The Anxiety, Chronic Pain and Illness Connection
Living with chronic pain and illness can bring up a lot of anxiety. You might be feeling a daily sense of worry, wondering if you will be able to manage your anxiety that increases when health and pain symptoms suddenly strike. While everyone’s anxiety symptoms and experiences with chronic pain and illness are different, I hear so many stories about how health symptoms interfere with daily life.
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Why Sleep Matters and How to Improve It
I am sure you have heard it over and over again how important it is to get a good night’s sleep. It’s right up there with eating well and exercising right? In this article I hope to add new perspectives as to why bedtime rest is important and what you can do to support better nighttime habits.
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Secondary Trauma and Its Impact on Caregivers
Are you familiar with the term secondary trauma? Chances are that this is the first time you are hearing about it, so let me give you a brief description of what this phrase actually means. Secondary trauma is defined as experiencing, hearing about, or being witness to life threatening or life-changing events of another person on a regular basis.
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Mindfulness in Times of Uncertainty
When life becomes too overwhelming, it can be easy to lose focus on how we can cope. Luckily, mindfulness can help make these difficult life situations more manageable. It comes down to approaching challenges one step at a time.
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Why Some Stay Silent about their Medical Illness & Pain
Experiencing life when you have chronic pain and illness can be difficult when it comes to maintaining relationships. If you developed your illness as an adult for instance, adjusting to your new normal also means having to make big life adjustments. Making adjustments due to medical illness was something I did, and it was hard. Some of what I share here is based on my own experiences and the experiences of friends with medical illness.
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Body Scanning: Learning how to reduce anxiety and improve resiliency
When experiencing uncomfortable sensations in the body what do you do? Do you ignore them? Do you try and distract yourself from what you are feeling? Or do you stop and sit still to understand what is going on within yourself? Most of the time it is hard to stop and take a moment to check in with sensations and emotions because life is just too busy. There are so many obligations and distractions that keep you moving from place to place without a moment to catch your breath.
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Feeling the Summer Blues and How to Cope
Experiencing the blues over the summer may be surprising to hear, but it does happen to many of us. Here will will explore some reasons why you may be feeling blue and what you can do to cope.
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How To Survive and Thrive During the Holidays – Holiday Stress Edition
How can we get through the holidays more stress free? This can seem managing holiday stress is an impossible task, but by exploring some ideas shared here you will see that it is possible. After all, the holidays are not just about running around trying to please everyone. That desire to please others and be everywhere for everyone can leave you feeling both depleted and resentful. Instead, these ideas can help keep the stress and overwhelm at bay allowing more time for fun, enjoyment and connection.
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Top 7 Tips to Manage Social Anxiety This Holiday Season
Holiday parties, work parties and family commitments can really be stressful for people who have social anxiety. Under normal circumstances an anxious person might be able to come up with some excuses as to why they cannot attend a party or social gathering, but when it comes to the holiday season this can be even harder to manage.
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Just Breathe – Breathing Exercises to Feel More Resilient and Relaxed When Feeling Overwhelmed
Practicing deep belly breathing is one of the most effective ways to help calm down the mind and body. To get an idea about what a deep belly breath looks like, I want you to place one hand under your belly button and the other hand on your chest.
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