successes. I meet with amazing parents all the time who have children who are struggling. I fundamentally believe that a parent’s success cannot be judged by their children’s success.

Parenting Tip of the Day: We need to judge our parenting choices by our own views of how we feel we responded to our children and by how well we followed our own personal and family morals and values – not by our child’s outcomes or successes.

Check out more in our final Parents and Anxiety Blog Post next week! Thanks for reading!

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/cvGx5n.

Parenting and Anxiety Blog Series (Part 1)

2/20/2019

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

I recently gave a presentation at a local private school about parenting children with anxiety. As a result, I reflected a lot on not only why our kids and teens are so anxious and stressed, but why we as parents are so anxious and stressed!  I believe that it is a combination of factors and plan to discuss the different elements that I see in this blog series about Parents and Anxiety. The first element I’d like to explore is that we have a lack of central, agreed upon parenting beliefs in our culture.

As Americans, we don’t seem to have any sense of what parenting approach really works best overall. We have so much advice and differing opinions that it really is overwhelming. This has always been a concern of mine, particularly after living in France as a nanny when I was younger where they definitely have more central beliefs that people use to guide their parenting. However, as a new mom myself, this has become so much more apparent. I still remember feeling overwhelmed with questions and uncertainty (and honestly still am at times). I would have a running thought process in my head that sounded like this… Am I going to be an attachment parent? Do I believe in “crying it out?”  What will people think if I don’t attend to my child’s every need? What will they think if I DO tend to every need?  Am I encouraging this behavior?  Is it all my fault? Am I a bad mom if I do it this way? And the list just could go on and on and on of questions and thoughts I have had.

Interestingly enough, as a parent consultant, I routinely work with parents on their parenting approaches and helping them match their parenting style to their child’s personality for a best fit approach. In my professional life, I’ve read tons of parenting books and still felt like I should buy more, read more, and do more for my own son and parenting experience. I’ve always been a perfectionist but parenting my newborn seemed to really take it to a higher level of anxiety. The saving grace for me was that I had the experience working with parents and families for years to know that I was not alone in this experience.

So many of us don’t talk about this anxiety and our fears about our parenting to others though. We keep it in and then continually compare ourselves to everyone else. And we compare our messy lives and mistakes to everyone else’s Instagram or Facebook or Pinterest worthy posts and lives, not what is actually happening for them. And the truth is, none of our daily realities will ever measure up to everyone else’s curated posts!

I believe that parents are really struggling with anxiety rooted in the overwhelming amount of parenting opinions and information out there. And while I do blog about parenting myself, I recognize just how many voices are out there now especially with our Facebook feeds carefully tuned in for us to read more and more and more articles about just how we should parent so that our kids turn out okay. While I think a lot of the advice we can get is truly wonderful, we need to recognize that it is not one size fits all in parenting, especially American parenting.

I think that instead of reaching out for advice, we need to get really curious and seek more understanding in our families. We need to try to understand our child(ren), co-parent(s) (if we have one/or many), family dynamics, and ourselves so that we can customize our parenting approach to work as well as possible for everyone involved. This way we can parent in a way that feels right to us and feels like it might work for our children, rather than follow what other people are doing and what every parenting expert recommends. Research shows that we simply need to try to have a good fit between ourselves and our children in our families for them to thrive.  Looking inward at ourselves and our children is the way to determine how to improve the fit for all of us.

So my parenting tip today is to work on asking yourself first what works best for your kid and for you… and then trying to find advice that matches your family.

Check out more in our second post of the Parents and Anxiety Blog Series next week! Thanks for reading!

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/cvGx5n.

Number One Parenting Tip of 2019

2/10/2019

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

In my work with parents and their children and teens, I offer families a lot of advice and tips. The most important one though is pretty simple (at least in my eyes).

Learn who your child is and embrace them for that.

Okay, I should really elaborate more! I think it is so important for parents to know that they are going to go into the parenting experience with certain ideals and ideas of who they will be as parents and who their child/children will be as people. For example, if they were strong students, they might assume that their child will be too. Or, if they were very athletic and interested in sports, they might assume that this will be something they will be able to share with their child/children.

As a therapist, I can’t tell you how often I hear children and teens feeling misunderstood by their parents. Sadly, it is really often. And children and teens do not assume that this is because the parent has not processed their unconscious expectations… They assume it is because they are a failure, or not good enough, or stupid, or a disappointment, or that they really should do better but just can’t. Children and most teens just blame themselves and end up feeling inadequate when they know they are letting their parents down. Rarely do they understand that their parent is just struggling to release their own thoughts about parenting and who their child would/should/could be.

I believe that it is not only important to acknowledge whatever your thoughts, hopes, dreams might be about who your child is, but to also really try to get in touch with who your child actually is.Learn their strengths and try to foster them but also, learn about their challenges and love them through it. The more you can help your children accept themselves and treat themselves with love and kindness, the better adjusted emotionally they will be for whatever comes next in their lives.

Of particular concern in this topic area are the kids who struggle in school. Maybe they struggle with a learning disorder or inattention. Or maybe they struggle with motivation around academics or just desire other things in their future than college. This group of kids struggles significantly with self-acceptance, shame, and feelings of failure. I can only encourage their parents to embrace them and encourage them but also to let them know that they are more than their grades or academic performance. Every person has something to offer our world and not all of those offerings fit neatly in an academic box or pursuit. As parents, it is our job to break through the pressure to perform academically and help kids find their innate strengths, interests, and future.

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/cvGx5n.

Setting an Intention for 2019

12/26/2018

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

As many of you may know, around this time of year I like to set a word as an intention for the coming year. It is a practice that I have been following for about 5 years and have come to really enjoy and look forward to. I personally find it much more helpful than setting New Year’s Resolutions as I try to find a word that represents things that I would like to cultivate in my life. The most interesting part of the past five years in following this practice has been that, even on years where I didn’t think again about the word that I chose, I definitely grew in that area during that year.

Not to get too “woo woo” about this, but I definitely think that there is something to the idea of setting an intention as long as you are listening to yourself and what you need when doing so. Plus, my intention is never something super concrete or demanding like buying a house or having a baby. I always choose something that is really in my control and is more about how I approach situations and the world.

So, I wanted to share about the word I am choosing for the coming year as well as write a post encouraging those of you who follow our blog to also consider choosing a word. From what many of my clients tell me, this is a practice they really enjoy as well. So hopefully you will too!

Anyways, my word this year is going to be “Enough.” I wanted to have a guidepost to help remind me that not only am I enough (as a mother, a boss, a friend, a wife, person, therapist, etc.) but my life is enough. My teeny tiny rental house is enough. My three person family is enough. My life is not just enough, but it is really overflowing with joy and love and I wanted to remember that.

Another way that I plan to use this word is to help rein in my ambitions a bit. I am someone that is always thinking of the next thing… the next trip, adventure, business opportunity or goal. This sometimes leads me to struggle to feel that enough is enough. I worry if I am doing enough for my clients, my employees, my business, my family, myself, and the list goes on and on. So, I am going to work towards saying no just a little bit more and minimizing the demands I place on myself.

Honestly, this year feels more exciting than ever. Only after having my previous years of balance, strength, faith, gratitude, and abundance can I now have my year of “enough.” So, I encourage anyone reading this to give some thought to developing your own tradition each year of choosing a phrase, word, or some sort of guiding intention for your coming year.

If you would like to read past blogs about this topic as well – please check them out here and here!

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/cvGx5n

Life Reminders

12/15/2018

By: Lauren Spinelli, LCSW

It’s important to remember that every day can be meaningful. It’s truly a new chance to reflect, grow, and make small changes as we navigate through life. Over the years, I have jotted down little reminders, affirmations, quotes, and expressions that I've heard, read, or made up. They seem to really help me when I'm looking for more strength. I wanted to share them with you in the hopes that they will help you, too.

Stick to the present. Rather than worrying about the future or dwelling on the past, focus on what is actually happening now and what is actually in your power to do now. It’s important to understand that happiness does not lie in the past or the future. It lies in the present moment.
Pain is out of your control. Self-compassion is in your control.
You’re imperfect, like everyone else, and that's OK. Your self-worth is not dependent on an accomplishment, number, or status.
You have already overcome so many things.
You need to ignore what everyone else is doing and achieving. Your life is about breaking your own limits. You are not in competition with anyone else. Plan to outdo your past, not other people.
You are constantly changing; your world is constantly changing; everything you experience (physical, mental, and emotional) will come and go.
The longest relationship you’ll have in your life is the one with yourself. Other people will come and go, but you’ll be with yourself from birth until death. The sooner you decide to start being kind to yourself, the longer you have to live life supporting rather than undermining yourself.
Whatever it is that you’re going through, chances are there are thousands of others going through a similar experience. Being perfect is not what connects people. Vulnerability brings us closer together.
To ask for help is not a sign of weakness; it's actually a sign of strength, courage and intelligence.
Just breathe. You got this.

Lauren is welcoming new referrals and enjoys working with children, teens, and adults of all ages! For more information about her approach to therapy, check out her bio here!

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/cvGx5n.

Coping with Holiday Anxiety

11/28/2018

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Anxiety is a tough thing to experience during our usual schedules and lives, let alone during the high pressure and expectations of the holidays! The gift giving and receiving, pressure to make everything Pinterest Perfect, and family get togethers that are sometimes anything but jolly – is a recipe for increased anxiety and stress for all of us! So, in preparation for the festive holiday season, I thought it might be helpful to go through some ideas of ways to help manage stress this holiday season, particularly if you are a parent with anxiety.

Let some things go… I mean this in so many ways. Try to let go of your expectations of yourself and others but also let go of things that cause stress or even financial debt. Maybe make a list of all of the things you feel you need to do and events you need to attend and make sure the things you commit to are truly most important to you.
Focus on what matters to you and your family… What are your favorite holiday traditions and things you want to focus on this year? Often, we end up with a list of 10000 things we think we need to do, make, etc. but try to focus on just the top 5 things that are important to you or your kids.
Slow down… Find some time to just slow down this holiday season. Schedule in some high quality family time where you just relax together and play some board games or watch a movie. Not everything you do is going to be Instagram worthy and that is okay!

I know these tips are a bit easier to write than they are to do for many of us. I believe that the more we as parents can get in touch with our values and what is most important to us, the more we can slow down and do things that really matter. Plus, the more we are likely to enjoy them which means our whole family will be happier!

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/cvGx5n.

Why is Gratitude Such a Buzz Word?

11/17/2018

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

With Thanksgiving coming up next week, I thought it might be interesting to reflect in a blog about all the buzz around gratitude. I find that practicing gratitude is both personally and professionally very important, but also “all the rage” these days. It’s hard to find a self-care article that does not include practicing gratitude or to find a person that does not think they “should” practice gratitude.

So, what’s the deal with gratitude? Why is it so important? Here are some of my thoughts on the topic…

Perspective– I fundamentally believe that life is all about perspective. If we see things a certain way, not only do we seek out information to confirm that perspective, but we miss the chances to see things a different way. So, if we focus on the things in our lives we are grateful for, rather than our frustrations or challenges, we will most likely feel a bit happier and more at peace.
Reducing stress and anxiety– Interestingly, it has been shown that practicing gratitude can reduce stress and anxiety in only two weeks. How amazing is that!
Gratitude is not ignoring the unpleasant parts of life– Having a gratitude practice does not mean that you ignore the difficult parts of your life or try to focus on only positive and happy feelings. It means that you acknowledge those things but also acknowledge the other things that you are grateful for. Even when they are teeny tiny little things, they matter and simply thinking about them does wonders for your mental health!

One of the ways I think about practicing gratitude is as another way to bring awareness to the great things, while also holding space for the unpleasant things in life. A good metaphor for this is thinking about your life like a slightly cloudy sky. If you only focus on the clouds and rain, that is all you see but you miss the sunny parts and interesting cloud shapes! Gratitude can be the attention you give to the whole sky, instead of just the unpleasant patches of clouds and rain.

So, I encourage you to try out a gratitude practice this holiday season. Particularly if you are feeling stressed and tired by all the holiday events and activities! It’s honestly pretty simple… All you need to do is pick a time of day to focus on thinking of 3-5 things you are grateful for that day. You could write them in a formal gratitude journal or just reflect on those things, either way works and will help shift your perspective!

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/cvGx5n.

Why Parents Need to Apologize to Their Kids

10/28/2018

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Learning to own our mistakes and be held accountable for them has to be one of the most difficult and painful lessons in life. I also believe that it is one of the most important lessons, particularly for our children and teens. Often, accountability and honesty in light of mistakes and failure is a goal for parents for their children. However, we need to first model this behavior and make it a goal for us as parents. We need to recognize that we are going to screw up as parents, most likely frequently! And that when we screw up, it probably is going to hurt… We love our little ones more than anything but on a bad day, we yell at them or we say something we shouldn’t or we give them bad advice that well, goes badly for them. I could go on and on about the possible ways we are going to screw up. Newsflash parents, we aren’t perfect and we aren’t supposed to be!

Do we want to be perfect parents, yes. Of course we do! Interestingly though, that would be entirely counterproductive for our kids and teens to learn about failure, mistakes, repairing relationships, and coping with our own humanity.

So, when we fail, I encourage you to use it as a learning opportunity for yourself and for your kids. Own it. Acknowledge that you screwed up. And figure out how to fix it. Apologize, listen to your kid or teens side and experience, and let them know you recognize that you screwed up and will try to do better.

Imagine if we lived in a world where we were all a bit more skilled at this. It would be amazing and we can be the change that leads to that world. I believe we can do it!

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/cvGx5n.

Call Today! 858-342-1304

Thrive Therapy Studio
5230 Carroll Canyon Rd. Ste 110
San Diego, CA 92121

"Watch your thoughts,
They become words.
Watch your words,
They become actions.
Watch your actions,
They become habits.
Watch your habits,
They become character;
It becomes your destiny."

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Thrive Therapy Studio Therapists Offer Child, Teen, Adult, Marriage and Family Psychotherapy Counseling Services in San Diego, California.