Insightful Play and Counseling

01/09/2025

Beautiful snow day in Texas and grateful for telehealth to be able to continue to support clients!

08/09/2024

Love this The Haven Wellness Center!! And all my clients know we talk about boundaries all the time!! 😀 I also love the quote by Prentiss Hemphill that “boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously”

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

03/01/2024

Once again, it has been a LONG time since I've made a post and I'm really hoping to make it more consistent, but self-care takes priority and unfortunately this doesn't always make the list! But here we go again! 🙂

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What’s your initial thought when you see or hear the word *feelings*? For a lot or maybe even most, it likely isn’t a positive thought. However, feelings are not positive or negative or good or bad. Feelings are feelings. There are certainly more and less pleasant feelings to experience, but having any particular feeling is not good or bad.

What happens when we have the mindset of good vs. bad feelings is that we dismiss, push away, ignore, etc. the “bad” feelings in ourselves and for others. How many times have you experienced either as a child or an adult someone saying something like, “Don’t be sad about that, be happy for x, y, z” or “don’t be mad about that, they didn’t mean it that way” or “there’s nothing to be worried about”, etc, etc. These types of comments lead us to believe that we aren’t supposed to have those feelings or that it is bad or wrong to have those feelings. And then that can lead to specific attempts to avoid or ignore certain feelings or shame when we inevitably do feel those feelings.

And here’s the thing, the more we push away or hide our feelings, the stronger they get. They get pushed in some corner of our body and that ball of emotion just keeps growing. It does not disappear as much as we might think it does or wish it would and at some point it will make its impact (an emotional explosion, unhealthy coping skills, health problems, difficult relationships, anxiety, depression, etc).

So back to the point of this post in changing the mindset of good vs. bad feelings is recognizing and allowing yourself to simply feel what you feel in any given situation regardless if it what you are *supposed* to feel or *want* to feel. And when you let yourself feel what you feel (vs. trying to stuff it away), then it will do its thing and go through your body as it is supposed to do. Again, I recognize it may not be pleasant to feel all feelings, but the more that we feel what we feel, the less uncomfortable it will be because we have more experience in feeling them.

You feelings are communicating something to you, so listen.

And side note, you can also work on processing through and shrinking your stuffed away ball of emotions. And that’s what I’m here for. :)

11/04/2022

It’s been a LONG time since I made a post! And as this article states, we only have so much capacity and unfortunately Facebook posts had not been in my capacity for a bit! I’m hoping to get those back going but saw this article and thought it was great on so many points! And sneak peak: it definitely doesn’t say that parents are expected to be calm all the time!

https://www.fatherly.com/health/calm-parents-all-share-these-3-traits?utm_campaign=fatherly&utm_content=1654270654&utm_medium=owned&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1dvrPXi09_AL1vCBzf2YMp8Hbk1QVrnbBKrFfJFw5E7_8t1TsHW75Ab7Q

Remaining calm is more about how you view yourself than how you view your kids.

06/30/2021

Wonderful opportunity for some FREE parent training and support!!

Attention all parents and caregivers!!
Join us for Summer of Connection this year: a program that provides key tools for parents to thrive and serves as a reminder to play, connect, and empower themselves over the summer. This FREE eight week program will include short video messages on a timely topic to learn, practice, & implement at home to keep the summer days positive, relational focused, & joy-filled. We look forward to encouraging a summer of play, connection, and ease.
Join in on the fun and click the link in our bio to head to our website and sign up today :)

05/16/2021

05/16/2021

03/28/2021

Parenting work is one of my most favorite work in my practice following the Child Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT) model. One of the first rules of thumb that is discussed in CPRT is “Be a thermostat, not a thermometer”.

Think about what a thermometer does and how a thermostat works. A thermometer just goes up and down based on whatever is happening and essentially has no control. A thermostat is set (likely with some type of thought or reasoning for why to be set at that temperature vs. another temperature) and then comes on or goes off as needed to maintain stability and predictability.

While in the CPRT model this is referring to being a thermometer in response as a parent to your child’s behaviors, etc. this concept applies across the board in how we can choose to *respond* to situations vs. *react* to situations (including social media interactions).

If you find yourself reacting quickly, whether positively or negatively, and with high emotional charge to an external situation, I challenge you to reflect for a moment so that you are able to respond vs. react. Is there a place for empathy or understanding for another? How might I best communicate in this situation to be heard and/or achieve the desired outcome? Am I seeking a reaction from someone else? Am I looking for validation? Am I feeling powerless/out of control and therefore wanting to exert power/control? (Big one in parenting) Do I need to maybe just take a break or remove myself from this situation?

No one is perfect and we all have times of reaction but if we can try to respond a bit more than reacting, more successful interactions can occur whether in a parent/child relationship or any other relationship/interaction.