selfcare Archives | Nutritious Thoughts https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/tag/selfcare Registered & Licensed Dietitians in North Carolina Sun, 14 Jun 2020 20:23:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/cropped-icon-touch-32x32.png selfcare Archives | Nutritious Thoughts https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/tag/selfcare 32 32 What Does it Mean to be Healthy? (Repost!) https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-healthy-repost.html Sun, 14 Jun 2020 20:23:22 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1704 **This post was written by and re-posted from: Cara Lisette of Cara’s Corner

We are bombarded with images of ‘health’ everywhere – social media, supermarkets, television, billboards. 

Being healthy is wonderful, and I do believe health is something people should hope to be. But what is ‘healthy’? Is it clean eating and raw foods and ultra marathons? Is it flatlays of avocado toast and juice cleanses and leg days?

I’m saying no.

Health does not stop and start with your body, but it is influenced by your relationship with your body, and how this impacts your mind.

Health isn’t just about eating your vegetables and drinking enough water and going to the gym. Don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate for those things because they boost my energy levels, my overall physical health and my self esteem. But actually, having a healthy mind is just as important as having a ‘healthy’ body. And a healthy body does not equal thin, no matter what the media leads us to believe.

A healthy mind, for me, means being resilient, accepting of myself and being able to challenge my negative thoughts. I am certainly not always of ‘healthy’ mind but it’s where I try to be.

When my mind is healthy, it also means I am able to recognise when I need extra support, and to have enough self esteem to know I deserve that extra support. It doesn’t mean being happy all the time, it just means I can cope with sometimes being unhappy.

It also means that I can eat chocolate and have a glass of wine at the end of a long day. It means that if I’m tired, I can skip the gym. It means that sometimes I need that extra couple of hours in bed, and that’s okay. Health doesn’t mean rigid diets and calorie counting and strict exercise regimes and meeting your macros. It means being able to listen to what your mind and body are telling you, and sometimes they are telling you you need a rest. There are so many messages in the world that lead us to feel guilty for not conforming to binary concepts of health, or looking like people with abs having protein smoothies after their daily 6am workouts. But you should not feel guilty for doing whatever you need to do to keep yourself well – and that is personal to you.

And really, the point I’m trying to make is that this entire post is just about my idea of health. It is personal to me. You may agree or you may not, but if you have other ways that work for you, that’s okay too.

Health isn’t just superfoods and squats. It’s being kind to yourself in whatever form that takes for you.

]]> Dating and Recovery – Your Go-To Guide https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/dating-and-recovery-your-go-to-guide.html Thu, 14 May 2020 17:17:03 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1676 Dating can be tough. Dating in recovery from an eating disorder?

That can certainly add some layers of difficulty. Where to begin, right?!

We’ve compiled a list of perspectives to help you sort it all out.

 

Yes, Dating in Recovery is Possible. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Dating During Eating Disorder Recovery

The Secret Life of Dating With an Eating Disorder

The Challenges of Navigating Dating in Eating Disorder Recovery

 

Happy Dating! (…if and when you want to, of course!)

]]> It’s okay if… https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/its-okay-if.html Mon, 06 Apr 2020 19:56:23 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1623 The emotions and thoughts you are experiencing right now….let them flow. Let them just be here for a moment while you read on.

In light of the current COVID-19 crisis, none of us have the answer for when life will return to normal and all of us are grieving the Spring time we thought we would have. It’s okay if you’re feeling angry, exhausted, trapped, relieved or rested. Any of it fits.

It’s also okay if….

  • You miss your friends and family…or you don’t.
  • You want to eat more…or you don’t.
  • You feel like you might jump out of your skin…or you don’t.
  • You need to sleep more…or you don’t.
  • You enjoy working from home….or you don’t….or you can’t.
  • You have a productive day…or you don’t.
  • You get dressed…or you don’t.
  • You feel grateful…or you don’t.

There is no right way to feel, act, or “be” right now. Your responsibility is to be true to yourself and your physical, mental, and emotional needs during this time. These needs might not look like your parents’, roommates’, friends’, etc. and that is okay!

Sometimes, it is difficult to meet our needs all on our own. Nutritious Thoughts is here to support you in whatever way possible. As we experience this crisis together, we want you to know that we provide the following services and hope to lighten the load of stress you may be carrying.

  • Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) for  chronic illness
  • Menu/Meal planning for individuals and families
  • Grocery list creation
  • Support around the following:
    • Easy meal preparation
    • Feeding your child during difficult times
    • Discussing food insecurity, budgeting, etc.
    • Body image concerns during a time of isolation
    • Emotional eating & loss of appetite concerns
    • Eating Disorders & Disordered Eating

Stay well, friends.

We stand with you and whatever you’re feeling right now.

Let us know how we can help you meet the needs of yourself and your family!

 

 

]]> Resourcing Yourself https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/resourcing-yourself.html Tue, 03 Mar 2020 18:32:45 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1595 What does it mean to “be in your body”?

For many of us in recovery from an eating disorder or disordered eating, this question is one that we shy away from. Being in our bodies? Nah, not for us. However, being in our bodies (embodiment) may be a tool to help strengthen and expand recovery.

So, let’s ask again. What does it mean to be embodied?

Being embodied means to have the ability to listen. When we can attune to the messages our bodies are sending us, we then have the opportunity to meet our needs accordingly and to be in and with ourselves.

Becoming embodied is a process that can take a lifetime, as we are discouraged from listening to our bodies from a very young age. How do we begin this process? See the tools below that can be used to exercise the “listening muscle” and enhance our ability to sense our bodies and how they fit in the world around us.

5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Tool

  • This grounding technique helps us to orient to the world around us, which is the first step to being able to orient to the world within us (an embodied state).  Practice utilizing this tool linked above.

Body scanning

  • Body scanning is a type of meditation that invites us to notice sensations within our bodies. Practice body scanning to your comfort level using the video linked above.

Begin your journey to exploring embodiment by practicing the 5-4-3-2-1 and body scanning tools above. What do you notice about your thoughts, feelings, and sensations? What do you notice about your comfort level with yourself?

 

Stay tuned for more information about embodiment in recovery in our April blog post!

 

 

]]> SURVIVING VALENTINE’S DAY DURING EARLY RECOVERY https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/surviving-valentines-day.html Fri, 14 Feb 2020 14:16:52 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1578

This Valentine’s Day, we share a post via New Method Wellness. These words are truly a worthwhile read!

With love,

Nutritious Thoughts

“It’s a little annoying when stores start putting up Valentine’s Day decorations before it’s even January. Well, February is here already, and now the countdown has begun toward that lovely – or dreaded – Hallmark holiday. Relationship experts and addiction professionals warn about love during the first year of recovery, but when “love is in the air” and all around you, it’s hard to block it out of your mind, especially around this time of year! As you scroll through your Facebook feeds and Instagram pics, you can’t help but wonder, how would a little love hurt anyone?
WHAT’S BETTER THAN LOVE AFTER RECOVERY?
If you are in recovery, your best bet is to make sobriety the top priority on your list rather than finding love. That can be pretty hard to do when every store you walk into is full of reminders that you are single, but rest assured, you won’t regret sticking to the discipline of sobriety for the following reasons:
• Focusing on your sobriety will, in the long run, lead to healthier relationships overall, not just in the romantic domain, but also in all aspects of life
• You increase your chances of success at any endeavor if you stick with the treatment plan that you and your substance abuse counselor developed together
• You reduce your chances of relapsing by avoiding romantic distractions
• You avoid the pitfall of unhealthy relationships. If you get involved with someone during your early stages of recovery, you get addicted to the “high” of falling in love rather than falling in love with the person
• You get to exercise responsibility by not entangling others in an emotional rollercoaster while you sort out your own emotions and discover who you are.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO INSTEAD OF FINDING A NEW RELATIONSHIP?
Do what makes you happy. Fill your schedule with activities that excite you. Here are some ideas you might want to try:
• Sign up for a dance class. Tired of salsa? Try swing dancing and bring a friend with you who will be supportive of your recovery.
• Get into photography and soak in the beauty around you. Form a new habit by creating an album of memories and people you never want to forget. Appreciate beauty in all its forms wherever you go.
• Go horseback riding. Aside from letting you bond with your favorite animal, horseback riding offers you nontraditional benefits of a physical workout. It helps strengthen your muscles and improve your cardiovascular health.
• Like water? Try water sports like surfing and paddle boarding. Not only are they great for physical exercise but they’re also excellent ways to enhance your mood and reduce anxiety.
DO NOT ISOLATE YOURSELF ON VALENTINE’S DAY
It’s a well-known fact that those who have a history of addiction tend to isolate themselves, irrespective of the type of addiction they have. Case studies have shown that social isolation largely contributes to higher rates of drug use, and the maladaptive patterns developed during substance abuse negatively affect one’s existing relationships.

Reach out to a loved one. Reach out to your recovery community. Stay connected this Valentine’s Day!

]]> Repost: the HAES® files: How We Can Reframe Gaining Weight as an Act of Self-Care https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/repost-the-haes-files-how-we-can-reframe-gaining-weight-as-an-act-of-self-care.html Tue, 10 Dec 2019 19:28:49 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1431 BY HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE® BLOG

by McKenna Schueler

In this ASDAH blog post, McKenna Schueler offers a compassionate framing of weight gain to combat harmful cultural messaging that glorifies weight loss while vilifying weight gain as a ‘problem’ to be fixed. Within, McKenna proposes that allowing your body to gain weight can, in many cases, be protective and serve as an act of self-care and body kindness. 

Most people nowadays have some level of awareness of what it means to pursue or engage in some form of ‘self-care’. Unfortunately, this concept which was initially rooted in self-compassion has in recent years been commodified.

That is, if you look to magazines or social media influencers to figure out what self-care is, you’ll find the concept often linked to products and services promoted as one-size-fits-all cures for any number of mental and physical ailments. If you buy this cream, or that subscription box – there’s your self-care.

This proposed requisite of having to buy a product or service to take care of your physical or mental well-being is problematic, to say the least. And it also bleeds into the aesthetic values of diet culture, which glorifies pursuits of shaping, surveilling, and shrinking the body.

Thus, it has become in vogue to find creative ways to pursue weight loss under the guise of #selfcare.

In this way, self-care begins to resemble something closer to bodily harm than body kindness. As a result of whom this media messaging typically targets, this commodified picture of self-care disproportionately reaches women; and by way of medical and institutional bias, has its most nefarious effects on women of color, food insecure populations, disabled folx, and trans folx whose bodies exist beyond the bounds of what has traditionally been conceived of as the “picture of health.”

What isn’t often broached in discussions of self-care, however, is where weight gain can fit. As a young, cisgender woman with a decade-long history of disordered eating patterns, I have had the challenging – yet, perhaps ultimately rewarding – experience of unlearning and relearning what it means to treat my body and general self with kindness.

As a result of having an eating disorder and living in contemporary American society, I’ve had a considerable amount of time to be both drawn into the alluring conception of body-shaping and shrinking as the ultimate #wellnesshack – and fight against it.

As most people who are drawn to Health At Every Size® principles are probably aware, there are many harms and health risks that can occur as a result of disordered eating. People of all sizes who engage in severe patterns of disordered eating or weight-cycling are at risk for facing both medical and psychological consequences. These risks are not limited to people who are classified by the problematic BMI calculation as “underweight.”

Weight gain is commonly framed within media and by bias-holding medical professionals as a “problem to be fixed.” But what about when weight gain is protective, and the choices leading up to them acts of self-nurture? Additionally, why must weight gain (for any reason) be moralized at all? All bodies shift and change with time; it is simply our realities as embodied creatures.

In this post specifically, I will be focusing on weight gain that occurs in response to nourishing and caring for your body after a time of caloric restriction or scarcity. Among people with and without clinical eating disorders alike, it is common for weight gain to occur as a natural response to weight suppression or recent weight loss.

Weight suppression refers to the phenomenon of your weight being below your biological set-point and can happen as a result of:

  • having inadequate access to enough food
  • chronic dieting
  • eating disorders
  • medical conditions

Side effects of medications, or significant experiences of stress or sickness, can also cause weight loss in some instances – much to the body’s chagrin.

Within the context of eating disorder recovery, weight gain can be more complex than one’s reaction to seeing a higher number on the scale. Many people (with and without eating disorders) tie weight loss or a smaller body to their identity, their sense of safety, or their value as a person. Learning to re-nourish the body in eating disorder recovery can also be physically uncomfortable, or even painful at times as a result of how the body reacts to increasing or regulating food intake.

The challenges of accepting and embracing weight gain are even more significant for people who occupy a fat body, due to the compounding pressure of messaging coming out of diet culture, biases held by treatment providers, and size discrimination. I recognize that as a person with thin privilege, I am protected from many of these compounding forces of oppression.

Then there are our friends, our family, or whomever we encounter this way or that who take the time to bemoan recent bodily changes. They have also been fed messages about what is “healthy” or “unhealthy,” or how to treat a body that is not pictured as the totally achievable health ideal.

When I propose the idea of reframing weight gain as self-care, I am not proposing that this physical change is the most important part of the body kindness process. When I talked to someone about this angle recently, they said to me: Yes, weight gain can be important for eating disorder recovery [and arguably for many people without an eating disorder], but what else does this mean?

As I understand, what accepting weight gain as a form of body kindness really means is:

  • listening to and accepting your body’s needs
  • challenging the ways we are conditioned to critique our bodies and instances of weight gain
  • challenging fatphobia’s white supremacist, ableist, and xenophobic roots
  • embracing the HAES® principle of eating for well-being, and rejecting healthism

Often lost in the continual onslaught of complaints about weight gain are how it can often come as a result of properly nourishing ourselves following sickness, stress, or inadequate access to food.

Not every instance of weight gain is something that someone is actively pursuing, and it may be unexpected. But when we become so fixated on feeding into diet culture’s vilification of weight gain, we neglect how nurturing, and how tender an act it can be to adequately feed our bodies and let them change as they may, if and when we have the resources to do so.

For people who are recovering from an eating disorder or years of dieting, this can be particularly special. It’s not easy to ignore and challenge the mainstream obsession with weight loss or ‘fixing’ our bodies. But is is an act of kindness to ourselves.

The Take-Home Message

Nourishing ourselves doesn’t have to be careful, pretty, gentle, or always even grounded in mindfulness.

Reaching for whatever it is you have available – be it an apple, candy bar, or your favorite food – and feeding yourself sends a message to your body that I am taking care of you, you deserve nourishment, and that will never change no matter how you change or grow.

So, if you would like, I invite you to frame any past, recent, or future weight gain as self-care. I’m right here with you. 

McKenna Schueler (She/Her) is a freelance/contract writer with a Bachelors of Arts degree in English and a minor in psychology. McKenna was first introduced to Health at Every Size® and the body liberation movement through the works of fat activists and radical feminist voices online. She hopes to further her education in public health and use her knowledge to help increase federal, state, and community support for inclusive and culturally-competent mental health treatment interventions that respect patient agency. In the meantime, she strives to offer words of compassion and understanding for those who can come away from her writing feeling better informed and/or comforted.

]]> Seasonal Self Care https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/seasonal-self-care.html Mon, 14 Oct 2019 17:40:21 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1334 Autumn is transitional.  The light reflects a bit differently on the trees at dusk, some schedules speed up while others slow down, and we prepare for the holiday season ahead.  Seasonal shifts can be a challenging time to maintain self care. In fact, for many of us, the ways in which we care for ourselves shift with the season.  Nights are longer, temperatures drop, the air becomes filled with family-focused activities, and so on.  Do you struggle with maintaining self care regimens as summer transitions to fall?  Read on for some key points to taking the seasonal shift head on and taking the pressure off of yourself when it comes to self care!

Sometimes Simple Works Best

Self care doesn’t have to be “all or nothing”.  Setting realistic expectations for yourself during more chaotic times is essential to prevent self care from feeling like a chore.  Simple self care this season might look like going to bed 30 minutes earlier, just like daylight does!  It could also be remembering to turn the crock pot on before leaving the house.  These things can (and should) matter just as much as carving out time on a sunny morning to run or booking that weekend getaway. 

Set and Keep Boundaries

Repeat after us, “You do not have to accept every invite you receive.”  Autumn is filled with fun activities and gatherings of all kinds!  While this time of year typically has something for everyone, this doesn’t mean that you have to do all the somethings at the expense of your own peace. If going to that bonfire on Friday night feels like too much, trust your gut…it’s probably too much…AND, you are empowered to say “no” to attending!

Look After Your Body

Yay, fall!  Not so “yay”  is cold and flu season.  Practice taking care of your physical body this season.  Get that flu shot, put lotion on that dry skin, stay hydrated.

Mind Your Mental Health

It’s SAD (seasonal affective disorder) season. If you feel you struggle more with your mental health this time of year, ramping up your mental health care game might need to be in the cards for you. “What more could I do?”, you ask? Here are some ideas:

  • Reach out for support – friends, family, clinicians
  • Begin a daily mindfulness practice – journaling, breathing, coloring, etc.
  • Self help – don’t knock the self help section of the book store…it’s a goldmine.

 

Wishing you all a wonderful fall season! Happy October!

 

]]> Is Laughter Really The Best Medicine? https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/is-laughter-really-the-best-medicine.html Wed, 31 Jul 2019 19:54:47 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1153 This past month, the Nutritious Thoughts team participated in Laughter Yoga.  Yep, you read that correctly!  Never having heard of this form of self-care, we were greatly intrigued and wanted to learn more about the potential benefits of this practice.  Happiness Coach Jennifer Parr (make sure to check out her services here!) gave us an incredible introduction to Laughter Yoga and how giggling can promote overall well-being!

Laughter Life Hack – written by Jennifer Parr

Laughing for just 15 minutes can literally save your life. 1 in 2 Americans struggle to stay happy and the majority of us are seeking solutions to escape the overwhelming stress so many of us face on a daily basis that can be felt in the form of anxiety, irritability, fatigue, digestive problems, and headaches.

One of the fastest and most immediate ways to reduce stress and rewire neural pathways in the brain to get immediate and noticeable change is laughter. Laughter is now recognized as a legitimate, scientifically validated form of preventative medicine.

Physiologically, stress and laughter are complete opposites. If you are laughing, it is physically impossible to also experience stress in that moment. When you experience stress, it negatively effects the functioning and health of your body including an increased heartbeat, rise in blood pressure, and constriction of blood vessels. However, when laughing, your heartbeat slows, blood pressure naturally decreases, and blood vessels are no longer constricted.

The health benefits of laughter are endless.

Laughter Benefits:

Decreases Stress Hormones.
Counteracts Symptoms of Depression.
Relaxes Muscles, and Simulates Circulation.
Improves Memory, Creativity and Problem Solving Skills.
Increases Energy Levels.
Strengthens Immune System.
Improves Digestive System.
Elevates Self Esteem.
Reduce or Prevent Symptoms of Allergies, Asthma, Arthritis, and Cancer.
Quiets the Mind.
Better Sleep.
Release of Feel Good Endorphins.
Emotional Balance and Joy.
Improves Overall Health.l

How can you get MORE laughter in your life? You are 30 times more likely to laugh in the company of others (vs. laughing on your own). One of the most fun and effective ways to guarantee regular laughter while in the company of a supportive community is to take a Laughter Yoga class. It is necessary to laugh for at least 15 minutes to receive the full health benefits of laughter. Laughter Yoga will guarantee that you get at least 15 minutes of Laughter (and in most cases much more) so you can experience immediate and noticeable health benefits.

WHAT IS LAUGHTER YOGA?

Laughter yoga combines yogic breathing techniques, guided laughter exercises and a unique form of meditation. No mat or yoga experience is needed or required.

Class Includes:

·       Light Stretching

·       Yogic Breathing Techniques.

·       Laughter Exercises and Movement.

·       Low impact cardiovascular workout for any fitness level.

·       Laughter Meditation.

What To Expect In A Laughter Yoga Session?

Play and joy are basic human needs, even for adults, and necessary for living a happy and balanced life. This class supports participants in meeting such essential needs and can bring lasting joy when practiced regularly through a variety of guided group and partner exercises. Learn how to laugh without having to rely on humor, jokes or comedy!

What Will You Experience After Laughter Yoga?

Immediately following a laughter yoga session, you will understand the value of laughter as a form of low impact cardiovascular exercise. Many participants have reported decreased anxiety, stress, tension, and worry immediately after the first class as well as increased energy and relaxation.

You will learn how to change your mood within minutes through the exercises. Practicing regularly will help create a more positive attitude and positive coping mechanisms for difficult life situations. Participants will also learn techniques for releasing built up negative emotions. Many participants also report that they feel more connected and comfortable with other participants in class and it can often help in forming friendships.

If you are interested in experiencing a Laughter Yoga class, we will be offering regular classes at Nutritious Thoughts led by Jennifer Parr. Her website is www.jennparr.com.

“Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.” – Lord Byron

 

]]> The grittiness of growth. https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/the-grittiness-of-growth.html Thu, 06 Jun 2019 15:03:04 +0000 https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/?p=1031  

It’s summertime, and the living is…well, a mixed bag of emotions.

Growth is hard. Healing is raw. This month, we chose to feature the blog of a local Asheville clinician – Elizabeth Gillette, LCSW of Heirloom Counseling – to celebrate the “realness” of getting in touch with our true selves. See her recent blog post below about being gentle with yourself as you walk your own path of growth and healing.

Being Gentle with Yourself as You Grow

Hi!
There is something many of my clients realize once we start really digging into relationship and self-work: it doesn’t feel very good.
On one hand, I don’t enjoy seeing people experiencing discomfort or big emotions (I have had to learn to hold space for this and allow it instead of rescuing or fixing). But on the other hand, I have realized that the place where emotions are flowing and discomfort is welcomed and old hurts are received instead of pushed away is where the healing happens. Healing is feeling it all and changing your relationship with your feelings. When the emotions are unearthed, I take that as a good sign. You are a living, breathing, deeply feeling person and I want you to know I respect that—so I let you feel it. We feel it together.
Whether you’re actively shifting your attachment style toward security or it seems like your life as you know it is crumbling all around you or you are growing so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with yourself, please know you are still loved and worthy and whole. None of this work is easy. I’ve come to believe that if you are awake and aware and showing up in any conscious way in this world then you are exposed to the pain of all of it. So many of us are hurting. I know that.
But here’s what I want you to remember. The work you do reverberates out into the collective. Your healing is my healing, and mine is yours. We all deserve to heal. Every one of us. We can help each other do that—by offering support, by being in relationship in a conscious way, and by being accountable for our own stuff. Healing is unlearning just as much as it is acquiring new skills and practicing new responses. We must take inventory of our values and beliefs, gain an understanding of how we came to those beliefs (and whether they still make sense), and move into alignment with who we are now.
Your personal work is incredibly powerful because we are all part of something much bigger than ourselves.
Healing doesn’t happen overnight. And attachment and relationship work? We are in it for the long-game. This work takes practice, time, energy, dedication, and awareness. We must be gentle with ourselves to maintain our commitment. Humans don’t learn well when they are shamed or afraid or experience harshness. How can you create compassion for the parts of you that are learning right now? The fact that you are engaged with the work on a daily basis and healing at your own pace is good enough. Let it be good enough for this moment. Rushing this type of healing doesn’t allow us to dive deep, to fully embrace our experiences, to feel everything we need to feel to move forward.
We all have our own stories and experiences of healing and I believe it’s very important for us to hold space to hear those experiences and learn from one another. I am so thrilled to launch the here to heal podcast on June 11! It’s coming up soon and I’ve done some amazing interviews with incredible folks in my community as well as solo shows where I share more about my own experiences with healing. I’m looking for folks who would be willing to be part of my Podcast Launch Team—people who will listen to a few episodes and then rate and review them on iTunes and get the word out to others who might be interested. If that’s you, will you hit reply to this email and let me know? I will send you instructions and a reminder when the podcast launches! THANK YOU!
I also want to share an opportunity for an in-person healing experience that I am offering on June 22, 2019, with Liz Gunn and Monica Leblanc in the mountains of Western North Carolina. We are hosting an afternoon gathering to support your relationship to yourself utilizing attachment theory, astrology, and the Enneagram (a combination that I have found to be extremely powerful in my own healing work). This experience will provide grounded and practical tools for increasing consciousness and self-awareness with a healthy dose of fun, pleasure, and play. This gathering will be nourishing on many levels and is the perfect way to celebrate the summer solstice! Space is limited so the gathering feels intimate—please register as soon as you can to secure your spot!
Thank you so much, always.
Warmly,
Elizabeth

 

FYI! Elizabeth is launching a podcast THIS MONTH that we are seriously stoked for. Check out the details here: here to heal Podcast

Happy [and sad and frustrated and whatever else you may feel] Growing!

]]> Spring Time Blues https://www.nutritious-thoughts.com/spring-time-blues.html Mon, 01 Apr 2019 20:20:35 +0000 https://nutritiousthoughtsblog.wordpress.com/?p=149 The weather is warming, daylight lasts longer, and the world seems to be blooming…and it expects you to be doing the same.

This month, we feature a very important blog post by Carolina Partners in Mental HealthCare, PLLC that highlights the pressure we may feel to present ourselves to the world as happy, energetic, and carefree this time of year and how it is perfectly alright (and actually makes sense) if “happy-go-lucky” is not everyone’s reality during the Spring season.

Check the post out below!

IT’S SPRING! WHY YOU DON’T HAVE TO FEEL HAPPY

Spring is finally here. People are wearing shorts, the birds are infectiously happy, flowers are blooming everywhere. In the grocery store today, a man told me, “You look so sad. Be happy! The weather is beautiful.” While there’s always room for gratitude in our days, and nice weather certainly can be something to be grateful for, I’m here to tell you why you don’t have to be happy.

There are admittedly many proven mental health benefits to Springtime. The increase in daylight provides a boost in one’s serotonin levels (serotonin is a crucial ingredient for feelings of happiness). And during the new season, people don’t need to expend as much energy to fight off the drowsiness that occurs when it’s darker outside. Also, people tend to socialize in the Springtime more, which comes with other mood-enhancing benefits; for example, laughing with friends or hugging loved ones, both of which release important endorphins.

With all of this bright light, social bustle, and beautiful, blooming nature, there can be an unspoken expectation to be as happy as possible all the time. But, for a number of reasons, many of us don’t feel happy during Spring … or we don’t feel as happy as other folks seem to think we should. And I would like to detail a number of reasons for why we may not feel happy, despite the beautiful weather and chipper social milieu:

  • The expectation to be happy itself can be stressful, and can, perversely, end up making us feel less happy. It is very alienating to be pressured to feel a certain way when you don’t already feel that way to begin with, and this social pressure is severely heightened in Springtime.

 

  • The warmer weather can make it more difficult to think clearly on a physical level. Ideally, Spring is a time of moderate levels of warmth that help us adjust to the oncoming heatwave of the Summer. But in reality, Spring is often dramatically warmer than we expect or want it to be, and those changes usually happen without warning.

 

  • A third reason is that many of us need to spend our days indoors during these lovely Spring days. Students are busy studying for exams. Office workers continue to spend eight hours a day inside, regardless of the season. That disconnect between desire and reality can be very demoralizing.

 

  • Some people experience a problem with sinuses during this time, which can make simple things like going on a walk in your neighborhood very unenjoyable.

 

  • Perhaps most importantly, it is important to remember that the regular ups and downs of life continue to happen in Spring, despite the shifting climate. For some folks, Spring is the anniversary of a loved one’s passing. Other people are experiencing terrible illness. There are folks who lose their job in Spring, or get into a car accident. The mere existence of warm weather and budding cherry blossoms does not erase the usual tribulations of life.

While there are likewise many reasons to enjoy the season, it’s important that we be aware of our own impulse to assume that everyone else is happy, or that everyone else should be happy, or that we should be happy. Spring is a time of should-ing. We “should” all over each other during this season, a practice that often makes even the enjoyable aspects less enjoyable.

As you move about in the world during this season of opening and renewal, remember to hold yourselves and others in a place of understanding and compassion. If you find yourself feeling sad, angry, frustrated, hopeless, etc., remind yourself that those emotions are a part of life, no matter the season. The same goes with other people whom you interact with. Every season is the right season to treat yourself and others with compassion, and to reach out for the help that you need.

To access other posts from the Carolina Partners in Mental HealthCare, PLLC blog, follow this link: Be Well Blog

]]>