An overview of the activities in our stress reduction group Want to know more about our upcoming six-week relational group for your stressed out fifth and sixth graders? Each week covers one aspect of healthy and mutual relationships, along with a type of coping skill to address a variety of… Read More »Group fun
Offering evidenced based coping tools nested in expressive arts (swing by to pick up your child’s weekly brown bag project, or ask us to deliver) and relational work, these fun meetings will be on Tuesday evenings from 4:30-5:15, on March 23, 30, and April 6, 13, 20, and 27th. Scholarships and sliding scale available!
One of the tools we’ve been trying to use, is Amy Banks’ idea of Positive Relational Moments. In her book, Wired To Connect, Banks defines PRMs as moments you felt “safe and happy in another person’s presence.” Returning to your PRMs can slow or even reverse a downward spiral of stress and isolation by activating healthy neural pathways. It’s not always easy to pull up a PRM on demand though, sometimes we could use a reminder– a picture, an email, a journal entry, or, now, an Appreciation Effect campaign.
Outdoor therapy offers an opportunity to connect with each other and nature while we work. You can set the pace, and choose from several locations. The goal is to get our bodies moving a little bit in nature, not to work up a sweat. Research has suggested that walking in nature reduces stress, anxiety, and depression, and supports improved cognitive functioning.
You are here. You are not responsible for carrying us anywhere else. There are few things that cultivate more hopelessness and helplessness than pretending a moment isn’t what it is. Be where you are. That is enough.
Covid-19 has created an anxiety stew that even the most relaxed parents can’t avoid. When kids catch on to the fear it becomes an even bigger struggle to keep a semblance of normal life. Here are some tips for helping the entire family work through anxiety.
This isn’t the time to implement your dream of recreating Little House on the Prairie, unless that comes easily to you and helps all of you feel better. Reassess frequently, and if what you’re doing is creating more power struggles, don’t be afraid to toss it and start over.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a contagious calm without filling your own cup. Even as we isolate, we need each other.
Without connection, it’s easy for our fear to grow as exponentially as the Covid-19 infection rates.
A Growth Fostering Relationship is marked by the Five Good Things. Coined by Jean Baker Miller in her transformational book, Toward a New Psychology of Women. These are the qualities of a relationship that creates fulfillment and counters inauthenticity and inequity. They include: