Therapists are offering free services to help frontline healthcare workers, first responders and essential workers during COVID19 crisis. The list of licensed volunteers is located online at www.covid19counselingca.org.
San Diego EMDR TRN
The San Diego EMDR Trauma Recovery Network is offering up to five free EMDR sessions to residents of San Diego who were at the Las Vegas harvest festival during the shooting. Vounteers will continue ot supprt TIP Volunteers and residents of the Lilac fire. Visit their website at www.sandiego-emdr-trn.weebly.com. Residents of San Diego at Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival 10/1/17
If you were in Las Vegas during the shooting at the harvest festival, you and your family may be eligible for Victim Compensation. Visit the CalVCB website for more information and to complete the application for compensation. Services may cover expenses for medical, funeral and trauma counseling. Website: www.victims.ca.gov/lasvegas, Tel:1-800-777-9229. Concerns at home sometimes overlap into your work life, just as job concerns may affect relationships at home. If unattended, the concerns that were once minor may become more serious and have a negative impact both at home and at work. An EAP Counselor will help you sort out the concerns in as few as three sessions to avoid further work or home conflicts.
EAP counseling is offered for free by your employer and conducted by a licensed psychotherapist. The meetings are short term, solution-focused so you may move forward and quickly resolve concerns in an effective manner. Your appointments with an EAP Counselor are voluntary. There are no fees or co-payments and the benefit is for you and your family. The following are a few quick tips for managing a depressed mood:
1. Continue with Therapy. Therapy helps to clarifying and gain insight to some of the possible causes of sadness. 2. Keep Doctor Appointments. If you are taking medication, take the medication as prescribed and talk with your doctor if you are not obtaining the desired results or feel worse while taking the medication. You can also work with your therapist to help monitor medication effectiveness and side effects. Continue therapy while taking medication. 3. Exercise. It's important to maintain exercise even though you may feel too depressed to exercise. Try to take a short walk or practice yoga, stretching or some other preferred exercise. The goal is to help lighten the mood, not run a marathon. It's good to get a little sunshine too. 4. Maintain Regular Meals. When depressed, overeating is common but so is a lack of appetite. Create a food diary to track what and when you eat to maintain balanced nutrition. 5. Journal. Writing about your feelings is helpful to get negative thoughts out of your head and onto paper. If what you are writing is too personal, write it and then shred it. You can also write all the negative thoughts that occur frequently. 6. Reinforce Positive Messages. The minute the thought "I can't do this" comes to mind, immediately say "STOP" or "STOP IT" and then say "I CAN do this." 7. What to Avoid. Try to avoid negative people, messages and the tragic news. While you are working to improve your mood, pay attention to what you allow into your life. If you have toxic friends, you may want to minimize the time spent with them and you can turn off the news and watch something or read something that you find inspirational or motivational. 8. Review and Revise your Boundaries. Assessing your current boundaries is always a good idea. If boundaries were good but declined to poor, the outcome may be more stress. Improve your boundaries by limit setting, stick to your plans and read more material on how to set and keep boundaries. A common statement made after the loss of a loved one is "you need to let go." But that statement has different meanings for many people and actually hurts some more than others. Moving forward and recovering from loss is important but telling someone to let go may be felt as dismissive. When loved ones are with us in our thoughts, memories and in some cases our personality and behavior, letting go is almost impossible and may just be a wrong choice of words.
You need to carry on, work through grief and find new happiness, but the work of grieving is remembering your loved one as you move forward. Let your loved one guide you as you move forward; and that is not "letting go", that is allowing them to hold your hand. One of the characteristics of emotional intelligence is the ability to quickly reduce stress in the moment. Others include:
Are you crying all the time, sleeping odd hours, or not sleeping at all and suffering from nightmares and memories of caregiver events? Your recent routine was caring and now there is a void and you may be confused about the future. These are common symptoms after loss. But sometimes after the support from family and friends has ended, the dreaded symptom and silent fuel for depression and anxiety may actually be guilt.
Guilty feelings after loss are that you did not do enough, made the wrong decisions, took too much action or not enough action, could have given more pain medication or gave too much pain medication, could have stayed longer, visited more, prevented the fall, stayed at the hospital for a few more minutes longer, and the list goes on and on. Memories flood during the night and sleep is often nonexistent. The tears of sorrow become the tears of guilt because the memory of someone suffering is too much to bear. The intrusive thoughts of guilt keep us focused on something in the past we believe we could have changed but may not have been possible at the time. Flashbacks of an incident remain in your memory keeping the guilt alive and the result may be depression. So the next step after loss may be to release the guilt feelings to reduce the chances of a great depression and start to care for yourself. Easier said than done, but it is a step in the right direction. Many ways to begin caring for yourself could be exercise or walks, meet with a friend who had similar experiences, journal your thoughts and feelings, watch comedies, get a massage, meditate, eat healthy foods, and definitely attend individual or group therapy and talk about the feelings of guilt. Share those feelings of guilt and expose those feelings so they no longer control you. The care and support you provided may have been significant enough to cause symptoms of PTSD so do take your feelings seriously. Take care of yourself for doing an enormous job of caring for your loved one because you had the strength to be the caregiver. Now it’s time to take care of you. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may affect anyone who has suffered a trauma. Abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, rape, combat, natural disasters or any threat to your life may cause PTSD and the symptoms will disrupt your life and relationships. Sadly, many people suffer in silence. The link below provides information about PTSD symptoms and the the fact that PTSD is being treated with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). EMDR is unique in that you may choose whether or not you share the details of a traumatic memory with your clinician. The therapy technique basically helps you "re-file" a memory into a place in the brain that is not at the forefront and does not continue to interfere. Some clients prefer to share a few comments about their experiences but the details are not required for this treatment to be effective which oftentimes helps clients due to security, trust or other privacy issues. Once the memory is "re-filed" clients report feeling lighter, have gained insight, the heaviness has been lifted, and they are able to keep the memory but in a place that is no longer confused or disruptive.
Symptoms: Nightmares, flashbacks, avoidance, feeling numb, jittery, always on alert for danger. Do you know someone with good boundaries? One thing about them is that they do not allow others to "dump" on them and they manage their time and self-care well. Boundaries are an important aspect to our health and well-being. Without boundaries, life becomes more stressful and may cause resentment, anger and illness. Having healthy boundaries means that you understand how you want others to treat you and how you treat yourself. If you have unhealthy boundaries, relationships become overwhelming. For example, without boundaries you may do everything for everyone, babysit when you prefer not to, talk at length with someone when you are late for an appointment, tell a new acquaintance your entire personal life story, invade the space of your friends by trying to advise, guide and make them change, fall in love at first meeting or continue dating someone even though you do not want to pursue the relationship. If these examples sound familiar, these are likely the unhealthy boundaries that may have increased your stress, unhappiness and anxiety. Here are a few helpful behavioral changes:
1. If someone requests your time, simply state that you will think about it and respond later. We tend to feel obligated to give an immediate response but taking the time to respond later after you check your datebook helps to protect your personal time. 2. New friends do not need to know every detail of your personal life so soon. Try to give the new relationship time to develop and gain your trust and respect. 3. Learn to say “no.” If you do not have time to babysit a friend’s child, state that you are not able to help today. No excuses needed. 4. Manage your personal time well. If you plan your day for yourself, do not allow unnecessary or non-emergency interruptions including phone calls and email. Write down your daily plan and stick to the plan. 5. Try not to avoid people. Avoiding adds more stress. You may honestly explain that you are managing your time or cannot meet with your friends which may be better than avoiding someone to guard your personal time. EMDR is a natural way to process past experiences that affect your life negatively today. For example, if you were traumatized by anything in the past such as physical or emotional violence or trauma, war, a car accident, fire, animal attack, stuck in an elevator, natural disaster or terror, these memories get locked in the brain and the result is modified behavior that may be fear, anger, anxiety, nightmares, startled response, irritation and stress when triggered by a current sight, smell or sound related to the past trauma. If you are experiencing any such responses, you may want to try EMDR.
Since I use this treatment in therapy, I witness the positive results first-hand so I know that it is very effective based on the results. I also use other treatment approaches, but I am amazed by EMDR treatment every time I use it in session and want to share it with everyone. Clients respond easily and instinctively to the treatment as if the body and mind already know how to heal using this treatment. Since EMDR is a natural healing treatment, it is definitely worth trying if you have been suffering in silence not knowing how to get past your negative experiences. Contact me for a confidential EMDR session, and please call me if you have any questions. What are the signs of an unhealthy relationship? Would you know if you were in a bad relationship? Most new relationships start out with good behavior, positive impressions, flowers, attention, compliments and everything you may want to hear. After a few weeks, a controlling partner begins to ask Why? Why do you wear those shoes, that outfit, those pants, etc.? Your first thought may be 'I really like these shoes, outfit etc...but I guess I need to change because my partner does not like it.' This situation may be a personal friendly opinion; however, it could also be the beginning stage of abuse and control. Here are a few examples of red flags:
- frequently questions you when you work late; - prevents you from seeing certain friends and family and you begin to isolate; - questions you about why your cell phone rings at night and checks your cell phone; - calls you numerous times per day and your every move is monitored; - shows signs of jealousy and rage. Understand that some demands made by your partner are not acts of love. If you identify with several red flags, counseling will help assess your relationship and may help you before a crisis occurs. |
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