By Lindsey Boman, MA, LPC "Why can’t I stop?" is often the first question people struggling with addiction will ask me when they come into treatment. They will name all the reasons that they have to maintain sobriety, (family, friends, finances, freedom, health, career etc.) but will confess that they keep choosing their drug of … Continue reading Understanding Addiction
Category: Resources
Mindfulness exercise abbreviated and adapted from Dan Siegel's wheel of awareness exercise. Mindfulness is the art of being aware of our internal and external experience. Mindfulness allows us to recognize and stay curious about each part of our experience--our thoughts, our emotions, our sensations--without being swept away by them. After all, each of these is … Continue reading Mindfulness Meditation
Compassion. Easy to preach and difficult to practice. If you know me personally or have read my previous blogs you may know that I am a recovering perfectionist. Perfectionism is often accompanied by harsh judgment of self and others which is in stark contrast if not the complete opposite of compassion. As a result, in … Continue reading 3 Assumptions for Compassionate Living
We live in a broken world. If we exist long enough, we will be exposed to hard things—trauma, grief, injustice, physical illness, and human tragedy. We are designed to live in community, and we are designed to care about people. Our existence depends on it. From our earliest moments our survival is highly impacted by … Continue reading Understanding Secondary Trauma
We live in a fast-paced and often high stress culture. At times we are drawn to the “next big thing” and continually look toward the future or analyze the past. In our competitive culture there are two paths to choose in response to stress: decrease stress by changing factors we can control or manage stress … Continue reading The Truth about Coping