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Each week, we post the latest articles and new blog content across a variety of categories. Browse our latest.
Books to Read and Things to Watch While You Hibernate This Winter
Cabin fever may not be here yet, but with the holidays wrapped, it probably will be soon. When you’re stuck inside and at your wit’s end, mix it up with these book, TV and movie recommendations straight from Stenzel therapists. Rita Rippentrop Read: Daring Greatly by Brené Brown If you’re not familiar with Brené Brown, this is a great first read! In Daring Greatly, she invites us all to [...]
How To Identify Core Values (And Live By Them)
By Deepak Santhiraj, MSW Licensed Clinical Social Worker As we welcome 2019, many Americans will attempt to pursue various ambitions and achieve different goals as part of their new year’s resolutions. If we desire to pursue meaningful goals and form healthy habits around what will matter most, our decision making must start with a vital exercise: identifying core values. Values “are the principles that give our lives meaning and [...]
How To Be Joyful (After Christmas)
By Grant Stenzel, MS Licensed Clinical Professional CounselorThe holidays can be filled with stress, but finding moments of joy before and during the holiday season is fairly easy. Songs and treats fill our bodies with that special Christmas warmth, giving and receiving gifts is a happiness-producing exchange, and spending quality time with family is like food for the soul.1.But after the holidays, finding joy can be a monumental struggle. January, [...]
Dethroning the Voice of Shame – Part I
Writing in his diary in 1892 at the height of the Russian Industrial Age, Leo Tolstoy observed, “Life cannot have any other purpose than joy and goodness. Only this purpose - joy- is ultimately worthy of life.” We can identify that goodness and beauty with unending joy can prevail in the face of monumental shame that releases a myriad of unsettling human emotions. Shame has a raw and overwhelming [...]
Family Time: How to Do It Well
By Mary Hockett, MA Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor Why is it that families are suffering from so much stress in our society today? Why are so many children anxious and angry? Why are parents so frustrated at their children? What is happening that teachers and social workers must meet moms or dads at the curb as they coax their child out of the car to get to their school classroom? [...]
How to beat the “Winter Blues” for Good
By Grant Stenzel, MS Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor Are the dark, grim winter days getting you down? Are you dreaming of sunshine? Many living in the Midwest look forward to spring. However, for the 10 million Americans who suffer from Winter Depression, warm and sunny times cannot come quickly enough. Seasonal Affective Disorder, commonly known as SAD, is a disorder that affects a person’s mood and is caused by light deprivation. Therefore, [...]