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 By: Dr. Andrea SeldomridgeI like to think about the ways we think about emotions. Emotions are often labeled as good or bad, positive or negative. Instead of seeing emotions as this good and bad dichotomy, I like to refer to them as pleasant or unpleasant. This helps remove the idea that there are certain emotions that should be avoided, but rather, some just aren’t our favorite to feel. There is so much value to these unpleasant emotions too! They serve a variety of purposes and are so necessary to being a human. Dr. Marsha Linehan is a clinical psychologist who has done a significant amount of research on the functions and myths about emotions. There are several emotion myths (such as emotions being bad), but before I share those, I think it is important to understand the functions of emotions. They motivate us for action. Emotions push us to do things. For example, anxiety might help push a student to finish their assignment. Anxiety itself here isn’t “bad”, rather it just helps the student get things done. If we feel happy while doing something, such as feeling happy when exercising, it encourages us to engage in the activity more. They communicate something to others. Emotions result in facial expressions which can communicate a lot to someone in a very short amount of time, such as giving a smile or furrowing a brow. They communicate something to ourselves. For example, fear can clue us in that the situation we are in is not safe. Emotions are so important! They are constantly motivating us to action and communicating things to ourselves and others throughout the day. As I mentioned above, there are various myths about emotions that tend to cloud their importance. Below are some of the most common myths of emotions Dr. Linehan has written on.
Instead of viewing emotions as things that should be suppressed, I would encourage you to embrace them and be curious about them. I hope you are able to see the importance of emotions and ways they are part of what makes us human. To learn more about Dr. Linehan’s work, you can check out her DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets manual. You can also learn more about Dr. Linehan’s story and her development of Dialectical Behavior Therapy in her memoir Building a Life Worth Living. 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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 By: Dr. Andrea SeldomridgeSo your child made a mistake. Now what do you do? You may have seen it coming or maybe it was unexpected. Maybe their mistake will affect others. Your child might feel defeated, hopeless, frustrated, or angry. As adults, we know that there is always something one can learn from a mistake, but how can we help kids learn from theirs? Luckily, there are often several teaching moments parents can incorporate in these scenarios.
While making mistakes is rarely enjoyable, there are so many things we can learn from them! Helping children notice the opportunities, rather than them only seeing their disappointments or frustrations, can increase their hope for future outcomes. 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. Andrea SeldomridgeI have never liked making mistakes. This was always most prevalent for me in school. When I was in 1st grade, we had a spelling quiz each week. If you got a perfect score, you did not have to retake it. I have been told that most times I did not get a perfect score, I would cry. In 4th grade, I got my first D on an exam. I distinctly remember when my teacher told me and I could not stop crying as I was so frustrated with myself. However, there were other areas of my life that I was more than okay making mistakes in! Specifically, anything sports related. Playing kickball in P.E. class, I rarely kicked the ball far enough. I even remember when other kids would be upset with me that I was not a better teammate. But you know, it did not bother me! I just had fun and placed no pressure on myself to be perfect! I think for a lot of people, we have certain areas in our life in which we are hard on ourselves, whereas in others we can give ourselves more grace. I was always “good” at school, so when I messed up, I had a harder time handling it. Whereas with sports, I was proud of myself if I just got through the game. The only way I became better at handling the fact that I would make mistakes academically was just by making more mistakes. I had to get used to the fact that mistakes happen, even if I thought they should not. Childhood really is a great time for making mistakes! As adults, we at times want to shield kids from the negative results some of their mistakes might lead to. However, making mistakes is fundamental in development and there are some mistakes that might be worth letting them make to reach those developmental milestones. Here are a few reasons why it is important for kids to make mistakes.
Childhood is a great age to practice making mistakes, especially as the consequences of those mistakes often have smaller consequences than maybe some mistakes one could make in adulthood. Allowing your child to make mistakes while being able to receive your feedback and support can increase their self-confidence to try again. 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. Andrea Seldomridge“Be careful!” is a phrase that is commonly and frequently expressed at every park I’ve ever been to. Often I think it is warranted and can help keep kids safe. It reminds me of a time in 2nd grade that I wish I had been told to be careful. I had thought somersaulting down a slide was a good idea (spoiler: it was not a good idea, but I got some cool new eyeglass frames because of it). We always want kids to stay safe. As adults, we have become skilled at perceiving when a situation may be risky. When we tell kids “be careful”, we hope to convey a need to be more cautious or warn them of potential dangers. While we might be trying to help keep them safe, there are a few other things they might actually be hearing instead.
While there is a line between keeping your child safe and allowing them to try new things on their own, sharing your faith in them can in the end increase their trust within themselves to be safe and secure. In the times in which they do get hurt, you will have laid a good groundwork for them to share this with you, knowing that their parents have confidence in them that they will succeed. 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. Andrea SeldomridgeI usually associate risk taking with bungee jumping or skydiving. Those are both “risks” I doubt I will ever take, no matter how many times my friends say “it’s so worth it”. While I am not a fan of heights, I do think I have taken risks in other ways. I think about the times when I have moved to a new city by myself. There were risks that I would not make friends and risks that I would regret having moved. However, I was willing to take those jumps because I knew I could find a way to handle it. As an adult, it feels easier to tell myself to take a risk. I can gauge if the risk is too big or if it might be just big enough by the amount of risks I have taken in life so far. Children can benefit from taking risks too. There are definitely times that a risk is too big (like the time I tried to jump into the pool without my floaties “like the big kids”). However, appropriate risk taking can actually be really helpful in their development. Below I have shared some of the benefits of allowing kids to take risks.
While your child might not be begging to go bungee jumping, I would encourage you to consider what appropriate risks they could take that can help them continue to increase their self-confidence. By doing so, it can help increase their sense of agency as they move towards adulthood. 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. Andrea SeldomridgeWhen I think of anxiety as an adult, I think of stressful thoughts, racing hearts, sweaty palms, and being preoccupied with whatever I’m anxious about. As adults, we’ve had years to learn to improve our ability to identify what emotion we’re feeling. When you can identify it, it makes it a lot easier to navigate how to cope. Sometimes just being able to identify an emotion is relieving in itself. For kids however, it can be harder for them to identify and communicate what emotion they are feeling. It can be even more difficult because some emotions, like anxiety, can look like anything but anxiety! Below I have listed some ways of what anxiety can look like in kids that might differ from adults.
While this isn’t an exhaustive list, these are some of the most common ways anxiety shows up in kids. If your child is experiencing any of the above, it might be helpful to check in with them on their stress levels and just remind them that you are there for them to be a listening ear. 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. Erica WollermanAs parents, there is so much pressure on us to try to do everything right, perfectly, or as well as possible as we raise our children. I think this has a lot to do with how much information there is regarding parenting and child development that we have access to. Additionally, there has been a shift culturally with people relating challenges they experience in their life to the parenting they received as a child. As a therapist, this connection between past and present is often a topic in my sessions both with adults and often young adults. It certainly has been a topic of my own personal therapy sessions! Interestingly, since my clinical work also focuses heavily on parenting, and since I have become a mom and felt this immense pressure on parents myself, I also have a slightly different perspective on this tendency to expect parents to be perfect. I fundamentally believe that it is impossible to parent perfectly. I also don’t think that it is a goal we should even have, and not just because it is impossible to accomplish but also because it is actually not helpful for our children to have perfect parents. I know this might sound strange to some of you, particularly if you don’t read my blog often, but our children are not served well by being led by people who are doing things perfectly. You see, how to repair things with the people we love after we mess up is one of the most important things we figure out in our lives. How can we possibly learn how to do this if we have parents who never mess up and as such, never need to repair? So, parents, a crucial part of parenting is acknowledging and accepting that you will not be perfect and that you will inevitably screw up, possibly in big ways. Once you can accept this, you can hopefully also open yourself up to learning how to repair with your child when you do mess up. Perhaps you mess up by yelling in response rather than calmly explaining things to them. In this situation, the best thing to do is to reconnect and repair with your child once you feel calm. These moments are surprisingly simple, but can be challenging not to fill in with unnecessary words and emotion. The best strategy is to take a compassionate yet matter of fact approach and to explain, “yesterday when I yelled at you, I was wrong. I am so sorry and imagine you may have felt scared, upset, or sad. You have every right to feel that way. I am sorry for doing that and will try my best to speak to you calmly in the future. I love you and you do not deserve to be yelled at.” Another way to handle things in the moment is to stop yourself, slow down, and simply explain that you do not like the way you are responding to them and ask if you can “restart.” If you can easily reconnect, go for it! If your child is reluctant to reconnect and restart, allow them time to feel their feelings and find time later to acknowledge what happened and that you messed up, similar to the above situation. For many of us who had parents who never apologized or acknowledged their challenges, this is likely to feel very uncomfortable! The good news in this current parenting culture is that we are doing things differently so that opens us up to consider what we might have appreciated or what might have helped us as people when we were kids. Then, we can simply try our best to do that. And for those of us whose parents did not apologize, just imagine what it would feel like if your parent truly acknowledged the mistakes they made, your feelings, and allowed a conversation about that now. It would do wonders for your healing, growth, and relationship! We all have an opportunity to create this kind of family climate from this point forward. Let’s do it - imperfectly of course. 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. Andrea SeldomridgeAs the saying goes, there is no user manual that comes with having a child. However, the amount of parenting advice, either asked for or not asked for, begins being shared not too long after someone announces they are pregnant. As much as someone might want to be the perfect parent, we all know that perfect parenting is not possible for anyone! It can be easy to become frustrated about ways you might feel like you are not doing the best, or exasperated when your efforts to help your child follow rules are not working. If you have been feeling this way, I would encourage you to take a moment to think about what you know you are doing well. What is one thing about parenting you know you are good at? As the title of this blog says, this is a start to parenting from a strengths-based perspective. So what is a strengths-based perspective? In short, it puts more emphasis on catching and elevating your child’s strengths to help them become more confident, gain independence, and engage in more positive behaviors (like sharing their toys with their siblings or doing the dishes). There are a variety of ways someone can incorporate a strengths-based approach into their parenting style. Here are a few of them!
All in all, remembering to give yourself grace is so important. No matter the image anyone portrays, no one is a perfect parent (or always has an easy going child). If you ever respond to your child in a way that you wish you hadn’t - it’s okay! There will always be a next time and repair is the most important thing you can do as a parent. 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: Andrea Seldomridge Wondering if your child is at risk of hurting themselves can feel incredibly scary. Sometimes it is hard to know if your child’s depressed mood is another part of being a child or teen, or if it is a sign of something more urgent. Maybe you are concerned that your child is feeling suicidal or they might have already communicated that they are indeed having suicidal thoughts. It can be hard to know how to keep your child safe when it comes it suicide or how to even broach the topic. If you are wondering if your child is experiencing suicidal thoughts or are concerned that their depression is something more than depression, here are some ways you can address suicidal ideation as a parent.
If you are ever concerned for the safety of your child, seek out professional help. This can look like seeking out therapy for your child or calling the Access and Crisis line (1-888-724-7240). If your child is at immediate risk, call 911 or go to your local emergency room. 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. Andrea Seldomridge Being a teen can be difficult to say the least. While it is a time of self-exploration, figuring out who you are and what you value, it is also a time when it becomes especially easy to compare yourself to others. A teen might not make the sports team or pass that difficult class, or may start to compare how they look to their peers. Most teens end up struggling with low self-esteem at some point. It can feel painful as a parent to see your child doubt themselves, but thankfully there are a few things parents can do to help their teen gain confidence in themselves.
Gaining self-esteem is a gradual process. Listening to your teen, reflecting their feelings, and being there for them are some of the best ways to help them increase their self-confidence. 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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