Maplewood Counseling
Work Life Balance for Better Mental Health

Work Life Balance for Better Mental Health

Relationships

Work Life Balance Strategies

Help Prioritizing Your Needs

Get in Touch with Maplewood Counseling in NJ

Help Maintaining Work Life Balance

Are you finding it challenging to maintain a healthy balance between your demanding work schedule and personal life? We completely understand how overwhelming it can be when the lines between professional commitments and personal space start to blur. But here’s the good news – you’re not alone in this struggle. Many of us find ourselves trapped in the monotonous cycle of work, eat, sleep, and repeat. However, we firmly believe that establishing a healthy work-life balance is not as daunting as it may seem at first glance.

Allow us to share a few practical tips that we believe can make a significant difference:

  1. Set clear boundaries: It’s crucial to create and maintain clear-cut boundaries between your work and personal life. Whether it means committing to not checking emails during family dinners or establishing specific work hours, taking charge of these boundaries is entirely up to you. By doing so, you can create space and time for the things that matter most outside of work.
  2. Prioritize self-care: Remember, you cannot pour from an empty cup. It is vital to dedicate time to activities that refresh and rejuvenate you. Whether it’s engaging in hobbies you love, practicing mindfulness and self-reflection, or simply taking time for relaxation, self-care should be an essential part of your routine. By nourishing your mind, body, and soul, you will have more energy and focus to excel in both your professional and personal life.
  3. Learn to say no: It’s perfectly okay to decline certain meetings or tasks that may not align with your priorities or overwhelm your schedule. Understanding your limits and learning to say no when necessary is a crucial step towards achieving a more balanced life. By doing so, you can create space for the activities and relationships that truly matter to you.
  4. Seek support when needed: If you’re feeling overwhelmed or stretched too thin, remember that it’s okay to ask for help. Whether it means delegating tasks at work or seeking guidance and support from loved ones, sharing the load can alleviate stress and provide a fresh perspective. Remember, you don’t have to face everything on your own, and seeking support is a sign of strength, not weakness.

In the pursuit of work-life balance, it’s important to remember that it’s not about achieving perfection. Rather, it’s about creating a lifestyle that brings value, fulfillment, and happiness to your life as a whole. We believe in you and know that you have the resilience, determination, and dedication required to achieve this balance. Embrace the journey, be kind to yourself, and take small steps every day towards a more balanced and fulfilling life.

If you need help managing work life balance and getting to a better place, reach out.  We’re here to help.

Get in Touch with Maplewood Counseling in NJ

 

 

Need Help Coping with Emotional Pain?

Need Help Coping with Emotional Pain?

Anxiety, Depression, Grief, Relationships

Coping with Painful Emotions
Trauma, Dysregulation, Coping Skills

 

Trying to Cope with Difficult Emotions?
Need Better Way to Manage?

 

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Get Help Coping with Emotional Pain

Need help managing deep and ongoing emotional pain in your relationship and personal life? You are not alone…

We all have to deal with emotional pain at different points in our lives.  Life unfolds in ways we never expected (or wanted) and finding ways to get throught these painful times is important. Deep emotional pain is the most challenging for us all.

Does this sound familiar?

  • You lost a loved one and feel like you are in the grips of deep sorrow, trauma, shock, and ongoing grief.
  • You are feeling lost after divorce or the end of a relationship and don’t know how to handle your intense emotions.
  • Maybe you’re feel ongoing emotional pain due to problems in your relationship or family.
  • Or are you’re just feeling empty and a deep pain in your gut is painful and hard to manage.

How can you cope better with this deep emotional pain?

Maybe you could use to find better way of managing the pain so you can lessen the impact emotionally and otherwise. Understanding the source of the pain and what to do with it can help. Emotional pain, which is also referred to as the “pain body” (by Eckhart Tolle) and also referred to as old emotional pain or undigested pain, can be extremely challenging to cope with. This type of pain can be very intense and cause strong emotional reactions, especially in relationships. Pain that is “unconscious” (meaning you are unaware of the true source) can cause intense fear, sadness, anger, confusion, or other unpleadsant emotions that are hard to process. Working through emotional pain means becoming more aware and conscious of the difference between the pain and the negative thoughts about the pain which can make things a lot worse for most people.

As therapists, we also experienced emotional pain as well and have to work through our pain, so we really understand how hard it is when going through it. We have a great deal of compassion and help others with their pain by focusing on the difference between emotional pain and the negative houghts about the situation. Negative thoughts make the pain feel worse, so a big part of helping is making people aware of the emotional pain and thoughts about it. Helping people increase their awareness and noticing the pain and trying to accept it’s there without making it into a mental concept, such as, “ this shouldn’t be happening” , “ oh, I’ll never get through this”, “it’s someone else’s fault that I’m feeling this way”. These are all examples of what can make your situation prolonged and much worse for you and others. Many people unortunately take out their uncoscious emotional pain on others since they are not feeling well and assume the reason is something others have done to cause you to feel this way. Others will trigger your old emotinoal pain, but developing the skills to work with the pain without lashing out at others will help tremendously.  You will not be able to work through old pain if you lash out at others.

Helping people process deep emotional pain takes developing more awareness about what’s going on internally in the body and paying attention to and trying to stop negative thoughts and “stories” about the experience. We can help you work on this to find the relief and peace you deserve.

If you are coping with emotional pain right now that’s been hard to manage, reach out and let us help.

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Need Help Letting Go?

Anxiety, Depression, Grief, Relationships

Mindfulness Counseling NJ

Help Letting Go

Counseling Near Me

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The Benefit of Letting Go | Mindfulness Counseling

Letting go will of an inner struggle or conflict can eventually bring you peace and acceptance to your life. It is not easy for many people to let go since it usually means facing something painful. You sometimes have ti go into the fire to get to a better place.

Trying to let go of something painful? Does this sound familiar?

  • You been hanging on to resentment that is hurting you and others in your life.
  • You haven’t been able to resolve something in your life or relationship that causes you on going anger and pain
  • You’re having trouble letting go of a bad marriage or relationship?
  • You may have a strong need to control others and make things happen a certain way?
  • You have tremendous anxiety and resist things that you can’t control.

Some people will benefit greatly from learning to accept they need to let go of difficult circumstances with kindness and manage the emotions that arise.

It can be very frightening and anxiety producing to move forward. Letting go can also mean you have to allow yourself to process painful emotions, which is incredibly important. Why? Avoidance will only prolong the agony. What you resist will persist and causes you and sometimes others more and unnecessary suffering.

Learning to manage emotions with letting go is the first step. It means instead of hanging on to resentments, anger and negative circumstances to avoid what will surface, you start to see the value in gradually accepting Things, circumstances and people you cannot change.

If you need help letting go, find an experience, compassionate and understanding therapist that can help you move in this direction

Contact Maplewoood Counseling

Hard Time Coping?

Hard Time Coping?

Relationships

Need Help Coping?
Mindfulness Counseling Can Help

NJ Couples, Families, Individuals

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Coping with Hard Times | Mindfulness

When Things Don’t Go According to Plan

All of us have to deal with the unexpected and sometimes very unpleasant circumstances in our lives. As much as we try, we cannot control so much of what happens. Sometimes coping with health issues ( you or your child or other family member ), a change to your family situation such as divorce, death of a loved one, infidelity, a struggling child, loss of a job, and financial hardship to name a few.

How you handle these situations is important if you want to reduce the amount of suffering you go through. Resisting and pushing away from these circumstances “this shouldn’t be happening”, etc… will only make matters worse. What you resist will persist and end up making you feel worse. SO what can you do?

Developing the skill of mindfulness can help you deal with difficult circumstances by learning how to accept what you can’t change and navigate difficult circumstance in a more calm, peaceful way.

Dealing with challenges past and present

There are so many things that we cannot control. Maybe when you were young you had deal with hardship such as divorce, poverty, neglect or even death of a parent.  Other Children have to deal with an abusive household growing up and having no say or ability to deal because they are children. These painful experiences can affect the way you cope with difficult times as an adult.

Having a Hard Time Coping?

Feeling helpless and out of control? Does this sound familiar?

  • You are going through a divorce
  • A loved one is dealing with health issues
  • Your own unexpected health issue has you scared and devastated
  • You’ve lost your job or are dealing with financial uncertainty
  • Your child has a mental health issues that has been challenging
  • You’re in a marriage or relationship that’s not been going well

There is so many challenges we all face at time. Developing coping mechanisms and developing a mindful approach to challenges will help you tremendously. Instead of resisting and getting angry or stuck in the painful experience, find ma therapist that can help you develop tools and skills in how are you related to present and future challenges.

Life is about how you handle Plan B, and you will have many opportunities to handle Plan B better and better over time.
If you need help developing on mindful way of dealing with challenges, please feel free to reach out to us.

 

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Mindfulness Helps Improve Your Life

Spiritual Relationships

Anxiety, Depression, Relationships

 

Spiritual Relationships

Couples Counseling NJ

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Spiritual Relationships

Mindful & Spiritual Relationships

There is a Insights at the Edge podcast with Elizabeth Lesser, author and spiritual teacher. She has tremendous wisdom and when asked what does it meant to be spiritual, she simply responded “to be generous, calm, loving and fearless”. Couples and individuals that are committed to this process can greatly improve the way they feel . Applying all of these to relationships with love ones will create stronger bonds and deeper connections.  Another positive outcome for many people that practice mindfulness is health benefits that go beyond peace of mind and happier relationships. You do not have to be spiritual or religious to benefit from becoming more generous, calm, loving and fearless.  

Be generous – being generous does not mean only being generous financially. It includes really listening and generously giving someone your time and full, loving attention. Generosity also includes noticing the positive and actually verbalizing with compliments, appreciations,. etc…. Pay attention to and appreciate the nice things others do for you. someone and the things they do, offering help and support, and paying genuine, authentic compliments. You can also be generous by way of service, volunteer work and helping others. Being generous is giving from the heart without expecting anything in return.  This can be challenging in relationships if you are focused too much on getting what you want or angry if you don’t get what you need. It can take work to develop a more generous way of relating. 

Be Calm – Emotional reactivity in relationships often leads to anger, resentment and conflict. Paying attention and becoming more aware of what you feeling and experiencing can help you change your level of reactivity over time. If there are certain triggers that can make you go from 0-60 in a heartbeat, understanding the triggers will help you reduce negative reactions. Childhood experiences, trauma, painful events and the like can still be unconsciously present and cause painful reactions. Reflecting on those experiences and the “hook” will help you approach present relationships and situations in a more mindful way. Also, life is a series of challenges and there are so many things we cannot control. If, over time, you understand this there will be less resistance and more acceptance of difficult situations and a more calm approach. 

Be loving – there are many words that describe being more loving in a relationship. Respectful, supportive, kind, affectionate, forgiving, gentle, compassionate, Also, prioritizing family and relationship over work or other things. It can mean a simple smile and loving attention. Listening is also one of the greatest gifts you can give to another person. Not listening to fix their problems, but rather listening to show you are there and you care. 

Be fearless – This takes work to become less fearful. For example, if you are used tp abiding conflict and putting up a wall, it will take eventually trying to approach rather than avoid. Fear of being hurt, emotional discomfort, worrying can all make it challenging to risk becoming more vulnerable. Fear of what will happen might hold you back, but changing some negative reactions and patterns will mean having the courage to face the pain, emotional discomfort and find ways to be less fearful of what will happen. A confidence comes when you can step by step work on you own fear of what will happen if you are vulnerable, kind, respectful and don’t avoid emotionally uncomfortable feelings. 

It takes patience to work on booming more generous, calm, loving and fearless over time, but it will eventually bring you more peace and closer to loved ones .

If you want help with developing all of these important mindful qualities, please contact us.

Contact Maplewoood Counseling

Mindful Relationships | Mindfulness Deepens Connections

Mindful Relationships | Mindfulness Deepens Connections

Anxiety, Depression, Relationships

Mindful Relationships NJ

How Mindfulness Can Help

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Mindfulness and Mindful Relationships

Mindfulness Strengthens Marriages & Relationships

Mindful relationships are more connected, loving and compassionate. Mindfulness is the state of being open and aware of something in the present moment. It is a therapeutic technique which helps people observe and accept their feelings and thoughts without judging them as good or bad. Developing mindfulness as a way of life helps individuals and couples communicate in more positive and peaceful ways. Mindful relationships enjoy more love, intimacy and connection in their relationships.

Mindful relationships help couples communicate with more compassion & understanding.

There is scientific evidence that back up how the brain actually is changed by developing a more mindful approach to life. I won’t get into all of that here, but will give a general idea of how this can help you and your relationship.

Mindfulness reduces negative emotional reactivity and helps people regulate their emotions.

The more a person practices mindfulness, the more they pay attention to their own thoughts and feelings, they start to understand their triggers and hooks. We all know how others can trigger painful feelings based on past experiences. Reflecting on triggers (our own thoughts and feelings – in a gentle way) will eventually help you understand the true source of your trigger, which are unconscious seeds based on conditioning. When you spend time looking inward and reflecting instead of lashing out in anger at the person who triggers your old pain, you can become more aware of the true source and work through it. You don’t have to keep reliving it. Reliving it in your present relationship will cause damage, disconnect and the unhappiness for both people.  Ultimately, you can reduce your negative, angry, controlling reactions and feel more calm, accepting and peaceful. This will help you can become more present, understanding and compassionate.

Mindfulness helps people become better listeners, attentive, compassionate, and loving

Mindful people relate in very different ways. They do not try and change their partners – they do not criticize, judge or avoid dealing with issues. They are more accepting, kind and compassionate.  Want a more connected, meaningful relationship? See how mindfulness can help you and your relationship.

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