How to Value Your Self
If you had the opportunity to watch yourself as you moved through your day, would you see a person behaved as though they valued themselves?
Keep Trying 101
Clients come to therapy wanting to change something. Yet, change can be really difficult. You want to change – how do you make it easier to do?
How to Change
How to change when you’re an overthinker and perfectionist - common barriers and how to get around them.
Why the Hype? Mindfulness and Anxiety
Mindfulness changed my life. What is it and why do I recommend it for overthinkers?
Managing Emotions as An Overthinker
Happiness, joy, contentedness – bring them on! Anxiety, sadness, shame – they can stay as our enemies, am I right? Just like we pull our hand away from a hot burner, we pull away from negative-feeling emotions. Makes perfect sense.
Sloooow down. What if I told you that it is the pulling away that causes the real suffering, not the negative-feeling emotions?
Anxiety is not the Enemy, or, 3 Steps to managing your Anxiety
…what are you missing in life while you’re working so hard to control your anxiety? What does trying to stop your anxiety cost you in terms of…your health?...your finances?...your relationships?...your time spent alive?...your work?...opportunities?
Stuck in your thoughts?
As overthinkers, our minds hold our thoughts in high regard. It makes sense, because as overachievers, our thoughts have brought us a lot of success. But sometimes, our thoughts paralyze us.
Attachment and Perfectionism
How did attachment influence your perfectionism? To make sense of “my needs are not met consistently,” your brain came up with the idea – ah, I must not be good enough, there must be something wrong with me. I know! I’ll become perfect!
Thinking Doesn’t Make it so
Okay, so we’ve been given a brain akin to a nasty social media algorithm. What do we do about it?
Why feel when you can eat (or not)?
Vanessa restricts to avoid feeling out of control, Jennifer uses sugar to cope with tension, and Ishani overeats to numb the feelings of anxiety.
What’s going on here? Why do Vanessa, Jennifer, and Ishani using food to cope with emotion, and others don’t?
Letting go of thoughts…sure, no problem
What does it mean to “let go” of thoughts? This phrase comes up all the time in therapy. Picture yourself 5 minutes into a mindfulness meditation, and the whispery-voiced therapist says, “Notice the thought, and let it go.”
Work now, Play later?!
There is always a next step, a new place to prove yourself, a way to show yourself you have worth. High performance is desirable; however, the difference is that the high performer without perfectionism goes to bed at night aware of their value beyond their successes.
How to Comfort a Beast
We want to avoid emotional pain. It generally feels awful. The physical sensations are sometimes unbearable. Suffering sucks. Ugh. Of course we want to get rid of these feelings!!
Just lie back and claim defeat?
Insomnia - this is a story about the idea of one and done. Getting rid of. The impossible pursuit of “it’s fixed.”
You’ve been “not thinking” wrong this whole time!
Discover two processes (noticing the thought and categorization) that help create psychological distance from the thought, so we can begin to view thoughts as simply - thoughts.
The #1 Therapeutic Intervention My Clients Love…
Life is hard enough. You need an internal best friend, not an opponent. Here’s how to get one.
Got a hate on for your body?
In present day, we have access at our fingertips to infinite images– people of every shape, colour, size, culture, etc. What is a woman to do?
Why your mind criticizes you and what to do about
Why does this inner critic exist? What is it doing in your head besides torturing you? We can imagine the inner critic as an over-tuned, too effective part of the threat defense system.
What are you avoiding?
Want to know the secret to having zero anxiety?
Avoidance! Works like a charm. Parties give you anxiety? Don’t go! Anxiety rises when you have to make a phone call? Send an email instead. Afraid of driving on the 401? Wait for a friend to drive you.
How Perfectionism Gets in the Way of Self-Care
Self-care can be problematic for person with perfectionism. Why? First, and perhaps most obvious, your self-care has to be perfect, too…