Many people struggle with some type of social anxiety; however, there are ample DBT skills to help manage it. As it pertains to mental health, social phobia is recognized as the most common anxiety disorder and in addition to taking many forms, it can impact people in diverse ways. Because being in the presence of [...]
Sometimes when people try to change the attitude or behaviors of others, they often find themselves in a power struggle. When a loved one is struggling with overwhelming emotions, this can lead to dangerous situations. While acceptance of the limitations of your control over others may be helpful to your emotional state, it can also [...]
Introduction Pat Harvey and Jeanine Penzo, both licensed clinical social workers, have a book called Parenting a Child Who Has Intense Emotions. It’s a book that I have been enthusiastically recommending to parents who are confronting this difficulty. The book teaches Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills, established by Marsha Linehan for treating adults. These skills help [...]
Toxic relationships can develop in both our personal lives, such as parent-child, siblings, friendships, acquaintances, tenant/landlord, and so forth, as well as in our professional lives, as in supervisor-employee or vice versa, and co-workers. Toxic relationships are typically defined by an imbalance in the ratio between what you invest in the relationship and what you [...]
Parents and Teenagers need to have a comphrensive understaning of each other. Having an understanding of how a teenager’s emotions develop can give parents useful strategies to better parent and avoid a situation from elevating. Using the scenario below, we can analyze how a teenager’s emotions develop and figure out a way to retell the [...]
Many parents struggle with determining the most effective way to respond when their child is distressed and provide validation. Sometimes what might feel like the best response can actually make the situation worse. The scenario below highlights such a situation: David is 15 years old and later his parents have noticed him acting out in [...]
Don't munch on feelings. Often we munch on feelings when we don't have useful tools to cope with distressful feelings. If you’ve identified yourself as someone who uses food to avoid and soothe a distressful emotion, then you may lack the necessary, non-food-related, tools to cope. Making this change is challenging as food is a [...]
Everyone at some point in time experiences distressing emotions. It could be related to the loss of a job, a relationship, a changed lifestyle or even having a new president. Often, the strategies we use to manage these feelings do not help. Some people try to avoid their feelings by distracting themselves with other activities [...]
Now that the winter season is ending, there is much we can learn from it about factors that impact our emotional health. In the winter, the temperatures are (generally) low, there’s less sunlight and often people are required to stay inside for longer periods of time. As a result, we can sometimes find our emotions [...]
