Holiday Stress: 5 Tips to Manage It This Year

Holiday Stress: 5 Tips to Manage It This Year

It seems like the holiday season starts earlier and earlier every year. Once September hits the aisles throughout stores become an odd mix of decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all at once. Then November 1st rolls around and homes become a mix of pilgrims and pumpkin spice with Christmas trees and Jingle Bells. Along with the decorations, there seems to come am an expectation that everyone should be happy and overjoyed during the holidays. But, for many, this isn’t the case because “the most wonderful time of the year” brings with it a lot of holiday stress. If this is you, you don’t need to let the stress of the season steal your joy.

Mental Health Challenges of College Students

Mental Health Challenges of College Students

College students are vulnerable to a wide variety of mental health challenges, and there is no one inoculation against any of these possible experiences. Clinical conditions such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, and even panic are common experiences for college students due to the many new stressors and pressures that come with the new academic and relational college experiences. Less serious levels of stress and anxiety can still cause students distress and functional difficulties in sleep, time management, school performance, social interactions, and decision-making. Additionally, the new freedom that the college experience brings for many students also comes with some negative decisional consequences and tough learning experiences.

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.