Your brain is wired in a certain way to protect you from danger. When there is a threat, your brain triggers what is known as the fight/flight/freeze response. This response changes the way your body feels in an effort to keep you safe. Imagine for a minute that you are walking through the woods, and […]
“The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia. Which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.” Dr. Anna Lembke The content of this post is drawn from a great book called Dopamine Nation, by Dr. Anna Lembke. Dopamine is a powerful neurotransmitter. Common knowledge tends […]
When research comes out around the relationship between social media use and mental health outcomes, the news usually isn’t good. In fact, most of us know by now that spending too much time on social media isn’t good for us. One of the social media use patterns that has been identified as problematic is called […]
Depression and anxiety are a relatively common mental health concern and rates are only growing, especially among the young. Considering the parallel growth of social media use and these mental health concerns, a lot of people have been looking into a link between them. Although it is very difficult to prove causation, studies have linked […]
We have to prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child Tim Elmore Preparing vs protecting. This has been described as the greatest paradox of parenting. Not only are these the two essential tasks involved in parenting, but they have a strange relationship to each other. At times, protecting a child […]
“When little people are overwhelmed by big emotions, it’s our job to share our calm, not join their chaos.” L.R. Knost At the outset it is important to understand what happens in the body when we experience anxiety. In part one, we talked about how anxiety evolved to keep us safe. Part of that evolutionary […]
Anxiety, especially among adolescents, is at an all-time high. For parents and young adults, understanding how anxiety functions, and strategies to address it, are the first steps to a less anxious future. The first thing to understand is that anxiety is a natural psychological and physiological phenomenon. Anxiety evolved to keep us safe from danger. […]