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Talking to our children is a challenge.   It is hard to believe we are a couple months into the school year and are embarking on the holiday season.  Many children have settled into their new classroom routines and are busy with after-school sports, playdates, sleepovers and birthday parties. However, more often than not, when you ask your child how…

Prioritizing Self Care Through the Winter Blues   The days are getting shorter and in a couple of weeks, temperatures will drop to sweater weather. For many, this brings a popular phrase to mind: winter is coming. Along with snowflakes and hot chocolates comes the fifth avenue lights, holidays, and New Years resolutions. In the mental health field, the change…

By Danica Spence, LMSW Key tools for loving yourself and increasing your internal happiness.   Executing our Agency Agency is different than attempting to have control over everything. Instead, it focuses on encouraging you to take an active role in your own life, aiming to build a life around things that make you happy. Agency is something we should be…

Part One in an NPR Ed series on mental health in schools. You might call it a silent epidemic. Up to one in five kids living in the U.S. shows signs or symptoms of a mental health disorder in a given year. So in a school classroom of 25 students, five of them may be struggling with the same issues…

We’ve all heard about the power of positive thinking. But will it help me sleep? My problem isn’t falling asleep – it’s staying asleep. This particular form of torture has been dubbed “sleep-maintenance” insomnia. Call me a high-functioning sufferer: I’m usually O.K. once I’ve had my morning coffee. But I worry about the long-term health ramifications of losing sleep. Now…

MINDFULNESS HOW SKILLS What you are supposed to do to be mindful has already been explained in a previous post. Observe, describe, and participate are three different ways of engaging in life in a mindful way. To make those experiences more powerful, you need the “How Skills,” or instructions on how/the way you are to practice the “what skills.” ONE-MINDFULLY…

People who have difficulty controlling their anxiety generally worry a lot about a lot of things. This is known as generalized anxiety. One factor that often fuels generalized anxiety is difficulty accepting the absence of certainty. For most people, uncertainty about important areas of life is unpleasant. It may seem as though life would be easier if you knew how…

People often ask me for recommendations for good, evidenced-based books based on cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness. There are quite a number of good ones out there, unfortunately they are vastly outnumbered by self-help books that are poorly-written, vague or unhelpful, and sometimes even harmful. The following is a list of self-help books based in contemporary psychological research, and that…