Many of us use the term “overwhelmed” to discuss how we’re feeling in today’s fast paced, increasingly connected, loud world. It’s a word that we are also using correctly. We ARE overwhelmed. We are frequently finding that there is almost no moment in the day where we are not being stimulated, asked to do things, or surrounded by noise and movement.
Being overwhelmed means that we are stressed, overstimulated, and unable to find opportunities to refresh and replenish our reserves. So it might not come as a surprise to learn that an effective way to help address being overwhelmed is finding yourself in quiet, disconnected, solitude.
Evidence increasingly shows that there are times when what we need to be less overwhelmed is to spend even just a few hours in completely quiet solitude – no noise, no phones, no distractions, no stresses. Sometimes, to address feeling overwhelmed, what need more than anything is silence.
The Psychological Impact of Silence
Silence can have a profound effect on the brain, particularly when it comes to stress reduction. In our daily lives, we are often bombarded with noise – whether it’s the constant hum of urban environments, the chatter of social interactions, or the endless stream of digital notifications. These stimuli can keep our minds in a heightened state of alertness, which can contribute to stress and anxiety over time.
Being alone in silence gives the brain a chance to:
Reset and Recharge – Quiet time allows the brain to enter a more restful state, which can help reduce mental fatigue. When freed from the need to process constant input, the brain can focus on recovery and repair.
Foster Mindfulness – Silence creates the perfect environment for mindfulness, where individuals can focus on the present moment without distractions. This shift in attention can reduce feelings of overwhelm and promote a sense of calm.
Improve Emotional Regulation – Without external noise and distractions, silence allows individuals to become more aware of their emotions and thoughts. This increased self-awareness can lead to better emotional regulation, helping individuals manage stress more effectively.
Silence gives our brain a chance to process the day, free of digital overload and the people and things demanding our attention. Our brains are always processing information, and need a bit of time to do that without distraction.
Physiological Benefits of Silence
Spending time in silence can also have a positive effect on the body. Stress often triggers the “fight or flight” response, which raises cortisol levels and increases heart rate and blood pressure. Silence, on the other hand, can activate the body’s “rest and digest” system, allowing for physical relaxation.
Some of the physiological benefits of silence include:
Lowered Heart Rate and Blood Pressure – When the brain isn’t processing external stimuli, the body naturally shifts into a more relaxed state. Studies have shown that quiet environments can lead to decreases in heart rate and blood pressure, which are key indicators of reduced stress.
Decreased Cortisol Levels – Cortisol is a hormone associated with stress. Spending time in silence can help lower cortisol levels, reducing the physical effects of stress on the body, such as tension, headaches, and fatigue.
Improved Sleep – Silence promotes relaxation, which can help individuals unwind and prepare for better sleep. Since stress is one of the primary causes of sleep disturbances, incorporating periods of quiet into your day can improve overall sleep quality.
In addition to its calming effects, silence can also lead to greater mental clarity and focus. When our minds are free from distractions, we are better able to process information, reflect on important decisions, and think creatively.
How to Incorporate Silence Into Daily Life
As hard as it is to schedule silence when you need it most, there are situations in which it is a good idea to see if, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can find a quiet place outside or inside, leave your phone behind, and sit in total silence for awhile if you can. All it may take is a few hours of silence to find that you’re able to take on the stresses of the day.
When it’s not possible to carve out large chunks of quiet time in a busy schedule, there are simple ways to incorporate moments of silence into daily life to help manage stress:
Morning Silence – Start the day by setting aside 10 to 15 minutes for quiet reflection, meditation, or deep breathing. This practice can set a calm tone for the day ahead and reduce stress levels.
Scheduled Breaks – Throughout the day, take short breaks in a quiet environment, whether it’s stepping outside, sitting in a calm room, or simply turning off digital devices. Even just a few minutes of silence can help reset your focus and reduce stress.
Unplug from Technology – Silence isn’t just about the absence of sound – it’s also about disconnecting from digital distractions. Set aside time each day to unplug from phones, emails, and social media to create a more peaceful environment.
Spending time alone in silence, even for a few hours, can be a powerful tool for stress relief. By allowing the mind and body to disengage from constant noise and stimuli, silence fosters relaxation, reduces physical signs of stress, and promotes mental clarity.
Whether through mindful practices or simply taking a break from the daily hustle, incorporating periods of quiet into your routine can significantly enhance your ability to manage stress and improve overall well-being. For more help controlling stress and feeling overwhelmed, please reach out to our team at Flourish Psychology, today.
It is difficult to live through trauma, and the way we experience trauma – based on our age, personality, the type of trauma we experienced, and more – means that different people may benefit from different treatment approaches as we try to help them overcome it and move forward.
We offer many strategies for addressing trauma here at Flourish Psychology, including EMDR and CBT. We are also able to use an approach known as “trauma systems therapy,” which is not right for all patients but can be very useful when appropriate.
What is Trauma Systems Therapy?
Trauma Systems Therapy (TST) is a comprehensive psychotherapy approach designed to support children and adolescents who have experienced trauma. This method recognizes that traumatic experiences can have a significant impact not just on an individual’s emotional state but also on their behavior and relationships.
TST takes into account both the personal experiences of the individual and the environment in which they live, including their family, school, and broader community, all with the goal of helping these younger people better address and overcome trauma-related issues.
The Core Components of Trauma Systems Therapy
TST is built around several key components, each of which plays a role in helping individuals recover from trauma. These components are designed to work together to address both the internal and external factors that can influence a person’s ability to cope with and heal from trauma. It believes in:
Creating a Sense of Safety – The first step in TST is ensuring that the individual feels safe. This involves both physical safety and emotional security, helping the person to feel protected and supported in their environment.
Emotion Regulation – TST teaches individuals how to manage and regulate their emotions. This is particularly important for those who have experienced trauma, as they may struggle with intense emotions that can be difficult to control.
Supportive Environment – A critical aspect of TST is working with the individual’s environment, including their family and community, to create a supportive and nurturing space. This might involve educating family members, training school staff, or connecting with community resources to ensure that the individual has a strong support system.
It can differ from other forms of therapy in that it is very community based, looking at overcoming trauma as something that is fostered around the person in addition to supporting them through therapy.
Why Trauma Systems Therapy Matters
Trauma can have long-lasting effects on a person’s life, particularly if it occurs during childhood or adolescence. TST is important because it recognizes that recovery is not just about addressing the trauma itself but also about ensuring that the individual’s environment supports their healing. By taking this comprehensive approach, TST helps individuals build resilience, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and ultimately move forward in their lives with a stronger sense of well-being.
Therapist for Trauma in NYC with Flourish Psychology
Trauma Systems Therapy is not right for all patients. Part of the process of therapy is discovering what approaches might work best for you or your loved ones, no matter what those needs may be.
Still, in situations when it is appropriate, Trauma Systems Therapy is a powerful tool for helping individuals recover from trauma by focusing on both the person and the systems around them. It provides a structured, supportive approach that addresses the complex nature of trauma and its effects, offering a pathway to healing and growth.
For more information about our trauma therapy services, or to schedule an appointment for yourself or someone close to you, please contact Flourish Psychology, today.
We are inches away from back to school season, and if you’re a parent, you know what that means:
**screaming internally**
Back to school season can be nice for parents that need to focus on work or have an easier time managing their day to day lives. But it also means late nights doing homework, lots and lots of errands, kids that are likely going to be going through their own challenges, and so much more.
It is, for many of us, a stressful time. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be.
Back to school season is also a great time to consider connecting with a therapist you can talk to, to make this after school season both easier on you and easier on your children.
The Annual Stresses of School Build Up
It’s important for parents to understand that seasonal stresses, like back to school season, are not harmless. When we’re stressed every year for a significant portion of the year, those stresses can affect our short and long term mental health. They make us more tense, increase our anxiety, make it harder to enjoy the things we used to enjoy, and impact our relationships.
Some years we might be able to overcome it as things settle down. But what if that doesn’t happen? What if something else goes wrong during back to school season, or it puts added stress on your marriage, or your child is showing more symptoms of ADHD or learning difficulties and needs extra attention?
Many, many issues can arise, and when they do, it becomes something that can lead to further mental health challenges if you don’t have someone to talk to.
Therapists for Adults During September and October
Therapists are not *just* for back to school season. Yet this time period is often one where many parents realize they could use some ongoing mental health support.
Still, because it is such a busy season, it is also not a time when many people seek it out. This school year, it is best for your mental health and wellness to strongly consider speaking with a therapist ready to address your current AND ongoing challenges, help you work through your feelings, and provide you with help for stress, depression, and anxiety so that you can manage this back to school season (and the next one, and the one after that).
If you find that your stress levels are high this back to school season, and you’d like to finally address it, contact Flourish Psychology, today. We’re here to help you better manage your mental health and get the support you need to thrive this year and the next.
One thing that therapists and lawyers often have in common is that we learn how to do our specific career (psychotherapy or law), but we’re often tasked with a second, very different career: running a business.
We’re trained to provide the services we know, and yet if we have our own practice, we often need to learn how to manage people, how to address conflict, how to market, and so much more. We’ve covered in the past how attorneys are often faced with the mental health challenges due working in a world of win/loss and black/white.
But when you add in issues related to business management, it can be easy to see why many attorneys are finding life to be overwhelming.
The Stress of Managing a Team
When you operate your own practice, you typically have a team of individuals working under you, all designed to support your work. You have paralegals, office staff, and more, some of whom have billable hours and others whose role it is to make sure the business side of your operations moves forward. That can be challenging when your training only teaches you how to be a lawyer.
If you’re struggling with these challenges, consider the following:
Speak with a Psychotherapist – Of course, step number one will be to speak with a therapist or counselor that will have a better understanding of what you’re struggling with and how to help. At Flourish Psychology, our therapists specialize in working with clientele in high pressure, high profile positions, including therapists that have completed their own legal training as well.
Assemble a Team You Trust – You are in position where you own the business and also are a participating, high profile part of it. Make sure the team around you works in line with your core values, and are people that you feel like you can trust based on their expertise and personality.
Delegate – It’s going to be challenging to manage the business and take the lead on legal matters. Once you’ve assembled this team, delegate. Micromanaging beyond what is necessary to do the work will only cause burnout and make it harder to lead.
Determine Your Management Style – Knowing yourself as a manager can help you live and work a bit more authentically, in a way that can make it easier to run the practice without it feeling like an additional burden.
Some people also bring on fractional CFOs and other similar leaders to help them learn to manage the business side of the business so that they can focus on the legal side. Remember, you do not have to take on all of it yourself. Others have the expertise and ability to take some of this work off your plate. For more information about our psychotherapy options for lawyers, please contact Flourish Psychology, today.
Most of us spend a lot of time working. At minimum 5 hours a week, 8 hours a day, and even more if we include commuting. Work itself is hard, and many of us – in any profession – can find it difficult to go from working all day to feeling happy and comfortable at home. There is a reason that, to address mental health, we often have to discuss the effects that our jobs have on us.
This is especially true, however, in the legal profession, and it is not only because the jobs themselves are fairly high stress. It is also because the legal profession, more than nearly any other profession, is one of the few jobs where a person is faced with black and white thinking – you either win, or you lose.
The Long Term Effects of Win/Loss Thinking
Rarely do we have to think in terms of wins and losses in most of our jobs. Work itself is typically gray area. A landscaper’s job isn’t winning and losing. A therapist’s job isn’t winning and losing. Even doctors do not typically deal with wins and losses every day (though they may have their own stresses related to loss in their profession).
But lawyers are different. Lawyers have to think in terms of winning. They have to look at cases to determine how they can win, and then – when they’re done – they have a peer that will almost literally tell them if they won or lost based on what they put together.
If they go to trial, they have a judge or, potentially, 12 other people that will tell them if they won or lost. Even in cases they win, this type of thinking, where you’re judged on your ability to win or lose, can have long lasting consequences.
This is believed to be why lawyers one of the careers most commonly linked to depression. When a person has black and white, win/loss thinking:
Every loss makes someone a “loser”
Every mistake means you’ve failed.
Every opposing counsel becomes an enemy.
You spend days at a time trying to get the information you need together to “win” a case, and even if you do win, you’re often constantly overthinking your choices and thinking about how someone else may prove you wrong. It is a lot to take on, and it’s something that you keep with you in other areas of your life. When you combine that same style of thinking with the stresses of the profession, it’s easy to see why depression can develop.
Depression, Black and White Thinking, and Therapy
Depression itself is, in many ways, a function of black and white thinking – where someone is either a winner or a loser. When you internalize your failures, you become more prone to thinking negatively about yourself leading to the conditions that can create depression.
Therapy, however, can help address this. Therapists that work with lawyers, like Flourish Psychology, can provide you with mental health tools that can break you out of this win/loss cycle and help you see yourself and the world in ways that are not so psychologically damaging. Through therapy, we can provide you with tools and guidance to get you to feel more comfortable with yourself and better able to function at your job. If you’re looking for a therapist that specializes in working with lawyers and those in high stress positions, contact Flourish Psychology, today.
We haven’t yet experienced the heat waves that have occurred in other parts of the country. But if you look at the weather forecasts over the next few weeks, it does look like hotter weather is right around the corner.
When we talk about our hot summers in Brooklyn, we talk about not getting enough water, or we talk about getting sunburned. Maybe we sometimes talk about the street smell as the trash heats up. But we frequently do not talk about the effects that hot weather can have not only on our physical health and wellness, but our mental health as well.
While sunny weather might encourage outdoor activities, excessive heat can have profound effects on our mental health, sometimes lasting beyond the hot days themselves.
How Hot Weather Creates Mental Health Challenges
High temperatures are challenging for the body and mind. Without proper management, the heat can exacerbate existing mental health issues or create new ones. When we experience extreme heat, we may also experience:
Increased Irritability – High temperatures can lead to increased irritability and mood swings. The body’s effort to regulate temperature stresses physiological systems, often resulting in heightened emotional responses. This can make individuals more prone to frustration and anger.
Sleep Disruptions – Hot weather can interfere with sleep patterns, leading to poor quality sleep or insomnia. The inability to cool down at night can make it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep, contributing to fatigue and exacerbating stress and anxiety levels.
Dehydration and Reduced Cognitive Function – Dehydration is a common consequence of hot weather and can negatively impact cognitive functions. Even mild dehydration can impair concentration, decision-making abilities, and overall cognitive performance, which in turn can affect mood and productivity.
Increased Anxiety – The physical discomfort of being too hot can increase anxiety levels. Individuals with pre-existing anxiety disorders may find their symptoms worsening during heatwaves, as the stress of physical discomfort compounds their mental health challenges.
Social Isolation – Hot weather can limit outdoor activities and social interactions, leading to feelings of isolation. Staying indoors to avoid the heat can reduce opportunities for social engagement and physical exercise, both of which are important for maintaining mental health.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) – While often associated with winter, Seasonal Affective Disorder can also occur during the summer. This condition, sometimes referred to as “summer SAD,” can cause symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and changes in sleep patterns and appetite, driven by the prolonged exposure to heat and light.
It’s also easy to envision how these issues may lead to secondary mental health problems. For example, if a person is struggling with irritability and anxiety, they may also have friction with a romantic partner, which in turn can cause other psychological challenges.
In addition, our brain chemistry can change when we experienced prolonged mental health challenges. Someone with anxiety caused by weather may experience changes that lead to anxiety even as the weather cools down. Because some people with summer-related mental health challenges may have already had the conditions in a way that hot weather simply made worse, it’s easy to envision why it is so important for people to address these issues.
How Would a Therapist Be Able to Help with Hot Weather?
Taking care of your physical health is going to be the first step towards taking care of your mental health, and many of those are going to be things you can do on your own. For example:
Stay Hydrated – Ensure adequate hydration by drinking plenty of water throughout the day. Proper hydration helps in maintaining cognitive functions and stabilizing mood.
Maintain a Cool Environment – Use fans, air conditioning, and other cooling methods to create a comfortable indoor environment. A cool living space can help improve sleep quality and reduce irritability.
Adapt Your Schedule – Schedule outdoor activities during cooler parts of the day, such as early morning or late evening. This can help avoid the peak heat and reduce physical and mental stress.
Practice Relaxation Techniques – Incorporate relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, or yoga into your daily routine. These practices can help manage stress and improve emotional resilience in hot weather.
Spend Time With People – If possible, make sure that you don’t suffer from social isolation even in the extreme heat. Schedule time with people and make sure that you’re still getting social support.
It also can often help to speak to a therapist in NYC, where the two of you can work together to maintain your mental health as you’re addressing the heat, and learning tools and coping techniques to support you in the months and years to come.
Therapists do this by providing:
Psychoeducation – Therapists can provide valuable information about how heat affects mental health. Knowing the physiological and psychological impacts of heat can help individuals recognize symptoms and take proactive measures to manage them.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – CBT is effective in addressing anxiety and mood disorders exacerbated by heat. Therapists can help clients identify and challenge negative thought patterns, develop coping strategies, and improve emotional regulation.
Stress Management Techniques – Therapists can teach stress management techniques such as mindfulness, deep breathing exercises, and progressive muscle relaxation. These practices can help reduce stress and anxiety levels, promoting a sense of calm and well-being.
Sleep Hygiene Education and Support – Improving sleep hygiene is crucial for those affected by heat-related sleep disruptions. Therapists can provide guidance on creating a conducive sleep environment, establishing a consistent sleep schedule, and incorporating relaxation techniques before bedtime.
Encouraging Social Engagement – Therapists can support clients in finding ways to maintain social connections despite the heat. This may include scheduling indoor activities, using virtual communication tools, or planning social interactions during cooler parts of the day.
Therapists may not be able to make the sun cooler, or prevent heat related illness. But a therapist can help make sure that you’re always feeling your best and living your best life, whether it’s hot outside, cold outside, or anywhere in between.
Call Flourish Psychology Today
Flourish Psychology may not be able to affect the heat itself, or the physiological effects of it, but we can help make sure that any anxiety, stress, depression, or other mental health conditions you’re struggling with get the attention they deserve. For more information, or to book a session with one of our therapists, please contact Flourish Psychology today.
Location: 300 Cadman Plaza West Floor 12 - Brooklyn, NY 11201
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