Fight, Flight, and Freeze are the three responses that are biological instincts to protect us when our lives are in danger. However, what we find sometimes is that we experience fight, flight, or freeze even when there is not a threat to our lives.

Mental health treatment is different for everyone, and people often feel overwhelmed trying to figure out where to begin. Outpatient therapy is a great place to start, and you and your therapist can work together to figure out if that is the right course, or if you need a higher level of care.

Therapists expect clients to have questions about therapy when they come to a session, especially if this is their first time in therapy.

Making sense of the passing of time can be hard, and sometimes we try to help ourselves understand this by setting goals. Therapist’s love goals! We set goals with our clients all the time. Goals themselves are not a problem, as long as you are kind to yourself and give yourself the grace to have harder days.

Here are some ways to think about the new year and set goals in a more positive way.

Everyone feels sad sometimes. Sadness is a normal, healthy human emotion. We feel sad when we lose someone, when someone we love is going through a hard time, or when we are disappointed. We feel sadness when less significant things happen too- our favorite restaurant is closed, or it rains on a day we plan to be outside. Depression is not the same. It is a diagnostic term that means someone is feeling a combination of different symptoms that get in the way of normal, everyday functioning. Depression is sometimes used in place of sadness, but, in a clinical setting, these words are completely different. Sadness can be an aspect of depression, but both can exist on their own. 

But how can “bad” emotions be helpful?

Often, though not always, what we mean is that humor makes us feel better. Humor is an important tool in relationships of all kinds, and humor comes up often during therapy. For example, “Opposite Action” is a coping skill commonly taught in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Opposite Action is doing the opposite of what you feel to counteract the feeling or urge. In the case of humor, it could mean making a joke or attempting to laugh when you are feeling sad. Laughter can also bring people together, in the case of a shared sense of humor, or an inside joke, or can help us process an embarrassing event or moment. 

Radical acceptance, developed by Marsha Linehan as a part of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or DBT, is the act of accepting experiences as they are, and not trying to force change. This can mean accepting the fact that you are feeling depressed, accepting that you are feeling let down by a friend, or, even accepting that you might not get enough sleep. The idea behind radical acceptance is if we accept that we have pain, we limit suffering. When we radically accept our own emotions or experiences, we feel more in control.

Anxiety is the experience of excessive worry or nervousness related to life experiences. Many people experience anxiety in some form at some point in their lives. However, some people struggle with anxiety on a much greater scale and with greater frequency. People who have intense or frequent anxiety often feel misunderstood and belittled by those around them, and have a hard time describing what they might be feeling in order to ask for help. What is unhelpful to say to someone with anxiety? What might you say instead?

A coping toolkit is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a collection of the coping skills, people, places, things, and ideas that help you to cope when symptoms of mental illness become overwhelming. Your tool kit is unique to you, and can be physical, mental, or some combination of the two. It depends on what works best for you. It can include ideas of where to go and what to do when you are experiencing overwhelming or distressing symptoms, it can include things like medication, it can even include a safety plan, if you ever experience self-harming behaviors or suicidal ideation or attempts. 

Often, toxic positivity creates a feeling of guilt for experiencing negative emotions at all. It can be trivializing to others’ experiences. If you are having a rough day, sometimes relying on positive vibes are enough to make you feel better. However-with depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses-thinking positively does not make the symptoms go away. What this attitude does, instead, is imply that mental illness is simply a mindset that someone can get over.