Tag: therapy

depression, Mental Health

Happiness is a Habit

Graphic that says: Happiness is a Habit: How to make and maintain meaningful changes in your life to improve your wellbeing

Happy New Year! 

To many of us, the new year welcomes the idea of having a fresh start and a clean slate. With the past year behind us, we feel like we have the opportunity to begin a new chapter in life. This can help us feel hopeful and optimistic about the year ahead of us. People often view the New Year as a perfect time to enforce positive changes in their lives, which can include setting goals, making healthy lifestyle changes, and leaving behind any challenges or disappointments from the past. The cultural tradition of making New Year’s resolutions fosters a sense of self-improvement and personal growth. The act of setting goals for the upcoming year can instill a feeling of purpose, motivation, and it can enhance overall wellbeing.

Why It’s Hard to Maintain Resolutions

As good as this sounds in theory, sticking to these resolutions is often a lot more challenging than it sounds! Have you ever struggled to maintain a goal throughout the New Year? If so, you aren’t alone! Sustaining New Year’s resolutions long-term can be difficult due to a multitude of factors, some of which include:

  1. Unrealistic Goals: We often fall victim to the ideology ‘New Year, New Me.’ This can lead us to aspire to redefine ourselves and completely change our routine in our day-to-day lives. Trying to implement so many changes into your daily life can lead to frustration, loss of motivation, and feelings of failure if you aren’t able to achieve all of your goals.
  2. Lack of Specific Planning: If our goals are too vague and lack a clear plan of action, resolutions often remain as abstract ideas. A lack of detailed planning can hinder the implementation of desired changes because we are unable to incorporate these goals into our lives in a practical way. For example, instead of setting the goal “Stop people pleasing”, it may be more helpful to set a more specific goal of “I will say no to others when I am feeling tired and burnt out.” or “I will communicate with others when I am upset or my feelings are hurt.” 
  3. External Pressures and Stress: We never know what challenges life will throw our way! Daily life stressors, work demands, and unexpected challenges can divert attention and energy away from maintaining new habits, making it hard to stay consistent and motivated. Unforeseen setbacks may arise and without a resilient mindset, individuals might find it challenging to persevere through difficulties.
  4. Lack of Intrinsic Motivation: Where is your desire to change coming from? Is it something that feels fulfilling to you as a person, or do you feel societal pressure to change in order to be more palatable to others? If resolutions are driven by external pressure or societal expectations rather than genuine personal motivation, the commitment may wane over time.
  5. No Immediate Rewards: Many resolutions involve long-term benefits, but the absence of immediate rewards can make it challenging to stay motivated, especially if results take time to manifest. In a world full of instant gratification, it can be challenging to find the patience and dedication you need to stick to our goals without seeing immediate results.

Building sustainable lifestyle changes often requires patience, self-compassion, and the ability to adapt when faced with challenges. It’s crucial to set realistic goals, create a supportive environment, and focus on the process rather than expecting immediate, significant changes.

So how do we make practical changes in our lives to keep us on track with our goals to better our wellbeing? The answer is habits!

How to Establish Healthy Habits

The establishment of healthy habits simplifies our lives by fostering a sense of regularity and consistency. This reduces the mental effort of ensuring that we are making healthy lifestyle choices because they are already embedded in our routine. Habits can also help with time management because they allow you to prioritize and allocate your time more effectively. By automating certain activities, you have more time to focus on other tasks. Additionally, habits contribute to skill acquisition. Regular practice of a skill becomes a habit, which enhances our proficiency over time. When positive habits align with personal goals, they can lead to significant long-term achievements and improvements in both physical health and mental wellbeing.

Now you may be wondering, what exactly is a habit?

The habit loop, introduced by Charles Duhigg in “The Power of Habit,” consists of three components: cue, routine, and reward. This model has since become widely recognized and utilized in discussions about habit formation and behavior change.

The Cue is the trigger that initiates the habit. It can be a specific situation, emotional state, time of day, or any other signal. One way to make healthy habits easier to start is to make cues for them more obvious and easier to access. For example, if one of your personal goals for the new year is to do more yoga, keeping a yoga mat out in an open space might encourage you to practice more than if it was stored away under your bed.

Routine is the continuous behaviors or actions you engage in as a response to the cue. This is the actual habit you’re trying to establish. In order to make the process of starting a habit easier to maintain, consider where you could fit the new habit into your current daily routine. One tool for this is called Habit Stacking, which is a behavior change technique that involves integrating new habits into existing routines by “stacking” them on top of one another. The idea is to link a new behavior you want to adopt with a habit you already have. This method leverages the existing cue of an established habit to trigger the initiation of a new habit into your routine.

For example, if you want to develop a habit of exercising every morning and you already have a habit of making your bed, you can “stack” these habits by deciding to exercise immediately after making your bed. The completion of one habit serves as a cue for the next. This makes it easier to create and sustain new habits by associating them with previous ones. 

The Reward is the positive outcome or satisfaction you gain from completing the routine. This reinforces the habit loop by associating the behavior with a positive experience. Although the satisfaction of making strides towards your goals may be enough motivation in and of itself, you also can encourage the maintenance of habits by making rewards even more appealing. Let’s stick with the exercise example to explain this one- say that you just completed your workout and you decide to treat yourself. This doesn’t have to be something that sacrifices your hard work or progress, like eating sugary food or candy. But instead, you could get into the routine of making a healthy smoothie, running a bubble bath, or watching your favorite show after completing a workout. This can help reinforce your habit of exercise by knowing that you will have the opportunity to do something that feels satisfying to you after completing it.

Understanding and manipulating these components can help with forming new habits or breaking existing ones by substituting the routine while keeping the same cue and reward. Consistency strengthens neural pathways, which makes these behaviors feel easier and more automatic. So the longer you practice a new habit, the easier it will become over time! Keep in mind that it is also okay to make mistakes or have off-days when implementing a new routine. By having self-compassion in the face of failure, this can actually make you more likely maintain your goals long term and build your self confidence. 

Ask yourself, what habits would help make you feel happier, make your life easier, and give you a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment? Try using these strategies to make healthy changes to your life in the new year. You are more capable than you know and remember that your future self will thank you for making positive changes to both your physical and mental health!

To Learn More or Book an Appointment

Interested in learning more mental health tips, tricks, or facts? Check out our blog or head to our resource page to learn more.

For more information about the science behind habit creation, go to Charlies Duhigg’s The Power of Habit website

If you are interested in seeing a See You Through It Counseling therapist, book an appointment.

To discover what the therapists at See You Through It Counseling offer, please go to our team page.

blog, Mental Health

What Is Masking: Understanding Masking in ASD

What is Masking Title Image.

As I rise, in the morning, I’ve noticed that the air feels chilly and crispy. The leaves on trees are blossoming into beautiful shades of yellow, orange, red and brown before gently falling and filling the yards and streets of my neighborhood. I’ve found myself digging through tubs of sweatshirts and hoodies that I retired for the summer to equip me for the changing weather. All of these occurrences can mean only one thing… Fall is here! The season is changing, and the world is preparing itself for a new beginning. When I normally think of fall, my mind goes straight to all things spooky and wicked. I imagine ghost stories being told around a fire, families carving twisted smiles into Jack O’Lanterns, and kids with masks walking door to door trick or treating and giving a good spook to their neighborhood while doing so. What a treat! However, did you know that the term ‘Masking” doesn’t just mean throwing on your scariest face mask for some Halloween fun?

In the mental health field, the term Masking suggests that someone is attempting to hide or camouflage certain parts of themselves to seem more socially appealing to the people around them. Individuals often feel like they have to ‘mask’ their true selves or their behaviors when they do not feel like they would be accepted by the dominant culture that they are living in. They may feel like hiding certain traits or parts of their identity can help them succeed socially without the fear of judgment or prejudice from others for being ‘different’.

Masking is a common coping mechanism for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). When individuals are growing up with Autism, they can recognize from a young age that the way they process information or interact socially may be different from their peers. In an attempt to hide these differences, individuals with ASD start ‘masking’ by learning the “normal” behaviors of those around them, practicing and performing those behaviors, and suppressing any urge to engage in “undesirable behaviors” in order to appear more like their peers. 

Many of the behaviors that are suppressed through masking can actually be soothing for individuals with ASD but can appear unusual to others who do not have an ASD diagnosis or who are not educated about Autism. For example, Stimming, also known as self-stimulating behavior, is a common soothing behavior that includes repetitive body movements or noises. Some common examples of stimming behaviors for individuals with ASD include repeating words or phrases, rocking back and forth, repetitive blinking, flapping hands, rubbing or picking skin, pacing or walking on tiptoes, etc.

Although the purpose of these behaviors can look different for each person, a common theory is that stimming helps regulate sensory input, which can be a very overwhelming process for individuals with ASD. Stimming can help individuals adapt to their environment by either increasing or decreasing sensory overload and help them better process information. Stimming can also be calming because repetitive motions can affect the body’s vestibular system which helps with balance and orientation of the body while also calming one’s nervous system. However, there can also be maladaptive effects of stimming such as disruptive behaviors, distractions in learning environments, and self-injurious behaviors such as head banging.

Another common way for individuals with ASD mask to protect themselves in society is by suppressing their interests and hobbies.  Many people with ASD have special interests or hobbies that they study from a young age, and this oftentimes becomes a field of expertise for them. When interacting with others, it can feel less intimidating to discuss these interests because facts and information can be shared and talked about freely without having to address other social nuances in ‘small talk’ conversations. However, this behavior is often interpreted as dominating the conversation and is normally viewed in an undesirable way. To address this, individuals with ASD will study the social interactions with others and incorporate these observed skills and traits into their interactions with others to mold themselves into a more socially acceptable version of themselves. 

Although Masking is a social skill used for survival and protection for individuals with ASD, the long-term effects of Masking can actually be quite harmful. Much research has shown that individuals with ASD who mask more tend to show more symptoms of depression and anxiety, and Masking may even be linked to an increase in suicidal behaviors. There are several theories that could explain this phenomena, one as simple as feeling exhausted from navigating a world that is not adapted to suit new ways of thinking or communicating. Masking prevents individuals from developing their identity and reaching their full potential by trying to make themselves palatable to others. It’s hard enough to find your place in the world, let alone figuring out who you really are when the world seems to always remind you that who you are isn’t good enough.

You may be wondering- where do we go from here? Knowing everything we’ve just learned about Masking; does it mean that I should stop? Although I can’t give you all the answers, I have made it my goal to equip you with as much information as possible in order to help you make meaningful decisions moving forward about how this topic impacts your life.

Throughout my career, I have found that one of the biggest obstacles individuals face when Masking is a negative self-image and internalized stigma that makes them feel obligated to hide their true selves. But there is hope! Therapy can be immensely helpful when trying to work through this. By engaging in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and learning how to seek relief from our negative thoughts and feelings, we may find that we no longer need to Mask as much, if at all. It is my hope that through compassion and self-love, we can all learn to put our masks down and show the world our true selves a little more often.

-Alyssa

To Learn More or Book an Appointment

Interested in learning more mental health tips, tricks, or facts? Check out our blog or head to our resource page to learn more.

For more resources and information about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), check out the NeuroClastic website:

If you are interested in seeing a See You Through It Counseling therapist, book an appointment.

To discover what the therapists at See You Through It Counseling offer, please go to our team page.

Mental Health, Self-improvement, Uncategorized

Mastering Emotional Intelligence: 3 Keys to a Better Life

Picture with the article title: Mastering Emotional Intelligence: 3 Keys to a Better Life.

Whenever someone mentions the word ‘Intelligence,’ what is the first thing that you think of? For many people, it might be someone’s IQ, grades in school, or having a vast amount of knowledge in a field of expertise. While these are all examples of intelligence, there are also many different categories that are used to measure one’s intelligence. One example includes body-kinesthetic intelligence, which refers to the ability to use the whole or parts of one’s body to perform tasks or create products. Another example is Musical Intelligence, which refers to the skills of interpretation or composition of musical patterns and performances. Though there are many ways to measure one’s intelligence, the type of intelligence that can improve with therapy is called Emotional Intelligence.

What is Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence refers to the ability to understand, use, and manage one’s emotions in a productive way in order to relieve stress, empathize with others, and defuse conflict by communicating effectively with others. Emotional intelligence can help you better your  relationship with yourself and others by connecting you with your feelings and true intentions. When we feel heightened or triggered by emotions, our decision making can be clouded. Have you ever tried to make an important decision when you are really angry or upset? I know from my personal experience; this can be very challenging. Our ability to think clearly and accurately assess our emotions, along with the emotions of others, becomes compromised. When we act on our emotions, it can lead to one making irrational decisions that may look different from our true intentions. 

Why Emotional Intelligence is Important

Emotional Intelligence is also paramount in many different aspects of life. For example, if someone is frequently experiencing emotions that they are not able to regulate, they may also have trouble managing stress as well. As you may have heard before, stress can be a catalyst for serious health problems, such as high blood pressure, weakened immune functioning, increased risk of heart attack or stroke, or even infertility. In addition, dysregulated emotions and stress can also affect your mental health and make you more vulnerable to anxiety and depression. Emotional intelligence also impacts your relationships with others by determining how effectively you are able to express your feelings while understanding how someone else might be feeling as well. Individuals with high levels of emotional intelligence are able to communicate more effectively and forge stronger relationships at work, school, and their personal lives.

Though improving your emotional intelligence may seem like a daunting task considering how many different facets of life it can affect, luckily, the skills that make up emotional intelligence can be learned at any age and applied to your daily life. There are three main skills to keep in mind when trying to improve your emotional intelligence. 

Skill #1: Self Awareness

Emotions tell us important information about ourselves. In order to better manage your emotions, you first must be aware of them and how they influence your behavior. In emotional intelligence, the first step to this involves being able to identify and label what emotion you are feeling in the moment. If you have trouble recognizing which emotion you are experiencing, it may be beneficial to look at an emotion wheel (which you can find easily through Google!) to see a plethora of options and pick which emotion feels most applicable to you at that moment. Emotions also are not limited to the mind. Oftentimes we can feel emotions in our bodies, such as a heavy feeling in our chest when we are sad or butterflies in our stomach when we are nervous. If you recognize bodily cues when you are experiencing intense emotions, it may help you identify which emotion you are experiencing. 

#2 Self Regulation 

Now that we can recognize which emotion we are feeling, where do we go from here? In emotional intelligence, the goal of self-regulation is to control impulses and emotions, so we are able to think clearly before acting. The easiest way to do this is to take a moment to pause and breathe. Taking control of your breath can relax your nervous system and make you more equipped to process and navigate decisions. This also gives you the space to consider if your reactions are appropriate for the current situation rather than being fueled by emotion. A breathing exercise that can help you achieve this includes the 4-2-6 technique, where you inhale for four seconds, hold the breath for 2 seconds, and release the breath for six seconds. Repeat as often as needed to help you feel calm and more in control of your emotions. Another practice that can help improve emotional regulation is meditation. Meditation allows you to quiet your mind and listen to bodily sensations to make you better acquainted with yourself and your emotions.

#3 Social Awareness

After recognizing emotions within yourself, it is then important to recognize how your emotions impact others and be able to identify other’s emotions. This is called Social Awareness, which refers to the process of interpreting verbal and nonverbal cues that others are constantly using to communicate with you. These cues let you know how others are really feeling, when their emotional states shift, and what is truly important to them. Mindfulness is a precursor to becoming socially aware. After all, you can’t be present with others if you are lost in your own head! Following the flow of another person’s emotional response is a give and take process that requires you to also be mindful of any changes in your own emotional experience. This skill is important for relationship management and your overall ability to sustain healthy and fulfilling connections with others.

Embracing Emotional Intelligence: A Path to Personal Growth and a Connected World

In a world where intelligence is often narrowly defined by academic achievement and specialized knowledge, the exploration and mastery of Emotional Intelligence presents an empowering pathway to personal and interpersonal growth. Far from being an abstract concept, Emotional Intelligence is woven into the fabric of our daily lives, influencing everything from our physical health to our relationships, career success, and mental well-being. The good news is that these vital skills of self-awareness, self-regulation, and social awareness are not fixed traits but learnable abilities that can be nurtured at any stage of life. By taking the time to understand and cultivate our Emotional Intelligence, we enrich our personal experience and contribute to a more empathetic and connected world. Whether through therapy, mindfulness practices, or dedicated self-reflection, the journey toward Emotional Intelligence promises profound transformation, equipping us with the tools to navigate life’s complexities with grace, insight, and authenticity.

To Learn More or Book an Appointment

Interested in learning more mental health tips, tricks, or facts? Check out our blog or head to our resource page to learn more.

To learn more about the mind-body connection, check out this article from Harvard Health:

If you are interested in seeing a See You Through It Counseling therapist, book an appointment.

To discover what the therapists at See You Through It Counseling offer, please go to our team page to learn more about how our therapists can help you.