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 As I sit alone in my office, as I have for months now during the Covid19 pandemic, I have thought a lot about Thrive’s options going forward in terms of how to provide the best care for our clients and community. I have debated with myself about the idea of reopening for in person sessions and talked with my team at length about it. I have felt sad even at the lack of activity in an office that I designed and decorated to be a safe space for both our clients and our team. The decisions that business owners are having to make in light of the pandemic are truly challenging for all of us. While I do not have any right to comment on what any other office is doing, nor am I interested in doing so, it is my job at Thrive to lead us in the best way possible right now for our team, our clients, and our greater community. As such, we are not planning to reopen our office to in person sessions anytime soon. So, I thought I would write a blog post to share more with our readers as to why we have come to this conclusion.
We appreciate our clients so much and their willingness to hang in there with us during this difficult time. I know that it is not easy to follow all of the social distancing guidelines and maintain our mental health, both collectively and individually. If our office staying closed allows you to see a close friend or family member with less risk, I’m happy to have helped in this way. For those who are struggling with telehealth sessions and are wanting to jump right back in, please know that I care about you as well and that we will do our best to make that decision to work together in person when it makes sense and we can guarantee that you (and your loved ones) are safe with us. 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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 I know that when I had the realization about my toddler, my lovely but also monstrous at times toddler, that he just doesn’t leave our house anymore. It helped me recognize what I was needing a lot more of, which is a little bit of time alone where I don’t have to take care of anyone but me. I’m sure we have all seen, and laughed at, the posts on Insta and Facebook about parents going to great lengths to get some time alone these days. Like the one about sending your kids in another room to look for a toy you have in your pocket? I definitely laughed and then realized that maybe we should all pool together ideas that parents are using to help themselves get a bit of alone time while we are all home together so much more. Here are some of my ideas and strategies I have been using:
These are just a few ideas I had! I’d love to hear more in the comments and for parents to share out of the box ways to get some time alone. Also, I want to remind everyone that it is perfectly natural to struggle without having time alone… If you have an ideal version of yourself as a parent who is always kind, patient, and loving and also around your kids 24/7 – you might be struggling with that as it is entirely unrealistic. In order to help ourselves be the best, most intentional versions of our parenting selves, we likely need some time to recharge our batteries and regroup. Especially during hard days and unfortunately, during a pandemic, there is just no shortage of hard days! 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, this has certainly been a wild ride for our family, as I imagine it has been for yours as well. While my husband and I both feel very lucky to be able to work and provide for our family right now, having our toddler son home with us full time while also working full time has been a challenge to say the least. While I do not have a ton of suggestions for families on how to make decisions about increasing their social circles in order to manage this situation better (for example through nannies or daycares or other sorts of supports), I do feel that we all need to recognize and weigh out the costs and benefits of these steps. As a parent myself and a therapist working primarily with families or parents, I am watching the dramatic impact of social distancing on all of our families. While I am relatively cautious about exposing our family to risk, I completely understand why families are choosing to make some exceptions to help themselves cope. This is one of the toughest situations we have all been in collectively and it is hitting families with young and school age children the hardest. I also have noticed that some weeks seem to be more challenging than others. My friends and I have said that we need to readjust our gages of how people are doing. Rather than 1-10 being a range of happy to sad (or something along those lines), it has now become more like 1 is in a pit of despair and 10 is keeping my head above water! While there have certainly been moments of true connection and joy with my family, there have been equally challenging times of wondering how the heck we are going to keep this up much longer without totally falling apart. One of my favorite ways to keep going during hard times is through affirmations and at times, I seem to find a “theme song” of sorts to help me cope and process my feelings. My current theme song is “Good job” by Alicia Keys. If you haven’t listened to it, I highly recommend this song as an anthem for parents right now. We are all doing a good job with what we have been given, which is a pretty difficult situation! Other than the theme song suggestion, I thought I would make a list of affirmations for families during tough times like this. Hopefully it is helpful to you on those tough days!
I also thought it might be helpful to share some thoughts about affirmations about our children during a time like this. As much as most of us know that this situation is hard on them too, it might be a good way to remember that!
I genuinely hope these ideas help motivate you to come up with your own list of affirmations, mantras, or intentions to help get through this situation. As we all know, this situation is so far beyond our control that the only thing we can control is our reaction. While doing so has certainly been a challenge, taking little steps every day to cope better will hopefully add up to this situation being less challenging in some small way! At Thrive, we are happy to help support you and your family if you are struggling right now! We are accepting new referrals both for individual therapy and parent consultation but also group therapy! We have three groups currently – Teen Anxiety, Young Adult, and Parent Support. Check out this page for more information. 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.  An Open Letter to the Thrive Community and Friends
 For those of us who are parenting young children right now, the struggle is truly real. It has been and continues to be at times completely overwhelming to try to both continue to work as well as parent my own toddler. I am hearing the same from the families that I work with at my office (virtually of course right now!). I thought it might help to compile some of the things that my family has been doing to help support our son right now. The truth is this blog post came out of a particularly difficult morning where my son was struggling to adjust on Monday to having another “dad working in the garage” morning. I could tell during breakfast that he was sad and missing dad but just couldn’t say it. Of course, these feelings then manifested into some behaviors which are of course expected at this age but can leave any parent (including me) feeling completely inept. I wanted to offer support to other parents struggling with similar situations by sharing the way I have been trying to handle things as much as possible (believe me, I am not perfect either!).
This is a particularly hard time to be a parent to a young or school age child. As parents, we often are the ones setting the tone in our families and I notice that while my family is adjusting to this situation, we are much quicker to struggle than we used to be. I think this is just the nature of the situation so we are trying to be proactive in our self-care right now. If you are struggling to figure out how to engage in self-care because most of what you used to do is now unavailable (ex. Massages, nights out, time away, gym classes, beach days, etc.), try to start with thinking about your personal needs. And not what you think you should need but what you really need as a person to thrive. For me, I need some down time as well as time to feel connected with friends and our community. While this is by no means as possible for me as it was before, I have found that even a little bit of time by myself (even just a walk on the weekends alone) and just a little bit of time to miss a daily routine like bedtime has been helpful. I am fortunate that I have a partner who can help with this and recognize that some people don’t have that available right now. I would encourage you still to focus on figuring out what it is you are looking for in your life and strategies or ways to access it, even while social distancing. As always, I am of the belief that the more parents are feeling effective, peaceful, and calm within themselves, the more they can parent from a place of intention and less reaction. At Thrive, we are happy to help support you and your family if you are struggling right now! We are accepting new referrals both for individual therapy and parent consultation but also group therapy! We have three groups currently – Teen Anxiety, Young Adult, and Parent Support. Check out this page for more information about our groups! 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 it should be" |
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Thrive Therapy Studio Therapists Offer Child, Teen, Adult, Marriage and Family Psychotherapy Counseling Services in San Diego, California.
