While the holiday season may be regarded with warmth, twinkling lights, and holiday cookies for some, it can activate (and trigger) unpleasant or traumatic experiences for others. This is where dialectical thinking comes into play – the reality that seemingly competing perspectives can both be true and co-exist. For example, “Your parents did the best they knew how in raising you and it still wasn’t enough”. 

The process of initiating couples therapy can be particularly daunting. Not only are you entrusting a total stranger to share your most intimate and difficult internal experiences with, but you’re doing it with your partner. Often, this is the person who matters the most to you, and right now, the relationship may feel rocky. Let’s take a second to honor this. Coming to couples therapy requires a real leap of faith that this therapist may be able to help you and your partner and bring you to solid ground. To assist with this leap, I’ll address a few of the biggest blocks couples face in beginning treatment.

The holidays often mean spending more time than usual with extended family. This means that parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, great aunts, etc. may be spending more time with your children. This can be a great thing, as loving relationships with relatives are a good for a child’s social development, self-esteem, and even cognitive skills. Nonetheless, conflict can arise when a family member has different ideas than the parent about how to best raise children.

So how exactly do we save ourselves from this anxiety riptide? The answer lies in changing our relationship to our anxiety,  and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT (pronounced ‘act’), can help us with this. 

Although today’s culture is more open about discussing women’s mental health, pregnancy loss continues to be a topic seldom discussed. This silence around a common occurrence (10-25% of pregnancies are lost) can lead to feelings of isolation for the birthing partner and close family. Additionally, the lack of information can leave friends and family wondering how to show up for their loved ones and support them after loss. While every person’s experience of pregnancy loss is different, here are some general suggestions to help you be there for your loved ones.

In parenthood there is often a desire and pressure to get it right, but not just right, perfect. The perfect schedule, the perfect educational toys, the perfect amount of independent play versus structured play, the perfect sleep schedule, the perfect amount of screen time, the perfect weight, the perfect latch, and so on, and so on…

Your child asks for water. You give your child some water. And suddenly the screaming starts…What is going on? The water could have the wrong temperature, could be in the wrong cup, your child may not like the way you handed them the water – who knows. The one thing that is clear is that your child is about to have a tantrum. Read on to learn what tantrums are, why they happen, how to deal with them, and better yet, how to prevent them. 

Are you looking for help to manage your stress? Here are steps you can take to feel more calm and in control.

Society has conditioned us to view anger as a bad emotion. However, the experience of anger in and of itself is not a bad thing. Emotions-including anger-are neither good nor bad. All emotions have functions.

While it is important to understand and feel our emotions, not every occasion is appropriate or useful for doing so. You can use these simple grounding techniques to help you detach from emotional pain that isn’t effective for you to feel in the moment. Grounding techniques work by shifting your attention and focus to something other than the difficult emotions or thoughts you are experiencing. 

When a baby is born, many assume that the birthing parent will be nothing less than overjoyed. However, it is more typical for birthing parents to experience a range of complex emotions after bringing a baby into the world. When these emotions become predominantly negative and longstanding, leaving parents feeling like they don’t know what to do, where to turn, or whom to ask for help, they may be experiencing Postpartum Depression (PPD).

As the “mental health generation” prepares to walk down the aisle, psychologically-minded couples are considering premarital counseling to start their unions on the right foot. Despite this growing interest, many couples wonder: what is premarital counseling, anyway? 

Feeling like you want to break up with your therapist is scary and confusing territory, so much so that it often creates urges to ignore your feelings, lie about your reason for ending, or ghost your therapist altogether.  First, a caveat* – if your therapist has crossed a clear ethical boundary, acted inappropriately, or made you feel unsafe, leave as soon and as abruptly as you want.

Dating, especially in New York City, is not for the faint of heart. This is one of the most discussed topics for our single clients. We caught up with Dr. Nadia Nieves for her advice on how to deal with some common dating concerns we hear from our clients.

We can put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be happy. Like all emotions, happiness is a state - which means it’s transient and changes. So, we can’t be happy ALL the time, despite whatever new fad out there claims. It’s healthy to experience a range of emotions!⁠
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A question we hear all the time... is therapy going to be all about my mom? Our answer: only if you want it to be.

If you take a poll and ask people which emotion they would least like to feel, chances are that most people would say anger. Anger tends to get a bad rap because the action urges associated with it (yelling and fighting) tend to be frowned upon by society. However, anger, like all emotions, serves an important function. Anger is a signal to ourselves that something is off, something is bothering us, and that we should slow down and take stock of what set it off. 

Believe it or not, arguing can save your romantic relationship. Differences are inevitable in intimate relationships and conflict provides an opportunity to harness healthy aggression to clear the air and make space for growth. More relationships die by ice than by fire— meaning the bigger danger is disconnection, not conflict. However, not all arguments are created equal. Studies show that fights filled with contempt, stonewalling, criticism, and defensiveness erode relationships. Learning to fight well is key in lasting relationships.

Whatever the outcome of this presidential election is, many Americans feel like they will come out of it with both a newly elected president, and a new anxiety disorder. So many of our clients here at Therapists of New York are struggling to manage the intense emotions arising from what feels to many like a very high-stakes election. This sense of panic, dread and worry many are experiencing is a bi-partisan experience. NPR news reports that the majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents are all reporting high levels of stress related to the upcoming election.

It isn’t news to anybody that the COVID-19 pandemic has completely upended the ways that many of us are doing our jobs, with millions of people working from home for the first time ever. Before the pandemic, even the most dedicated workaholic had one key way to enforce the boundary between their work and home life: By leaving the office. Without a commute and physical separation from the office, many have felt the boundary between work and home dissolve, finding themselves overstressed, hunched over their computer at odd hours, and answering slacks and emails into the dead of night.