Notes from the Counseling Department

For all our returning families, welcome back!  For all our new families, welcome!  We can't wait to get started with you all! The start of a school year usually means that we find more structure than we've had for the previous few weeks.  Even when we're working full time, most summer environments are more casual than in the other months.  Dress codes relax, hours may change, we may all be yearning for more time to linger outside when we're having lunch.  As fall creeps towards us, many of us begin to recommit to earlier bedtimes, more working out, less ice cream, more organization overall.  As we begin to pick up our new (or go back to tried and true) routines and rituals, I invite you to think about what these actions provide for you.  Do your routines include time to ground yourself or psych yourself up for what's to come?  Do your rituals provide you with comfort or help you manage and organize yourself?   One habit I encourage you to create is that of reflectin

As May comes to a close, many of us are feeling heartbroken, shaken, numb, angry, and many other emotions as we process the news from Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX.   There has been so much loss and grief and violence over the last few years and it can feel overwhelming and hopeless.   If this is how the adults are feeling, it's easy to imagine that the children are feeling it as well.  As the adults, it is important for us to acknowledge those feelings in ourselves and our children, and it is important that we do not shy away from appropriately talking about what's happening.  Children, tweens, and even adolescents often take what they hear and create a narrative about events that may not be accurate. If the adults don't help to clear up misunderstandings and talk about what is happening, our students will rely on their own interpretation of events, and will internalize the message that even the adults are too afraid to talk about scary things.   I once had a clinical supervi

  Note: I wrote before the devastating war in the Ukraine. As I read over it now, it seems so silly to be thinking about sleep problems as well as many other things when it's clear that there are bigger issues in the world. There's so much happening everywhere- war, climate change, famine, murder, racism, poverty, pandemic... the list goes on and on, and it's very easy to be overwhelmed and to feel like our own seemingly smaller problems don't matter. The truth is, they do. As a therapist once told me, pain and suffering are not a competition. There will always be someone, somewhere who has it worse and who has it better than you do. Your pain is just as valid. So, the best that we can do, I think, is be where we are, when we are; to do what we can, when we can; and to help ourselves and help others as much as we're able. It's a very mindful way of being: staying in the moment and working on what's in front of us both personally and further-reaching. As the

How's your mental health these days? It's a good time to check in with yourself to see where you fall on a scale of "totally fine" to "really not okay." If you're feeling like maybe you could benefit from some mental health treatment and support and you decide that you want to see a therapist, how would you go about finding one? It's a good question, right? Access to mental health treatment varies widely depending on a number of factors. Insurance, geography, socioeconomic status, race, gender, sexual orientation... the list goes on and on. While this should not be the case, like so many things in our country, the more demographic boxes you check off, the less likely you are to be able to easily access treatment. Massachusetts has a mental health parity law which essentially says insurers who provide mental health benefits for the diagnosis and treatment of certain mental disorders must do so to the same extent that they cover the diagnosis and treat

Happy January! Welcome 2022! A new year! A fresh start! Time to be bombarded by ads encouraging us to set resolutions which will, of course, require expensive accoutrements of all kinds. Losing weight, eating "healthy", spending less, getting organized, getting up earlier... all of these are common resolutions for January first, regardless of the year. It's energizing to imagine how our lives will change when we make these resolutions and we often jump right in with both feet to make them happen. And then a few days or weeks go by and we lose our motivation and interest. Life gets in the way and it's hard to stick to our original resolution. We often feel bad and defeated and we stop trying at all. Let's face it, change is hard (if it were easy, we wouldn't need psychologists or counselors!). This year, rather than setting a resolution, which is often a rigid, achieve/fail framework, perhaps try setting an intention. An intention can ground you, remind you of

As we move away from Halloween and towards Thanksgiving, we're getting more settled into our routines and daily life.  Which means that we are also setting or reinforcing habits, positive and negative.  This month I'm focusing on one habit that we all have, self-talk.   We all engage in self-talk to varying degrees.  You may talk yourself through a tough task or you may talk yourself through a situation.  This kind of self-talk keeps us focused and moving through the process to an end point.  We often see and hear this kind of self-talk in children as they are learning language and new academic concepts.  A different kind of self-talk is the more about the messages we tell ourselves every day.  Usually these messages are ones we have picked up from others and internalized. Sometimes they are ones that we have created ourselves. They can be positive but very often, they are not.  We live in a society that is constantly pushing us to be "better." We are bombarded by pro