Month: <span>December 2024</span>

Holidays Mental Wellness Self-improvement Uncategorized By Beth Church 0 Comments

Going Beyond Resolutions: Cultivating Change Through Gratitude

Written by: Jessi Beatty, PhD, LP

It’s that time of year when people are setting intentions and goals for the new year.  One important way to transition from the past year into the next is to consciously build or create more positive thoughts and actions. We often think of these as resolutions, but if we look deeper into what supports positive change, we can move beyond resolutions and into lasting positive change.

Rooted in Gratitude

Positive thoughts and actions are often rooted in our experience of gratitude. Research has shown the important benefits of gratitude to our overall mental health, motivation, and physical health.  While our minds naturally notice and focus on the negative to keep us safe and aware of our surroundings, this tendency can burden us with anxiety, depression and stop us from starting positive behaviors. However, with practice you can notice more of the good in your life. It doesn’t have to be a big undertaking to teach your mind to experience gratitude regularly. It’s more about short periods of consistency over time. When we notice what brings us a sense of gratitude, we tend to DO more that brings us that unique and wonderful feeling.

Set up short moments of gratitude practice each day

The first step is, of course, upping the frequency that we consciously attend to gratitude. Regularly building the habit of recognizing and appreciating the good things in your life, no matter how big or small, helps build happiness, self-esteem, and keeps you in the present moment. You don’t have to spend a long time focusing on gratitude to get its benefits. You could add it into your morning or bedtime routine or take a break during the workday to reflect. Possible ways include spending a few minutes listing three good things that happened today. It could be little things like someone holding the door for you, noticing how beautiful the sunrise is, getting a text from a friend or bigger things like finishing a project you’ve been working on for a long time.  You can make a conscious effort to notice when others are doing good things and tell them thank you. Each thank you builds something positive for you both. You can go on a walk and use your senses to notice the sights, smells, and feel of the sun or wind. Regular gratitude practice helps us connect with others, our surroundings and ourselves. 

Change how you ask your family about their day

Another way to help yourself and your loved ones focus more on gratitude involves how you ask about their day.  Rather than simply asking how their day was, try asking: What surprised you about your day? Who made you feel cared about today? Who did you help today? What made you laugh today? When did you feel calm, content or relaxed? 

Questions like this may lead to better conversations rather than getting the typical “fine” or “it was good” response. Questions like these can encourage us to share and reflect on the good, training us to scan for the positive in our days. It can help balance any negative things that happen, which are also important to talk about. It can be so easy to get into the pattern of venting or focusing on the bad with our loved ones. These questions challenge us to reframe the way we reflect on our day.

Change the questions you ask yourself

While building conversations around the good things that happen day to day with our loved ones, it’s also important to be aware of what we are training our own brains to focus on. Our words matter. Not just with others, but also with ourselves! Our internal dialog can easily get stuck in negative spirals or repeatedly place a distorted emphasis on what went wrong. When we focus solely on what might or did go wrong, we aren’t focused on what we did do, or could do right. To break a negative thinking cycle, try asking yourself: What did I learn in the situation? What would I do differently if I had it to do all over again? Focusing on gratitude often helps us set an effective pathway forward for what we actually want, rather than just highlighting what didn’t work or what we’d like to avoid. If anxiety about what’s to come creeps in and you start thinking of all that can go wrong, ask yourself: What if it goes right? What is the more likely scenario? Will this matter in a week? In a month? In a year? You can use visualization to set a positive mindset for upcoming tasks and set yourself up for things to go well, rather than getting trapped in what could go wrong and worst case scenarios. 

Conclusion

Making the intention to cultivate gratitude as a daily practice, in your life and your loved one’s lives, helps kick start the new year in a positive direction.  Things will not always go the way you would like and situations are often out of our control, but building the practice of noticing what is going right helps motivate positive and effective changes, and give important boosts to your mood. Regular practice helps to reset our mindset, pulling us out of the negative spirals, and keeps us moving in a positive direction. Gratitude helps us feel connected and motivated!  

Wishing you and your loved ones a happy and healthy 2025!

Contact us if you have a goal for 2025 that you would like help working towards!

Child Wellness Children Therapy Mental Wellness Parenting Teenage Uncategorized By Beth Church 0 Comments

Mental Health Influencers: Understanding & Managing the Impact of Social Media & Gaming on Youth Development

Written by: Julie Braciszewski, PhD, LP

Do you have a tech zombie at your house? Do you walk into a room only to find a loved one bathed in the blue light of a screen, with glazed over eyes and a blank expression? Or maybe you have a tech gremlin. They appear calm and relaxed on screens but then become irritable or even intensely angry when it’s time to get off screens? Or perhaps you have a Youtube-ing, tech-toc-teen  who appears to partake in social media light-heartedly but shows concerning signs of being influenced in negative ways. Chances are, your child is engaging in gaming or social media use, and you are wondering how this is influencing their mental health?   

Screens & Executive Functioning

You’re not crazy… increased time on screens is associated with worse executive functioning. Executive functioning describes the brain processes that help guide goal driven behavior and self-regulation. So if your child seems to have more difficulty completing less-fun tasks such as picking up after themselves, getting ready to leave the house, or even homework, it might be because screen use has gotten out of balance. You might be yelling ‘OMG just get it done!’ in your household lately, you might want to re-examine the amount of tech use and its timing in your household. This balance is especially hard to attain when kids are on screens all day at school.  

Rewards to Real Life

Most apps, games and social media are designed to manipulate the reward centers of our brain. When we get something we want, achieve a goal, or experience pleasure, positive neuro-chemicals and activity lights up our brain’s reward center. You can even see it on brain scans!  When using apps, games and social media we get lots of little and big reward ‘pings’ in our brain without actually having to exert much effort. So when we re-enter the real world and need to do tasks that require sustained effort and result in more subtle or even long-term rewards, we may react with irritation, frustration, and even feelings of helplessness. Some kids and teens will even react with intense anger when it’s time to put down screens and re-enter the real world.  

Identity Building from Social Media

Identity building in the era of apps, gaming and social media is tricky! Content is pushed via algorithms and is based not only on our patterns of viewing and consumption, but also our identifying factors such as age and gender. Our feeds tend to be narrowly based and can become dangerous echo chambers, leading to reduced exposure to people, ideas and information. Research clearly tells us that  this information greatly impacts our thinking patterns, such as what we think of ourselves and others.

The Social Media Sads

Social Media has a complex relationship with mental health. It can provide a sense of connection and positive inclusion in groups, but it can also fuel fear of missing out, ‘should’ thinking, and intensely unrealistic expectations for everything from looks to socializing and material belongings. 

I Am The Influencer Now

We know social media and gaming will continue to have a huge influence on our thinking, behavioral, emotional and social patterns. But if we are aware of these impacts, we can be conscious of having our own positive influence over learning to regulate screen use in our own family and household. 

Here are some tips to consciously engage in screen time and social media use in your household: 

  1. Model good tech use boundaries: Establish tech free zone in the house (e.g., dinner table? Bathroom? Bedrooms?), and tech check-in times (bed time? Study time?) 
  2. Establishing the timing of when tech is allowed in your household is paramount to kids developing self-regulation skills around tech use.  Fostering the mindset that necessary tasks get done before tech time helps hone expectations and self-regulation. 
  3. Step away from screens. Establish a norm of setting phones/iPads down and turning screens off when engaging in work, chores, eating, etc.  Create physical distance between screens and other essential activities.
  4. Build Self-worth and Identity through real-world competencies: Learning tik-tok dances is fun and makes us feel cool with our friends, but witnessing real-world impact increases positive self-worth and identity much, much more 
  5. Shared Values: Take time to sit with your child and teen and consume social media or games together. Your input and perspective does influence their inner narrative

If you feel your child or teen is demonstrating concerning signs of too much screen use or social media consumption, contact us and speak with one of our specialists.