
Back from Burnout
by Rebecca StanwyckOctober 28, 2022 Anxiety and Stress, Grief and Loss, Health and wellness, Trauma0 comments
It’s been a while since I’ve written here – let me explain my absence. Early this year I began to recognize the signs of something resembling burnout in myself, and decided to take the advice I often give to my patients, to take a step back from some of my activities and responsibiilities in order to focus more on my well-being. The activities I chose to give up were writing blog posts...
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Burnout in the Helping Professions
by Rebecca StanwyckMarch 28, 2022 Anxiety and Stress, Health and wellness, Self-Compassion, Sleep Problems, Stress0 comments
“There’s no shame in taking a step back to focus on self-care.” As I was saying this to one of my clients recently, it hit me: if I truly believe that, then I need to practice what I preach! It was obvious to me that my client was suffering from burnout, due to the demands of her job as a mental health professional as well as her family caregiver responsibilities, and equally obvious that she...
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Calming the Anxious Mind
by Rebecca StanwyckSeptember 19, 2021 Addiction, Anxiety, Cognitive Therapy, Mindfulness, Neuroscience0 comments
We are living in turbulent times. If you are paying attention at all, it’s hard not to feel anxious about the state of the world we live in and the fate of humanity. While violence, war, and natural disasters have occurred throughout human history, we seem to be experiencing them today with a new level of intensity – from the effects of climate change to the rise in terrorist activity –...
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A Ladder and a Map: Tools for Emotion Regulation
I recently had the opportunity, due to the pandemic, to attend a virtual version of an annual conference for psychotherapists that is usually held in Washington D.C. One of the webinars I attended, by Deb Dana, LCSW, offered some simple and practical tools to use with clients, based on a not-so-simple to explain theory, the Polyvagal Theory. The first tool is a ladder; the second, a map, or a...
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Healing from the Trauma of Toxic Narcissism
I have been struggling to write something relevant to the current political and social turmoil that might be helpful; yet while I have many opinions, I am not an expert at political, economic, or social trends. But one thing I do know about is narcissism and its effects.
I know that narcissism exists on a spectrum, from charmingly self-absorbed to pathologically destructive, and I’ve...
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