The ultimate goal of couples counseling is to try to repair and grow a relationship. Most people seek couples counseling in an effort to address communication difficulties, overcome challenges, and learn how to grow together. Through our sessions, we use techniques specifically aimed at addressing these concerns and helping you become a better, stronger, happier overall couple.
Still, it is important to recognize that not all relationships are successful. Not all relationships are even meant to be. Sometimes, there are challenges that cannot be overcome, or there are relationships that – when you go back to how the relationship started – are not necessarily ones that were meant to be.
Even in these situations – situations where it is clear that the relationship has reached its end – there are goals that you need to complete as a couple. One of which is the idea of an amicable and uncontested divorce.
The Lifelong Value of an Amicable Divorce
Relationships, in many ways, never really end. We carry these emotions and memories with us each and every day. We think about that person often – maybe not as often as we did before, but they had an impact on our lives that we are unlikely to forget. If there are children involved, or if the person plays a role in our life that is likely to continue onward (for example, business ownership), then the odds are even greater that the person will always be a part of our lives in some form.
That is why couples counseling can – and often should – be considered even for those that may not necessarily want to keep the relationship together. Holding on to high emotions runs the risk of causing ongoing issues:
Ongoing stress when you have to communicate with your partner.
Ongoing anxiety when you’re dealing with family issues.
Ongoing relationship issues from broken trust or other struggles.
This idea that a divorce is final is not necessarily accurate. A person will continue to be in our lives in some form, either through memories or through interactions. Divorce itself can also be a difficult process, one that people are more likely to navigate in less emotionally healthy ways when they are feeling angry or upset.
It is in a couple’s best interests to try to work on their issues even if continuing the marriage is no longer the end goal. The long term value that it can have to your mental health – and the value that it can have to any kids involved – makes it clear that learning to better communicate and understand each other is always of value.
Even if you have decided not to move forward, it is best to consider still working through these issues so that you can divorce in amicable terms and come up with solutions that are in the best interests of both of you, along with any children or other interested parties. Contact us today to learn more about our couples counseling in NYC.
It’s difficult to describe a panic attack to someone that has never experienced one before. While it’s true they’re a form of anxiety, they are also immensely physical. During a panic attack, a person may experience chest pains, weakness, lightheadedness, rapid heartbeat – experiences that are so intense, they become their own fear.
While panic attacks may be anxiety related, it’s the physical symptoms that typically cause the most distress. A person with panic attacks often ends up fearing those very same physical symptoms, which in turn leads to more frequent and more difficult attacks.
Reducing the Severity of Attacks to Reduce the Fear of Panic
Panic attacks and panic disorder require a multifaceted approach to treatment, one that often involves therapy, lifestyle changes, and beyond. But it all starts with finding ways to reduce the severity of the attacks. The reason this is so important is because severe attacks:
Cause more fear, which increases the frequency and severity of the attacks.
Cause you more pain and discomfort, as the panic attacks get stronger.
Cause you to change your life in order to avoid panic attacks.
It’s this process that causes many people to develop other conditions like depression and agoraphobia. It’s also why panic attacks often get worse long before they get better. In fact, the less people fear the panic attack (because it is less severe, and thus more manageable), the more likely they are to take back control over their anxiety and have fewer panic attacks in the future.
So, if you can reduce the severity of the attacks, then you can also make it easier for yourself to take additional steps.
Addressing the anxiety of a panic attack is complicated. It’s why so many people choose to work with an anxiety therapist – someone that they can talk to in order to learn how to reduce and prevent anxiety. But what you can sometimes prevent is the severity of the symptoms. You can do this by:
Breathing Slower – Many of the worst panic attack symptoms come from hyperventilation. When a person breathes too fast and/or too shallow, they breathe out CO2 faster than they can make it. Hyperventilation also creates an irony – it makes you feel like you’re not getting enough air, causing you to breathe faster, yawn, or do other things to take in more air, thus making hyperventilation worse.
Talking it Out – If you have someone in your life near you that you trust, talk through your panic attacks with them. When we have panic attacks, we often go “inside of our own heads.” Talking your symptoms to someone near you while you have them decreases some of the fear, especially if it causes you health anxiety, and also helps take you out of your own mind by sharing those thoughts in public.
Engaging a Distraction – It can be very difficult to distract yourself during a panic attack, but every little bit can help. If you go for a walk, for example, the sights, sounds, and smells can potentially give you some light distractions that can help alleviate some of the symptoms.
We’ve created a bit of a reminder panic attack reminder checklist that you can keep with you to help you through the attacks. You can download and print the attachment here:
Panic attacks and their symptoms can manifest differently for every person, so we want to make it clear that you should discuss your specific symptoms with your therapist and work through the different causes, patterns, and more. You may find that some of the strategies may not work for you, or you need far more intentional interventions with a therapist than these provide.
Nevertheless, we hope that this checklist may be of help. If you’d like to inquire about an anxiety treatment, please contact Flourish Psychology, today.
One of the ways that we find contentment in today’s world is to set goals for ourselves and, ideally, achieve them. We try to make some specific amount of money, or visit a specific country, or read a specific number of books. Goal setting may even be part of therapy, as we work together to find and create goals that make sense for your core values.
Goal setting is both admirable and important, and giving up on goals or failing to complete them can be a source of unhappiness. But one issue that can arise is believing that the goals we create now are critical for our happiness in the future. Goals are important, yet what is also important is adaptability to the changes in where we are in life, who we are in life, and what we really need to be happy.
Our Goals and Our Lives Change with the Seasons
When you were a child, you wanted to grow up and be an astronaut or a fireman or the President of the United States. At the time, even without realizing it, you set a goal. Then you grew up. Life taught you more about who you are and what you wanted to achieve based on your life experience.
We look back on our childhood and we know that times change. The dreams we had as kids are (probably) not within our reach, and we are not the same person that we were in our youth. But, as we become adults, many of us start to think that the goals we have now should be treated as some type of necessity. Now that we’re adults, we start to convince ourselves that this is who we are, and our goals now are the only goals we’ll have that will make us happy.
The truth is that we are always changing. For example, in our college years, we may have been focused on finding a job that made us more money. Then we got a job and our goals could have changed to something like having children or spending more time with our families. Our life changes all the time. Our goals need to be able to change with it.
Seeing and Assessing Our Personal Goals
Our life goals are not meant to be static. They change regularly, even if you do not achieve the goals that you originally set. We are always growing and changing, and while we may still hold on to some of the goals and dreams we had in the past, we also need to be willing to reflect on who we are and what we really need to be happy. If we hold onto our past dreams, and do not look at what will make us happy in the now, then we’re going to miss out on opportunities to make ourselves happier that are more in line with who we are in the moment.
So while we should have goals, and we should work hard towards those goals, it is also very important to remember that our goals can change as our circumstances do. There is nothing wrong with seeing our goals as temporary – writing them with a pencil, and not a pen – and reviewing where we are now and what we really want to achieve. If you need help with achieving your goals, contact Flourish Psychology, today.
Many of us have moments or experiences in our lives that deeply affect us on an emotional and psychological level. Traumas are traditionally defined as an emotional response to a “terrible” experience, such as violence, assault, or natural disaster.
But we now know that that is not exactly the case. While there are certainly levels to trauma, a person’s trauma is intensely personal and affected by factors that are not necessarily directly connected to any objective measurement of “terrible.” A person can be traumatized by a car accident, an illness, or a sexual assault.
A person can also experience trauma because of an upsetting parental experience, a scare, or witnessing the trauma of others. When we’re young, our childhood can involve many experiences we grow up to find personally traumatic, simply because at a young age we’re learning how to process the world.
Trauma is Not a Competition
One of the reasons that it is important to understand that many events and experiences can be traumas is because there are many people that struggle with the traumas of their past but refuse to get help because they don’t feel their traumas are “as bad as what other people have gone through.” We see this often, where someone is affected by a critical event in their past, but sees it as minor compared to other events that are considered more objectively “bad.”
But in the mental health world, we do not judge things based on how bad they are to others. We examine how much these issues affect you. For us, a trauma that was “only” few hurtful words you experienced in your childhood still matters a great deal if they continue to affect your self-esteem, confidence, happiness, relationships, or any other component in your life, just as we would care about any trauma you experienced.
There is no value in trying to convince yourself that your traumas are “not as bad as others.” What matters is bringing out the best version of you that we can. If a trauma of any kind has been affecting you, or you have life events that have left a strong negative impact on your life – even if you do not describe them as traumas – then you deserve to receive some form of psychotherapy to help you address and identify these concerns and experiences.
Therapy for Trauma in NYC and Beyond
You’re worth more than you think, and our role as therapists is to help you discover this worth. Part of recognizing your value and how important your mental health is comes from understanding that there is no value in comparing your traumas and your experiences with the experiences of others. What matters is you. A person can be more traumatized by something small, like an upsetting experience with their dad as a child, as they can be with war, depending on the individual.
If you’re experiencing trauma, PTSD, or any issues related to your experiences of your past that have stuck with you in a negative way, contact Flourish Psychology today to talk about it and learn to work through it.
Life is so busy. Most of us are working full time, commuting, managing family obligations, and on and on, taking up our time and making it difficult to take back control of the day.
We also have goals for ourselves that will improve our quality of life, our happiness, our health, and more. But when the days get busy, it’s so hard to set aside any time to achieve these goals.
Eliminating and Replacing the “Time Sucks”
One of the first things that we notice, however, is that the truth is a bit more complicated. It is not always that we do not have time. It is often that we prioritize things that are not productive to our day. Easily the #1 example of a “time suck” (an activity that dramatically reduces the amount of time we have in the day) is the time we spend on our phones. The average person spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone every day. That is roughly an entire day (24 hours) on our phone every week.
Yes, of course, if you lose an entire day a week to your phones, you’re not going to have much time to do your daily activities. The reality is that you’re losing even more than that, because most people are only awake 16 hours of the day. So, you’re really losing almost 2 full days out of a 7 day week browsing your phone.
Of course, that is not the only “time suck” we have in any given day. We waste time on commuting, or on unnecessary errands, or on working longer than we need to work just to make things perfect. We may also find ourselves watching TV shows we barely enjoy, or “vegging” on the couch for longer than we need to. Yes, our days are stressful, and many of these provide an escape. But an escape that adds additional stress is not really an escape at all.
Getting Your Time Back
It is for these reasons that we need to make an effort to reclaim our time and use it on our goals. We can do this in a variety of ways:
Eliminating the Time Wasting Activities – See if your phone offers limits, or delete any apps that waste time. Most social media apps, for example, can be safely deleted without it affecting your personal and social life. You can keep your profile, even check it once in a while on your computer, but removing it off your phone can help. For non-phone related time wasting activities, set reminders (using your phone for this one purpose) that tell you to stop what you’re doing and focus on your goals instead.
Make Your Goals Public – It’s one thing to eliminate time wasting activities, but it is quite another to replace them with activities that help you achieve your goals. One effective way to do this is to put your goals in a prominent place in the house so that you’re always reminded of them, and then make sure that you set a plan to knock out different activities every day. Doing so also helps fulfill that sense of satisfaction that can fuel you to reach your goals even more.
We are busier than ever before. But, for most of us, there IS time available to help us achieve the things that we want to achieve. Look at your life and figure out where your “Time Sucks” are, and then make every effort you can to cut them out and replace them with more fulfilling activities.
Location: 300 Cadman Plaza West Floor 12 - Brooklyn, NY 11201
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