Transitioning to College: Helping Students with Anxiety

Transitioning to College: Helping Students with Anxiety

The transition to college is an exciting time for students and families. Whether going directly from a senior year in high school or from a “gap” year, students are looking forward with intense anticipation to all of the mysteries and wonders of college life as they’ve come to understand it: meeting new people, a profoundly new degree of independence, exciting new surroundings, studies that may one day connect to a career, and a symbolic point of entry into their adult lives. The rites of passage associated with a senior year of high school in particular lend significant buildup to the college transition.

Postpartum Anxiety: How to Get the Support You Need When You Are Feeling Overwhelmed

Postpartum Anxiety: How to Get the Support You Need When You Are Feeling Overwhelmed

There is tremendous social and cultural hype around the joys, excitement, and wonder of pregnancy, birth, and raising children. Baby showers, parenting classes, and the array of pre-birth activities often convey the implicit and explicit message to parents-to-be that having kids is exclusively a magical albeit stressful experience.

Healing from Addiction: Finding the Road to Recovery

Healing from Addiction: Finding the Road to Recovery

Addiction– and recovery– can look differently from individual to individual. As surely as we can be addicted to alcohol, substances, or medications, we can just as easily be addicted to love, work, sex, dieting, exercise, skin picking, and food. Addiction can refer to any compulsive and unhealthy attachment or behavior that one uses as a way of artificially enhancing, numbing, or avoiding feelings. Addictions have negative consequences and are difficult to just “stop” doing.

Managing Depression: 3 Simple Strategies to Create Joy

Managing Depression: 3 Simple Strategies to Create Joy

There is a very subtle and insidious cycle that frequently occurs for those who are struggling with feelings of depression. Whether it’s situational, acute, or chronic, feelings of depression build on themselves. When we don’t feel great, we succumb to a sort of molasses-like slowdown . . . because we don’t feel great, we don’t feel like doing much. And because we don’t feel like doing much, that usually includes slowing down or stopping doing the things that have the potential to make us feel better.

How Practicing Mindfulness Can Change Your Life

How Practicing Mindfulness Can Change Your Life

“Mindfulness” is a word that’s gotten a lot of attention lately. It sounds good, it’s usually accompanied by calming images that look very appealing, and most of us accept on principle that mindfulness must be a good thing. If you have a sense that mindfulness is something that you need more of—but you’re a little sheepish to admit that you’re not entirely sure exactly what it is—don’t worry. You are so not alone.