Celebrating Responsibly

Responsibility isn’t boring, it’s maturity!

The holiday season is fast upon us and by now, you are halfway through parties, gatherings, festivities, and celebrations with family and friends.

Many of you are already feeling the physical effects of over-indulging on sweets, chocolates, protein, fats, and alcohol. It often takes a solid FIVE days to feel the real effects of rich foods and alcohol.

For women like me, who are post-menopausal and comfortably adjusting to middle age, there are some effective strategies that work to reduce weight gain and emotional stress during one of the most stressful times of the year.

Some simple strategies include drinking water before and during social events, munching on vegetables between mains at dinner parties, and avoiding junk food sweets and snacks like chips, cookies, and squares altogether. Trying to increase your physical activities during this time is also effective at reducing harm caused by alcohol consumption.

The holiday season is certainly not a time to diet. So, a healthy attitude around eating one or two special treats is always a good thing!

Homemade and traditional recipes are especially important to people with culturally diverse family members. Making efforts to include a variety of foods and something for everyone is bound to make the holiday a memorable one!

The view that celebrating responsibly is boring is inaccurate and worthy of a gentle challenge or rebuttal. The life of the party is often the person who maintains a tempered approach to food and drink.

Maturity is never boring. Instead, it is distinguished, elegant, classy and attractive. So, this New Year’s Eve, celebrate responsibly and mindfully. Balance good food, alcohol, and humor, especially when marking important holidays with colleagues and professional associates.

You will never be sorry for celebrating responsibly with friends and family over the long term. Socially responsible adults are always regarded as the gentle steadfast leaders in communities and the workplace.

Where this reward for responsibility fails to occur, especially in leadership, then it may be time for a radical review or change in employment for you. The New Year always heralds hope for good things yet come.

May all your good efforts be rewarded accordingly and grow in excellence in 2020!

#wellness #character #professional #standards

Essentials to Healing

Trusting your therapist is key to healing.

As a Registered Social Worker and Psychotherapist, there are key aspects essential to healing. It is important to recognize when you need help with a problem or situation. You are likely to know that it is time for assistance by episodes of feeling unwell.

The degree of suffering is often the measure by which individuals or families decide to engage in counselling conversations with a licensed, certified, or regulated mental health professional.

It is critical to understand that not all mental health practitioners possess the same level of knowledge, practice skills, training, and lived-experience in culturally diverse settings.

As you embark on one of the most important decisions of your life to engage the services of a mental health practitioner – it is advised that you take time to select the individual with whom you feel most comfortable.

How you feel about your counsellor or therapist is actually a valid and reliable indicator about your eventual health outcomes. In short, if you feel that your therapist can empathize with and understand your particular problem, then your health outcomes are promising.

In fact, research shows that empathetic doctors yield positive results with patients, especially in relation to active engagement in mending one’s own health or mental health problems.

In truth, you are the key to your own healing. Shifting your perspectives about a problem or multiple repetitive problems that trouble you and your family over and over again is an important first step to getting better. A problem is only a problem when it is a problem.

Start your journey of emotional healing with a personalized thought analysis. Whose problem is this anyways? What is your role in the problem? And finally, are you or are you not invested in repairing it?

Once you decide to secure help to address a person, family or social problem, it is time to find the right counsellor, therapist, or psychotherapy-informed health and wellness coach for you. You will know the right service provider by the way you feel.

Again, research findings suggest this sense of therapeutic alignment takes less than 30 seconds to establish. So, if it doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t. A seasoned therapist is not fazed by a client’s decision to work with someone else.

Trust your gut and listen to your internal sense of wellness as you reclaim what you deserve and need to be healthy.

We provide only the best at Lakeside Wellness Therapy Affiliates.

#heal #wellness

Values-based problem solving & next steps

Choosing next steps is akin to a chess move

When you have been in the field as long as I have, it is plain to see that people need time, support, and kindness when deciding next steps on matters of most importance.

Saying “yes” or “no” to a person’s overtures for romance, friendship, or companionship requires a lot of steps. Some of the ways you land on a decision are clear to you, and other factors may be less so.

Deciding to move on with your career, earn another diploma or certificate, or gain a new skill also involves conscious and unconscious problem solving steps.

Easy factors to understand major life moves are usually practical and include reasons like an increase in salary, gaining new skills, meeting new people, and professional growth and advancement.

More deeply held reasons for making decisions are values-based. Your values do shape the ways you make decisions even where these values are hidden from view.

What is a value and how does it impact your problem solving may require some time to re-surface. Values are core principles that provide you with your own guide for healthy living. Your personal values are usually formed in your early years and reflect your ancestry, culture, and traditions.

When you are immersed in situations, relationships, workplaces, or perspectives that are fundamentally contrary to your value-systems, your health may suffer.

Counselling often reveals the ways your core perspectives have been compromised, misused, or undervalued. It is only when you take the time to deeply think about your next steps in relation to your personal values that solutions to problems reveal themselves.

Life is like a game of chess. People however are not pawns to be played with in a game of life. Instead, every person has a right to speak up when personal values are infringed upon and to act in your own best interests when your values are not shared or honoured.

Health and wellness happens when you live in congruence with your deeply held values of honesty, loyalty, hospitality, respect, equity, justice, and charity. What will your next move entail and why is it important for you to make this decision ?

#wellness #health #counselling