Building Strong Bonds: Connecting with Your Teen through Relational and Emotion-Focused Perspectives
Building Strong Bonds: Connecting with Your Teen through Relational and Emotion-Focused Perspectives Introduction The teenage years can be a challenging period for adolescents and their parents. Maintaining a strong emotional connection becomes increasingly important as teens seek independence. This blog post will explore how parents can connect with their teens from an attachment and emotion-focused perspective, fostering emotional intelligence, resilience, and a secure parent-child relationship. The Connection Between Parent and Child Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby (1969), tells us that children form strong [...]
Guiding Your Children Through Social Media Use
As a parent of a GenZ child, you might be familiar with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but the number and complexity of social media platforms are growing at a strikingly rapid pace.From a young age, we are taught to not talk to strangers, but what happens when that stranger has “mutual contacts” with you or, better yet, is “verified” on social media?Keeping up with your children’s social world can feel more and more complicated and stressful. In order to better equip yourselves to engage in [...]
Parental Burnout: When the Demands of Parenthood Wear You Down
What do you think of when you hear the word “burnout?” Maybe you imagine an overworked employee drowning in an endless heap of deadlines, or maybe you imagine a university student who stays up night after night studying until they inevitably reach a breaking point. What about parents? We don’t often talk about parenting and how much burnout it can lead to. While parenting can be a rewarding and life-changing experience, it also comes with a mountain of responsibilities and expectations that can leave one [...]
Emotion-Focused Therapy: What Can It Do for Me?
With so many psychological treatments available, it’s no wonder that people struggle to figure out what the best treatment is for them. With emotions running high now more than ever throughout this global pandemic, one type of therapy that people may begin to consider exploring is Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). However, what is EFT, and what can it do for us? EFT was primarily developed by Canadian psychologist Dr. Les Greenberg. As the name suggests, EFT focuses on people’s emotions, recognizing that “emotions are the [...]
A Puppy Pandemic: Unleashing the Mental Health Benefits of Having a Pet
Growing up, I never had a pet dog. My parents, both working professionals, had to balance their employment schedules with raising four children, and it was simply not in the cards for our family. While we had fish, birds, and even turtles, my siblings and I attempted to use our best persuasion skills to convince my parents that we could somehow manage to take care of a dog whilst being in school all day. This, of course, was unrealistic and we instead turned to the [...]
Pandemic Protection: More Than Just Masks
Please Note: The names of the clients have been changed to protect their privacy and confidentiality. During a regular follow-up with my 17-year-old client, Lily, she was thrilled to inform me that against all the odds of the lockdown, she had matched with, and fallen for, an older guy, Jack, on a dating app. She exclaimed that this was her first “real relationship”. Even though her parents had firm expectations around COVID-19 precautions, Lily was determined to spend time with her new boyfriend. To [...]