counselor
Uncertainty can be scary and can often increase symptoms of anxiety and stress. The end of this COVID-19 pandemic is not yet in sight, and I have been hearing from a lot of friends, family, and clients that their levels of stress and anxiety have been significantly higher since Chicago went on lockdown. It appears as though people are hoping to find answers to when life will go back to their day to day normal and tend…
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Maintaining effective communication within a relationship can be a challenging task, yet when individuals within a relationship are able to express their needs and wants appropriately, the relationship is much more likely to flourish and prosper. Expressing our desires to our loved-ones, however, can sometimes be difficult due to extraneous factors such as our fear of rejection, disapproval, or embarrassment for wanting something. Marsha M. Linehan, the founder of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and professor of Psychology…
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It is often a terrible gut-wrenching feeling when you start suspecting your significant other might be cheating on you. Maybe there was an unexplained situation that put you on high alert or possibly a comment from him/her/them or a friend that made you start suspecting. Whatever the situation might be, it is often discouraging, saddening, and isolating. Here are some suggestions to try and navigate the situation. Consider what you are feeling. You are the expert of…
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I work with many clients who describe feeling that midafternoon slump at their job. For those that work the 9-5pm Monday-Friday job, it is very common to feel the midafternoon slump around 2pm due to the simple fact that you likely needed to wake up by 7am at the very latest to get to your job by 9am. As a clinical therapist, I help my clients better understand contributing factors regarding their midafternoon slump; I then help…
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If you read my last blog post referencing the article from The New York Times, “Why you should find time to be alone with yourself” by author Micaela Marini Higgs, you may be curious about not only the benefits of spending alone time, but also how to implement alone time in your life. Below answers those two items from the remaining part of Higgs’s article. What are the benefits of spending time alone? There was a…
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Hannah Hopper, LPC It’s in the news, it’s on social media, it’s all the people in our lives have been talking about lately – Coronavirus seems to have taken over our world and our mental space too. And with so much news bombarding us on a minute-by-minute basis, it’s easy to neglect our mental health. Anxiety can overwhelm before we even realize we’re starting to feel anxious. 1. Stick to Your Routine In times of stress and…
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It is ok to cry. It is ok to cry. It is ok to cry. (insert tears). Why do we feel like it’s not ok to cry? Why do we feel like crying equals a sign of weakness? Why does crying mean that we are sad? Why do people become awkward when someone is crying? I do not know how many times I can say this, but it is OK to cry. It is ok to allow…
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During the coronavirus period of our lives, also known as COVID-19, I feel like people around have become very paranoid (which is valid emotions) but we are forgetting how to stay positive in times of panic. Humans sometimes tend to forget that there are positives in our lives and we focus on the negatives. Lets refocus on positives and reminding ourselves how to. In this post, I will makes sure I work on providing you ways to…
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I have been feeling very heightened lately with all the COVID-19 stuff happening and I think mainly the fact that people keep talking about it. We are all in the know of what is happening, but it is getting to a point where I do not need to constantly know what is happening or what your thoughts are about it. I have found myself getting slightly more agitated when we all are talking about COVID-19. So how…
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Unfortunately, right now, people all across the country are experiencing the emotional ups and downs of regulations surrounding being cooped inside of our homes. In my work with clients, I’ve found that this turmoil can look like several different emotions: depression, helplessness, anger, frustration, anxiety, nervous energy, hopelessness, fear of the future. If you take away nothing else from this article, please hear me that: each of these emotions are valid and deserve space in this time…
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