Notes from the Counseling Department

Happy National School Psychology Week!  The theme this year is "Together We Shine." From the NASP website: This year's theme, "Together We Shine" is derived from how we see hope after several challenging years. We have all faced difficulties created by the pandemic, social injustice and inequity, economic stress, and challenges to mental and physical health. For some, it has been a time of real darkness, and finding light is critical to building resilience and hope. The week hopes to highlight how we are all part of and contribute to a collective healing and growth so that we can move forward to strength and health together.  We shine hope to our students, colleagues, buildings and communities in order to help build resiliency and stronger support systems.  For more information on what school psychology is, click here. Celebrate your school psychologist today!  --Dr. J     

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 t...

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 ...

  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 "b...

It's October and we're just starting to get into the groove of the school year.  With that settling in, however, comes some predictable anxiety.  Maybe it's anxiety about a test or presentation or about a conversation we anticipate will be difficult.  Often the advice we're given is to "just breathe."  It's good advice but do you know why?  Our body's goal, at the core, is to survive. It's why so much of how our bodies function are not things we consciously control. One such part is the  autonomic nervous system , which regulates body functions such as breathing, heart rate, and digestion. The autonomic nervous system has two main parts: the  sympathetic nervous system  and the  parasympathetic nervous system , which are responsible for carrying out daily activities (such as digestion) and protecting us when we sense a threat. They are both always active systems but each can be activated to "take over" as needed. When our bodie...

Welcome back to school!  We are here in person, we are masked, and we have no remote learning options.  Which is to say, it feels a lot more like the "normal" we have been used to in the past.  There are still some differences, for example, we're eating lunch outside whenever possible, but overall it has felt good to be back in the school building with the students.  In preparing for the year, Bigelow's staff spent time learning about the concept of a " window of tolerance " which was first conceptualized by Dr. Daniel Siegel .  The basic idea is that we all have an optimal amount of space in our windows.  When we are in that space, we are open to new concepts, ideas, challenges, and experiences.  If we open our window too wide, we become overwhelmed and begin to spin out- our heart rate increases, our breathing becomes more rapid, our thoughts swirl, and we become ruled by our emotional reactions.  If we allow our windows to close too much, we sh...

As the days grow longer and the light gets brighter, we are nearing the end of what can only be described as a year like no other we've known.  We learned remotely, we learned in a hybrid model, and we learned with most of us in the building while still including those remaining remote.  All of us can now measure six feet without a ruler (about the length of a sofa or car), discuss which hand sanitizers are most effective, (I prefer the Bath & Bodyworks Sunshine & Lemons spray) and offer suggestions as to where to find the best, most comfortable face masks (I'm a fan of Athleta Activate brand).  We have washed our hands, eaten outside, and figured out how to unmute ourselves on Zoom.   Some of us have experienced unbearable loss and grief.  Others of us have experienced physical illness.  Many of us have felt incredibly high levels of anxiety, depression, and lethargy.  Many of us who already had experience with mental health challenges fe...

It's been quite a fall for all of us here at Bigelow, the Newton Public Schools, and, really across the U.S. and beyond.  As we move toward the Winter Solstice, it feels like we are entering a dark tunnel, one in which we can just barely make out a light at the other end.  It's hard to imagine what the world will look like in the Spring and how the vaccine might impact that.    Many of us are experiencing what experts are calling "Pandemic Fatigue."  That feeling of being "done" with the restrictions, the isolation, the fear and anxiety.  It's an exhausted, hopeless kind of feeling and when we feel that way, we aren't in the best mind to make wise choices.  It's this kind of feeling that allows us to let down our guard and make rationalizations and excuses for our behavior, whatever it may be.  This is what makes us watch just one more episode, play just one more round of a game, or stay up just a few more minutes later.  We find reasons to m...

Welcome back to school.... sort of!  We are back, though most students are remote, with a plan to return in a hybrid model in mid-November.   There is so much happening in our world right now, with the Covid-19 virus and subsequent responses and impacts, the upcoming election, the various protest movements across the country.  Emotions are running high wherever you turn.  It is so important to remain connected to loved ones and to be kind to yourself and those around you during this time.  It is ok to feel whatever you're feeling- sad, happy, confused, angry, restless, anxious, scared, worried, like you just want to crawl into bed with a good novel or movie- there are no "right" ways to feel right now.   Continue to support each other and to make safe choices.  We all need a bit more support right now, as we move from autumn into winter. It's a time when many people are impacted by the shorter days, the cooler temperatures, and lack of sunlig...

Here we are, nearing the end of the 2019-2020 school year.  In many ways it has been a year like no other. In the span of a few short months, we've gone to meeting in person to meeting on-line and feeling unsure about our health, our safety, and our country. Between the inequities sharply highlighted by the Covid-19 Pandemic and the recent protests against police brutality and inherent inequity for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), many of us are reeling and wondering what we can do to help.  Many of us are also wondering how to talk to our children about these realities and how we can both protect them and make them active change agents. Rather than telling you what to do, we will remind you that staying connected with each other is an essential component of healthy emotional wellness and isolating yourself has a negative impact on your mental health.  So, please stay connected, check on each other, support each other. There are a number of resources l...