mental health

March 26, 2020
An infographic by the TheCounselingTeacher.com (Sheltering in place)

Sheltering in Place: Healthy Ways to Deal with Anxiety and Isolation

The Mental Toll of the COVID-19 and Sheltering in Place As more cities, counties, and states begin sheltering in place due to the coronavirus pandemic (including my county), life in the great indoors is becoming our new normal. A lot of us are working from home, trying to learn how to create routines for ourselves and our children. But today we learned that close to 3.3 million people applied for unemployment insurance in a single week. On top of the work and employment concerns, we’re encountering empty shelves in grocery stores, enduring increasing amounts of cabin fever, and probably, most of all — we’re worried. There’s so much uncertainty — of how we’ll pay our bills, if we’ll get sick, if we or our sick loved ones will get better, or if that cough is due to seasonal allergies or something else. It’s OK To Be Worried So I’m not here to say you shouldn’t be worried. This outbreak is a serious matter. In the U.S., our infrastructure has been laid bare and low. Hospitals are scrambling to find masks, gowns, ventilators, and more medical professionals to keep up with the growing amount of people who need to be hospitalized. The economy has essentially shut down because need to keep physically distant from each other to help contain this virus (and not like everyone is adhering to those recommendations). It’s a scary time. Worry and anxiety about the present and the future aren’t feelings you should shove to the side. […]
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February 19, 2020
An East Asian woman in a cream sweater and glasses looks sideways while sitting down at a black laptop computer. Mental Health.

The Intersection of Social Media and Mental Health

My Mental Health Escape? Lately, it’s been on my mind how reality TV and social media affect people’s mental health. After seeing people talk about it non-stop on social media, I binge-watched the dating reality TV show, Love Island — all five seasons — last summer. It’s such a fun little tropical escape for me. For a few sun-drenched weeks, 20-something UKers looking for love live in a villa in Mallorca, Spain (this season, they’re in South Africa). To win the game, contestants have to be in a couple at the end. The audience votes for their favorite couples throughout the time and the most popular couple wins 50,000 pounds. The popular show now has a U.S. version as well as an Australian version. It’s fun to watch couples fall in, and out, of love. It’s touching to watch friendships form. The drama, the tears, the giggles, the “sexy times.” ? It’s like Big Brother but for dating. But there’s a looming dark side of reality TV and the intersection of social media and mental health that needs to be addressed. Paradise Darkened For five seasons, Caroline Flack was the host, a spunky, smiley, bright-eyed blonde. But if you saw her come to the villa, you had a bittersweet feeling because you knew people were going home. Love Island is currently filming its 6th season, but Flack is not the host. Last December, she was charged with common assault because of an argument with her boyfriend. She was going to […]
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September 4, 2019
A GIF of radar looking at Hurricane Dorian off the Atlantic coast of Florida

Dealing with the Emotional Stress of Hurricane Dorian

It’s a gloomy morning in Central Florida. I struggled to wake up as the thick clouds blocked the rising sun, filtering it into weak, pale light. It’s a little breezy and spitty out as Hurricane Dorian whirls away from the Floridian coast in a counterclockwise, northwesterly motion. The eye of the storm has remained about 90 to 100 miles offshore, with sustained winds of 105 mph, a Category 2 storm. It’s parallel to Daytona Beach which is north of me. This storm will probably wreak havoc on the southern tip of Georgia and the Carolinas, just like Hurricane Matthew did three years ago. By tonight, Hurricane Dorian will have left the state of Florida, and all the hurricane and tropical warnings and watches will cease. We have spent a long time waiting, and as Central Floridian Tom Petty (God rest his soul) used to sing, “the waiting is the hardest part.” The Stress of Staying or Leaving It’s been a surreal past few days for me, and this small article from Reuters reminded me of the psychic toll that just preparing for a hurricane can take. My fellow Floridians and I have been on an “emotional roller coaster” for sure. Sometimes that involved hurricane cakes and parties, and sometimes it involved boarding up our windows and leaving town. And for the rest of us, it involved sheltering in place, preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. Last week around this time was when I was pretty sure our […]
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August 28, 2019

Mental Health, Writing, and the Detours Along the Way

If you’ve taken a stroll through my website, you’ve probably landed on my About page (if not, go there now!). It’s a bit of a meandering stroll through careers, and maybe that isn’t unfamiliar to you. We often change careers, averaging around three to seven times. If you’re older, it’s on average up to almost 12 times! I wanted to take some time to tell you about my career path and how I want to help people who help others. Psychiatry or Bust…and I Busted. Although writing was my first love, I had wanted to be a psychiatrist who studied sleep to a child & adolescent psychiatrist since I was in my teens. After I got my BA in psychology, I was a mental health worker and then as a project manager at Northwestern University. I took those positions to make sure that I really did want to serve people as a psychiatrist. And I did, until I tried to take pre-med classes in a post-bac program. I tried pursuing pre-med classes three times within 12 years, and every time I was sick. The last time I tried, I was highly anemic. My ferritin levels were so low, I needed a hematologist and two infusions of iron! During that tiring time, I made two C’s in chemistry and physics. I was 30 years old, and I knew I was at a crossroads: should I keep trying to pursue this dream or pick up an old one? That was when I […]
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