Nowadays we often hear about expressing gratitude - how it’s so great for our mental well-being. But hardly anyone talks about being the recipient of gratitude. While we might find it easy to give a compliment, we don’t quite know what to do with ourselves when we get one.

Change takes as long as it takes. And mental health tends to be far more nuanced than physical medicine. After all, there is no lab work to be done to assess your emotions, nor any surgical procedure performed which will remove your emotion-based symptoms.

You might be wondering: What does God think about me going to counseling? Should I just sit in my room alone, reading my bible and praying about it till I can figure it out on my own?  

Did you know that distractions, if used thoughtfully and intentionally, can be therapeutically helpful and can be used to your advantage? It’s true! In fact, scientists confirm the positive utility of deliberate, purposeful distraction. Here are 60 ideas to get you started.

The holiday season can be a time of wonderment and joy. If you have an eating disorder, it can also be a time filled with challenges. There’s the Christmas cookie exchange at your office. And the plates full of cookies well-meaning friends and family gift to you. There’s the work Christmas party. And the gift basket of food your boss gives you. And don’t forget the bowl of chocolates sitting out in the office kitchen. Here are some tips to help you navigate it all.

It’s the most wonderful time of year . . . unless you struggle with disordered eating or an eating disorder. The holiday season features one soirée after another. From elegant cocktail gatherings to workplace functions to family buffets, the seemingly endless number of food-filled events makes it exceptionally challenging to feel merry if food is your nemesis. Here are some of the challenges you might encounter during the holiday season along with some strategies for how to navigate them.

Maybe you’ve never participated in mental health counseling before and you’re unsure about what it will be like. In such situations, when we don’t know what to expect, it’s typically far too easy for our minds to imagine all sort of stories as we’re trying to fill in the blanks.

But counseling needn’t be some mysterious or anxiety provoking thing. With that said, what exactly can you expect at your first counseling appointment?

Self-care can be a wonderful thing. And it’s become an increasingly popular trend, especially as the conversation about mental health awareness and wellness has spread. Maybe you gave it a try, and it did help reduce your worry and stress. But maybe it didn’t really seem to do much. Or maybe it seemed to make things worse. Is that even possible, you might wonder - can self-care actually increase your anxiety in certain cases? If this has been your experience, there are a few reasons why you might be having this reaction. And yes, there are some changes you can make in order to have self-care be more effective for you.

The small “little” things which stress us each day, throughout our day, often seem deceptively innocuous. After all, they’re “little.” Yet, taken all together, they can cause us hours of stress every single day. So how do you combat the stress brought on by the “small” stuff?

Many people think the self-help genre is the only category which could potentially be effectual in terms of enhancing mental health and well-being. This just isn’t true! In reality, there are several reasons you should consider stepping out of the self-improvement aisle. You might even be surprised to learn that FICTION might be the best thing to read when you’re feeling anxious or depressed.

A lot of people who come to me for counseling experience symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. Some have been told the root cause is a biochemical imbalance. However, I have discovered that, most of the time, this simply isn’t true. Usually, we come to agree that one or more of the following 8 habits is usually contributing to their distress:

Did you know that binge eating disorder is the most common type of disordered eating (it is three times more common than anorexia and bulimia combined)? Were you aware that it is perhaps one of the most misunderstood? The myths, the associated humiliation, and the social stigma surrounding binge eating means a person struggling may go years (sometimes decades) before finally asking for help – although unfortunately many never seek help, they instead suffer in silence. An important step in ending this is to call out the lies about binge eating disorder. Do you believe any of these 12 myths about binge eating?