Avoid Burnout with These 3 Tips

Burnout is a real and quite damaging condition. Once you find yourself suffering from burnout, it can be difficult to turn your life around. This is why it is necessary to take steps to try and avoid burnout.

1. Set Boundaries

No matter what your profession may be, it’s important to have boundaries. You can’t be available around the clock; this is simply impossible. So, to prevent burnout, it’s critical to establish boundaries of times you will not be available. This means that you won't be in the office or available by phone or email during these times. If you are in a management position, it might help to post these hours somewhere or adjust your email auto-reply, so people know you will answer as soon as you are available.  

2. Have A Work-Life Balance

Besides just setting boundaries, you need to have time to do things that aren't workplace-related. This means you have time for your hobbies, your family, and just doing what you l...

5 Ways to Experience Personal Growth even in an Upheaval

When you’re in upheaval, you tend to hit survival mode pretty quickly. Your life becomes focused on just getting through the day. Beyond that? You don’t have the time or energy to care.

Now more than ever, you need to take advantage of what time you have for personal growth. When we are challenged is where we rise to the occasion the best. During upheaval, our minds become busy, and we start thinking more. It’s a great time to take advantage of a mind made flexible by circumstances and learn something new.

In short, this is an excellent time for personal growth.

Furthermore, the act of bettering yourself gives you a focus, something you can control right now, at this moment, helping your mental state. It’s all about attitude and the idea you can keep growing, even now. How?

You Learn to Embrace Adversity

There’s no doubt upheaval can make a mess of your life. But as you dig in and start looking for solutions,...

From the day we are born until the day we die: Lifespan

What we can know, see, do (i.e. reach) today: Wingspan

The family is a system, all members influence each other. The family system changes with transitions, such as kids going off to college, marriage, divorce. Despite these changes, the family continues to exist and be a source of influence on our lives. The family system is a powerful influence on the relationships experienced by each of its members, relationships both inside and outside of the family system.

The family system continues to influence the quality of personal relationships across the life span.

It is well known that the experience of parental marital conflict and divorce may result in
long-term consequences for social outcomes and personal relationships in
young adults whose parents get divorced. The experience of parental conflict being particularly troubling for kids. The divorce itself can be a turning point in terms of conflict.

The continuing influenc...

Releasing the Grip of Family Trauma

QUESTION:

Sally's Questions: Our family has a lot of trauma with divorce, broken promises and relationship issues. There are also abandonment issues. This involves my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and other family members. Everyone has contributed to the trauma in some way.

 I want to move past the trauma and let go of this pain.

 I’m tired of letting the past weigh me down all the time. I’m tired of being controlled by what they did. I also feel unsafe. I worry all the time. I am scared to try new things or start relationships.

 How do I learn to let go of the family trauma?

Everyone keeps telling me I can’t heal without forgiveness. They’re convinced I have to forgive my family for the trauma. I feel like I have done this, but I won’t let certain family members back into my life.

Despite forgiveness, I still don’t trust them.

What can I do to balance forgiveness with trust?

ANSWER:

Sally, awareness is the first step...

"In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted and bent in weird ways and they're still beautiful." Alice Walker

There aren't any perfect families. You know that intellectually but I am calling upon you to also know this in your heart. I am speaking to you from two different generations. First, your family when you were a child and second, your own family today.

If you had a pretty easy going childhood, why postpone celebrating your family's gorgeous idiosyncrasies and eccentricities? Allow this to inspire you to also celebrate the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities in the family you have as an adult. Our families don't need to be perfect but they do need to hold a space for each family member to be and feel loved. If you have recently divorced, you may worry that you won't be able to give your children the good experience you had. That is a myth. You can and will give your children time and space filled with love.

If childhood was full of challenges, ...

The impact of destructive conflict between coparents on children differs in relation to what the conflicts are about.

Research studies have found that conflicts between coparents about finances and those about parenting time have the greatest negative impact on children.

Why does financial conflict have a disproportionally greater negative impact on children?

Divorce is, in many cases, extremely financially costly.

The cost of divorce forces many families to make financial readjustments. Some will experience serious financial consequences.  Parents may believe their financial well-being is threatened. The economic impacts of divorce may significantly increase stress and emotional distress of parents leading to high levels of conflict between parents of the kind that children are aware.

Children experience the parent's stress and conflict together with the concrete ways family economic circumstances are changing. Together, this kind of conflict tends to have greater nega...

Divorce devastates, not everything, but many, many precious things.

Divorce gives us, leaves us, with a long sad story.  A story that initially feels like the greasy  scraps from an overcooked marriage.

Never Again.

“Never again” we tell ourselves.

As if we could ever trust ourselves after the mess we had just lived through.

We don’t know how to trust our self again, and that mistrust of self creates more pain and loneliness than not being able to trust another soul again.

We believe there is only one way to make sure that “Never again” is true and that is to hold that divorce story front and center, like a dangerous curve warning sign, for which we continually slam on the brakes and proceed slowly and cynically with life. We lead with suspicion, even congratulating ourselves for our trepidation and our commitment to “Never Again.”

We must come to trust that we have learned from our divorce experience, or we will forever peer at life from around that dangerous curve sign, f...

When it comes to the impact of coparenting conflict on children, there is a tendency to lump all conflict together in one heap and label it a villain of parental and, especially, child well-being. 

When creating and validating conflict management tools in research on coparenting,  conflict was often seen as a one dimensional construct that predicts family dysfunction and negative impacts on children's mental health.  However, this is an oversimplification.

Constructive and destructive conflict have different effects on the family and on children. 

It is destructive conflict that is harmful. That not all conflict is harmful is good news because it is unrealistic to set a goal of "No Conflict."

A goal of constructive conflict is attainable.

Transforming destructive conflict into constructive conflict can be motivated by the knowledge that it does not lead to harmful effects on children and that it increases the possibility for win-win solutions on tough problems faced by coparen...

Many say," I don't remember who I am" as a marriage is coming to an end . We may have been silenced. We may have silenced ourselves.

 Giving voice to our experiences is one step toward healing. Expressing ourselves in writing to connect with who we are at our core.

 What pours from our mind down, past our heart, down our arm onto the paper is something that needs to be shared; it contains a truth, you will become reacquainted with yourself.  If you can't think of what to write about, just starting with, "I remember when...."

Something from five years ago one day, something from yesterday the next, something from childhood, all of these different experiences, not editing them, allowing them to pour out.

There are going to be threads of truth.

A map back toward yourself.