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By: Lauren Spinelli, LCSW We all know about the importance of self-care - setting aside that “me time” to focus on improving our mental, emotional and physical health. However, between children, work, relationships, or just life in general, it can be hard to make it a priority and fit it into our busy lives. On average, people in the United States work almost 2,000 hours per year! That’s a lot! Since we are at our place of work so much, it’s important to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves while we’re there! Here are 5 easy, simple tips to weave self-care into your daily work routine! 1. Meditate Now, I’m not talking about setting aside thirty minutes or an hour in quiet room at work. That’s probably not possible...but I bet you have 16 seconds! That’s all it takes! 16 beautiful, simple seconds to clarity. Not only does it have a significant de-stressing impact in the moment, but it can also serve as the foundation for greater clarity of thought, heightened creativity, deeper intuition and aid in making better choices! Setting aside 16 seconds each day to meditate can actually change your brain waves and have a positive influence on your emotional health. Let’s try it right now! Observe your breath as you slowly inhale through your nostrils to the count of four. Then hold that breath in your belly to the count of four. Gently release the breath and follow it out to the count of four. Then hold the breath out to the count of four. Now return to regular breathing. 2. Schedule breaks Taking regular mental breaks throughout the day improves productivity and creativity. Long periods of concentration fatigue your brain, and giving it downtime restores your ability to problem solve and concentrate. Try to actually schedule multiple 5-10 minute breaks throughout your day. If you don’t put it in your calendar, it’s easy to skip it! Skipping these breaks and trying to plow through your work can leave you exhausted and stressed. 3. Drink water Did you know 75% of our brain is made up of water? Even the tiniest levels of dehydration can affect factors like your mood and cognitive functioning. Next time you feel that after-lunch sluggishness creeping up on you, there’s a good chance it’s due to dehydration! Actual amounts of water that you need vary person to person, but aim to drink 0.5 ounces of water per pound on a daily basis! Bring that water bottle to work and leave it on your desk so there’s no excuse! 4. Walk outside We spend about 2,000 hours a year at work, and most of that is inside at an office! Try to get outside during lunch, or even hold walking meetings. Have a phone call? Take it outside! A 2015 study done at Stanford University proved that being outside in nature “showed decreased activity in a region of the brain associated with a key factor in depression”. The study also found that that those who walked outside experienced less anxiety, rumination, and negative affect, as well as more positive emotions, such as happiness. 5. Ask for help We are all human. We all need help. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength and intelligence. Ensure you have a solid support system at work. You spend so much time there, it’s important to surround yourself with trusted colleagues! 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, teen, or adult 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.
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By: Dr. Erica Wollerman As a new-ish mom and owner of a small business, I am far busier than I ever really have been in my life. Seriously, I’m even busier now than in grad school, completing a dissertation, and working three jobs in undergrad. The challenge for me now though is that my busy life is filled with a lot of things that I feel I have to do so that I can be the best me I can be in all the areas of my life. I really want to bring my best version of myself to my work for my clients and Thrive team members as well as to my family and friends! I especially want to be my best self for my little man Luca. I was chatting with another new-ish mom friend of mine recently and we were talking about our to-do lists. We had a lot of complaints you would expect – they are so long and never feel done. The interesting part is that on our to do lists are things like, well, I need to read a chapter in my book at night so that I can sleep well, or, I need to go for a walk and stretch so that my back does not hurt. The conclusion that we drew was that even self-care feels like another item on our to-do list! For women who are already overwhelmed, this is even more overwhelming and makes the activities we are “supposed” to enjoy, feel like tasks to check off rather than “self-care.” I started thinking about the idea of self-care and how it has become such a buzz word in our culture, especially therapist culture. While I think self-care is obviously important, I also think there might be a better way than the way I am doing it. Which is essentially, a mad, moderately perfectionistic dash towards wellness. Here’s a snapshot of my brain: Luca goes to bed at 7pm so I am going to rush home as soon as possible from work to spend time with him until 7, do all the household things that need to get done in that time while I spend quality time with him so that at 7, I can maximize my time and either go for a walk or do some work leftover from the day, or spend time with my husband, or do my nails, or watch a show, or take a bath, etc. Even better if I can do multiple things at once, right? Some of my mentality and tendency towards a frenzy of productivity comes from having an appreciation for time that only comes after not having any while you have a newborn. Some of this comes from having a deep appreciation for what ingredients I know help me be a better functioning person. I tend to do really well when things in my life are balanced and I have some time alone reading, some time to exercise, some time with work, and some time with my family each day. Oh and I like a clean house with things seeming somewhat orderly. While I have been mulling this over, I have realized that the crucial ingredient to my self-care is for it to feel like a choice and to be something I take the time to enjoy. While maybe I still rush home to see Luca, spend time with him while also cleaning up the house and dinner, so that I have time to do more things that fuel me in the evening… the key is to be more mindful of the choices I am making and present focused during all of the tasks. The key is to truly appreciate whatever I am doing at any given moment and to find it something to enjoy, rather than to just check off a list. Sometimes it helps me to remember to tell myself, I “get” to do this, rather than I “have” to do this. Small changes in our self-talk really can influence the way we feel about our lives! 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.  By: Dr. Erica WollermanSo, as you probably noticed in my first blog in this series, I have a lot of concerns with positive thinking and its’ attempts to tell us not to feel our unpleasant emotions or think our unpleasant thoughts. However, there are parts of “positive thinking” that I think are truly helpful and worth mentioning here and are traits of someone with resilience and more of a positive mindset. Check out the first two blogs in this series here and here!
1. Focusing more on gratitude In my eyes, focusing on gratitude and intentionally seeking ways to show or experience gratitude is so important. We can often become habitual problem finders who just focus on problems or challenges, rather than all we do have to feel grateful for. In contrast to positive thinking though, I mention gratitude more as a daily practice or habit and not a response to feeling something unpleasant. Generally trying to cultivate a mindset of gratitude looks like noticing things you are grateful for at the end of a day or week – NOT trying to focus on gratitude in moments where you are really upset or struggling. That would be just like the whole, “think positive” suggestion and likely only make you feel worse. 2. Confidence that you can manage difficult situations, experiences, struggles I believe that having a positive mindset about your life could include the confidence that you are going to be okay. That yes, life has its’ struggles, but they really do make us stronger and lead us in new and different directions which can be exciting and scary. In order to have this perspective, you have to not only remember struggles you have had, but remember that you got through them and that there were lessons learned along the way. This part of having a positive mindset involves allowing yourself to remember and process your challenges, not to feel worse about them, but to see what you have endured and how resilient you are. Yes, difficult things are going to happen. But yes, you can get through it. 3. Cultivating memories of pleasant moments, experiences, even during times of struggle This is so incredibly difficult, but so important. We need to remember that all emotions are temporary, the pleasant and the unpleasant. As such, even when we are in deep pain and struggle, we need to have the deeper knowledge that we will not always feel this way. For example, when you are grieving a loss, perhaps of a relationship, pet, loved one, life path, etc. it is important to know that grief marks the importance of that relationship in your life. That when we love, because everything is temporary, we will know loss and need to feel that loss because our feelings and grief honors the relationship or experience. Hopefully this blog rounds out our series on Positive Thinking! While I am not a positive thinking proponent, there are definitely some assets of learning to cultivate a positive mindset and work on becoming a realistic thinker. 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.  By: Dr. Erica WollermanWe at Thrive hope all of our readers are having a very happy holiday season! While I am actually on vacation from the office for the week to spend time with the new little addition to our family, Luca, I was reflecting on my intention for next year. As some of you may know, I am in the habit of choosing a word for each year as a symbol or guidepost of something I would like to focus my energy towards or bring into my life. I use this exercise with many of my clients also and wanted to make sure to bring this up before the new year to our blog readers!
Life for me, as a business owner and new mother, has certainly been overwhelming lately. Interestingly though for next year rather than a word like balance or rest, I am choosing a word that helps me lean into the opportunities, experiences, and amazing abundance that has come my way. As I was reflecting on my word from this past year, gratitude, I realized that the trick for me in choosing gratitude over stress or overwhelm is to focus on the reasons behind my stress. I am often stressed or overwhelmed because of the needs of my growing business as well as because of the needs of my growing family. And honestly, I am lucky and blessed to have both! So, I want to choose a word that helps to remind me of my blessings and that my busy life is amazing, wonderful, and so filled with love and laughter that I wish for more hours in my days. This year, my word is abundance. I will choose to emphasize the abundance in my life and frame the busyness with love and appreciation rather than stress. If you would like to join me in choosing a word and setting an intention that this word represents this coming year, please do. Here are some simple questions and activities that can help you in choosing your word:
I hope you do choose to join me in this activity this year! Each year, the words I choose become my guide and they have been invaluable to me. Hopefully you have a similar experience. Please feel free to share your words in the comments either on our social media post or on our blog here! And most of all, Happy New Year from the Thrive Therapy Team! If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about therapy for adults, your child, or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.  By: Dr. Erica Wollerman So many things are nudging me towards contemplating gratitude right now that I just felt pulled to put some of my thoughts together in a blog post. Hopefully it is interesting and helpful to some of you who read our blog!
Thanksgiving is a time that I usually try to focus on gratitude in general. This year, the timing is interesting for me as I have a 3 month old at home and just returned to work two weeks ago… But I’ll talk more about that later! Thinking back on my year, I remember finding out I was pregnant a few weeks after Thanksgiving last year when I had already set in motion so many big, exciting, and pretty scary things professionally. A new office… Not just new, but also bigger! Expanding to a corporation and hiring more team members! Eek! I remember the overwhelm of just considering what this next year would be like balancing pregnancy, motherhood, and these new obligations. So much to adjust to and so much to feel overwhelmed by. In January, I always take time to consider a word to focus my energy towards in the coming year. It is a guidepost of sorts, something to try to create more of usually. I remember sorting through thoughts about the year and coming up with words like, overwhelm, stress, chaos, too much and intentionally choosing to focus on the abundance side of my feelings of overwhelm. So I found my word to be gratitude this year. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, this has been a tough word for me. Often I have found myself swept up in the to do lists and feelings of stress and exhaustion and needed to remind myself to focus on the gratitude I feel for so many wonderful things happening in my life. Currently, people have asked how I am adjusting to motherhood and even more, working motherhood. And I answer honestly with, “I’m just running. All the time. Everywhere. There’s never enough time or enough of me to go around!” Or some variation of sleep deprived sentences that are communicating that (maybe, hopefully in some way that makes sense!). Today, as I work from home during naps and savor one of my last weekdays home with my little man… I have chosen to put the “running” feeling aside and just lean into my gratitude and savor, really just enjoy, the moments of snuggles, kisses, giggles, and of course cries, whines, and tears that are inevitable at 12 weeks apparently. The thought that keeps coming back to me is that everything is temporary. The lack of sleep – yup, it’s temporary. Hopefully some of the crying is temporary too. But the snuggles, baby smell, little hands and feet, and oh the sweet smiles and newness of it all. That’s temporary too… so through my sleep deprived and overwhelmed days… I am going to choose to enjoy this time and be grateful for all the things I am blessed to have. Interestingly, this experience of gratitude applies not just to my family but also to having a whole different side of me that is fulfilled through my work and the fact that people come and share their deepest moments, feelings, fears, and pain with me. Because the truth is, I love what I do and I missed it. The baby snuggles have been amazing but I have acknowledged and accepted that I need both. Both the mother part of me that is still developing and the therapist part of me that I have nurtured for years. I need both and because of that, I most likely will never stop running. But at least for now, I am running gratefully. Most of the time ;) So, as the holidays approach, I urge all of you to consider how can you focus on abundance and gratitude rather than the hustle and bustle, which is really just a nice phrase for stress. Here are some tips I came up with:
I hope this helps some of you enjoy the season a bit more! Please let me know any thoughts you may want to share or things you may be grateful for in the comments. We would love to hear from you. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about parent counseling or therapy for yourself, your child, or teen, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.  By: Angela Bianco, ASWTake a moment to think of the last interaction you had with your child that left you feeling uneasy, stressed, or helpless. How did you first interact with your child? Did you make eye contact or use physical touch with them? Did you mostly listen or do most of the talking? What lesson did you teach? Were you obsessing over consequences? Do you feel good about how you handled it?
Parents are more likely to operate from a reactive state of mind instead of working from a clear set of principles and strategies. We call this "autopilot"; where we grab our four year old who just slapped us on the back and with wide eyes and clenched teeth say "Hitting is not okay" and take him to his room for a time out to process what's just happened. Fear, punishment and drama are probably not part of your principles and strategy, so why would you want to instill this as a primary motivator to your child? The lesson here reads "Power and control are the best tools to get others to do what we want them to do.” You don't have to choose this route; in fact it's been proven ineffective. Dr. Dan Siegel discusses specific strategies to use with his No Drama Discipline approach. This approach allows you make more free flowing conscious decisions in times where reactivity is most likely. What are the benefits? You won't find yourself in power and control struggles and you will feel more confident and secure in your parenting. In the scenario of the four old; here's an alternative way to respond. Ask yourself these three questions. Why did he act this way? What's the lesson? How can I best teach it? Chances are your four year old was searching for your attention. He's still navigating the art of consistently calming oneself. Your wish for him to act like a regulated adult is unfortunately a faulty expectation. The lesson you want to teach is "there are better ways to getting someone's attention than violence". Now, how can you teach this? Connect with your child by making eye contact and calming physical touch. Validate his big four year old feelings and exclaim "Wow! It's hard to wait, isn't it?" "It looks like you're angry that I'm speaking with someone on the phone right now.” Engage him and support him in building his emotional vocabulary. At this point, he's probably agreed and his body language and thoughts will become calmer. Now, discuss alternatives to slapping your back and teach your child WHAT to do; not just WHAT NOT to do. Angela Bianco offers parenting workshops at Thrive Therapy Studio based on the concepts of building in intentional parenting into your life. Check out more information about her workshops here! If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.  By: Dr. Erica WollermanThis blog post was inspired by one of my favorite cartoons that depicts a person burying a “bad” feeling, walking away feeling like it is gone forever, while the roots are clearly growing under the surface. I think the urge to try and bury our uncomfortable feelings is totally understandable because well, they are uncomfortable! Plus, in our culture, we are not really taught very much about our feelings which leaves many of us at a loss as to what to do with the particularly tough ones… feelings like jealousy, anger, shame, betrayal, anxiety, depression, grief to name a few of the toughies. Not only are we often not taught about how to deal with them, we are often given examples of people coping in unhealthy ways such as through substance use, avoidance, and just plain denial and repression.
Unfortunately, as I explain to my clients at my office, there really is no “easy” way out of tough feelings. We need to wade through them, experience them, and figure out how to let them go in order to learn what we need to from those feelings. For example, if we feel unsettled in a friendship it is worthwhile to sit with that feeling to figure it out a bit… perhaps we are feeling taken advantage of, unappreciated, or perhaps disconnected. If we can take the time to sit with that feeling and learn what it is trying to tell us, we can then use that information to connect with our friend, communicate our feelings, and get some feedback from them too. Ideally, then, some of the challenges in the relationship could be openly talked about and worked on so that things go a bit smoother! While this example is a bit more innocent, some feelings when left to linger and fester, can be very destructive. These are feelings like anger, shame, depression, and even anxiety. If we are not able to sift through these feelings to figure out what is underneath them and leading to them, they often grow and attach to situations and people that are unrelated to the initial feeling. For example, if someone was verbally abused as a young child and told that they are worthless, terrible, and other kinds of awful things; while they might not continue to have feelings they relate to that situation, they are likely to have other symptoms such as extreme anger, shame and feelings of worthlessness and depression, possibly even suicidal thoughts, or debilitating anxiety around other people. These feelings can play out in so many ways, particularly in our relationships, to where this person might act out in their relationships and treat other people poorly OR they might become the opposite and feel that everything is their fault and tie themselves in knots trying to please their partner or friends. The hardest part about this is that people often have no idea that their behavior or feelings currently could have so much to do with buried emotions related to past experiences in their lives. So the patterns unfortunately continue to be unresolved, their symptoms continue, and it can be very discouraging. This is often a time when people make their way into therapy looking for solutions and though it is not always the most pleasant of experiences, it is crucial to our growth and ability to move forward to spend some time learning about our emotions, finding ways to cope with them differently, and connecting the dots between our experiences, unresolved emotions, and present life situations. Spending some time unraveling these apparent “bad” feelings is one of my favorite things to do as a therapist, not because it is “fun,” but because it really produces growth and change for my clients. So, next time you are experiencing an uncomfortable feeling, try to allow yourself to experience it for a moment and invite the feeling into your heart for a bit. If you can imagine the emotion as a wave, let it come and then let it go. Try to find a name for it and try to see what created this riptide in your life. Then you can release it and hopefully find some solutions or lessons from the experience. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n. By: Dr. Erica Wollerman With summer starting up, I thought it might be helpful to talk a bit about how to have a wonderful summer with your kids, easily! There is so much pressure on parents to cultivate amazing experiences for their kids and I by no means intend to add to that. Quite the opposite actually!
Thank you all for reading! I hope that you find this blog and brief bit of information helpful in planning your family’s summer! If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about your child or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us either via email at ewollerman.psyd@gmail.com or phone at 858-342-1304. If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child, teen therapy and adult psychotherapy Therapists in San Diego with San Diego Counseling at Thrive Therapy Studio. By: Dr. Erica Wollerman As those of you who read the Thrive blog may know, I am a big advocate for setting an intention for the year rather than a resolution. If you are interested in reading my blog on the topic, please check it out here!
As the year has been just flying by, I thought it might be nice to check in on that intention and see how we are all doing. My word for the year is “gratitude.” I picked this word very carefully as I had realized at the beginning of the year just how much I have on my plate this year. Not only have we expanded our practice location, but we have also hired on two amazing and wonderful new therapists. In addition to that, as many of you know, I am also pregnant with our first child. So, when I thought about words for the year, things like “chaos,” “busy,” “overwhelmed” came to mind. Though I might feel all of those things pretty routinely, I chose to focus on gratitude even during the chaos this year. Doesn’t that sound so nice? Of course it did in theory, which is what brought me to the blog topic for today, which is a check-in about our words of the year. I really feel that the beginning of the year was not a time you would hear much gratitude from me but in the past month or so, I am really working on cultivating it. The most interesting thing that has happened since I am rededicating myself to finding gratitude even in the chaos, is that I am seeing it all around me so much more. Just the other day, I was coming into our lovely new office location and was overwhelmed with this feeling of gratitude for everything that is happening. For my growing family both at work and at home and just felt this sense of peace. It was a really great moment. And in the interest of creating more moments like that, I am focusing on those moments more than the headaches, heartburn, and other fun pregnancy symptoms! So, I created a little list of questions that I thought might help guide some of you in stepping back and reflecting on how we are doing with our words of the year, partway through the year. I hope this is as beneficial to you as it has been for me!
Thank you all for reading! I hope that you find this blog and brief check in helpful in cultivating the life you want, rather than just reacting to what life sends your way! If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about your child or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us either via email at ewollerman.psyd@gmail.com or phone at 858-342-1304. If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child, teen therapy and adult psychotherapy services by Psychotherapist San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio.
 Thrive is excited to announce our first Parenting Workshop will be starting on Wednesday April 19th from 6:30-8:00. It will be a 5 week workshop where parents will learn practical strategies to parent with more intention in a small group setting. As a preview, we wanted to share Angela’s perspective and the things that she is excited to explore with parents during this exciting workshop!
Top three things I am excited to explore with parents during Parenting with Intention workshop series. 1. What kind of relationship do you have with your child? Exploring and discussing what it's like to parent your child helps to clarify what you're looking for and what areas you would like to strengthen. If you're feeling ineffective, tired, and disconnected from your child; focusing on your intentions in parenting will help you bring about the balance in your relationship. 2. Parent as a coach. Using little moments each day to reframe your role as a coach to jump in and help your child through meltdowns and tantrums. What's working and what's not working? If you're feeling bored or frustrated with the power struggles; gaining a new sense of the "why" behind your parenting decisions will guide you in more intentional parenting. 3. Permission to play! What does the quality time with your child look like? Discussing the intention behind the activities we choose to spend engaging in with our children will help highlight where we are setting our intentions. You will learn how to become more mindful while making an ice cream sundae together, reading a bedtime story, or looking at a tide pool. If you're feeling rushed or overwhelmed; slowing down and practicing mindfulness will help you tune into those intentions and embrace your relationship with your child. We hope you are as excited as we are to learn more and explore these areas further! For more information about the group, please contact Angela Bianco, ASW directly at 858-952-8835 or by email at angelabianco.asw@gmail.com. Angela is supervised by Erica Wollerman, PsyD (PSY25614) and questions can also be directed to Erica and the general Thrive team at 858-342-1304! If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about your child or teen working with one of our teen psychotherapists, please reach out to us either via email at ewollerman.psyd@gmail.com or phone at 858-342-1304. If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome! |
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