Women's Mental Wellness Blog

Teaching has always been one of the most stressful jobs but nothing can compare to the stress of teaching during a pandemic.  The global pandemic has required so much of teachers; altering the way we communicate, connect and learn with others.  Teachers were already stretched so thin and now we add in a decline in student engagement, fear of getting sick and personal childcare or caretaking responsibilities.  With a year of uncertainty, long hours and…

Addiction is a disease that affects the whole family. Every family is different and has different ways of coping with the addiction. No matter how well the intentions are family members often move into unhealthy roles to cope with an addict in the family. These roles often help give the appearance of a healthy family and take the focus off of the addict. However, these roles typically avoid self-reflection and avoid focusing on the issue…

Why Nurses Must Prioritize Self-Care Healthcare workers are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. As if working in a hospital wasn’t already stressful, working in a hospital during a global pandemic has reached the next level of stress. It’s exhausting to keep up with policy changes and the ever-evolving information on COVID-19 precautions while working overtime to care for patients. Compassion fatigue is real. Given the challenges brought on by COVID-19, it’s more…

What is Self-Care? Self-care has become a buzz word in the mental health community, but what does it really mean? Self-care is taking the time to do things that fulfill an unmet need in order to feel more balanced and complete. Unmet needs can occur in various areas of your life including physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and other realms of life. It's More than Just the Basics Self-care is about more than just taking…

Sleep hygiene is without question one of the most important factors in our mental health, but in our fast paced society, it is often overlooked. When we aren’t sleeping well, not only are we losing the ability to function at our highest capacity, but it affects our physical health as well. Additionally, many mental health disorders such as bipolar and depression can be exacerbated by sleep issues. Here are a few tips to help you…

Am I Codependent? It may be tough to determine if you’re in a codependent relationship or find yourself engaging in codependent patterns. The line between a nurturing relationship and codependent one can be fairly thin, considering that a number of different variables are often at play. However, there are some common signs of behavior that can accurately indicate codependent patterns and help you determine if it’s something you’d like to work on. Examples of Codependent…

New Year's Resolutions From A Therapist 2020 has been a unique and wearisome year to say the least. For some it has been filled with heart-ache, tragedy, and pain, and for others it may have been filled with blessings and perseverance. Regardless of your personal circumstances, we have all made it through a year that has been quite different than anything we have collectively experienced in several generations. Entering the end of one year and…

Coping With A Different Kind Of Holiday Season As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to drag on towards the close of 2020, this holiday season is set to include some unprecedented challenges that our society has not faced in several generations. These challenges include not just the direct risk of the virus, but the financial concerns that it presents, as well as the affect of stress that we each feel in our own way. Despite this…

De-catastrophizing In this day and age of instant news updates, constant social media inundation, and the intrusiveness of advertisements and other information, it can be challenging to take one’s surroundings at face value. Imagine the amount of situations, no matter how severe, in which you have observed some form of negative stimulus or circumstance which caused you to have an unavoidable, or at least subconscious, development of anxiety-ridden apprehensions which leads to the imagination of…

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended virtually every aspect of modern life. Universities and colleges across the country have adapted to the post-pandemic world, with students returning to campus in spite of spiking COVID-19 cases. Though students are indeed back at school this fall, the average freshman experience looks quite different than usual. “It’s really the isolation that gets to you,” Molly Cordray, a freshman at Gettysburg College told the New York Times. “I just feel…

What Type of Communicator are You? Among the variety of skills that an individual is expected to become proficient in during their development, few are as important as the ability to effectively communicate. Through communication, we are able to interface with the world around us, creating a collective consciousness that is far more effective at navigating the complicated reality in which we exist. Acceptable communication abilities can be the deciding factor between competence and deficiency…