• Anxiety,  Coping Skills,  COVID,  Depression,  Mindfulness,  Relationships,  Somatic,  Trauma

    A Playlist of Short Resources for Mothers!

    Here’s a short and sweet post – a list of 15 SHORT podcasts to listen to to support and encourage you in your role as a parent. Titles include “What can the pandemic teach us about what working moms need?” and “2-Minute Pandemic Self-Care Reflection, feat. Season of Love Lyrics” (come on just take a couple of minutes and do the mindfulness activity?) Again, if you find that you’re experiencing more than the normal “baby blues” things like depression, scary thoughts, anxiety, sleeplessness, feeling depleted managing it all, PTSD from your childbirth experience, feel free to reach out to me me, Michelle Grunkemeyer to talk about if it makes sense…

  • Addiction,  Anxiety,  attachment,  Coping Skills,  COVID,  Depression,  Relationships,  Somatic,  Trauma

    Pandemic Resources for Mom (well for anytime!)

    On this Mother’s Day, I’ve included a somewhat diverse set of imagery depicting mothers and children. But is it truly representative of our experience of motherhood? I couldn’t find images showing mothers trying to juggle working from home and managing online schooling. I couldn’t find mothers comforting crying children, or mothers in the middle of the night after a day of work outside the home or work inside the cooking, cleaning and doing laundry. I couldn’t find images of mothers who feel the loneliness that the pandemic has imposed on us. For mothers, there aren’t play dates to get together for support. In labor, for a period of time some…

  • Addiction,  Anxiety,  attachment,  Coping Skills,  COVID,  Depression,  Mindfulness,  Postnatal,  Pregnancy,  Somatic,  Trauma

    I can say NO? No Way! – Boundaries

    How did you feel after you read through this list? Or did the title of the blog post simply kind of blow your mind off? The graphic above has some great prompts to think about when you are trying to establish some healthy boundaries. When we have grown up in homes where there was substance abuse, mental health struggles, financial issues, domestic violence, incarceration, physical, sexual, verbal or emotional abuse, we often develop a set of faulty beliefs about what we can say no to. We may become people pleasers, always molding ourselves around what we think others want of us. We may develop avoidant attachment styles where we simply…

  • Addiction,  Anxiety,  attachment,  Coping Skills,  COVID,  Depression,  Relationships,  Trauma

    How is COVID affecting your mental health?

    At this point, I do not believe that anyone can deny that COVID has dramatically affected their lives. I hear of stories of adult children who are unable to visit their elderly parents in nursing homes. I know of another family whose mother was hospitalized, and they were unable to visit her during the hospitalization. Visits via online options like FaceTime were attempted, but often the visits did not happen. Nurses were busy and unable to assist elderly clients with the technology needed to facilitate the visits. So loved ones were separated not just by distance but even technology was unable to assist in keeping them connected. The statistics for…

  • Addiction,  Anxiety,  Coping Skills,  COVID,  Depression,  Mindfulness,  Postnatal,  Pregnancy,  Trauma,  Uncategorized

    COVID-19 Response for Georgia

    In my Marietta office, we are seeing clients face to face. Cleaning procedures are informed by the best practices described by the state of Georgia and the American Psychological Association (APA.) I clean the room in between each sessions which means I need to maintain a 55 minute session time.  We do not require a form to be filled out as yet. But please check your temperature before you come for your appointment, verify that you and your household members are not sick with COVID and that you have not been exposed to the best of your knowledge to anyone who has tested positive. I will ask you all these…