Articles

As we enter the holiday season amid rising public health concerns, family members and loved ones are attempting to hash out plans for being together, sometimes through differing lenses of what’s acceptable and safe. If we do sit down together at the dinner table with extended family, we face the familiar holiday stress of engaging in conversations with loved ones who may hold opinions or world-views which differ greatly from our own.

Your friend, Rachel, doesn’t let her wife fold her laundry because she is “so OCD about it.” Watching an HGTV show, one of the cast members says he is “so OCD” about having the two windows perfectly symmetrical to one another.

Suzy, the 25-year-old mom of 3-year-old Moira, suddenly finds herself living with her own parents after she lost her job due to a COVID-related closure. As the fall approaches, the family reckons with the decision of whether to send Moira to in-person preschool. For Suzy, the answer is clear — her daughter needs socialization, and Suzy imagines a terrible domino effect of negative consequences stemming from Moira missing out on this essential year of school. Moreover, Suzy…

In anticipation of the upcoming school year, many parents and students are thinking about how to prepare for the unusual circumstances of learning during a global pandemic. Some schools have opted to open with little restrictions, though this has been met with understandable concern as Covid-19 cases continue to rise. Many schools are approaching the fall 2020 school year by mandating e-learning or offering a hybrid model with both in-person and online coursework with…

The end of the summer is when millions of students are preparing to return to college. This is a time that is typically filled with anticipation, excitement and some nerves. This year, college students are experiencing higher levels of anxiety about returning to school.

During this time of social distancing, many families are exploring how their young children can continue friendships without play dates or school. For young children, video calling may create anxiety or a sense of loss. They may be telling you that they miss their friends more after video calls or that they are not interested in sitting at the screen. Video calling on its own, only allows for verbal communication to easily occur. Nonverbal cues are hard to catch, and…

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, managing stress is vital to protecting our physical and mental health. One way to do that is to up our self-care game. After 30 years as practicing clinical psychologist and family therapist, I have found that care for oneself is most meaningful and helpful when it:

As the weeks of stay-at-home orders, economic challenges and uncertainty wear on, even more of us are experiencing increased feelings of depression, anxiety and isolation for good reason. If you find yourself wondering, “what can I do?” when experiencing these feelings, Jonathan Sutton, Ph.D., director of our CBT program, shared the following activities to consider: