It’s difficult taking care of others. And while it is cliché, in order to take care of others, we need to take care of ourselves first.

Too often these work stressors begin to impact other areas of our lives. Creating personal and professional boundaries is essential in maintaining sanity and longevity in our careers.

High achievement and expectations are important in getting the most out of life. Conversely, these can also lead to much pain and misery when our goals are not met. Together we can help understand what drives the need for perfection and help identify why this trait doesn’t really serve us.

The large majority of my doctoral training involved working at university counseling centers. Working with college students afforded me the ability to help students better transition between the safety of their childhood and the fear of exploring the unknown. This has greatly impacted my ability to help support those venturing into a new career, retirement, or getting to know a new aspect of themselves.

Trauma occurs when we experience an event, or multiple events, that overwhelm our ability to deal with a stressor. This results in predictable cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and somatic reactions that - at some level - keep us safe. Traumatic experiences also cause dysregulation of these systems that makes life difficult for ourselves and the people around us. Common reactions to trauma include excessive avoidance, independence, people pleasing, and overgeneralizations.

Fortunately, through therapeutic “integration,” clients can reconnect these systems and promote cognitive and emotional flexibility.

It’s normal to feel sad from time to time. It’s another to be caught in negative, self-defeating spirals regarding our self worth, others, and the future.

Talk therapy can be helpful in understanding maladaptive loops, reinforcers, and decisions driven by poor, or overly rigid, values.

Anxiety is a necessary force in our lives. In its best form, eustress, it motivates us to accomplish our goals and make important changes. In its worst form, distress, it paralyzes us and overrides our ability to make necessary changes.

Research has provided us with an outline to better understand this relationship (Yerkes–Dodson law), along with techniques, that can help us find our state of best performance, dubbed by psychologists as “flow.”