10 Ways to Fall Asleep Fast

August 2, 2020

When you don’t sleep well, it makes it so much harder to get anything done...including manage your feelings.  When we’re tired, we’re more irritable, more anxious, and more depressed.  Last week, I shared with you 12 things that make it harder to sleep.  This week, it’s time to replace those 12 sleep disruptions with 10 strategies to help you fall asleep faster.  

 

In this week’s article, I’ll share with you 

  • 10 strategies to help you fall asleep faster
  • Resources for implementing those strategies in your life
  • The reasons these 10 strategies work

12 Things Making It Hard for You to Sleep

July 26, 2020

Disrupted sleep is one of the most common symptoms of just about every mental health condition.  The more anxious you are, for example, the worse you sleep.  But the frustrating thing is that it just perpetuates itself: the worse you sleep, the more anxious you get.  You can really get stuck.  But it’s possible to reverse this spiral.  This week, let’s take a look at 12 things that are making it harder for you to fall asleep.  Are you making any of these mistakes??  

 

In this week’s article, I’ll share with you 

  • 12 things you might be doing that are actually making it harder for you to sleep
  • The reasons these 12 simple things interfere with your sleep

How to Unwind After Work: 7 Proven Strategies

July 12, 2020

Whether you’re working from home or you’re back in the office, chances are you are spent at the end of the day.  Tension builds throughout the day, and we end up carrying it home with us.  You want to relax, but it’s almost impossible -- like you’re too stressed to de-stress.  Or maybe the only way you can unwind is with alcohol.  If this is you, I’m here with 7 proven (non-alcoholic) strategies to help you unwind after work.  

 

In this week’s article, I’ll share with you 

  • 7 proven strategies for unwinding after work
  • The reasons the strategies work
  • Ideas for how to incorporate them into your life
  • A checklist to make sure you’re implementing the strategies in your life -- after all, they don’t work if you don’t do them!

15 Coping Mechanisms That Are Keeping You Stuck

April 26, 2020

Hey, we’re all doing our absolute best to just get from day to day and from week to week.  And over the years, we develop coping mechanisms to help us do just that. Sure, not all of those coping mechanisms are healthy, and we know it.  Of course smoking and drinking and spending too much are helping us feel “better,” and we know they’re not actually fixing the problem. But today, we’re diving deep into 15 coping mechanisms that you might not even realize are keeping you stuck.  Have you adopted any of these habits?

3 Lessons Learned from Acceptance & Commitment Therapy

March 16, 2020

Recently, we’ve been talking about how to get the most out of your therapy sessions, and I shared with you three of the main takeaways from one of the most powerful psychological treatments - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  I also mentioned that a newer treatment is gaining momentum and filling in for some of CBT’s weaknesses.  This treatment is called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and the research on it in helping people transform their thinking and find freedom from anxiety, stress, depression, and lots of other mental health problems is super impressive.  You’ve probably never heard of ACT (pronounced as the word “act” rather than by its letters), so I’m here to tell you the main takeaways from this incredible treatment approach. If you’ve tried CBT and felt like it left you hanging, then definitely check out this post because ACT is an interesting extension with different ideas about how to master your mental health.  

 

3 Lessons Learned from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

March 15, 2020

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most widely researched therapy intervention, and for most of the most common mental health conditions it is the absolute best therapy approach.  You might not know much about CBT, though, so today I’ll tell you 3 of the main lessons that underlie how CBT works. If you’re not in therapy, these lessons might help you know where to focus your energy in overcoming your own mental health struggles; and if you are in therapy (even CBT), these lessons should help you consolidate what you’re learning.  Let’s get into it.

14 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Therapy Sessions

March 8, 2020
So you’ve gone through all the steps of getting a therapist -- it wasn’t easy, but you did it! Congratulations! Now you want to make sure you get the most out of your therapy sessions. In today’s post, I’ll tell you what to do before each therapy session, what to do during therapy sessions, what to do after therapy sessions, and what to do between your therapy sessions to make sure you’re squeezing every ounce of juice out of your therapy that you can. Plus, I put together a worksheet to help you organize it all and maximize your therapy sessions.

The Secret to Living a Balanced Life

March 1, 2020

Psychological health and relieving stress, anxiety, and depression are all about balance.  It’s so cliche that I roll my eyes at myself when I say it to my clients. When we’re stressed, overwhelmed, or anxious, that’s an emotional cue that something is out of balance in our lives.  So we respond by shifting things around. Mental health problems arise (in part) from things being too far out of balance for too long. We’ll rebalance but we too quickly go back to the old patterns that got us out of balance in the first place.  Today, I’ll tell you the piece you’re missing to help you actually get things balanced in the long term.

How to Overcome Anxiety & Depression with More Useful Questions

February 2, 2020

As a full-time therapist, I hear a lot of people’s most intimate thoughts, and I’ve noticed people are asking themselves a lot of questions….a lot of unhelpful questions that are keeping them stuck.  In today’s article, I’ll show you how to turn unhelpful questions (like Why can’t I get this right?) into more productive, useful questions to get you unstuck from anxiety and depression.  Discover how to do it here.