Self care. A popular phrase utilized to rationalize that trip to the nail salon or night out with friends to relax. An act done when one is feeling overwhelmed and stressed, and finally decides to indulge in that “me” time to release the tension. While these activities may assist to reinvigorate your mental and emotional health short term, a self care plan that is incorporated into your daily routine can yield long term positive effects.

After years of research studying thousands of couples, Dr. John Gottman found a pattern in the way couples fight. Gottman discovered four behaviors that were the most destructive when couples were in conflict. In fact, Gottman found that the married couples who enacted these four particular behaviors were the most likely to become separated or divorced. As a result, Gottman coined these behaviors the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as they were the strongest predictors of the apocalypse of relationships…divorce. Avoiding the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse can be the start to improving how to deal with conflict in your relationship.

As people go through life they tend to experience a cascade of positive and negative emotions such as happiness, excitement, joy, stress, anxiety, agitation, anger, and sadness. All of these emotional states of being are a natural and normal part of life and the human condition.

Among my clients, I find this to be a relatively frequent theme. And it is not surprising: in our society of super-achievers who are expected to multi-task 24/7, we are always on, always wondering what we forgot to do, or should be doing, always questioning and doubting ourselves, hence only strengthening the self-doubt: Am I Enough?

For a quick grammar refresher, pronouns are the articles used to describe a person or persons in the third person. Singular pronouns are gendered! For example, they are he, him, his, she, her, and hers. Gendered pronouns mean that depending on whether the person you are talking about in the third person is female or male, you use either she, hers for female and him, his for male.

However you feel your feelings, consider reacquainting yourself with them as we enter this new year. Sometimes, it may be embracing the uncomfortable, but we become closer to our truest selves as we emerge to embrace, release, and feel all our feelings.

Although rumination occurs naturally from time to time, when it feels like your mind is running a mile a minute, it can really feel distressing, overwhelming and endless. Times like these, you may wonder, is there anything that can truly quiet the mind?

Depression and anxiety look very different in children than it does in adults. Often, these behaviors are perceived as strange, bizarre, erratic, or disobedient. Because of this, childhood depression and anxiety is often missed by parents, family, and school faculty.

The reality is that worrying is, more often than not, unproductive, but has the illusion of feeling productive when we engage in it. If we hash out possibilities and options over and over, we think that we are doing something about our fears and anxieties. Most of the time, it gets us nowhere, and only winds up causing further anxiety.

“Wait don’t eat yet, I need to take a picture for Instagram.” How many times have you or your friends uttered this phrase out loud? The impact of social media on shaping our thinking and behaviors can’t be discounted.