Reading Time: 3 Minutes A Journey of Healing and Rediscovery: From Darkness to Spiritual Fulfillment at Akua Far from the serene landscape of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate reservation, one Akua Native Healing Center client found herself at a crossroads. As her life unfolded on the West Coast, hundreds of miles away from her roots, a new journey began. I […]
Mental Health
The Mental Health Effects of Doom-scrolling
Reading Time: 4 Minutes Suppose you have spent several minutes or hours scrolling through the Internet (including social media), reading about disheartening news stories, looking at photos of your ex-partner, and reading hundreds of comments or retweets about a controversial topic from someone you don’t know. In that case, you are engaging in “doom scrolling.” Doom scrolling is a […]
Should You Tell Your Boss About Your Mental Health Condition?
Reading Time: 4 Minutes Living with a mental health condition can be challenging on many levels, and one of the greatest challenges is dealing with the stigma often tied to the diagnosis. Nearly one billion individuals live with a mental health disorder, including 47 million Americans. Still, we often avoid discussing our mental health in professional settings, thus allowing […]
The Science Behind Relapse
Reading Time: 3 Minutes Despite the best efforts of clinicians, patients with addiction problems will sometimes relapse after successfully undergoing treatment. Physicians can support such patients in their recovery efforts following relapse by developing a strong therapeutic alliance with them and by better understanding the mechanisms of relapse. Understanding relapse The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines relapse […]
Navigating Trauma Together
Reading Time: 4 Minutes Navigating Trauma Together: Supporting Your Partner’s Healing Journey and Establishing Healthy Boundaries Trauma comes in all shapes, forms, and sizes, from emotional trauma in childhood and physical trauma from a gruesome accident to trauma from intimate partner violence and intergenerational trauma. If your partner has experienced trauma, you most likely have noticed that they are […]
Is your teen at-risk of a mental health crisis?
Reading Time: 3 Minutes How to Talk to Your Teen About Mental Health Being a parent is difficult; being a parent of a teenager can feel even harder at times. Dealing with the hormones, the mood swings, testing the limits of their independence, exploration or identity, and the reckless behaviors, all while trying to raise a respectable, kind teenager […]
7 Ways to Celebrate Pride Month Sober This June
Reading Time: 3 Minutes Celebrating Pride Sober – How to Show Your Support and Keep Your Recovery on Track June is Pride Month and it’s a time for celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community. During this month, we come together to celebrate those who changed history, as Pride Month recognizes the historic and present-day progress toward equality. Cities across the world […]
PTSD vs. PTSI
Reading Time: 5 Minutes PTSD is a mental health disorder that involves severe anxiety, flashbacks, fear, and negative thoughts after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic, life-threatening event. The individual can directly experience this traumatic, life-threatening event, or they can be a witness to such an event. Individuals with PTSD/PTSI will have reminders of the event, will feel stressed, and […]
Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Reading Time: 3 Minutes Coping mechanisms are thoughts or behaviors that help with internalized and externalized stressful situations and unpleasant emotions. Coping mechanisms are conscious and voluntary acts that differ from defense mechanisms, as defense mechanisms are subconscious or unconscious acts. However, both coping and defense mechanisms aim at preventing or reducing unwanted stress. Coping mechanisms come in all […]
Trauma and Self-Esteem
Reading Time: 3 Minutes Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes, whether physical abuse, childhood trauma, emotional trauma, going to war, workplace harassment, refugee camps, a traumatic accident, a natural disaster, or working as a first responder; trauma can affect individuals in all different ways. Trauma can negatively impact how you see the world, solve problems, your decision-making skills, […]