Many of us have this desire to be professionally successful. We start businesses or work in industries where success is measurable and profitable, with goals that we make every effort to reach. For some of us, our lives are dedicated to reaching those goals, such as becoming CEO of a business or a lawyer getting your name on the wall.
Then what?
There is something incredible about finally achieving work success. But what we find as therapists that often work with successful professionals is that, once the success is achieved, there is a drop. There is a low feeling that can cause emotional and psychological challenges. What causes this drop, and what can be done to help fix it?
Why Do Some of Us Feel Down After Success?
Every individual has their own reasons for feeling low after achieving work success, but typically it is related to some, or all, of the following issues:
No Next Step – Change is difficult. Achieving immense success can mean that you now feel lost, without direction, unsure what to do next with your time and energy. That’s hard, and can be especially difficult if you saw this success as the ultimate goal.
Other Areas Missing – What did the journey to achieve that success require? Did you sacrifice relationships, for example, and have no one to share it with? Do you feel like you have the friendships you need to enjoy it? Some people find that they become suddenly aware of the things that are missing in their lives.
All That’s Left is the Work – Imagine your goal is CEO. You become CEO. You have hit the pinnacle of your hard work. Now, even though you have achieved that success, you still have to do a lot of work with no future goal planned. That is a lot of stress and it can feel like it’s for “less” since there is no where else to go.
Good Feeling Neurotransmitters – Achieving success fuels the release of chemicals in the brain that cause good feelings. Then, like any high, those chemicals go away. If you’ve been working for something your whole life, that high is going to be very powerful, and then the subsequent drop can cause you to feel emptier than you do on a typical day.
The Downside of Success – Some people, like CEOs, influencers, models, and actors, receive more public scrutiny with their successes. For example, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company has to watch stock prices and stock analysts discuss their company and determine their success based on fluctuations. Lawyers are frequently judged by whether they won cases, and actors receive reviews of their movies, acting ability, and looks.
Fear of Losing It – Some successes can also be taken away at any moment. Achieving the success means suddenly being faced with the pressure of maintaining that success, as the role or position may not be something that is solely yours at the pleasure of other people in charge.
The Pressures Were Always There – Sometimes, our lives already are very stressful, but we do not necessarily notice because we’re so caught up in our goals. Once the goal is reached, we may feel the stress more than was already a bit part of our lives.
Achieving success can also lead you to feel emotional, cause you to question yourself and your goals, and – of course – feel more stressed as you have to continue to work day to day.
Therapy for Work Success
There are many different ways that work success can have drawbacks. Achieving your goals is great, but it is equally important to work on our mental health as well. If you are someone that feels like your work success has left you feeling issues emotionally or psychologically, contact the therapists at Flourish Psychology, today.
Chronic pain is a pervasive issue that affects millions, significantly impacting quality of life and overall well-being. While traditional medical treatments focus on the physical aspects of pain, it is often psychotherapists that can play a key, important role in the patient’s ability to manage pain.
A psychotherapist, through various therapeutic approaches, can offer substantial support in coping with the emotional and psychological dimensions of living with chronic pain.
The Link Between the Mind and Body
Chronic pain is not just a physical experience. It is an emotional and cognitive one as well. The mind-body connection plays a crucial role in how pain is perceived and managed. Different emotions can increase pain. Pain can also be exacerbated by thoughts and attention, and can be worse when a person has mental health struggles as well.
A psychotherapist can help unravel this complex interplay between the brain and body, providing insights into how psychological factors like stress, anxiety, and depression contribute to the amplification of pain sensations and giving tools and strategies to patients whose pain is impacting their quality of life.
Therapeutic Approaches in Pain Management
Psychotherapists employ a range of therapeutic techniques to address chronic pain. These include, but are not limited to:
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – CBT is a widely used approach that helps individuals identify and modify negative thought patterns and behaviors that exacerbate pain. By fostering a more positive outlook and adaptive coping mechanisms, patients can alter their pain experience.
Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques – Techniques such as mindfulness meditation, deep breathing exercises, and progressive muscle relaxation can reduce stress and tension, which are often linked to increased pain.
Biofeedback – This technique involves training patients to control physiological processes such as muscle tension, heart rate, and blood flow, which can contribute to pain levels.
Somatic therapy is also an approach that we use here at Flourish Psychology. Somatic therapy specifically addresses the mind/body connection, and provides tools and techniques to help them both communicate and function properly.
Addressing Emotional and Psychological Causes of Pain
Living with chronic pain often leads to emotional distress, including feelings of anger, sadness, or hopelessness. A psychotherapist can provide a supportive space to explore these feelings, offering strategies to manage emotional responses and improve mental health. This emotional support is integral to holistic pain management, increasing resilience and enhancing quality of life.
Effective coping strategies can then play an important role in managing chronic pain. A psychotherapist can help individuals develop and strengthen these strategies, including:
Pain Acceptance – Learning to accept pain as a part of life, without letting it define one’s identity or dictate life choices.
Activity Pacing – Teaching patients how to balance activity and rest to avoid pain flare-ups and maintain functionality.
Social Support – Encouraging the maintenance and development of supportive relationships to provide emotional support and reduce feelings of isolation.
Chronic pain is a multifaceted issue that requires a comprehensive approach to management. A psychotherapist can play a vital role in addressing the psychological and emotional dimensions of pain, complementing medical treatments. Through various therapeutic techniques, psychotherapists help individuals navigate the complexities of chronic pain, promoting coping strategies, emotional well-being, and an improved quality of life.
If you’re struggling with chronic pain, consider exploring how psychotherapy could be part of your holistic pain management plan. Contact Flourish Psychology today to get started.
There is something particularly stressful about work these days. There’s an argument to be made that work has always been stressful, and certainly if you asked someone 50 years ago if they found their work to be difficult, they would say yes.
But life today is much louder, much busier, and with much less time to cope. Even if work is as stressful as it was decades ago, our ability to overcome that stress has diminished. We are getting less sleep, less outdoor time, and more – all of which make it harder to cope with the challenges of work related stress.
Seeing Work Stress as Normal
One issue that often arises out of this is the normalization of that work stress. We often see work stress as inevitable and, unless it causes a diagnosable mental health issue, we often ignore it and assume that it is something that we have to live with. The idea that work is stressful has become, in many ways, a meme – a joke that we reference over and over again as a part of life.
The problem is that you spend at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week at work. That is at minimum half of your entire day, five days out of every 7 days. That is a significant portion of your day to day life that you’re spending with a great deal of stress. That is not healthy for your mind or your body. Even if you can come home and not feel the anxiety or depression that leads many people to seeking out therapy, experiencing at least 40 hours of non-stop stress per week is unhealthy.
Addressing the Causes and Finding Solutions to Work Stress
Work stress can seem normal, but it isn’t. We don’t have to love our jobs, but we should at least find them to be something that we can cope with, and something that we don’t have to find overwhelming when it occurs. We can learn not only how not to take stress home with you, but also how to identify it at work.
For people in high pressure positions – doctors, lawyers, and heavily involved executives – stress is considered a part of the job, but – when not managed properly – can impact decision making at these positions and ultimately cause mistakes or poor satisfaction at the role. No matter where you work or what you do, work stress is something that is going to hurt your ability to manage your personal and professional life.
That is why therapy for work stress is so important. It’s critical to learn tools that will help you manage your work stress. Through therapy, you can learn coping mechanisms to use while at work, how to create boundaries and develop a healthy work/life balance, how to accept the responsibilities of the position, and more.
Therapy is what will help you address and identify work stress challenges, and make sure that you’re able to manage your job accordingly with greater satisfaction in the process. Don’t let work stress be normalized. Contact Flourish Psychology today to get started.
Most people are aware of couples counseling, often viewing it as a last resort for when marriages and relationships are on the brink of failure. We at Flourish Psychology in Brooklyn are trying to reframe the idea of couples counseling for what it really is: a way to learn how to better communicate and understand each other to grow a relationship.
Couples counseling is about skill building and creating better understanding between couples. It is about:
Learning how to communicate.
Learning how to manage your lives together and apart.
Learning how to parent together, and/or engage in activities together.
While these tools are going to have some of their greatest benefit to couples currently in a relationship that are looking for ways to address arguments or enhance their intimacy, they are skills that benefit people in ways far beyond the marriage alone.
How You Communicate Post-Divorce
In some cases, post divorce, both couples move on with their lives and never have any additional contact. But those situations are rare. Typically, with or without kids, the couple is going to still be in ongoing contact. They may share friends, they may live in the same area, they may still have a relationship in some form after the marriage is over.
If kids are involved, the likelihood of ongoing contact is even greater. Both partners are going to be tasked with coparenting and navigating the world as separate individuals with children in common. Anger, aggression, frustration, and sadness can all get in the way of that. That is why, even if a couple is certain that they are not right for each other, couples counseling may have many benefits.
Through couples counseling, we can work on many important issues that affect post-divorce couples:
How to communicate effectively about the needs of the children.
How to accept the other person’s life they have for the child.
How to make sure that issues relating to assets are navigated.
How to handle any conflict that may arise later.
How to cope with uncommunicated feelings that come up when alone.
Rarely does divorce mean the end of communication between both parties, and if there are children in the marriage, then that becomes even more likely that both of you are going to still be in regular contact. Not only will you be communicating regularly, but after a divorce, each partner is not able to police how the other partner acts, so you are likely to have disagreements with issues like parenting.
This is why couples counseling in Brooklyn and NYC can be so important, even after a divorce. Couples counseling is not only about saving your marriage. It is about gaining the skills needed to continue to function together in a way that is best for both of your mental health and happiness – and possibly that of your children as well. Learn more about couples counseling or get started with Flourish Psychology, today.
As specialists in disordered eating and eating disorders, one issue that drives many poor eating habits is the idea of avoiding being “fat” – a term, often used as a slur, that is designed to shame someone about the size of their body. We know from health science that bodies of all sizes can be healthy bodies and that the concept of “fat” as unhealthy or unattractive is not factual. It is time to reclaim the word fat, and restore it’s proper meaning.
It’s why we emphasize what we call fat positivity – the concept that all bodies, and particularly larger bodies, are inherently worthy and that size itself is not a determinant of health status or physical attractiveness.
What “All Sizes Fit” Really Means
As Rebecca Appleman, a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist with offices in NY, CT and FL and owner of Appleman Nutrition explains, “it is a pervasive view in both diet and wellness culture that “fat” is bad; That it is bad to eat fat and bad to be fat. This view is profoundly misguided.” High quality fat, is a vital nutrient and is important to consume in order to decrease inflammation in the body and protect the heart, brain and bones. Rebecca further reflects that “fat bodies have unfortunately been culturally deemed unhealthy, unworthy, and unattractive. Appleman Nutrition wholly rejects the idea that only one body type is worthy and that only thin bodies can be healthy and strong. Every body has value, and every body deserves to be well nourished and well cared for.”
Fat positivity is about embracing your body as it is and not allowing unscientific standards dictate your body image.
At Flourish Psychology, we call this the concept of “all sizes fit.” It is the idea that:
Whatever size you are is the right fit for you.
Whatever shape you have is an ideal shape to be.
Whatever view you have about beauty standards, you fit into that view.
Through this concept, we work with patients that struggle with disordered eating, teaching them how to be in touch with their body and its signals, knowing how to listen to it and give it what it needs to thrive. We teach you how to accept your body and what it does for you, focusing less on its appearance and instead on how incredible it is that it allows you to enjoy and appreciate so much goodness in life.
We also focus on acceptance, and learning to accept all the great things you already have instead of desiring what you do not. These skills help not only with poor body image, but also with changing your overall mindset about how to live an enjoyable, incredible life of any size at any time.
Health at Every Size
In the mental health world, the concept of “Health at Every Size” (often shortened to HAES) is supported by research. Teaching people to love themselves, address their mental health needs, and respond to their body showed better overall health outcomes, no matter their weight on the scale.
The idea behind fat positivity is based on this principle. It is to show people that loving yourself matters more for your health than other approaches, and that your size or weight matters less for your mental AND physical wellbeing than the way you feel about it.
Learning to Love Yourself and Your Body
Food is designed to nourish our bodies so that we can enjoy all the other activities that we wish to enjoy. When food becomes a distraction, or how we feel about our body interrupts our ability to enjoy all of life’s many pleasures, then that’s when we need to take a step back and gain a better understanding of why we feel that way and what we can do to feel more positive about ourselves and our bodies.
If you or someone you love is struggling with disordered eating or body image issues, please reach out to Flourish Psychology today. Our therapists often work with patients that have eating disorders on ways to improve their relationship with food and to feel more positive with themselves and their bodies.
Location: 300 Cadman Plaza West Floor 12 - Brooklyn, NY 11201
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