Category: Mental Health

We’re getting a makeover!

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

We’ll be launching our new site in mid-November, with some exciting new opportunities that we’ve been working hard on. In the meantime, here are a few things to check out!

Be sure to sign up for my #MindfulMonday email list which is full of tidbits to keep you on track during the week as well as sneak peeks into what I’m working on

Learn more about the Anxiety is an Asshole course, and sign up for it here with a discount (for a limited time).

Find therapy referrals here.

Get to know me better.

Check out the article database.

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Learning to manage your anxiety is a little bit like going to the gym. You don’t see the results immediately, and you might get a little sore, but if you keep showing up and putting in the work, you’ll see results over time! And hey, having a personal trainer makes it a lot easier, right?

This course includes 42 lessons full of real knowledge and effective techniques created  to help you break down, analyze, and kick anxiety’s ass! Between the videos, readings and assessments included in this course you’ll learn new things about yourself and your anxiety while acquiring the tools you need to move forward.

Want early bird pricing for this course? Click here to join our email list and receive $100 off! This is a limited time offer so make sure to grab it while you can!

For more information about the ‘Anxiety is an Asshole’ course, check out this video!

Maybe Monogamy isn’t the Only Way to Love?

by graciousminds, posted in Communication, Mental Health

“Her book examines the long, sometimes awkward legacy of philosophers’ thinking on romantic love, and compares that with a new subfield in close-relationships research — consensual nonmonogamy, or CNM. While singers and thinkers alike have been riffing on a “one and only” for decades, she argues that space is being made in the cultural conversation to “question the universal norm of monogamous love, just as we previously created space to question the universal norm of hetero love.” These norms are more fluid than they appear: In Jenkins’s lifetime alone, same-sex and cross-ethnicity relationships have become common.”

Read the full article here.

Tips To Calm An Anxious Child

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

” Imagine you are driving in the car. You look in the rearview mirror and see your child trying to shrink into her seat.

 

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

 

“I don’t want to go to the birthday party.”

 

“But you’ve been excited all week. There will be cake and games and a bounce house. You love all of those things,” you try to reason.

 

“But I can’t go. There will be lots of people there I don’t know. No one will play with me. My tummy hurts.”

 

Sound familiar? As a parent of an anxious child, you might regularly find yourself in situations where no matter what you try, what effort you make, what compassion you offer, or what love you exude, nothing seems to help quash the worry that is affecting your little one’s everyday interactions.

 

In my work with anxious children, I have found it tremendously beneficial for both parents and kids to have a toolkit full of coping skills from which to choose. As you know, every child is different and some of the tools described below will resonate more than others. When you pick one to work with, please try it at least two to three times before making a judgment on whether it suits your child and family.

 

Here are 37 techniques to calm an anxious child.

Don’t Worry If You Always Worry

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

“For most people, worrying is a form of problem-solving where you look at challenges in the future and work them out before they happen, which can be constructive. Researchers call this adaptive worrying and have identified the top five areas that people worry most about: relationships, finances, work, lack of confidence and an “aimless future. But some people worry too much. Chronic worriers fret all the time, about everything. Pathological worriers are chronic worriers whose apprehension affects their functioning. They’re just as likely to fret over a real problem, such as a job setback, as they are to stew over something that may not be a problem at all, say the weather next week.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Why Forcing Positivity Won’t Make You Happy

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

” The harder you push, the worse it gets. We think forcing ourselves to think and feel optimistically will relieve the anguish, but all that actually does is backfire. Choosing to ignore negative feelings is like leaving garbage to pile up and pretending its not there anymore. You may decide to disregard it for a while, but eventually it will spill over and start to smell.”

Read the full article here.

Encouraging Kindness in Children Through Reading

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

“Kindness is one of the most important character traits, but sometimes kids need an extra reminder about the best ways to be kind to others or why kindness matters. These books provide that reminder in creative and appealing ways. Happy reading!”

Check out the books here.

Is Your News Feed Destroying You Psychologically?

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health

 

“Many of us (myself included) deal with mental health challenges on a daily basis and being fed a steady diet of devastating world events only serves to make that harder. So I’ve decided to share a few strategies I’m using to avoid being completely crushed by my newsfeed right now. (I’m writing this post as much for myself as for anyone else. But I’m also hoping that this post will be helpful to some other sensitive soul who is having an extra tough time right now.)”

To get tips on keeping yourself from drowning in your newsfeed, read the full article here.

Becoming the Parent of a Trans Child

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health, Social Justice

Learning the ins-and-outs of parenting a transgender child is made easier by the recent outpouring of stories, suggestions, and advice from families all over the world who are making the journey with their loved ones. This article gives us a beautiful glimpse into the lives of one family.

“……Then one day “Kendra” told them that “she” was gay. Not many months after that, “she” asked to be called “Kasey” which would eventually become Ashur. From there it progressed to cutting. It became so bad that they took “her” to the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas.

While there, they suggested that Ken and his family sweep Ashur’s room for anything unusual.

What they found was a suicide note.

This is the moment they learned that their son was Transgender.

They confronted Ashur and learned that he had indeed already attempted his plan weeks ago and it had failed. The note made clear that if Ashur couldn’t be who he felt inside, there was no point in living.

Take heed of that. When a person is making it known that they wish to take their own life, they are asking for help. When they say nothing, they’ve given up hope.”

 

Read the whole article here.

Girl Scouts is for Every Girl

by graciousminds, posted in Creativity, Mental Health, Social Justice

It’s cookie season! This article from last year (2015) highlights one of the many reasons to support the Troupes!

Girl Scouts Choose Transgender Girls Over $100,000 Donation

“In 2012, when she headed the organization’s Colorado council, a 7-year-old transgender girl in Denver was denied entry to a troop. Although the council had never specifically said that it accepted transgender girls, the national organization had always made inclusivity the foundation of its mission. So after checking with the council’s attorney, Ferland issued a public statement welcoming transgender girls and explaining that the council was working to find a troop for the girl who’d been rejected. “Every girl that is a Girl Scout is a Girl Scout because her parent or guardian brings her to us and says, ‘I want my child to participate,’” Ferland says. “And I don’t question whether or not they’re a girl.”

 

The Forsaken

by graciousminds, posted in Mental Health, Social Justice

“For LGBT kids who remain homeless, the stakes are clearly life and death. They are seven times more likely than their straight counterparts to be the victims of a crime, often a violent one. Studies have shown they are more than three times more likely to engage in survival sex – for which shelter is the payment more often than cash. They are more likely to lack access to medical care, more likely to attempt suicide, more likely to use hard drugs and more likely to be arrested for survival crimes. According to the Equity Project, leaving home because of family­ rejection is the single greatest predictor of involvement with the juvenile-justice system for LGBT youth. And for so many of these outcomes, the clock starts ticking the moment a kid hits the streets. “We know we have 24 to 48 hours to get to them before they do anything illegal – whether it’s selling drugs, stealing or prostitution,” says Westbrook. “It’s a survival thing. In America, we lose six queer kids a day to the street. That’s every four hours a queer kid dies, whether it be from freezing to death or getting the shit beat out of them or a drug overdose. This is our next real plague.”

Read the full article on Rolling Stone