Fitting Work into your Life

We know work can be taxing in two ways:
Time Pressure – The perception one has of uncompleted tasks and that
time is running out to accomplish those responsibilities.
Emotional Labor – The management of one's emotions in order to present oneself and interact with other people in a certain way while doing a job. An example of emotional labor may be working daily with customers and coworkers, while making a good effort to appear cheerful and friendly, can be especially draining when one is under time pressure on tasks.

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Resiliency in Challenging Times

Resilience is necessary now. Trying to be toughly impervious to our serious changes is not rational, as change is the only thing we can really expect in life. With a rigidly resistant attitude, one could become unnaturally inflexible and be unable to adapt to life’s sudden twists and turns. Realistically, we must honor what is taking a real toll on us all. It may be better to think of the tree that bends and flexes with a strong gale so as not to ultimately collapse.

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Helping Children Cope after Tragedy

Many caregivers are wondering how to address the Texas school shooting with kids. Adults are uncertain about what to say when a child asks about terrorist attacks and community shootings learned about in the news or from school friends. Children may be frightened by rumors or inaccuracies about what actually happened and require a special type of clarification.

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Mental Health Awareness Month

Common signs of mental health problems are eating or sleeping too much or not enough, losing interest in people and activities, feeling hopeless or having aches and pains without a source. Other signs are using alcohol or drugs as way of coping, irritability and anger, feeling depressed and thoughts of harming oneself or others.

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Perfectionism in our Culture

What is perfectionism? What it is not is merely having high standards or striving too intensely to achieve a goal. What drives perfectionism is an erroneous belief that one is inherently flawed and then works hard to cover up what they think are their defects.

People who cannot accept mistakes may act in the following ways:
1. Have to always set their own rules
2. Blame others for their mistakes
3. Say unhelpful things about themselves
4. Have trouble making decisions
5. Make a project way too complex in trying to make it be ‘the best’
6. Procrastinate until the last minute, as they feel their work won’t be good enough
7. Always take over and insist that things be done their way
8. Pay more attention to what is wrong instead of seeing the positive side
9. Give up too soon without really trying

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Mental Health Apps

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the clinical development of a host of self-help apps. Possibly it is due to disruptions in mental health services, economic or convenience factors, but our populace is adopting this form of care. Drawbacks of using apps are that some software is unregulated prior to hitting the market, which may render them ineffective or even risky. If a person is already in therapy, the use of undiscussed external programs can muddy the waters of the person’s clinical treatment plan, which would be a problem. In psychotherapy a good deal of work is done outside the session. In my experience, clients have trouble enough completing outside tasks (even with therapeutic support). There may be less resolve towards homework success left to their own devices – pun intended.

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Suzette Turner-Clark, LCSW-S, RPT/S, RYT-200