What Do I Need to Know Before my First Therapy Session?

First: take a second to feel proud of yourself.

Starting therapy is a big step. While therapy has been more normalized and less taboo to talk about socially in recent years, it’s still a difficult step to take for yourself. It requires a lot of vulnerability and self compassion–and hope! Taking the step is incredibly brave, and if you haven’t heard it somewhere else, let us be the first to say, we’re proud of you. 

Starting something new–especially something like therapy, which asks us to be present and raw and honest–often brings up some anxiety. If you’re feeling nervous or apprehensive before your first session, know that that’s completely common and nothing to be ashamed of. And if you’re willing to bring it up, it’s something you can tell your therapist in your first session so they can more specifically address what you’re concerned about! 

To help cover some more general concerns, here are our tips on how to prepare for your first therapy session:

Check your therapists website:

It’s common for therapists to have a page on their website that covers what goes into getting started with them. It’s possible any questions you have about the process have already been answered there! Ours includes a frequently asked questions section, but some practices have this as a separate page. While it’s not necessarily required, you could also review the modality your therapist will be utilizing so you can familiarize yourself with what it means and what that looks like in practice. 

Review contact from your therapist: 

How did you make your appointment? Did you get a confirmation email or a message from your therapist with any info on what to bring to the first session? For example, at our practice, once patients are scheduled they get an email with our welcome packet to complete in our online patient portal–this includes any paperwork we need from patients we need to get started with care. Be sure to check if you need to have paperwork completed before your first appointment! 

Prepare for some housekeeping: 

Starting therapy isn’t jumping into the treatment right away. First, you need to meet with your new therapist and go over what brings you in, what could impact your care, what steps your therapist thinks are right for you, etc. In these consultation sessions, your therapist will get some background information on you as a client and go over potential goals for your therapeutic treatment. This time is important for both you and your therapist to assess your fit together!

Ask yourself what you need to feel safe being vulnerable: 

Just as your therapist will be assessing the fit of their practice for your needs, as you begin your work together it’s up to you to decide how you’re feeling about the fit as well. Do you feel comfortable being honest with this person? How does your body react to being with them? If you’re tense or anxious or nervous in your body, is it a discomfort that you can sit with and overcome, or is it more severe, trying to tell you something doesn’t feel safe for you? If it’s discomfort you can sit with, take some time to think about what it is that is causing the discomfort. Are these things you can address with your new therapist? They may be able to help you overcome what might block you from being honest in that space. 

While you can always bring things up throughout your relationship, making intentional space with your therapist to go over what you need to feel safe trusting them with your vulnerability can help lay a strong foundation for the therapeutic relationship right from the beginning. 

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. 

4 Tips to Become a Better Listener

Everyone wants to feel listened to and understood by the people around them, but listening well can be easier said than done. Becoming a better listener is a powerful way to improve your relationships with others, whether it’s close friends and partners or even just people you know casually. 

Think about the last time you were talking to someone and you could tell they weren’t listening. Or back to a time when you were trying to communicate something but the other person wasn’t hearing you. You probably felt annoyed or upset, right? It can be hurtful to feel like you’re not being listened to. And on the other hand, you’ve probably had moments where you were only half listening to someone. 

No one is perfect all of the time! We all have moments where we’re distracted or we’re too emotional to think clearly, and those moments can get in the way of listening well. Learning how to become a better listener can improve your relationships by helping you feel more connected to others and communicate more effectively. 

Active listening is a strategy to improve your listening skills by making listening an engaged practice. Sometimes, even when we’re trying to listen, something will go in one ear and out the other, which can leave everyone in the conversation feeling frustrated. 

Listening can sometimes be seen as something passive, but that can sometimes lead to misunderstandings and poor communication. This is especially true in distracting settings or in heated conversations. When you listen actively, hearing what is said is the primary goal instead of just getting to the end of the conversation. 

If you’re looking to become a better listener, here are 4 tips to keep in mind: 

Listen to understand, not to respond

Sometimes in conversations it is tempting to think about what you’re going to say next. No one likes to feel judged or blamed, but difficult conversations can leave you feeling that way. Remember that everyone has their own perspective and feelings, even when things are hard to hear. Don’t think about what you’re going to say next, just listen to what the other person is saying without judging. 

Make sure you do your best to not interrupt the other person. It can be hard to listen without jumping in to defend yourself or share your point of view. It’s pretty natural to want to defend yourself, but it’s not helpful to interrupt someone when you’re trying to hear and understand what they’re saying. When you’re rushing to interrupt, you’re also tuning out what they’re saying to a degree as you formulate your response. Remember that you’re listening to understand, not to respond right now. 

Jumping in before the other person has finished speaking can make it harder for you to hear each other, which can sometimes lead to talking louder or raised voices. Remember that you will have your turn to speak and you can share your side when that comes. 

Validate the other person

Communicating is hard. Validation goes a long way when it comes to listening, because it shows the other person that you appreciate the effort they’re making to communicate with you. Telling them “I’m so glad that you shared that with me,” or “I really appreciate you being vulnerable right now,” helps to build trust. Even when a conversation is difficult, finding ways to validate each other can make it more likely that you’ll have more opportunities to keep communicating.

Stay engaged

It’s important to stay engaged in the conversation for the whole time. It can be helpful to make sure you’re understanding the other person correctly by summarizing what they have said. Some people find they can understand things best by relating it back to themselves or something that they’ve experienced, but sometimes that can come across as invalidating or insincere, even if that’s not how you mean it.

Another way to show that you’re engaged in the conversation is to have open body language. Nodding your head with what they’re saying or saying things like “That makes sense,” or “Mhmm” can also keep you focused on the conversation. 

Minimize distractions

When you’re listening to someone, do what you can to get rid of distractions that could draw your attention away from the conversation. It’s important to give the other person your full attention, so make sure to put your phone away, turn down the music, turn off the tv, or close your computer. 

Multitasking while talking to someone isn’t the best way to really hear and understand what they’re saying. Sometimes making eye contact can help you focus your attention and show the other person that you’re engaged and listening, but some people find eye contact uncomfortable, distracting, or distressing. Some folks find that stimming helps them focus more effectively, so if that works for you, go for it. 

Listening effectively is a skill, and it takes practice. Do you want to become a better listener and improve your communication skills? Working with a therapist can help you learn and practice new skills to help improve your relationships. Get in touch today to get started!

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. 

What to Do When You’re Burned Out

Do you know what to do when you’re burned out?

Burnout is something that many of us are all too familiar with, especially since the onset of the pandemic. While many of us know on some level that we’re burned out, it’s less clear what to do when you are burned out. A complicating factor with treating burnout is that it leaves you feeling exhausted, depleted, and hopeless, which can make it harder to get started doing anything that will help you feel better. Coping with burnout doesn’t have to be complicated, though, and there are some simple steps you can take to start feeling better. 

What is burnout, anyway? 

Burnout is excessive and long-term stress. It’s easy to confuse burnout with stress, but they’re a little different. Stress is generally about a specific thing or situation, and it has an end. Burnout, on the other hand, is long-term. Burnout lasts until we do something about it, even if the situation that originally stressed us out has passed. 

Anything that causes lots of stress can lead to burnout. Some situations that can lead to burnout include:

• Being a caregiver or parent

• Struggling with relationship problems

• Having to work multiple jobs

• Being in a rigorous academic program 

• Having to deal with too much at work

What does burnout feel like?

Burnout is a message from your body that you’re doing too much, going too hard, and you need to listen before you cause serious damage. As you can imagine, it doesn’t feel good! 

Some of the physical and mental symptoms of burnout are:

• Feeling cynical, helpless, trapped, or defeated

• Getting sick more frequently

• Procrastination

• Struggling with self-doubt

• Problems with concentration or memory

• Being exhausted and drained all the time

• Coping with substances 

• Becoming more detached and isolated from the people in your life

• Feeling consistently bored or overwhelmed

• Irritability 

• Loss of motivation for things that are important or meaningful to you

• Frequent aches and pains (like headaches or stomach aches)

• Changes in appetite

• Shifts in your sleeping patterns

Why is burnout so common?

Burnout is common because our culture values work/productivity above personal happiness. Our worth is often tied to our jobs and how much we can produce. Being busy is rewarded and not being busy is seen as lazy. With inflation rising and the economic unpredictability from the pandemic, many people are working more than ever and having less time to recuperate. 

Being stressed for a long period of time is harmful, both mentally and physically. Our bodies aren’t meant to be stressed for months and months on end, and when they are, it can cause problems, from mood swings to health problems like heart disease. 

Dealing with burnout takes a two pronged approach of treatment and prevention.

Burnout always has a cause, but it’s not always easy to figure out what that cause is. Understanding the cause of your burnout can be key to prevent it from happening again. Figuring out what is making you feel burned out can help you focus on relieving the symptoms of burnout so you can make yourself feel better. 

What can you do to feel better right now? 

The first step to treating burnout is to ease the symptoms and start feeling better. It might seem like there’s nothing you can change, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes there’s not much you can do about a situation, but other times you can make changes that will help you feel better. Try approaching the problem after a few good meals and a good night of rest. When you’re feeling slightly less depleted, try to think about where the burnout is coming from. 

It can feel bad to have to cancel plans or to ask for help, but remember that you’re not meant to go through life alone. Even if you feel like you’re the only one who can do certain things, you deserve to have a break too. Go through what’s on your plate and cancel or reschedule a few things. Ask for help from the people in your community. 

It can also be helpful to let people know what’s going on with you so you don’t feel so alone. Most of us have dealt with burnout at some point, and it can be comforting to know that someone has gone through something similar and come out of it. 

How to prevent burnout in the future

Once you understand a little bit more about where the source of your burnout is coming from, you can work on strategies to prevent it from happening again. If you struggle with being assigned too much at work, you can work with your boss to clarify your job responsibilities and learn how to delegate. If you are burned out from caregiving, you can call in your support system and ask for help. 

Do you tend to be a people pleaser? When you struggle to ask for help, it can lead to burnout because you feel you have to take everything on yourself. No one can do everything alone, but it takes practice to feel comfortable asking for help from your support system. 

Make it a habit to celebrate what’s going right. Our brains naturally try to focus on the negative to keep us safe, but sometimes they overdo it. It takes effort to focus on the positive sometimes, but when you make it a habit to celebrate what’s going right, it can help you feel less hopeless about the future. 

Finally, it’s crucial to give yourself breaks. Schedule time off in your calendar. Take all of your vacation and sick days. Switch shifts with people to give yourself some time away. Say no to plans when you’re overwhelmed. 

The way that we work and live in the modern world is pretty tough, and it doesn’t give us a lot of time to ourselves. It’s important to take time off regularly and use it to replenish your energy. This is hard because a lot of us spend our free time running errands or completing tasks, not resting. It can take time to learn how to really rest in a way that replenishes you, but it is possible. 

What to do when you’re burned out and can’t take a break or change jobs

Work is a frequent source of burnout. While it can be fun to imagine just leaving your job and never coming back, that’s not always possible for people. Most of us need our jobs to keep the bills paid and keep a roof over our heads. If you’re burned out at work and you can’t take a break or change jobs, you’re not alone. There are some things you can do to help feel less burned out. 

Start with setting boundaries. Talk with someone you work for like a manager or supervisor and explain what you’re experiencing. Your employer should have an interest in supporting your mental health, because employees who are burned out aren’t as productive. Your productivity doesn’t define you, but it may be something your boss cares about. Using this logic can help persuade your boss to help take some things off your plate or find solutions where they can. Try to set boundaries like when you will respond to work messages or how much you can realistically handle. 

It may also be helpful to challenge your sense of urgency. Are the things causing you stress really urgent, or do you just feel like it is? Try to assess whether you’re pressuring yourself to do too much. Remember it’s okay to have boundaries, and not everything needs to be done right away. In most situations, what is happening is not an emergency, even if the people around us are behaving like it is. 

Finally, take good care of yourself when you’re burned out. Treat yourself like you would when you’re not well, because you’re not well when you’re burned out. Get enough sleep, eat enough food, drink enough water, take enough time for yourself, do things that make you happy, move your body, and spend time with people you love. 

Burnout is unpleasant, but it is treatable. Working with a therapist can help you cope with burnout and find solutions to prevent it from happening again. Get in touch with our office today to get started.

How to Make a Coping Skills Toolbox

What’s your go-to coping skill when you’re upset or emotionally activated? 

We all have different ways that we cope in stressful or emotional times. Sometimes the ways we cope are strategies we learned when we were young to protect ourselves. Others might be skills we’ve learned as we’ve grown up and experienced different situations. Sometimes coping skills are supportive, and sometimes we outgrow coping skills that used to work. There are even times where we use coping skills that end up causing more emotional distress down the line. 

However you cope, it can be helpful to make a coping skills toolbox to use when you’re upset or emotionally activated. Keeping a dedicated container with some helpful items and reminders inside can make a big difference when you’re having an unpleasant emotional experience. Everyone is different and copes differently, so the suggestions we have for a coping skills toolbox are just a jumping off point. 

Using more supportive coping skills than the ones you’ve relied on for years can be tricky in the moment, when you’re outside of your window of tolerance and emotionally activated. It’s hard to rely on newer coping skills that we learn because the old ones are hard-wired into our brains. It takes our brains time to make the connections that help us form new habits. That’s why practice is crucial. 

One of the keys to developing new coping skills is to practice using them when you’re not already upset or emotionally activated. Your ability to think clearly lessens the further you go outside of your window of tolerance, so thinking of ways to comfort yourself in the moment can be close to impossible sometimes. Having a go-to resource that you can rely on when you’re distressed can make coping with the situation and moving forward a bit easier. 

Here are some suggestions for what to keep in your coping skills toolbox, so you can pull it out the next time you’re emotionally activated and need soothing. 

Mindfulness Exercises

When you’re upset, it is hard to focus on what is happening in the present moment. When putting together your coping skills toolbox, try adding some mindfulness exercises or activities to help you reduce your stress and worry and focus on what’s happening right now. If there’s an exercise or activity that is helpful to you, write down some instructions or a reminder of what to do on an index card or piece of paper to help guide you in the moment.

Some items that you can add to your toolbox to help you cope in stressful moments are: 

• Deep breathing exercises, like box breathing or 4-7-8 breathing

• Meditation tracks on a meditation app

• Progressive muscle relaxation exercises

• Coloring pages

• A journal to write in and a pen

Distractions

When you’re upset, sometimes the most supportive thing to do is to distract yourself until the painful or distressing emotions pass. Distraction can become unsupportive when it’s the only coping skill you use, but there’s nothing wrong with distracting yourself from time to time when you’re upset. 

Here are some items for your coping skills toolbox that may help distract you: 

• Movies to watch

• Music to listen to 

• Games to play

• Puzzles 

• A playlist of funny videos

• Hobbies, like crafting or baking

Movement Ideas

Movement can be helpful in times of high stress and emotion. Movement is not only a distraction, but it can help release feel-good hormones throughout your body that can make you feel less distressed. You don’t have to move in a way that punishes yourself or your body, but some people do find that intense movement can be really helpful when they’re super emotionally activated. 

Here are some items you can keep in your coping skills toolbox to encourage movement: 

• Yoga mat

• Foam roller or muscle massager

• Sneakers

• Gardening tools

• A list of exercise videos you like

• Guides for stretching

Calming Sensory Objects

Using your senses is a powerful way to calm down or comfort yourself during intense emotional distress. Try to engage one or all of your senses during upsetting moments by keeping some sensory objects in your toolbox. Some items might be hard to keep all in one box, so leaving yourself a reminder of what objects to grab can be helpful in the moment. 

Some ideas for sensory objects that can be comforting are:

• Candles, lotion, or other comforting scented objects

• Soft blankets or pillows

• Calming music

• A pen to click

• Fidget spinners or stim toys 

• Soft toys or a stress ball to squeeze

• Cuddly stuffed animals

• Candies, mints, lozenges, gum

• A warm beverage mix like tea or cocoa

• Silly putty or slime

• Weighted blanket

• Photos of people you care about

Reminders

If there’s a coping skill that you want to remember to use when you’re emotionally activated, write it down on an index card or slip of paper and add it to your toolbox. You can pull out the card when you need to and remember what to do to make yourself feel better. It may also be helpful to keep some affirmations handy in your coping skills toolbox that you can repeat to yourself in distressing moments. 

It may also be helpful to leave a reminder for yourself that this difficult moment won’t last forever - eventually it will pass. Emotions are like waves, and they do eventually recede, even when they’re uncomfortable. Finding ways to help yourself cope until the difficult emotions fade can help you feel more prepared for next time. 

Therapy is a great opportunity to learn and practice new coping skills that you can add to your coping skills toolbox. Get in touch with our office today to set up an appointment!

3 Tips for Telling Your Therapist They Upset You

Telling someone that they’ve done something to hurt your feelings is never easy. 

It’s vulnerable–you’re exposing yourself as someone who isn’t infallible. It’s opening yourself up to the risk that the person you’re trying to communicate with will misunderstand you. And while sometimes this sort of communication is exactly what we’re working on in therapy, it can still happen that your therapist says something to upset you in session. 

Maybe they poke at an old wound, maybe they misunderstand something difficult you’re struggling to communicate, maybe they’re reactivating old dynamics that hurt you in the past. No matter how it comes about, it’s possible–and in fact normal–that at some point, your therapist will say something that upsets you, rubs you the wrong way, or just generally hurts your feelings.

But, isn’t therapy supposed to be a safe space?

Yes! But your idea of a safe space might be different than what that safe space actually needs to be. Feeling safe and being safe–while both important!–are two different things. Things that make us feel safe might not actually be things that keep us safe in every context. If you grew up in a dysfunctional home, avoiding conflict may have literally kept you safe. Now however, in a different context, that avoidance can create more problems and be a hindrance to your emotional safety. 

A safe space isn’t a space where you will never face discomfort or conflict, it is a place that provides safety to you while you navigate those things. 

In that way, going through the experience of telling your therapist that they’ve hurt your feelings can be an extremely valuable tool in the healing process. Part of how therapy works is through relational healing–your therapist is someone who is there to hear you without judgment, who won’t be mad at you for expressing something unpleasant, and who will demonstrate healthy ways to navigate those moments with you, so you have a model for how it looks outside of therapy. 

Basically, therapy helps us to heal wounds we’ve gotten in other relationships by giving us a relationship where conflict is managed safely. 

So when you tell your therapist that something they’ve done has hurt your feelings, you’re giving yourself an opportunity to write a new script about what happens when you do that. When before it may have gotten you yelled at or berated, your therapist is there to listen to what you’re saying to them, to hear what you’re trying to communicate. When you do this more and more, you’re learning that conflict doesn’t just mean danger–it can also mean an opportunity for deeper understanding, stronger communication, and an emotionally safe relationship. 

That doesn’t mean it’s easy to do! We know it’s hard. If you’re trying to figure out how to let your therapist know they’ve said something that upset you, here are three tips: 

Acknowledge the difficulty of the situation: 

Starting the conversation is hard. But in therapy, you’re in a very unique position where the person you’re talking to you knows a lot about your emotional world, the history you have, and the general bravery it takes to be vulnerable in this way. It’s okay to start with “I’m struggling a lot with how to say this,” or “I’m nervous about bringing this up.” That’s actually helpful information for your therapist to have–they can help address the root of those fears as well as the specific issue you’re hoping to talk about. 

Tell them what you’re worried about: 

Are you worried they’ll be mad at you? That you’ll get kicked out of their office? That they’ll yell at you? Tell you your feelings don’t matter? There are so many reasons we avoid conflict, and they’re often informed by how we’ve experienced conflict in the past. It’s okay to call those fears out, right away. No matter how outlandish that fear may seem in comparison to the conflict, your therapist is there to hold space for those feelings, not judge them. And sometimes, just voicing what you’re afraid of lessens the feeling of fear!

Focus on the feelings it brought up in you: 

When someone says something that hurts our feelings, it’s often about something we’re a little sensitive about anyway. When your therapist says something that hurts your feelings, before you bring it up in session, reflect on what feelings that hurt brought up in you. Did it bring you back to a moment where you’d been hurt before? It’s okay if they seem totally unrelated–brains are funny little things and sometimes they latch onto moments that don’t make any sense to us. If you can let your therapist know not just what hurt your feelings, but how you experienced those hurt feelings, they can help address both the moment in your own relationship, and the history it brought up. 

Do you struggle to communicate when someone has hurt your feelings? We can help support you. Reach out today to get in touch with one of our clinicians! 

7 Blogs to Read if You’re Dealing with Chronic Illness

Living with chronic illness impacts your whole life. 

From your relationships, to your work life, to your self-image, chronic illness finds a way to influence everything. Many of us prefer to think that chronic illness is something we’ll never have to deal with, so it can seem jarring or even frightening to consider what our lives would be like if we dealt with chronic illness.

Part of the fear that comes from imagining life with chronic illness is that we live in a world that was not designed for disabled or chronically ill people to move through. We understand, on some level, how difficult it is to navigate a world that is at best indifferent to you and at worst hostile to your participation. 

When we understand more about the experience of folks living with chronic illness, it's easier to be empathetic and to extend compassion to others and to yourself. Studies show that six out of every ten adults in the United States are living with a chronic illness, so chronic illness is definitely not as rare as we might like to think. 

Especially in the wake of a mass disabling event like the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider what the world is like as a chronically ill person and what we can all do to make things a little easier on folks who do live with a chronic illness. 

To help make a difficult experience a little easier, we’ve gathered 7 of our blog posts related to living your best life with a chronic illness: 

The majority of people in the United States will experience chronic illness at some point in their lives. 

There’s no doubt about it - living with a chronic illness has an impact on your mental health because our mental and physical health is interconnected. Just because you don’t have to worry about chronic illness right now doesn’t mean that will always be the case.

It’s critical to understand the ways that chronic illness can impact mental health because the odds are that you will experience chronic illness at some point in your life, whether for yourself or through someone you love.

Read 5 Ways Chronic Illness can Affect Your Mental Health

Do you have a loved one who deals with chronic pain?

It’s not always easy to know how to show up for someone when they’re going through something serious or life-changing, like dealing with chronic illness or pain. It’s also difficult for folks who don’t live with chronic illness or chronic pain to really understand all the different ways that it impacts everyday life. 

Learning ways to be more conscientious about making plans and prioritizing accommodations for your chronically ill friends can make them feel safe and cared for, which is ideally how we want our friends to feel in our presence, right? 

Read How to Be There for A Friend with Chronic Pain

When you can have reasonable expectations for yourself & your limits, you can start to develop compassion for those limits. 

It can be frustrating as a chronically ill person to feel like your limits change from day to day. Your energy levels change, your symptoms shift, and it can be hard to find a routine that you can sustain for more than a few days. At times it can even feel like you’re working against your own body, which can feel heartbreaking and confusing. 

It’s important to learn how to be compassionate with yourself when you’re chronically ill. There are already enough things to deal with when you’re in pain or symptomatic without being hard on yourself on top of it. 

Read Developing Self Compassion While Living with Chronic Illness

Are you parenting a child with chronic pain?

Watching your child suffer is devastating as a parent. You might feel helpless when your child is in pain or stuck, like you don’t know where to turn for help. It’s also logistically difficult to parent a child with complicated medical needs, and parents of chronically ill children often feel isolated or burnt out. 

Finding ways to support both children with chronic pain and their parents as they navigate this complicated experience can help improve quality of life, even in the face of pain. 

Read 3 Tips for Parenting a Child with Chronic Pain

Since chronic illness is longer term than acute illness, it tends to ripple out and affect even more of people’s everyday lives, including their relationships. 

Unfortunately, the reality for many chronically ill people is that their relationships change after their diagnosis. There are lots of reasons why this happens, but it often feels extremely personal and painful. 

Many people don’t realize how isolating and exhausting chronic illness is, and since it’s a long-term condition, the impacts on relationships can be long-lasting. Practicing speaking up for your needs, setting boundaries, and practicing coping with grief can all help you navigate changing relationships in the aftermath of your chronic illness diagnosis. 

Read How to Cope With Losing Relationships as a Result of Your Chronic Illness

One thing that might surprise folks about living with a chronic illness is the amount of grief there is to navigate. 

Chronic illness has a way of changing everything about your life, from the way you relax to your job to your relationships. Major changes and upheaval in your life often lead to grief, and learning how to cope with that grief can make it easier to navigate. 

The grief that comes up in response to chronic illness can come from your changing relationships, the dream of what could have been if you hadn’t gotten sick, and even from the way the world treats folks with chronic illness. Learning how to move through the world in this new way takes time and lots of self compassion, and you’re not alone for feeling this way. 

Read Understanding Grief and Chronic Illness

If you suffer from chronic pain, the idea of body positivity might feel like asking a lot. 

It can be hard to feel positively about a body that is letting you down or causing you pain. Learning how to love your body and feel positively about it isn’t the only way you can have a healthy relationship with it, though.

You might need to practice readjusting your expectations and understanding your new limits. Remember that you and your body are worthy of respect and care, no matter what else is going on.  

Read Can I Have a Healthy Relationship with My Body Without Loving It?

If you would like more support in coping with chronic illness or dealing with body changes, our therapists at Hope+Wellness can help. Reach out today to make an appointment! 

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. 

3 Ways to Build Trust With Your Body

Do you trust your body?

Body trust might not be something that you’ve ever considered much before. It might seem like a strange concept, but working toward trusting your body can be helpful with self-image, confidence, and self-compassion. 

When we’re born, we know to trust our bodies. When a baby is hungry, they don’t question the hunger cues they’re feeling. They just feel hungry and cry for food. When that baby gets older, though, they might not be as able to tune in to what their body is telling them to determine that they’re hungry. Why is that?

Over time, they began to question the trust they have in their body and their trust in themselves to listen to and care for it. 

Body trust is the concept of feeling connected and compassionate toward your body, and trusting its innate wisdom. Our bodies know a lot more about what they need than we think. Our bodies send us messages all of the time, but it’s often tricky to pick up on them when you’ve grown up learning how to tune them out. 

The Center of Body Trust has a great explanation: “You were born with an inherent trust for your body. Somewhere along the way you became disconnected from that way of knowing. Body Trust is disrupted by many things including and not limited to trauma, oppression, illness, and social constructs of gender, race, sexuality, beauty, health, and weight. Body Trust is an invitation to return to a relationship with your body and yourself that you want to be in for your lifetime—flexible, compassionate and connected.”

It might seem a little odd to have a term for what is essentially just listening to your body, but it’s necessary for many reasons. As we grow, we become influenced by the culture that we live in. We experience discrimination and oppression in some cases. Many of us experience trauma. These experiences teach us to disconnect from our bodies as a way to fit in, and often to stay safe. For example, someone in a larger body might internalize the message that they can only get help from medical professionals if they ignore their body cues for hunger and rest. To avoid substandard medical care due to anti-fat bias, they work to change their body size. 

This is just one example of the ways that we lose trust with our bodies. Any time you have felt that your body isn’t good enough or felt pressure from someone other than yourself to change your body, it reinforces the concept that you can’t trust your body. After a lifetime, it is hard to unlearn. 

What does a lack of body trust look like?

You might not even realize the messages that you’ve taken in about bodies throughout your life. There may be cultural messages that you disagree with on an intellectual level but have a hard time disconnecting from for yourself. You’re not alone. It’s hard to disengage from the constant messaging that your body is not good enough and that you can’t trust what it’s telling you. 

When you don’t trust your body, you might have a harder time picking up on body cues like hunger or thirst. You might ignore your body’s needs, like needing to take a break, because you feel you should push through. 

For many of us, it’s a habit to tune out what our bodies are telling us. It will take time and practice to learn how to tune back in. If you’re working on rebuilding the trust you have with your body, here are 3 things to try:

Notice and appreciate what your body does for you

Lots of us are disconnected from the ways our bodies support us. When we learn how to ignore the messages from our bodies, it makes it harder to appreciate all of the ways our bodies show up for us, day after day. The truth is that there’s probably something you can find to appreciate about your body. Maybe you really appreciate the way your senses allow you to experience the world. Or maybe you really love how your arms allow you to snuggle your pets. 

Take some time to tune in and notice what your body does for you. It’s gotten you this far, after all! Chances are, there is something, even if it’s small, that you can find to appreciate about your body. This will take time to learn. It’s taken a lifetime to learn how not to trust your body, and that won’t go away overnight. 

To get in the habit of tuning in to what your body is telling you, try doing a body scan. Take a few minutes to close your eyes and mindfully imagine your gaze scanning over each part of your body. Take a pause at each area to listen to what your body needs. Does your body need something to eat or drink? Does your body need a hug or to move around a little? Listening to the messages that you get from your body and meeting your body’s needs will help to reinforce that you can trust each other. 

Remind yourself that your body is not the problem

Most of the messages that we get about our bodies being a problem come from people trying to sell us something. If marketers can convince us that it’s our bodies that are the problem, then it’s much easier to sell us a solution. When you notice negative thoughts about your body creeping up, try to remind yourself that there are a lot of people who make a lot of money making you distrust your body. Who is profiting from you feeling this way? It’s probably not you. 

All of our bodies are different. They don’t always work the way they should, but that doesn’t mean that you’re doomed to always hate your body. Sometimes feeling positively about your body is not possible, but body neutrality can be helpful in those moments. Your body doesn’t have to be perfect and you don’t need to be its biggest fan. You just need to treat your body with respect, because you’re on the same team. 

Treat your body like a friend 

Your body is the only body you’re ever going to have. You’re in this together for as long as you’re here, so you might as well treat your body well. Try to connect with it like you would a friend. If a friend expressed a need to you, would you ignore it? Probably not! When you receive information from your body, don’t ignore that either. 

It takes time to build trust, so it will take time for you and your body to learn that you can trust each other. When you show up for yourself and consistently listen to the messages that you’re getting from your body, you reinforce the trust you’re building. When you get a cue from your body that you need something to eat and you eat, you teach your body that it can rely on you to meet its needs. Over time, it will become a habit to meet the needs of your body. Being consistent with listening to your body is a powerful way to rebuild body trust. 

If you’re looking for support as you rebuild trust with your body, therapy can be a great place to start. Contact us today and our expert clinicians can help. 

Developing Self Compassion While Living with Chronic Illness

When you live with chronic illness, it can be hard to predict what your body and energy levels will allow you to accomplish on any given day. 

Some days you may wake up feeling wonderful, ready to fill your time with dozens of activities, while other days you make way up in the midst of a big flare up and even getting out of bed feels like a big ask. 

Feeling unsure of how you’ll feel from day to day can be extremely frustrating, especially given that we live in a culture that often conflates productivity with morality and “laziness” with immorality. 

While he was speaking specifically in regards to academic “laziness” Devon Price reveals a larger truth about laziness and lack of productivity:

“If a person can’t get out of bed, something is making them exhausted. If a student isn’t writing papers, there’s some aspect of the assignment that they can’t do without help. If an employee misses deadlines constantly, something is making organization and deadline-meeting difficult. Even if a person is actively choosing to self-sabotage, there’s a reason for it — some fear they’re working through, some need not being met, a lack of self-esteem being expressed.” (Laziness Does Not Exist)

When you live with chronic illness what seems like laziness or lack of productivity is actually both a mentally and physically exhausting process of trying to rest, recover, and tend to your body in the best way you can. 

In order to develop compassion for your limitations, you need to understand what they are. Instead of waking up and trying to get done what you could at an 80% day no matter how you’re feeling, it’s important to learn what different energy/pain level days look for you practically. 

One way you can do this is to keep a simple journal, logging what different days look like to you. 

This doesn’t have to be anything involved–while things like bullet journals and art  journals can be fun and stress relieving, they are also very intricate to keep up with and part of what you’re hoping to accomplish with this journal is just an easy way to build a reference for how to best take care of yourself. If it takes too long to update it or add to it, eventually you’re going to hit a high pain/low energy day where keeping up with it just isn’t possible. And then it won’t be helpful to you! Instead, keep it simple. Note:

• How your pain/energy/symptoms are in the morning when you wake up 

• What you think your energy level is from 0-100%

• What you managed to do during your day without overextending yourself 

• Anything that helped manage symptoms

As you keep track you’ll learn what your 10% days look like, what your 80% days look like, etc. and you can start to have reasonable expectations. 

When you can have reasonable expectations for yourself & your limits, you can start to develop compassion for those limits. 

It can be frustrating to accept a 10% day! If there are things you want to do or activities you want to participate in, waking up on a 10% day can bring a lot of grief. And while those feelings are absolutely legitimate, it can be helpful to make space for a more positive perspective on those days as well. For example, how can respecting your 10% day help you prepare to make the most of a 90% day?

Have a plan for caring for yourself on limited days:

Take a look at your journal, what are the things that have helped on days like this in the past? Can you make a reference for how to best manage these sort of days for yourself? Getting in the habit of providing care to yourself can help shift your mindset from self frustration to compassion as it starts to benefit you long term. 

And remember everyone else has limits too! Chronic illness can feel isolating especially on low energy or high pain days. Having physical restrictions or limitations is difficult in the world we live in but it’s not the only kind of limitation that exists. Everyone has things they need to navigate from day to day. While it might not be as visible, remembering you’re not alone in this can help reduce the shame you may feel.  

Learning that you have a chronic illness diagnosis is often a life-changing experience. Chronic illness tends to impact every aspect of life, from work to leisure time to money to relationships. Remember, chronic illness is not your fault. If you would like more support in coping with chronic illness, our therapists at Hope+Wellness can help.