http://straightuptreatment.com/kim-cox-mft

Kim Cox, LMFT, Los Angeles, CA (2025)

11/23/2021

For many, breaking the people-pleasing pattern and/or setting assertive boundaries may feel even more difficult to do during the holidays. This is a time in many families I’d great joy and positivity as well as tension-ridden and complicated for many.

You can simultaneously set boundaries and be loving, compassionate, and kind. You can sit with your loved one’s pain, hold space for their reaction, and reiterate how much they mean to you—all while making clear that your boundary is non-negotiable.

It takes a great deal of courage to speak up and alter old ways of relating to others, especially in your family.

Every time you set a boundary, you bring your outer world into alignment with your inner needs. It is a gift that only you can give yourself—and a gift unlike any other.

This holiday season, practice setting boundaries in your family to give yourself the gift of feeling joyful, peaceful, and empowered. Here are some common holiday scenarios in which boundaries might come in handy!
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11/22/2021

As thanksgiving approaches, many families have a tradition to share what they are grateful for. This is an activity that can help shift our mood and rewind our brain and tendency to focus only on the negative and therefore benefits us if we practice year-round! This is a great routine activity for families, children, adults, and couples (everyone!).

The gratitude jar is a simple exercise that can have profound effects on one’s mental health. It is a great activity to do routinely together as a family, with your partner or solo and It only requires a few ingredients: a jar (or an empty tissue box can also work); a ribbon, stickers, glitter, or whatever else you like to decorate the jar; paper and a pen or pencil for writing your gratitude notes; and gratitude!

Step 1: Find a jar or box.

Step 2: Decorate the jar however you wish.

Step 3: (This is the most important step) Think of at least three things throughout your day that you are grateful for. It can be something as benign as a coffee at your favorite place, or as grand as the love of your significant other or dear friend. Do this every day! Write down what you are grateful for on little slips of paper and fill the jar.

Step 4: When you are feeling down or having a hard time finding inspiration, pull a couple examples out of the jar

Over time, you will find that you have a jar full of a myriad of reasons to be thankful for what you have and enjoy the life you are living while also acknowledging the dichotomy of life’s struggles and challenges we face. This mindfulness exercise has powerful and long term effects on our mood and overall physical and mental health.
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11/16/2021

SAFETY is a foundation for growth and development. However there is a fine line between safety and over-protection. Its healthy to experience some stress and discomfort when we are young and as we develop; it’s important for kids to have just enough stress to stretch, learn, grow and develop tolerance for the challenges life inevitably confronts us with. ⁣
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⁠⁠Many parents share the discomfort they have while seeing their child struggle and move towards providing solutions or sparing their child from the discomfort ASAP. Many have shared that this is partly to also assuage the emotional discomfort they feel watching their child struggle in addition to wanting to spare the child from stress and discomfort. ⁣
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We need to empower our children to ask questions, to try to find answers and solutions, to try new things and fail or succeed on their own. Having safe opportunities to learn things “the hard way” offers natural consequences that ultimately are profound teaching moments for them. This doesn't mean we aren't there to help when they need it, it just means we also make sure to get out of their way too so they learn how to navigate challenges throughout their lives.

11/15/2021

Adults actually have a lot more in common with teens and tweens than we realize. They have a hard time utilizing their prefrontal cortex to regulate their overactive amygdala, which means they are controlled by their emotions.🧠

Adults can have this same issue even with a fully developed and functioning prefrontal cortex. Our past experiences, anxiety, ADHD, can cause us to react emotionally with our amygdala rather than respond intentionally with our prefrontal cortex and amygdala in full force together 🧠

The goal should never be to never act with emotional dysregulation. If we can’t, as adults, meet that goal 100% of the time, teens sure as heck won’t. The best we can do is model emotional regulation as often as possible and offer repair by revisiting the situation once everyone’s emotional systems are regulated again later. This eventually leads to less emotional dysregulation and an ability to stay grounded even in moments of conflict and stress later.
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11/12/2021

Do you ever have a hard time with setting and/or holding boundaries with your children? Ever wonder the "why" behind why it's worth it to set and hold boundaries even if it causes more turbulence in an already busy and turbulent life?

Any parent knows that it's in kids' nature to test limits; it seems to be something all kids are born knowing how to do, like breathing or reaching for something that they shouldn't.

The upside to this challenging behavior is that pushing boundaries is an important part of growing up and becoming more independent, and one day, thinking for themselves and (hopefully) making values-driven choices.

Kids need to flex their boundary-pushing muscles now, and sometimes challenge you and disagree with you so that they can assert their individuality more and more as they grow.

Lack of boundaries, containment, routine, predictability and structure is a breeding ground for entitlement, unrealistic expectations about how the rest of the world will treat them and what the rest of the world will expect from them, low empathy and low frustration tolerance. It also encourages a child to think about the people and things around them as things that exist to meet their needs and give them what they want. This may be somewhat tolerable at age 6, 8 or 10 however when those teenage years hit...YIKES! By then, they are likely going to learn the hard way how the world works but this is often confusing for them and can lead to unrealistic expectations about life.

Just because children test limits, does not mean that we give in to them. They are doing what their instincts tells them to do. It is the adults jobs in their life to set explicit expectations and boundaries and follow through with them consistently enough. This is not parenting by following the path of least resistance...but it will contribute to long term gains for short term pain on both the child and parents side.

11/11/2021

Whatever thought that pops up for you today, just allow them to be there!

Make space for the uncertainty and open up to feeling uncomfortable... Remember that fighting our thoughts only makes them stronger & more painful, see if you can let them be there instead! This will help you build tolerance towards discomfort, uncertainty and frustration.

11/10/2021

A good friend of mine and I were speaking about the FUNCTION of attention-seeking behavior the other day. About how attention-seeking behavior is often labeled as "the function" or the cause of a child's "maladaptive" or non-preferred behavior. We agreed that this is pathologizing and ultimately leads us to avoid getting to the root of the issue and placing blame on a child for their attempt to get what is likely an emotional need met.

Just like adults (c'mon lets be honest!), kids don't know how to verbalize their thoughts and feelings well and when they are feeling dysregulated, their ability to express their wants and needs verbally and in a way adults can understand is not possible.

This is not just a kid thing...we can intuit a lot about what a child, teens and adults non-verbal behaviors are telling us. It is not happening for no reason...and its not usually because we were born communicating this way (fill in the blank- lacking empathy and compassion, with entitlement, attention seeking, etc.).

When we notice that behaviors are trying to communicate something that the person is not able to put into words for us, we can respond with curiosity, empathy, narrating what you are seeking in a non-patronizing way, compassion, validation and eventually, solutions to the problem. We find that attention-seeking behaviors happen less when we provide alternative ways to expressing their wants and needs, even when we can’t meet them right then and there.

11/09/2021

The OCD cycle is vicious and self-reinforcing! The more you hunt for certainty, or answers to the ultimate unsolvable problems, seek reassurance, neutralize, check (engage in compulsions), the more value and importance you give to the obsessions you are trying to unhook from and the more you guarantee that you will have to do these things to try to solve the problem the next time the obsessive thoughts/urges/images arise.

Obsessions + compulsions= Attempt to solve an unsolvable problem

Avoidance, misery, wasted
Attempt to solve an unsolvable problem = time, pain and suffering, low
tolerance for uncertainty, low
frustration tolerance

The only way out of this self-reinforcing anxious loop, is through accepting that we may never have the answers...we may never have certainty, we may have to accept that the worst case scenario may be true...this does not make it any more or less likely to be true or not. It simply helps the person stuck in the OCD trap get unstuck and build the tolerance around discomfort and uncertainty that OCD has robbed them of that comes naturally to others without OCD.

Believe me...I know this is NO easy feat...the reward is long term gains for short term pain. OCD is all about long term pain (OBSESSIONS) for short term gains (temporary relief that comes from compulsions).

We can't control our thoughts and feelings but we can control how we respond to them. That is what Exposure and Response Prevention teaches us to do to battle back against OCD's attempts to keep us stuck in its trap.

11/08/2021

Approximately 1 in 200 children have OCD, although this may be an underestimate, as OCD is likely under diagnosed in children for a variety of reasons. Given these large numbers (more than the number of kids with juvenile diabetes), and the disabling nature of OCD, it would seem sensible for schools to be aware of OCD.

In an ideal world, all teachers would be fully aware of what OCD looks like and how to effectively assist their students with OCD.

So what questions should you ask yourself before disclosing your child's OCD diagnosis to their school?

Let me know in the comments below!
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11/05/2021

In the busy life of families, it can be hard to find moments to connect emotionally from day to day. Children's behavior usually stems from unmet emotional needs. We can't meet them all at every moment that they appear, however there are a few things we can do to mitigate the lack of emotional connect kids today are experiencing in many families due to busy lifestyles, expectations and the overwhelm that comes with parenting (especially when you have more than one kiddo!).

Kids need explicit attending to their emotional needs and when this does not happen, we see bit reactions, big feelings and behaviors that concern us and often time exacerbate already short fuses.

To fill their cup, children need quality connection with their parents and caregivers every day. When they receive this, children will develop higher frustration tolerance, more empathy and compassion and higher self-worth.

11/04/2021

Are you guilty of caving to your child/teen’s negative emotions because it’s hard to see them struggle? Do you find that your child/teen expect others to solve problems for them, have a hard time not getting their way, or struggle with uncomfortable emotional experiences? Do you find it hard to let your child have negative emotional experiences without trying to fix it for them so they feel better? If so, sounds like you are a wonderful parent 😊

🤔you might be asking…

Parents who try hard to give their children a good, happy, and full childhood easily fall into the entitlement parenting trap. It’s because of a parent’s desire to make their child happy that they give TOO MUCH or unintentionally stand in the way of life’s appropriate teachable moments that would allow your child to learn how to overcome struggle and healthy obstacles in their path. Their child grows up without any wanting. Needs and desires are met by the parent and thus the child not only feels, but knows that their parent is there to provide for them.

Sometimes parents have a hard time tolerating their children’s negative emotions so they do what they can to avoid being involved in their experiencing those negative uncomfortable emotions. What ends up happening is young people grow up to think that if things are uncomfortable or don’t go their way, then all is wrong with the world. It breeds low frustration tolerance and children need to experience appropriate struggle, discomfort and natural consequences for their behaviors in order to learn adaptive behavior as they grow.

Keep your eye out for examples in the future on how to build and strengthen your own frustration tolerance as a parent so you can fine tune that compassionate and intuitive parenting muscle that’s gone a little rogue. Tough love is love too-and it matters how it’s delivered as opposed to never modeling that kind of love at all.

🙌🏼 Cheers to parents out there doing their best to raise tiny humans into adults driven by empowerment and values.

Tag a friend and save this for later!

11/03/2021

Today is International Stress Awareness Day!

Stress awareness helps people openly talk about how they feel, and encourages us all to support one another. Paying attention to stress levels is more important than ever this year as we deal with self-isolation, stress, and grief.

Some minor stress can be good. But, when negative stress is not properly cared for, it can evolve into mental health issues like anxiety and depression. Stress can have a detrimental impact on our physical health; such as problems with heart disease, our immune system, insomnia and digestive issues.

There should be ZERO stigma associated with stress. The more we advocate for , the more awareness is spread to those who are not hearing these messages! That’s what days like are all about.

What are your greatest sources of stress? How do you cope with it? Please share below to help others learn how to talk about this 💛
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Kim Cox, LMFT

11/23/2021

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