Important Mental Health Resources

Important Mental Health Resources
For the next few days (ends MARCH 25) anyone can sign up for some free resources.
 
The Andreas family have been involved for decades in developing and sharing strategies promoting mental health.  When I finally (after years of a friend telling me I needed to) did the PTSD training, it changed the way I work.
 
It is a myth that trauma has to “break”us. It is a myth that you have to relive/talk about traumatic experiences to return to a more peaceful level of functioning.
 
I encourage everyone to sign up for these free courses right now, and then peruse at your leisure.
 
I have no affiliation, and get no commission or other benefit from, this resource.  
 
I labeled my blog “worth repeating” because I realized if I’m saying things over and over at work, a wider audience must need this information. I've shared this with a number of my clients but really it's something we all may benefit from. 

I appreciate the Andreas’ for sharing their valuable work in response to the crisis in Ukraine.



Counseling - it's not just venting

Counseling - it's not just venting
“I can’t imagine doing your job as a counselor.  How do you listen to people’s problems all day? That must be so stressful!”
 
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that…
 
Well, I DON’T listen to people’s problems all day.  That WOULD be miserable, for them and for me.  
 
In early sessions I tell people it is “my job is to work myself out of a job.”   If therapy is going well, then things get better, and we finish.  If they don’t get better…then we have to rethink the approach and maybe even have them go work with someone else.   
 
As I mentioned recently, tt’s actually a cool time to be in mental health right now.  We have so many tools and strategies to teach people.
 
Functional medicine helps people see how nutrition and deficiencies can cause and heal things like depression and anxiety.  When someone says they can’t really understand why they feel how they do (because in general life is good) I try to get them to have an evaluation by an integrative medicine practitioner.  Because there’s no talk therapy to get their vitamin D or inositol levels up.  And since most serotonin (a big feel good neurotransmitter) is made in the gut, intestinal health has to be looked at for chronic conditions.
 
Polyvagal theory explores how to engage the nervous system in a helpful way.  Yoga, music therapy, simple breath work, can give folks a chance to finally feel good in their bodies.
 
Neurolinguistic programming, which totally changed how I work in my practice, lets me teach clients to “edit” their memories.  We have great success stopping memories from popping in uninvited, getting rid of nightmares, and resolving phobias.
 
There’s even a way to use neurolinguistic programming with aromatherapy, my other love!   Oh, and people don’t even have to tell me about what they are working on if they don’t want to.  
 
Honestly the biggest challenge often is figuring out any reasons someone might subconsciously be cautious of change.  (Which is normal, it just needs to be brought into awareness so we can work with it.)
 
Milton Erickson taught his patients and students, “don’t dam the river, channel the river.”  The river is headed somewhere important, but we can have some say in how it gets there.

If you've had therapy and didn't find it helpful, or have been worried that it would be years of reliving all the yuck in your life, please know that there are really good targeted treatments now.  


Three Supplements My Clients Use

Three Supplements My Clients Use

It’s a great time to be in healthcare.

 

With functional medicine becoming more widespread, people are getting information about how physical health IS mental health.  (Because it turns out, our brains are in our bodies.  Go figure.)

 

When people have symptoms that don’t change with their stress levels, I do my best to get them to have a functional medicine consult.  I can’t cover all the things they learn, but I wanted to share with you the ones I see being prescribed for my clients.  (Remember, I do not have a medical degree and can't advise you, I'm just relating what I've learned from my clients.)

 

MAGNESIUM

It’s the “calm down mineral.”  Seriously. It’s in Epsom salts folks use in a warm bath, and also in milk of magnesia, used for constipation.  There are different opinions if we can absorb enough from applying it to our skin, but lots of folks use a spray.  I’ve taken it orally (Natural Calm or Ionic Fizz) for muscle relaxing when I had chronic neck issues, and it’s a great one for sleep.  I have had more than one client where I noticed a difference in their mood they could not explain. When we dug deeper, they realized the change happened when they started taking magnesium.   We need regular intake, most people don’t get enough, and when we are stressed, our bodies use it even faster.

 

INOSITOL

My first encounter with a client taking inositol was dramatic. I was working with someone with obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and within a week of taking this (combined with L-Theanine) the symptoms were about noticeably reduced!  It’s used for a lot of medical conditions, but my experience is that people who obsess about things find that fades dramatically with supplementation.

 

L-THEANINE

This is a tea extract, but it is hard to drink enough to get the more therapeutic benefits, so it’s widely prescribed in supplement form. Have you seen this popping up in various “health” drinks lately?  It’s best known to help with sleep, focus, and relaxation.  Again, for my clients who struggle with OCD, it can provide noticeable relief.

 

On the homefront, we use Kidscents Unwind to promote calm and get ready for sleep.  It has both magnesium and l-theanine, as well as some essential oils known for being relaxing.  It’s not just for children, I know adults who make it into a tea or just take it straight.

 

Do you use any supplements that have helped your mental health?  I want to know!


Pandemic re-entry stress is real

Pandemic re-entry stress is real
Have you had an uptick in worry, even with the good news of fewer cases and effective vaccines? If yes, you are in good company.
 
A year ago, I was talking nonstop about ways to care for our nervous systems.  The sudden arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the never experienced (for most of us) stay-at-home orders, were triggering all the threat system alarm bells.
 
Problems sleeping. Nervous tension. A visceral response to wearing a mask for the first time in the grocery store.  I had them all, and so did my patients.
 
With the anniversary now past, we are getting daily good news: the vaccines are safe and effective, hospitalizations are going down, and we may be able to have some normalcy by summer.   
 
So why might we feel uneasy about having friends and family inside our homes again, with or without masks? Dining in a restaurant is one of my favorite things ever, but I know that after a year of strictly takeout, being seated inside is going to feel so strange!  
 
Apparently, we are more likely to feel re-entry anxiety if we find staying home to be comforting, because it gives us control.   We can reduce our risk when in our home environment, and when we go out, we are increasing our risk.  People who are less concerned for their survival experience a bigger feeling of loss from being told to stay home.
 
Experts say that there are some things we can do to manage anxiety as we emerge back into public spaces.  Focus on what you can control.  Get good information to assess your risk.   Ease into things, no need to make the re-entry as abrupt as the lockdown.  Practice mindfulness so that you can recognize and “surf” the anxiety when it happens.
 
I find it helpful to remind myself it is normal to be on guard, so when my heart speeds up or I get that visceral gut feeling, my mind doesn’t have to scramble to guess about what danger may be nearby.  Because our minds want to make sense of things, and when the threat system gets activated our minds will take all kinds of guesses.  We can over-react endlessly and stay alive, but we can only under-react once.  Our brains aren’t concerned as much about our happiness as our survival.  Telling myself my body is just nervous because it has been so long with these precautions will go a long way toward making this transition as easy as possible.


What is mental health?

What is mental health?
I’ve worked in mental health, as a psychotherapist, for coming up on 25 years.  (Not sure how that can be true since I’m pretty sure I’m in my extremely late 30’s). When people come in because they are struggling with anxious, depressed, or traumatic thought processes, they understandably want to learn how to make the pain go away.
 
One of the things I have to say right up front is, that isn’t quite how it works.
 
Our brains are amazing and have learned some pretty great things over the years about how to keep us alive. In fact, this is the brain’s top priority, much more important than keeping us happy.
 
You get to over-react endless times and stay alive.  Under-react once and…that’s it.
 
After delivering this unwanted news, I get to share the exciting part: we can learn to work WITH that tendency, and actually harness that super-power.
 
I attended a virtual conference in December, focusing on how psychotherapy has evolved and where we are now.   Since it’s virtual, I get to attend ALL the sessions, over the course of a year, rather than just a few if I’d attended in person (introvert swoon!).  The most recent video I watched was a summary of the most amazing meta-analysis of all the studies about therapy treatments.  They looked at almost 55,000 studies to learn, in short, what works.
 
It was a full presentation, and I’m not going to try to summarize except in the most basic terms. I’m going to have to listen a few more times and I can’t wait until they publish soon.
 
So, what does work?  Or to phrase it another way, what is mental health, if it isn’t the absence of uncomfortable symptoms?
 
Here’s a few of the biggest factors: cognitive flexibility; acceptance and emotional openness; perspective; voluntary attention to the now.
 
On that last one, fun fact from the presentation: 15 minutes of meditation “turns on 2% of the genome.”   I can’t wait to learn more about that!
 
What does mental health mean to you?


 
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