Guess what? I have a new book!
Dear friends,
After a LOT of hard work behind the scenes for the past several months, I'm so excited to finally announce that I have a new book coming out! Connecting with Loneliness: A Guided Journal is for anyone who has struggled with loneliness. This past year, that may be many of us! The book is full of self-reflection exercises and activities designed to help you feel more connected and fulfilled.
My favorite part of writing this book was knowing how many might benefit from being able to do something to feel better after being lonely or isolated. I know you’re going to love it.
Learn more about the book and pre-order a copy here!
Stress and the Window of Tolerance
We’re all under a higher baseline amount of stress lately, due to COVID, isolation, winter and seasonal depression, world tensions, and ongoing transitions in work and family life. When we have higher levels of stress, our “window of tolerance” becomes very narrow. That means that our stress hormones are overacting, and we can be easily pushed into unhelpful coping strategies like anxiety or agitation, or numbing/dissociation.
Window of Tolerance
Here are some ways to widen your window of tolerance and stay in the more optimal part of your stress response, where you feel present, grounded, and able to regulate or tolerate your emotions:
1) Practice mindfulness – Even doing a quick, 2-minute grounding exercise where you check in with your five senses and pick out:
5 things you can see
4 things you can touch
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste
. . . brings you out of your overactive anxious thinking and back to the present moment. Staying present as much as possible makes it easier to notice and allow for whatever you’re feeling, rather than scrambling to do something about it or try not to think about it – which only makes it feel worse.
2) Up your self-care – Use mindfulness and awareness of your senses to build in extra care when stress is higher. Take a break. Walk outside (even if it’s cold). Have a candle lit or music playing. Stroke a pet. Give yourself small gifts of time and pleasure and allow yourself to really feel relaxed and happy – on purpose – throughout your day.
3) Write yourself a compassionate message – When you’re stressed, you might not be the kindest to yourself. Think about what words make you feel better about yourself, and write them somewhere you will see when you need that reminder. You’re doing your best. You’re dealing with a lot. You’re going to be okay.
4) Set a boundary around your stress – give yourself real, practical time away from stressors like work, school, parenting, etc. This might mean not checking your phone or email during a certain time. Taking a drive by yourself once in a while. Journaling about what you’re grateful for before bed instead of working right up until you fall asleep. Giving yourself time when the stress from each of your different roles/demands isn’t running the show.
Read the words in the “Window of Tolerance” box and think about what makes you feel that way. Consider how you can give yourself more of those feelings and experiences to widen your window and feel better about how you’re coping with stress.
Pandemic Motivation
Self-Motivation might be the only thing we have these days, as this pandemic rages into its second calendar year and many of us have been self-isolating for ten+ months. Maybe you’re like me, and viewed the first few months of the pandemic as an exhilarating challenge – Let’s see how this goes to teach two kids and work from home! Look at all the artists doing fun craft-from-home videos! A short-lived period where my second-grader made a lesson plan for my preschooler was a big win!
Now we’re more than over it.
So let’s talk about how to keep your motivation up when there aren’t a lot of external rewards for doing the things.
1) Make your list: Write down a reasonable amount of things you want/need to get done just today. Reasonable is the key! For me, about 8 things is reasonable – and that includes the zoom meetings, errands, even small tasks like “figure out how to renew a driver’s license in a pandemic.” It also includes the small steps in what might be a big task, like a work project. Write down the pieces that you absolutely think you can accomplish in the one day.
2) Set yourself a reward: Our brains don’t want to work for nothing – that reward pathway is there for a reason! Make sure you have something to look forward to after you finish those tasks. It could be a fun activity, a walk, a meal or dessert, or a phone call with a friend. If there are some big or dreaded tasks on your list, make sure you plan a small reward after you complete that – maybe just a break to stretch your legs, a snack, or some music or movement.
3) Give yourself credit: At the end of the day, whether you got everything done or not, recap to yourself and feel some gratitude for what you were able to get done. Focus on what you did well. Think ahead to tomorrow and how you might adjust your expectations of yourself. Practice some self-compassion around anything that didn’t go well – you did your best. You’ll try again tomorrow.
4) Connect: If you don’t live with others, put some thought into how connected you feel to others. This is a really isolating time, and if you don’t have built-in interactions throughout your day, you might have to plan them out. If a phone call, text exchange, or video chat is not your favorite, put it on your list of tasks and the reward yourself when you do it! While we might be feeling resentful that we’re not able to connect with others spontaneously or the way we would prefer, we will benefit if we push through and do the connecting anyway – ideal or not.
Here are the key pieces to staying motivated during hard times:
- Time-limited – one day at a time, one task at a time so we don’t get overwhelmed.
- Realistic – lower your expectations to what you are capable of doing during a global pandemic, not your usual high standards.
- Reward-oriented – don’t expect yourself to work for little or no rewards! Figure out how you like to celebrate your wins and do it more often for yourself.
- Connected – recognizing we need that social interaction, however we can get it.
I hope you will write your own suggestions for keeping your motivation up in the comments so we can help each other out!
Recovering from Life Burnout
Many of us – I’ll venture to say working mothers in particular – are feeling burnt out in one if not many of the roles we find ourselves switching wildly between these days – parent, worker, teacher, disciplinarian, compassion figure, cook, consumer, partner, housekeeper, functional adult. I will say that I have felt “burnt out” – feeling hopeless and ineffective in dealing with my work and just over it – in every one of these roles over the past week.
We are reaching our limits within these roles more frequently because they used to serve as breaks from one another – while I was at work I didn’t have to worry about what was for dinner, and when I was planning fun and educational activities for my kids I didn’t have to also think about when I was going to fit these into my work day. Breaks (mental or physical) and feelings of purpose or motivation toward a goal are what prevent burnout – and here we are without them, and without an end in sight.
Here’s how we can recover from burnout, if we’re already there:
1) Redefine “effectiveness” – forget about being able to complete one task by a deadline and before moving on to another. If you are living in the reality of multiple overlapping and critical roles, surviving through the day without anyone dying is effective. Avoid setting expectations about all of the things you “should” be able to accomplish in a work day (or a parenting day, or a home-school day), and instead set one small, achievable goal in each of the realms you have to function that day. Plan to get outside. Plan to make it to that one important zoom meeting. Plan to take a few minutes to shower, to read, or to have a dance party in your kitchen – something that brings you joy. Plan to eat a sandwich. If you don’t reach all those small, achievable goals, THAT’S OKAY. There were probably too many of them anyway. Give yourself credit for the things you did, and let the other things go. Finish the day with gratitude about what went well.
2) Build up your Life satisfaction – Identify what things you do in a day that make you feel energized and engaged. Do more of those things. See if there are ways to define your “effectiveness” by how much you do these things, instead of how much work you get done or how much math your kid learns. If you also happen to identify some things that drag down your morale, see if you can either do less of those things or pair them with a reward or something fun like listening to a podcast or music while you file reports, or taking that meeting on your phone outside. We might not be able to quit all the things we don’t want to do, but we can maybe shift our thinking so that we don’t spend so much of our mental energy (which is limited!) on them to the point that it’s all we think about.
3) Talk about Work-Life Integration – if you’re a working parent, this is the time to talk with your manager/supervisor about how to design a more sustainable work-life integration – let’s lose this idea of “work-life balance,” as if they are ever going to be totally separate things again. We need to be able to work within our life, and live as whole humans even in our work. Now is the time, because if your workplace is not willing to be flexible now, when we are ALL needing flexibility, it is not. the. place. for. you. (I offer workplace consultation on specifically fostering the needs of working parents, so a well-placed referral can certainly be made here!) As workplaces are thinking about what productivity looks like long-term, we working parents have to be in the equation. It is also a unique time to take a look at your own work-life integration and think about what you would like it to look like as opposed to what it does look like, and see if some of the changes can be made internally (in your own thinking or prioritization), as well as making some recommendations to your employer.
I’m with you in this, working parents, and cheering you on as we all try to figure out our own balance, roles, and ways of moving forward!
photo: Jayden Brand
COVID-19
Well our world has been completely rocked by COVID-19, the coronavirus, and all of our plans for 2020 are changed in an instant. We, like so many others, are on shelter-in-place status until further notice, which I find to be comforting (as well as frustrating and difficult and all of the other things). It’s nice to have certainty that we are where we should be, at home, in solidarity and protecting the more vulnerable among us.
My family and I had started keeping at home about a week early, thinking that this was coming and with encouragement from our workplaces. This means that we join the legions of parents trying to figure out how to work from home, parent, home school, and also maintain some sense of normalcy while also keeping our children apprised of the situation. This is a delicate balance. But it is one we can manage, and I feel grateful that we have the ability to do this, and the will to do it (as long as it is TEMPORARY)!
I have also been doing all of my therapy online, via telehealth, which has its own challenges of invasion of privacy, as I can now see inside my clients’ houses and lives in a way I couldn’t before; internet connectivity; figuring out where to look and how to manage the background noise of my own home, kids, and dog. But again, we can do this, and I have felt glad and grateful that this technology exists at a time when we suddenly and completely needed it. My clients have adapted and seen that it can be helpful to have a time and a place that they know they can talk with someone about their fears and struggles – and they ALL have them. We are all, every one of us, having fears and struggles with this. It is my hope, as I’ve worked on with all of my clients, that we can all also feel the gratitude and solidarity of this hard time; that we can recognize that we are doing this for each other. That is what will keep us going.
In that vein, I hosted a short Mindful Meditation 101 virtual class on Monday night that is now available as a recording. I think that it was helpful in creating a sense of calm and peace in these times where we are so desperately searching for them. I hope that the class will be helpful to you all, too, as you look for that sense of calm and peace, that you realize you can create them yourselves, right there in your own home.
Stay home and stay well,
It's okay to talk about
Yesterday I gave a presentation about the basics of mental health and how we can all keep ourselves mentally healthy in this new year. I didn’t have a lot of expectations about how the talk would go or what the reception would be, as this is a very new group and population to this kind of conversation – seniors in an independent living facility. I wasn’t sure whether this generation was ready to talk about mental health, so I approached it from the foundation of “our mental health is our feelings, thoughts, behavior patterns, and our relationships – all those intangible parts of ourselves that also require care and attention.” We talked about how to know whether what you’re feeling is okay, and how we might recognize symptoms or areas we’d like to work on – and how to do that hard but important work!
I was so pleasantly surprised by the turnout – we filled the cafeteria, probably over 50 residents came to hear what I had to say! Yes, some nodded off during my talk – one woman came up afterward to apologize for falling asleep a little, and said she “hoped she absorbed some of it”! Far and away, though, they were an engaged and open group! They asked great questions about how to support their own and their families’ mental health, including wanting to talk about the Mental Health Pyramid and their own experience with being overprescribed medications rather than being encouraged to work on some of the other important and do-it-yourself areas of mental health. We also talked about depression and grief, experiences that become more common as we age and experience more losses, including sometimes loss of identity, purpose, and motivation.
As we were wrapping up and several people came up to thank me for coming, I saw one man’s handout sheet sitting on his walker. Under the title of the talk, he had scrawled:
“Mental health – it’s okay to talk about.”
I nearly started crying for joy that this was his takeaway! I love the idea that maybe these folks felt a little more equipped to talk with their family members about what either of them might be feeling. I hope that this is the takeaway from any talk I give – that mental health is important, and it’s for all of us, and it is absolutely okay to talk about.
Ask Anyway
We’ve been away, but for good reason – we’ve been busy! Empower Mental Health has been all around the state of Minnesota, engaging with providers on how to best address mental health! We have been talking with leaders about what struggles they are seeing and what some of the barriers to addressing them are…and there are a lot of each!
Here are some things we’ve learned. “Mental health” is a buzzterm right now, but a lot of people don’t really know what it means. When we talk about mental health, we’re talking about everything from anxiety, depression, and everyday stress, all the way to more severe things like suicidal ideation and aggressive behaviors that might come from an issue like schizophrenia or a neurocognitive disorder. Anxiety, depression, and stress are by far the most common things that people see around them, and these might be just normal feelings but also might be symptoms of a bigger issue that may require some kind of treatment.
Second, people don’t like to ask about others’ mental health because A) they think it will make the other person (or themselves) uncomfortable, or B) they don’t know what to do next. Okay! That is totally fine. Ask anyway. It absolutely might be uncomfortable to ask someone if there is something bigger going on for them than just an angry outburst or seeming isolated or withdrawn. Ask anyway. I love the “Seize the Awkward” campaign I’ve seen on commercials – it’s geared toward adolescents but does a great job of saying “it’s okay to talk about it, even if it’s awkward.” In fact, it is absolutely better to say something than nothing at all! Saying nothing makes it seem like it’s not okay to be struggling, which keeps stigma high and people quiet. And even if you don’t know what to say next, just the fact that you have asked opens the conversation. You can say “Is there anything I can do to help?” or even “I’m not sure what to say, but I’m glad you told me.” And you can always suggest that they find a professional (a therapist) to talk to – we therapists love to hear that clients come to us because someone who cares about them said they should talk to someone!
Here’s another thing you can do: write to our “Ask a Therapist” page and ask how you can support someone you care about who might be struggling with mental health. We love questions and can give you a few helpful hints about bringing it up or let you know how great a job you did trying it out!
Ask anyway! Breaking down the stigma around mental health helps us all – because we’ll all feel less scared about talking about things, and the struggles we all have will become more manageable.
Ask Anyway.
Why Online Therapy Is Worth It
One of the questions I’ve been getting a lot lately is “do you think online therapy is really as effective as in-person?” My answer is this: Maybe not, but the fact that it is reaching people who might never come into an office for in-person therapy outweighs the fact that it might not be as satisfying or relational as if they were in the room with me. I think we have to get over this “ideal therapy situation” concept as therapists – that if we can’t do therapy exactly in the way in which we are most comfortable, it’s not worth it. We are excluding so many people then for our own comfort (and privilege, see this past post for the whole soapbox)!
In my brief experience with online therapy, I am noticing that I get a lot of clients who say, in one way or another, “I don’t want to bother anyone with my problems.” I am guessing that this internalized message of disregard for their own importance would normally stop them from going in to see a therapist – where there is a lot of paperwork and effort required to make and get to an appointment, all the while they are telling themselves they are not worth it. So, the ease of online therapy breaks down some of these barriers and makes the initial inquiry easier and much more likely to occur! Wonderful! If someone can get in the “door” and express to me that they don’t feel worth any time or attention, it allows me to give them some, and to at least start working on those negative messages they have been telling themselves for who knows how long.
Also, I am seeing a lot more marginalized individuals via online therapy – those who identify as LGBTQ+ or of different racial or ethnic backgrounds. Those messages of “I’m not worth it” or “I don’t want to bother anyone” are strong in these groups! Maybe these are messages they have heard from our dominant culture, or have been taught to them growing up as coping strategies to fit in or acculturate. Shame. On. Us. for making whole groups of people feel unworthy of time, love, care, and attention. This is a big part of our jobs as therapists these days – to undo as much of these self-degrading thoughts and messages as we can. (It is much the same job as parenting, a post for another day!) We can do this in our lives as well as in our work – notice where society tells us to be small, invisible, silent, not needy or emotional – and counteract those messages. Take up more space there, amplify the voice and the presence of someone told to be quiet, and feel and show our emotions instead of stifling them.
Be a disruptor out there to make voices heard and emotions felt and mental health okay to talk about!
In the Tunnel
Yesterday was World Suicide Prevention day and today is the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attack of 9/11. It’s a rainy, gloomy morning in Minnesota, and sometimes it feels like sadness is all around us. This is a feeling and sentiment that I’ve been hearing often in my work and in my life – sometimes it feels hopeless, and sometimes there is more darkness than there is light. We have days like this. We all do.
The most pain I’ve felt in my life is when I tried to deny those feelings, shove them down or pretend they didn’t exist; the best I’ve felt is when I let myself feel them, and then went “through the tunnel” (as a yoga teacher of mine says) and came out the other side. Because there is always another side. No feeling lasts forever, including sadness, depression, even hopelessness. Moreover, no feeling is as painful as we let ourselves believe. Sadness is just a feeling. Hopelessness is just a feeling. It’s a body response, and a spirit response, and the best thing we can do is pay attention to it, not judge it or try to stop it, but to see what it has to tell us. And then do something about it.
The key is to keep moving forward. We can let ourselves feel our feelings, to sit in them for a while, and then the job of life is to keep going. It might mean doing something to shake up our routine or to get out of our own heads. It might mean reaching out to talk to someone. It might mean taking a mental health day from work (please, employers, make this an option for everyone! Talk to me about how to make it happen!) and doing something to take care of yourself. When we do these things for ourselves, we can create a little bit more light in the world. When we tell someone else about our struggle and they feel they can open up about their own – there is a little bit more light. This is how we combat the darkness – by creating one little spark of light at a time.
Always feel welcome to ask a question or share your experience and create a little light here!
Jessie Everts, PhD LMFT
Out of the Office
With depression, substance use, and suicide rates climbing, we need to look at new and evolving ways of providing mental health services. The people who need therapy are often not going in to the places where it is being offered – private practices, clinics, etc. One thing we can do is look at who is and isn’t going to therapy and how we can reduce the barriers for people to get in. The other thing we can do is take mental health out of the office and to the places where people ARE. Schools, workplaces, homes, doctors’ offices – these are the places where people are going, and they all need to be infused with mental health messages, information, support, and options.
When we expect people to come in to an office for therapy, we’re basically saying that we only want to treat people with privilege – those who have the privilege of transportation, of flexible work and family hours, of money to pay co-pays and big deductibles (or – could we be more entitled? – self-pay only!), and also, the privilege of being able to walk into an unknown business environment and talk to a stranger about their most vulnerable inner thoughts and feelings – without overwhelming and often historical fear. Each one of these ignored privileges discounts thousands of people, especially those who could most benefit from mental health therapy because of these very reasons.
Taking mental health to nontraditional places helps more people be aware of their and others’ mental health. We also need to offer therapy in nontraditional ways, and often this means using technology that people are already using. Therapy by text, chat, video, and email are all ways to reduce the barriers for people who need mental health support but are not going to go in to an office to get it. While many “classically trained” therapists think these modes of communication are disingenuous or don’t lead to real connection and therapeutic environment – and they may be right. But it gets therapy to more people, and to people who might not otherwise see you, so why not focus on that rather than our righteous beliefs about what therapy “should be.” We need to evolve as a profession to be where the people are, rather than expecting them to come to us. We hope you’ll join us in taking mental health out of the office, and into the world.
