6 Ways Hobbies Benefit Your Mental Health

Do you have a hobby?

Your answer to this now might be different than it was 4 years ago, before the pandemic. 

During the COVID lockdowns of 2020, hobbies became more popular than ever as we all looked for ways to keep ourselves busy at home. Surveys show that “59% of Americans took on a new hobby during the coronavirus pandemic.” Furthermore, “79% of consumers said they’ll continue with their hobby even after the pandemic is over.”

Why do we love hobbies?

The reason that hobbies are so popular is because they give you a chance to unwind and recharge mentally. Lots of hobbies are physically taxing, but they allow us time to get in the zone of doing something we like and get over the stress of our day. 

Having something that you care about can make a big difference in your mental health. When you have something to look forward to, it’s easier to deal with smaller day to day annoyances. 

Burnout is extremely common right now for a number of reasons. Time spent engaging in hobbies can be a source of joy and replenishment, which can be a powerful antidote to burnout. It’s like having a little happiness bubble that makes it harder for negativity to get in. 

Hobbies aren’t just for fun, they’re good for you, too! Here are 6 ways hobbies benefit your mental health: 

Level up your confidence

Learning something new helps build up confidence. While being a beginner at something can be frustrating at times, sticking with it and trying again is a way to practice resilience. Over time, as you improve, you’ll feel more confident in your abilities to handle new challenges. In moments when you’re feeling less confident, it can be helpful to remind yourself of how far you’ve come. 

Hobbies also give you a chance to experience mastery, or to feel proud of something you have accomplished. Feeling mastery happens when you can see your improvement over time, and can be a powerful mood booster.

Opportunities for mindfulness

Mindfulness doesn’t just come from meditation. Anything that gives you a chance to be engaged in the present moment is a mindfulness practice. Engaging in a hobby often teaches you to slow down and focus on what you’re doing. Hobbies can also help drown out the pressures and annoyances of the day to day world and narrow your focus down to what you’re doing. This can help lower anxiety! 

Hobbies also offer you a chance to experience a flow state. A flow state is one where you are completely absorbed and engaged in whatever activity you are doing. This state often occurs when you’re skilled in an activity and find yourself completely immersed in it, making it feel like time is flying. This feeling can help with regulating emotions, as well as increasing your sense of happiness and fulfillment. 

Improved cognition

When you engage in a hobby, you’re using your brain. You’re likely using different parts of your brain than when you’re working or in your personal life. Doing new things is helpful for your cognition because it builds new pathways in your brain. The more you use these new pathways, the stronger they become. 

Having a hobby can also help keep your brain healthy. Some hobbies, like playing instruments, have been found to support memory, while others, like puzzles, have been found to protect against dementia. 

Increased creativity

Trying and learning something new can give you a big boost of creativity. Everyone is creative, but we don’t always get opportunities to nurture our creativity. Trying new hobbies can help you nurture your creative side. Hobbies allow you to express yourself in new ways and to learn new skills to keep improving. 

Chances to build community

We’re not meant to be alone in the world, and hobbies are a great way to build community with like-minded people. When you find a group of people who are passionate about the same thing as you, it feels validating. Whether you build community virtually or in real life, increasing your social connections feels good. We all need support from others and finding people who also engage in your hobby can build up your support system. 

Building community sounds intimidating, but it doesn’t all happen overnight. Even something as simple as following a few other people with your hobby on social media can help you feel less alone and more connected to others. 

Lowered stress

After a long stressful day, engaging in a hobby can help you feel better. Hobbies give you a break from your demanding day to day life. Research has shown that when we take time to engage in hobbies we enjoy, our brains release neurotransmitters like dopamine, which feels good. One study found that making visual art significantly lowered the levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in participant’s blood. 

A hobby can be an outlet that lets you blow off steam when you’re overwhelmed. It’s also helpful to find an activity where you can lose yourself in what you’re doing, because that can help distract you from whatever is causing you stress. 

An important note: Don’t trade rest for hobbies

While hobbies have real mental health benefits, they can also be a way that we overwork ourselves, so be careful to make time for rest. Balancing leisure time with work, life’s responsibilities, and rest can be tough. 

It’s tempting to be productive at every moment, thanks to our cultural obsession with work. Hobbies can be a way to meet that cultural expectation to be productive and fill your time with things other than rest. Focusing on the joy of experiencing your hobby, instead of on the outcome, can help you get the benefits of a hobby without forcing yourself to be useful or productive. 

Many people feel pressure to monetize their hobbies, especially in times of financial insecurity. Putting pressure on yourself to be so good at something that you can make money off of it can take away the positive aspects of engaging in hobbies. 

It takes real effort to disconnect from the idea that you need to be productive at all times, including your leisure time. It’s okay to use your free time for rest instead of finding another way to get things done.

Hobbies are just one way to benefit your mental health, but there are many others, including working with a therapist. If you’re looking for a mental health professional who can help you in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia, get in touch with our office today. 

Healing through Relationships: Why the Therapeutic Relationship Matters

There’s a lot of mental health advice on the internet right now. 

Take this blog for example! Our blog is full of resources, thought exercises and tips meant to help support you in your journey to better mental health. But are the blogs themselves therapy? Are the social media posts describing different mindfulness exercises to try for your anxiety the same thing as therapy?

Short answer: nope!

Long answer: therapy is so much more than the tools you learn. Therapy is comprehensive mental health care, where the relationship between therapist and client is a crucial component to the treatment and healing process.

While there are lots of differences between the tools a therapist or therapy practice may provide online and the actual mental health services they offer, the part we’re going to focus on today is a part that is often overlooked: how the therapeutic relationship itself is crucial to healing. 

That’s part of why you can’t get the same experience reading a therapists blog as you would seeing that therapist in person–while they can provide you helpful tools to practice on your own, you’re missing the practice of showing up in relation to someone and writing new social scripts based on how they’re able to hold space for you. 

Okay….what does that all mean?

Let’s go back to our example from a few weeks ago about talking to your therapist about when they’ve hurt your feelings. 

The social script you’re working from might make telling someone they’ve hurt your feelings a scary, anxiety provoking conversation. Maybe you were yelled at as a child when you got upset or expressed your feelings. Maybe you’ve never been in a relationship where someone apologized after hurting your feelings. Or maybe you’ve never been in a relationship where you were safe to express that your feelings were hurt at all. 

In therapy, you get to practice showing up and telling someone they hurt your feelings.

While it’s not quite practice practice–you’re still communicating your real feelings and it was based out of a real situation, not just a theoretical scenario–you’re still given the assurance that you’re in a safe space where you won’t be punished for expressing how you’re feeling. That makes it an easier stepping stone to use to practice expressing those feelings because you have that safety net of knowing therapy is the space where you’re supposed to come in and discuss your feelings. 

This sort of relational healing is a crucial component to good therapy–and it doesn’t just come up in the moments where you need to manage conflict with your therapist!

You’re also engaging in relational healing in therapy when: 

• You express something you feel shame about and instead of responding with anger, repulsion, or what you fear they will respond with, your therapist responds with curiosity and compassion

• You come to therapy frustrated with how something is going, and you find support in collaborating with your therapist to figure out what to do next, rather than managing it all on your own 

These are two other simple and common examples of how the relationship between therapist and client is an essential part of the therapeutic process! That’s also why it’s so important to be sure you have a safe and trustworthy relationship with your therapist.

If you’re looking for support in the process of finding a therapist, contact us and we can help personally match you to a therapist based on your needs. 

Tending to Plants for Better Mental Health

Have you ever considered the benefit of taking care of something else as part of your own self care process? 

It may sound counterintuitive, but it’s true: creating routines where you tend to something else (a pet, a garden, a community project) benefits not just what you’re tending to, but your own mental wellness. Today we’re going to look at tending to plants specifically, but many of the benefits can come from making space to tend to other things (pets, community spaces, etc.) as well. 

So, how do indoor plants help our mental health? Here are 4 ways that caring for houseplants can help you care for your mental health: 

It helps promote mindfulness:

When you’re taking care of your plants, you have a chance to focus your attention on the nurturing that is taking place. Instead of your mind wandering around in a thousand different directions, you’re focused on the task at hand: which plants need care today? What do they need? Sunlight? Water? Do any need to be repotted or trimmed back? When you let your mind stay in the present moment, you reduce the opportunity for negative thoughts to land and stick in your mind. Taking care of your houseplants gets you into a regular mindfulness practice, which you can then bring to other areas of your life. It allows you to take the opportunity to slow down. We live in a hustle dominated culture, but that hustle isn’t always what is best for us! Tending to your plants requires care and attention so you have to slow down. . 

They give you reminders for your own care

Your plants need regular things like water and sunlight to survive; what are the things you need daily? You need things like food, water, and sunlight too, but what else? You need joyful movement, supportive relationships, opportunities for creativity and fun. Are your needs being met?

And sometimes your plant will need a change and you won’t know exactly what it will need. You might have to try a few different things to find the best way to take care of your plants; did you give it too much water? Not enough sunlight? A combination of both? It can be tricky to figure out what your plant needs and if you wind up giving it the wrong thing, just remember it’s all part of the learning process. This is also true for you. 

Easy companionship

Plants are living things! They have needs you have to get to know them to meet, they contribute to the well being and beauty of your space, and it’s important for the relationship between you and your houseplants that what each of you bring to the home is valued. 

But they aren’t like pets who require constant care and attention. Houseplants need us–we’ve taken them out of their natural habitat so it’s our responsibility to take care of them, but unlike a dog who might need multiple walks a day, someone to clean up after them, someone to devote a good portion of their day to petting and playing with the dog, etc. plants just need a good space to be in and someone to check in on them to make sure they’re getting enough water and sun. That makes them a good option for people who want something to take care of but don’t have the time or money to commit to a pet.  

They remind you small steps matter

Your plant isn’t going to fully grow overnight; it needs regular care. Watering it once and putting it in the window isn’t enough. This is a helpful reminder to us about our own wellness and growth: it’s a constant, daily practice. And each time we tend to our plants (or ourselves) matters and aids in the growth. 

Tending to houseplants has many mental health benefits, and it’s a coping skill you can keep in your mental health toolbox for when you need it. If you’re looking for other skills and tools to help support your mental health, working with a therapist can help you find what works for you. 

What Does it Mean to Take Care of Yourself? 7 Blogs to Help You Practice

What does it mean to take care of yourself?

Is self care about making your life as easy as possible? Is it about making sure you’re always happy? Does it mean that every off feeling we have can be solved with a quick little treat? 

At this point, I think we all know self care is a little more complex than that! True self care isn’t about avoiding difficult situations or banishing “negative” feelings; it’s about making sure you’re doing what you can to provide yourself with the tools and skills you need to manage those hard moments and tricky feelings when they come up. Self care is about noticing what needs tending to, and finding appropriate, compassionate ways to tend to them. 

That’s, of course, much easier said than done. Self care requires a lot of skills we aren’t necessarily taught, and it asks us to patient and compassionate with ourselves and others as we develop those skills. Some of them are easier than others; it’s easier to get yourself to stretch or go for a walk when you feel your body to start to ache than it is to figure out how to express an unpleasant emotion to someone you care about. 

To help you practice, we’ve gathered 7 of our favorite posts that cover skills you may not even realize are self care practices: 

Do you struggle to motivate yourself to do boring life tasks?

Getting started is often the hardest part, especially when the task itself is so massive it feels like even if you start you’ll never finish.  When you tell yourself “I don’t have to finish the dishes, I just have to start them” you’re easing that pressure. Chances are? You’ll realize doing the dishes isn’t actually that bad and you’ll just finish them. And if not? Then some of your dishes are clean now when they weren’t before! 

Read How to Motivate Yourself to Do Boring Life Tasks. 

When you think of self care practices, do you ever consider your social media? 

For every positive aspect of social media, there’s an equal and opposite negative action. Yes you’re able to keep up with friends, but do you remember that their lives aren’t as perfectly curated or posed as they seem on social media? Do you forget to check in with loved ones because seeing a facebook update makes you feel like you’ve already caught up? Do you get stressed from the information overload that can come with mindless social media scrolling?

Read How to Stop Social Media from Making You Feel Bad About Yourself. 

Waking up with a ball of anxiety in your stomach every morning is not ideal.

It can leave you feeling like you don’t even want to get out of bed. That’s why it’s helpful to establish habits that you can use every day to carry you through on the days when your anxiety is spiraling out of control. It can be almost impossible to snap yourself out of an anxious spiral, especially without practice. That’s why it’s important to find anxiety-relieving methods that work for you and then practice them until they’re second nature to you. That way, the next time you’re feeling anxious and out of control, you have something to reach for to soothe yourself. 

Read Daily Habits to Help Manage Anxiety in a Healthy Way

Telling someone you’re upset by something they’ve done takes a lot of courage.

It can feel like a risk–like they could be mad or upset or maybe even react unpredictably. It’s important to remember that while their feelings matter, you can’t control them and it’s not your job to prevent them from experiencing unpleasant emotions. It’s only your job to be honest about how you’re feeling and stick around to work through it if that brings up unpleasant emotions. 

Read How to Tell Someone They've Hurt Your Feelings

How do you react when you feel angry?

For a lot of people, anger is a confusing emotion. Everyone feels anger, of course, but we often aren’t taught how to deal with anger in a healthy way when we are young. It can feel like the only way to respond to anger is through yelling or violence, but that’s a myth that stems from our anger-phobic culture. 

Read 6 Safe Ways to Express Anger. 

How does comparison harm us?

Most obviously, comparison usually makes us feel inadequate. Particularly when we’re comparing ourselves to a carefully curated version of someone else's life (like their instagram feed). We see amazing or exciting things people are sharing, and if we’re not in the middle of something amazing or exciting ourselves, it can make us feel like we fall short. 

But it isn’t just us that it harms. Too much comparison can also be damaging to your relationships. When you’re constantly putting yourself up against someone else–out of either admiration or jealousy–you’re not seeing the other person as a full person. You’re only seeing the one thing that is provoking an emotional reaction out of you (a picture of their vacation, a post about their promotion, etc.) It can lead to jealousy, even resentment in your relationship.

Read How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others. 

Do you know how emotions feel in your body? 

Emotions aren’t only felt in the mind. Our bodies react to our environments just like our brains do, and it can be helpful to connect emotions with body sensations so we can better understand what’s going on within us. 

Read Learning How to Connect Emotions and Body Sensations.

Learning to care for yourself is a process and it can feel hard to do it alone. Working with a therapist can help teach you new ways to explore what your needs are and find healthy, supportive ways to tend to them. Get in touch with our office today to get started with one of our expert clinicians. 

4 Ways to Deal with New Year Overwhelm

4 Ways to Deal with New Year Overwhelm

The new year is an overwhelming time, especially when you’re chronically online as most of us are. There’s always a huge frenzy of self-improvement at the new year, and it can be hard to escape on social media, at the office, and from friends and family. 

It makes sense that people are tempted to make big changes at the new year. Changing from one year to the next is a natural fresh start, and lots of people like to mark that new start with some new habits or goals. However, it’s important to remember that you can start something new or decide on a new goal anytime during the year, not just around January 1st.

This time of year is also typically pretty busy on its own, so adding major lifestyle changes to that can be completely overwhelming. Lots of folks are back in the office in the new year after a break, with mounting workloads from their time off or working seasonal jobs that take away free time, which leads to even more stress. 

Are you looking for ways to be less overwhelmed in the new year? Here are 4 ways to deal with New Year overwhelm: 

Don't expect your whole life to change with the change of the date

There’s a lot of pressure this time of year for a “new year, new you” where you erase all bad habits and pick up new ones almost effortlessly to improve your life. Remember, it’s not reasonable to change everything about yourself overnight. (And even if you did, then you wouldn't be you, which would be no good.)

If January 1st is looming over you and you feel like you have to do something major in the new year, remember that time is made up. Of course, time does pass, but the way we structure time is a man-made system. You can do anything you want to at any time, not just when the calendar changes to a new year. Some people prefer to use the start of the school year to kick off new habits or goals. Others use their birthdays, and some people just start on random days when they decide on a new goal. It’s up to you, not to anyone else.  

Connect with what you really want to do

Are there any habits or goals that would actually make a difference in your life? It’s okay to want to form new habits, and setting goals is a huge part of life. It’s just tricky to narrow down what you actually want in all the New Year’s Resolution noise from other people. If you genuinely want to see what your month would be like if you changed your relationship with alcohol, try a new year challenge like Dry January. If you’re feeling pressured into it from your social circle, give it some more thought or skip it. 

Ask yourself what would actually feel good to you and what would work with your current lifestyle. Small changes are more sustainable over long periods and can go a long way toward building your confidence, and when the changes you make are aligned with your goals and values, it’s a lot easier to maintain over the long term. 

Take things slowly

Building new habits, unfortunately, takes time. When you work on changing your habits slowly, you not only have more chances for success, but you also build confidence and allow your brain to master this new skill. Our brains do a lot of work, and so when it can find a shortcut to take to send messages, it will use them. Your current habits are wired into these shortcuts, or neural pathways, and so your new habits will have to build their own pathway. This takes time and repetition. Once your brain learns this new shortcut, the habit will feel like it’s second nature. 

The same is true for goals. It’s exciting to set a new goal and to have something to work toward, but it’s important to make a plan for your goal so you don’t get overwhelmed and abandon it. Break goals down into small pieces that you can take action on and build off of, instead of trying to do everything at once. 

Adjust your expectations for yourself and practice self-compassion

You might notice that many of our blog posts suggest practicing self-compassion. We repeat it all of the time because most of us are suffering from a serious lack of self-compassion and it doesn’t need to be that way. Learning how to be kind to yourself and have your own back, no matter what is going on is a life changing skill. 

Most of us are mean to ourselves automatically, without even realizing it. Negative self-talk can be really surprising when you learn how to notice it, because it might not even have occurred to you that you feel that way about yourself. When you notice what automatic thoughts come up about yourself, try to respond to them with compassion rather than with judgment.

It takes time, but you can get in the habit of interrupting those negative thoughts when they come up. When you know that no matter what happens, you have your own back and you will be kind to yourself, things feel a lot less scary. 

Are you feeling overwhelmed with 2023 only a few days away? This time of year is tricky for almost everyone, so remember that there’s nothing wrong with you for feeling this way.

If you want some extra support during this time, working with a therapist can help you get clear on your goals and values and how best to get started. Give our office a call today to get more information or to schedule an appointment. 

3 Tips for Cultivating A More Positive Relationship With Yourself

When you think of cultivating positive relationships in your life, do you think about the relationship you have with yourself? 

The word relationship calls to mind our connections with others–with romantic partners, with friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors, etc. But you have a relationship with yourself as well–and it’s the longest relationship you’re ever going to have! That alone makes it worth it to spend intentional time reflecting on your relationship habits and where you want your relationship with yourself to go.

We’re pretty familiar with the idea of self care at this point, but an under-discussed component of self care is the ongoing attention your relationship to yourself requires. But our relationship to ourselves touches just about every part of our lives, like: 

• The way we talk to ourselves daily  

• The way we’re able to connect with others 

• The opportunities or healthy risks we take or miss out on 

• The way we take care of ourselves on a regular basis  

• The way we’re able to handle setbacks  

And while being intentional with our self care habits is a good start when it comes to tending to our self-relationship, there’s more to it than that! 

We develop our relationship with ourselves much the same way we develop all early relationships: through watching, observing and learning from the examples given to us by our caregivers. Our self-relationship is influenced both by how we see our caregivers and close peers speak to and about themselves, as well as the way we are treated within the relationships with our caregivers. 

When we’re young, we develop what is called an attachment style. There are four main types: anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, disorganized attachment, and secure attachment. Anxious, avoidant, and disorganized attachments are all what are considered insecure attachment styles. A secure attachment is when someone feels secure in their ability to express what they are feeling openly, to foster emotional intimacy, etc. Those who developed secure attachments are more likely to also then be able to cultivate a positive relationship with themselves as well as others, because the building blocks are already there. 

What does that mean if you grew up in an environment where there was no emotional safety or closeness? Where you didn’t learn that it was okay to openly express yourself or your needs or address conflict? Does that mean you’re doomed to a negative relationship with yourself forever?

Not at all! 

We always have the ability to improve our relationships, especially when it comes to the one we have with ourselves. It just takes some time, intention, and care. 

Here are some tips on how to begin to adjust or cultivate a more positive relationship with yourself: 

Tip 1: Remember you don’t need to earn basic needs

You need to nourish yourself, hydrate yourself, move your body a little, and get enough rest no matter how you feel about yourself. These things aren’t related to whether you’re productive enough, or nice enough, or liked by enough people, etc. Your body can’t function without food, water, and rest! It’s best to incorporate some sort of gentle movement as well (tips for developing a caring relationship to your body even if you don’t feel love for it here), for both your mental and physical health–but this can be something as simple as putting your favorite song on and dancing around your bedroom for four minutes or taking a leisurely stroll around your neighborhood. 

Getting in the habit of meeting these basic needs, even if you don’t feel you “deserve” them, will help to improve both your physical and mental health. When we’re properly nourished we’re less easily ruled by intense emotions, we’re able to tolerate a bit more distress (small things don’t set us off) and our ability to be compassionate for others and ourselves increases when our bodies are properly taken care of. 

Tip 2: Redirect negative self talk

Negative self talk is a difficult habit to break. Ideally, it would be wonderful if you only ever thought lovely things about yourself–but that’s also a lot of pressure to put on yourself. We all get in bad moods sometimes, and sometimes our minds put thoughts out before we’re able to realize it’s not actually what we truly believe! So, while working on the practice of reducing negative self talk, it can be helpful to learn to stop and redirect negative thoughts as they happen. 

For example: Let’s say you make a mistake on something at work, and your first thought is “I am so stupid, I’m going to get fired any day, everyone here hates me.” While your brain might jump there first, if you take a moment to investigate the thought, you will find there isn’t actually any evidence to back it up. People make mistakes all of the time, so anyone can experience that at work. One mistake doesn’t put you on the chopping block, and there’s no evidence that anyone hates you! So what can you do? Take that real “evidence” and redirect that thought to something more positive, or even neutral. It goes from “I am so stupid” to “I know what I need to fix, so I can take care of this and move on.” 

Tip 3: Don’t forget your inner child

A great way to cultivate a positive relationship with yourself is to start with your inner child! If you are carrying wounds from your childhood, they can be influencing the way you view yourself, connect to others, etc. Taking time to connect with the needs, wants, and joys of your inner child is a wonderful way to be intentional about both getting to know yourself, and tending to your inner self-relationship. 

If you’re looking for more support as you develop a more positive relationship with yourself, a therapist can help suggest skills that fit your needs. Contact us today!

4 Practical Ways to Build New Habits

4 Practical Ways to Build New Habits

Have you ever tried to build a new habit?

It can be surprisingly difficult to start doing something new regularly. Doing one small new thing a day (or not doing something) might sound simple, but our brains are complicated, so it doesn’t always end up being that way. 

Thankfully, we know a lot more about the human brain than we used to, which can help us make sense of how habits are built in our nervous system. It’s absolutely possible to build new habits that improve your life, it just takes some patience. 

Habits are “a settled or regular tendency or practice,” or something that you do without really thinking about it. It might be brushing your teeth in the morning, or taking your dog for a walk. A habit tends to be sort of automatic, and such a routine part of your life that it feels strange when you don’t do it. 

Why are habits hard to break and hard to build?

It comes down to our brains. When our brains notice that we do something over and over, they try to make life easier by making a sort of shortcut for that action. Our brains spend all day long taking action, so when they can use a shortcut, it’s usually helpful. These shortcuts are called neural pathways. 

Our brains work by sending electrical signals to our neurons from one area to another. When that path gets used over and over, our brains learn and develop a new neural pathway to send the message more efficiently. This is why after a certain period of time habits become so ingrained that you don’t even really have to think about them.  

Sometimes improving your life isn’t about adding in a new habit, but breaking an old one that is no longer serving you. Breaking habits is just as difficult as building one, because your brain wants to use that neural pathway it’s created for you. It takes time to teach your brain that you’re not using that one anymore. 

So, you want to learn a new habit? Here are 4 practical ways to build new habits:

Unlearn myths about habits

There are a lot of myths out there about habits. One of the most common myths is that it takes just 21 days to build a new habit. This might be true for some people, but it’s not the case for most. For many people, it can take months to develop a habit. If you’ve felt frustrated in the past that you weren’t able to establish a new habit in 21 days, know that you are not the problem! The expectation that we can re-wire our brains in 3 weeks is often what leads people to feel frustrated. 

Another problematic myth about habits is that they are good or bad. As with much in life, things are rarely that black and white. There's a gray area that's important to notice. 

Instead of trying to view habits as good or bad, try to assess them by whether they’re supportive or unsupportive. Does this habit help you feel good about yourself and meet your goals? Does it align with your values? Does it support who you are now, or is it no longer necessary? 

When you shift from thinking about habits in terms of good and bad, it’s easier to remove the judgment you feel and treat yourself with compassion. 

Try habit stacking

Remember those neural pathways we talked about earlier? Those shortcuts give you a built-in hack to start a new habit. A habit stack is when you put a new habit alongside one you’ve already mastered. 

So, if you’d like to develop a habit where you spend time meditating each day, try sticking it next to a habit you already do daily - like brewing coffee or charging your phone. When you’re done getting your coffee ready, jump right into meditation until it’s ingrained. It’s easier to remember to fold in a new habit alongside an established one, instead of forgetting half of the time. 

Examine barriers

A lot of times when we try to implement new habits, we only do so in optimal conditions, like when we’re feeling healthy and not too stressed. When life inevitably gets in the way of your new routine, it can be tricky to keep up! Often new habits are the first things we drop in times of overwhelm, because they’re not ingrained in the neural networks in our brains yet. So when you’re building a new habit, it’s important to zoom out and look for potential barriers that could get in the way of this new habit. 

Do you struggle to get the laundry done because you don’t have a set time in your schedule? Or maybe because you have to travel to the laundromat, and when your schedule gets busy you don’t have time? Whatever the barrier is, write it down, and try to come up with as many solutions as possible to give yourself opportunities to overcome what’s getting in the way of this new habit. Having a plan for when those barriers happen will help you feel less overwhelmed when they do pop up. 

Go slow

You’re not going to be able to completely overhaul your habits overnight. It can be a fun energy boost to start a new habit, but try to avoid the temptation to do too much at once and build your habits one at a time. 

If you try to do too much too fast, you run the risk of burning yourself out instead of being able to stick with the habit for the long haul. Work on one habit at a time so you can have time to build that new neural pathway so the habit becomes almost automatic. Once you have to think less about the habit to get it done, you can add in the next one. 

Have patience and compassion with yourself because you’re doing your best! Our brains are complicated and take more time to learn than you might like. You’re worthy of compassion anyway! 

Are you looking for more support as you build new habits? A therapist can help you discover what habits are no longer supportive for you and examine the barriers you face in implementing new ones, along with so much more. You can get started in one click!

Spending Time with Your Inner Child this Autumn

What’s your inner child?

Your inner child is all of the younger versions of yourself that still live inside of your mind. Imagine yourself like a tree–as the tree grows, it creates rings on the inside of it, marking how many growth cycles it’s been through. Your inner child is like that, the rings of your growth. You don’t abandon each version of yourself as you get older, you simply build upon it. 

Their hopes, their needs, their dreams, their fears, and their wounds all live within you, making you responsible for them. We call this sort of responsibility the reparenting of your inner child because it allows for you, now grown, to provide the care and support your younger self needed to that younger version of you inside of yourself. You are parent and child at once. 

Why is connecting to them important?

Taking time to connect with your inner child allows you to tap into those needs and fears and wounds. Wounds left untended from our childhood don’t just go away, they seep into our adult lives & relationships. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re trying to tend to those wounds through our behaviors! That’s why taking intentional time to get to know your inner child, and explore where they might be hurting is so important. 

What does it mean to care for your inner child?

Taking time to care for your inner child is about taking intentional time with yourself. Notice your emotional reactions to things, and make an effort to investigate where those instincts come from. Often at the root of an emotional reaction is a childhood wound–one we may or may not be aware of. And remember as you take this time: what you find may seem insignificant to an adult but can be a major moment for a child. When we’re children, experiences are all new. That means we’re not able to apply the logic of context to a situation, and may draw the wrong conclusions. Be kind to your inner child and remember that their feelings are real and huge to them. It’s not your job to logic those feelings away, but to offer a safe space to name them, sit with them, and explore what those feelings say about your emotional needs. 

Use the changing of the seasons as an excuse to make plans with your inner child. 

As the weather cools, it’s finally starting to feel like autumn! There are many ways you can connect to your inner child throughout the year, but why not have a little seasonal fun with it? Here are just a few ideas on how you can use the changing of the seasons as an opportunity to connect with your inner child: 

Visit a corn maze: 

This is both a fun group activity (get all your friend’s inner children to come along to!) or an opportunity for some one on one, mindful time with your inner child. Walk through the maze as they would, what choices would they make? How would they have fun? Indulge their playful spirit! 

Pick out & decorate pumpkins:

Getting creative with your inner child is a great way to allow them to express themselves, and seasonal decorating is just one way to do it! You can let them get their hands messy and carve a pumpkin, or you could keep it whole and have some fun painting it. Let your inner child guide the creative process, and see what they come up with! 

Make your own Halloween costume: 

Just one more creative way to connect to your inner child’s playfulness and creativity. Who would your inner child want to be for Halloween? Did they have a hero or a favorite character? How would they like to dress up as them? Would they have fun piecing the costume together, DIY style? 

Go apple picking: 

Spending time in nature is great both for you and your inner child! Go for an autumn hike or go to an apple orchard to spend an afternoon walking around, smelling the crisp air, stepping on crunchy leaves, and picking delicious apples to bring home with you. Maybe you and your inner child can bake them into an apple pie for a sweet treat later! 

If you’re looking to go deeper into your inner child work, our therapists can help support you. Get in touch with us today to schedule an appointment!

3 Ways to Build Interoceptive Awareness

3 Ways to Build Interoceptive Awareness 

Did you know that you have way more than 5 senses? 

When we were little, most of us learned that we had five senses - sight, taste, hearing, smell, and touch. In fact, there are many more ways that our bodies pick up on information in the world around us and make sense of what’s going on. 

Some of the less commonly understood senses are proprioception (sensing where your body parts are in space), thermoception (sensing temperature), nociception (sensing pain), equilibrioception (sensing balance), and interoception (sensing what’s happening in your body). Interoception, in particular, can play a role in decoding the emotional messages we’re getting from our bodies.

What is interoception? 

Interoception is being in touch with what’s going on in your body. It’s a mind-body connection that lets us tune in to the messages that our bodies send us. When we have experiences, our bodies are often heavily involved, but many of us don’t have a lot of practice translating what they have to say. Decoding the interoceptive signals that our bodies send us is something that comes with practice and patience. 

Interoception allows us to feel things like: 

• Hunger 

• Thirst

• Urge to use the bathroom

• Emotions

• Tired

• Itchiness

• Heart rate

• Muscle tension

• Body temperature 

Many of us are more disconnected from our bodies than we realize.

It’s a cultural norm, for example, to learn to ignore body cues about hunger and fullness in order to meet beauty expectations. It’s such a struggle to learn how to tune in to the messages your body gives you about its hunger needs that there’s a whole framework called intuitive eating that teaches people how to re-learn those signals. 

Some people are disconnected from their bodies for painful reasons. Folks who live with chronic pain may not be able to handle being fully present in their body when it is in pain, so may feel easier to ignore those body messages. Survivors of trauma may not feel safe in their bodies and so may not know if they can trust the messages they’re receiving. 

We all have a level of interoceptive awareness, or the ability to understand the messages we get from our bodies. Some people have lower levels of awareness of their internal body sensations, or lower interoceptive awareness. The messages our bodies send us can be tricky to understand if you’re not sure what to look for, but it’s possible to increase your level of interoceptive awareness. 

Why interoceptive awareness is helpful for mental health

It would be helpful if our bodies and our brains spoke the same language, but they often don’t. The messages our bodies send us come in what are known as interoceptive signals, and they can be easy to miss if you don’t know what you’re looking for. These interoceptive signals help us identify our emotions, which is an important step in emotional regulation.

For example, let’s say you’re frustrated about something. You might have a sense of unease that you’re picking up on, but you’re not sure where it’s coming from. It could be mistaken for fear or anger. There might be subtle signals that set it apart from the other emotions, but if you don’t pick up on them, it might take you longer to get to the bottom of what’s going on. Some signs to look out for that distinguish your feeling of frustration could be:

• The level of tension in your muscles (are your muscles tense, like you’re ready to run or strike? Or are you feeling more relaxed?)

• How fast your heart rate is (often your heart rate will speed up when you’re afraid or angry)

• Feeling hungry or thirsty (if you’re afraid, often your sense of hunger will disappear as fight or flight kicks in)

• Feeling tightness somewhere in your body (some people experience frustration as a tightness in their chest or throat)

It can feel like a full time job just trying to ride the waves of your changing emotions sometimes, but emotional regulation is even harder when we can’t name the emotions we’re feeling.  It’s hard to regulate something you can’t name, because you don’t know what to look for. When you are able to read the messages from your body, though, it becomes easier to regulate what you’re feeling. 

How to strengthen your sense of interoception

It takes practice to learn how to engage the sense of interoception. Interoceptive awareness builds with time, so the more you can be curious about what’s going on in your body, the better. Here are 3 other ways to strengthen your sense of interoception. 

Practice mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness is often one of our suggestions, because it really makes a difference. Learning how to focus your attention on the present moment is an important skill that is a foundation for mental wellness. 

Instead of letting your thoughts or feelings carry you away, practicing mindfulness teaches you how to notice and name what you experience. It also helps you learn how to let go of judgments you have of yourself. We tend to judge ourselves a lot more than we’d ever judge anyone else. That sense of judgment can make it hard to fully express yourself, even to yourself. 

To build up your sense of body awareness, try a body scan meditation or a grounding exercise that focuses on the senses. These will help you get in the habit of checking in with your body as you check in with your mind. 

Connect body signals with emotions

Sadly, many of us don’t learn how to notice and name our emotions until they’re causing us distress. We can feel a wide range of emotions as humans, and sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint which one you’re experiencing. It may be easier for you to identify your emotions if you’re able to connect the signals of your body with the emotions you feel. This not only helps you tune into the signals from your body, but it helps you understand how you personally experience each emotion, which will make it easier to identify in the future. 

It may be helpful to consult an emotion wheel to pinpoint which emotion you’re feeling. This is a fantastic one because it links emotions and sensations, so if you’re not sure what you’re feeling, you can explore the sensations you’re experiencing and try to determine your emotions from that angle instead.

Practice body curiosity

Occupational Therapist and interoception expert Kelly Mahler recommends practicing body curiosity to build your interoceptive awareness. Body curiosity is what it sounds like - practicing being curious about your body. The key with body curiosity is to remove judgment from the equation. There’s nothing your body is doing that is bad or wrong, it’s all just information. When you can remove the layer of judgment, it’s easier to be honest with yourself and understand what is really going on. This is especially helpful to teach to young ones as they grow so it’s a habit for them to check in with their bodies without judgment. 

Try keeping a body curiosity journal to get in the habit of checking in with your body. You can quickly note what your body feels like during daily activities, so you can pick out patterns and learn more about how you physically experience emotions.

There are many different ways to support your mental health, and learning more about how to listen to the messages your body is telling you is one. It builds trust between you and your body when you make an effort to be a loving parent to yourself. Working with a therapist can help you uncover more ways to support your mental health that work for you and your lifestyle. Call or email us today to get started. 

What Internalized Messages Do Your Still Believe About Yourself?

What’s an internalized message?

An internalized message is something we believe, unconsciously about ourselves. These messages and beliefs don’t come from within ourselves–while they may feel like undeniable qualities about ourselves, these internalized messages actually came from outside influences. They are the result of how we, as children, are able to interpret and understand the world around us, and the way we’re expected to behave in relationships. 

These messages then become core parts of our self view, how we’re unconsciously able to connect with and relate to others, how we navigate social situations and relationships, etc. These messages, when they aren’t explored and questioned, can muddle our true beliefs about ourselves, and lead us to believe we are less lovable,safe, and valued than we really are.  

So where do these internalized messages come from?

The internalized messages we have ourselves come from the foundational relationships in our lives.These would be our parents, guardians, other family members, early childhood friends, authority figures (teachees, church leaders,) etc. 

As we grow older and can understand our own and others complexities, we can start to see that while these messages came from influential people in your life, they are not always trying to communicate the message you’re understanding. What may be a normal exchange for an adult can be a foundational building block for a child. If your needs were neglected by your parents–even without malicious intent, but perhaps because of less fortunate circumstances–there’s a part of your brain as a child that takes that information and tries to understand it with what it knows. So it’s entirely possible that those negative beliefs you have about yourself are coming from that inner part of yourself that is still a child, asking for their needs to be met. 

For example: take this story, where a man internalized a fear of abandonment after his family took in a series of rescue dogs until they found “the one” that was right for their family. This series of events–while not intentionally–taught that young boy that it wasn’t safe to make quick connections with others or try to bond with them before they proved they would stick around. This of course wasn’t the family’s intention, and there were probably many factors that went into the constant shifting of the family-pet dynamic, but it’s a belief that boy learned and carried with him into adulthood because it was how he was able to understand and get through the circumstances he found himself in. 

What are common internalized messages we have about ourselves?

Unfortunately, when we internalize these messages about ourselves, we often fixate on negative messages. Things like: 

• Everyone is going to leave me

• I need to constantly prove my value so people will want to keep me around

• If I say the wrong thing, someone may stop loving me

• My body deserves to be punished/I should feel shame for my body 

• People will only love me if I can do something for them

So how can we begin to question/challenge those internalized messages?

The first step is recognition. What is it you’re believing about yourself right now? Can you identify what the message is?

From there, what is it about this moment that is making that message come up for you? Is there any evidence to support that the thought is true? (Ex. Is it really true that if you say the wrong thing, someone will stop loving you? Has the person you’re nervous about talking to given you any indication that this is true? Or is this a fear coming from somewhere else? 

If it’s coming from somewhere else, can you identify where that place is? Think on the feeling, what memories come up with it? Does the feeling you’re having right now remind you of a moment in your childhood? When is the first time you remember having this feeling?

The next step is to take that information and use it to challenge that feeling or belief or message whenever it comes up. Ask yourself: 

• Is there any information at this moment to support this negative belief I’m having about myself?

• Or is there a moment from my youth that made a “wound” that is being re-opened in this moment? 

It can be helpful to have a regular reflection process for moments like this, so you get into the habit of questioning those negative beliefs when they pop up.

Below are 8 journal prompts to help you explore and challenge the internalized messages you still have about yourself: 

1. What beliefs do I have about myself?

2. For each of those, what is the earliest memory of that belief? 

3. What feeling did it bring up as a child? How have those feelings translated into my adulthood?

4. What about this moment is pulling up that belief?

5. When is the first time I felt like this?

6. What did I need in that moment that I didn’t get?

7. Is there any evidence that my needs will be ignored or overlooked now?

8. Is there any evidence that this negative belief I have about myself is true in this new situation? 

If you’re looking for support as you work on challenging those negative internalized beliefs, therapy can be a great place to start. Contact us today and our expert clinicians can help.