May is mental health month, and since anxiety and stress levels are so high, I asked world-renowned resilience expert Andrew Shatte, Ph.D. to offer us some resilience tips. Dr. Shatte is the Chief Science Officer at meQuilibrium and the founder and President of Phoenix Life Academy, a company that specializes in measuring and training in resilience. He is a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Executive Education, a former professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and currently serves as a research professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona. Dr. Shatté has published prolifically in peer-reviewed journals and is the co-author of
The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles.
Tag Archives: mental health
Quarantine Diary: Family with mental health problems and the CoronaVirus shutdowns
As you all probably know, I am parenting three children with mental health problems. There are a total of seven people and two dogs in my house right now.
How Could Motherhood Possibly Be This Hard? (Parenting Kids with Mental Health Problems)
Dear long-time readers: You may recognize this blog post from my old blog, nicoleroder.com. From time to time, I will re-share old blog posts here. If you’ve read it before, feel free to just scroll by. (Or stick around and enjoy it all over again!)
I wrote this particular blog post in 2017. Back then, I didn’t have the best handle on treating my kids’ mental illnesses. It’s not exactly easy now, but at least the kids are taking prescription medications along with their therapy. That helps a lot.
How to Know When It’s Time to Think About Psychiatric Medications for Your Kids
Question: Hi Nicole. I follow you on Twitter and wanted to ask, how did you know it was time to start your kids on medication? I understand if it is too personal to share but just interested in your experience.
Special Education, 504 Plans, and Homework PIAs
You all know that three of my kids have diagnosed mental illnesses. What you might not know is that one of them has to go to an intensive outpatient program (IOP) three times a week after school. This program is three hours long, and it’s a 45-60 minute drive from my home, depending on traffic. This means that I have to pick my kid up early from school, and we don’t get home until 15 minutes before bedtime.
Actively Listening to Your Child
Can we talk for a moment about listening? As Americans, when we have conversations, we’re conditioned to do something that psychologists call “reloading” while the other person is talking. This means that instead of truly listening to our conversation partner, we’re preparing what we will say next. (Don’t worry. The other person is doing it to you too. You’re not a total narcissist.)
Mental Health Tools: Dogs Are a Spirited Kid’s Best Friend
Occasionally, I’ll share some of the therapeutic tools that my kids and I use to help control their mental health symptoms. Today’s tool is snuggling our dogs.
One of the symptoms of my son’s mental illness is that he his anxiety often turns to rage. He feels anxious, he convinces himself that a problem is unsolvable, he spirals out of control, and rages.
Let It Be
The other night, as we climbed into the car after an evening at my parent’s house, my kids were going berserk. Yelling, teasing, complaining, and just generally discombobulating all over the place. I decided to put on some soothing music to calm them down. And to me, there is no more soothing song than the Beatles “Let It Be.”