Monday, September 16, 2024

Autism Certification

This month, I am officially a Certified Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinical Specialist, certified by Evergreen Certifications!

The training I completed in order to achieve this certificate has well-equipped me to provide even higher quality service and more targeted treatment to individuals on the autism spectrum, as well as their families and other loved ones.

Contact me at teresahealdconsulting"at"gmail.com if you would like to schedule a consultation (nationwide in the USA) or an assessment for yourself or your child/teen (Idaho residents only).

Be well!

Teresa

Teresa Heald LCSW, MSW, ASDCS

Friday, May 10, 2024

How to Help Your Teen Understand and Resist Peer Pressure

One of the best ways to help your teen understand and resist peer pressure is to spend more time around your teen.

And by "time," I don't mean sitting in different parts of the living room while you both are slouching, heads down, glued to your different devices.

All humans crave connection.  When you stay connected to your teen, they are less likely to be overly influenced by peers and the pressure they feel to fit in with their peers (virtual ones, ie their "peers" on social media, and their real-life peers at school and in their neighborhood and community).

Plus, when you schedule activities that both you and your teen enjoy and participate in them together, your teen has less time to doom-scroll, on-line game, SnapChat, and TikTok for hours on end. 

Why not try scheduling an extra few hours per week with your teen?  It's one of the best antidotes to peer pressure out there!  And it's within YOUR control.

Be well!

Teresa

Teresa Heald, LCSW

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Mindfulness for Stress Reduction

Mindfulness can be an excellent tool to help reduce your experience of stress and help you to live a better life.

Mindfulness is simply being aware of your present situation, emotions, environment, body, thoughts, etc.

Let me give you an example: 

You and your teen-ager are discussing their use of the car this Friday night to go to a school function.  You say that this privilege is contingent upon their completing three missing assignments in math class.  Your teen begins to whine, complain, and resist.  Your blood pressure rises, as does the volume of your voice.  Then your teen gets defensive.  Before you know it, both you and your teen are in a full blown argument.  How did that happen again?

Without self-awareness and other-awareness, situations like this will continue to play out until your little darlin' launches off to college, career, or the military.

How do you practice mindfulness?

Good news!  Mindfulness is a learnable skill.  Here is a quick way (of many ways) to begin using mindfulness:

Take a deep breath.

Seriously.

Five or six in a row.

And just observe how you're feeling, what you're seeing, if your jaw or shoulders are clinched, what sounds you're hearing.

And pause.

Practicing mindfulness when you are alone and not agitated is a great way to improve the skill, so that when you ARE in a situation like I described above, you will be able to calm your nervous system and be able to think and act in a calmer way.

Try it, not just for a few times, but for a few times per day for several weeks.  Your experience of day-to-day stress is likely to drop, if not a large amount, then at least a small (but not insignificant) amount.

I believe you'll be very surprised at the results.

Peace and calm to you,

Teresa

Teresa Heald, LCSW

Saturday, October 7, 2023

Tools For ADHD Success

  Here are three ideas for thriving with ADHD in day-to-day life:

1.  Individuals with ADHD may benefit from having important objects out in the open where they can see them (and not forget they own them).

2.  It can also be highly beneficial to store things with the least amount of effort and fewest hand motions, to foster ease of putting an item away and the ease of its retrieval (multi-step actions have a much higher risk of not being completed).

3.  Make life easy:  

    Reduce inventory (reduces visual chaos and decision-making on unimportant things)

    Reduce visual chaos (have things that match  and or many in the same color so that they're easy to wear, easy to identify across a room, and easy to decorate with--too many colors is visually overstimulating and chaotic).

Let's talk about these ideas, starting with #1.

Many individuals diagnosed with ADHD like having all their tools, supplies, books, papers, within eyesight because they often forget what they own.  It's not laziness, it's a symptom of the ADHD brain.

But if everything is always within eyesight, then a home, office, closet, car, or storage space can look overwhelmingly cluttered fast.

Solutions?

  • Place items face front.
  • Open storage.
  • Clear bins and files.
  • Large calendar on desk top.
  • Divided bin in the trunk.

Ok. Let's address #2:  storing and retrieving things with the least amount of effort.

What we're looking for here is a one-step motion.  ONE hand motion to put clothes away on a hook, vs. multiple steps to fold in sleeves then fold the shirt over then stick it back in a drawer; grab two socks, line them up, fold the tops together, THEN put them in a drawer; find the DVD case, open the case (then insert DVD, close the case, put it back on the shelf) etc.  

Marie Kondo (bless her tidy heart) is the antithesis of ADHD simplicity:  Fold your t-shirts? Fold your jeans?  Not happening with ADHD.  Sure, you might have a major folding session after reading one of her books, but then the system falls apart after just a few days.

Stop setting yourself up for failure.

ONE hand motion!  Use things like

  •     Hooks
  •     Open bins
  •     Lidless hampers
  •     Lidless trash cans
  •     A dresser drawer or bin/basket in the closet in which to DUMP freshly laundered socks (don't bother matching them or folding them...see below)
  •     Open hanging file folders in an open file box (without lid)
  •     Open storage shelves in the garage
  •     Hanging shelves that you hook over the closet rod to increase shelf space and inspire quick sorting

For #3, we're literally going to make life easy (or, easier...some things we face or have to do ARE a challenge, but let's look at things we can do to make life easier now).*

Buy easy to use and coordinated objects:  

  •     bed in a bag
  •     same color towels
  •     all socks (yes, ALL socks) the exact same color, brand, and style so that they match (and so you don't have to pair them up after washing them)
  •     matching end tables
  •     matching lamps
  •     matching food storage containers
  •     matching dishes
  •     limiting clothing to colors and styles that go with each other

And one of the best tips ever for ADHD?  Reduce inventory!

If you're really looking to make life easy, attempt minimalism.  You will have fewer things to keep track of, to distract you, to clutter your visual field, and to clean up which will equal a BETTER life with ADHD.

For example, one of my sons with ADHD moved house this year, from a small apartment, to a larger home which he shares with roommates.  During this move, he made the decision that he wanted as BARE A BEDROOM as possible.  He literally got rid of over half of his possessions, including several large pieces of furniture, clothing and shoes, books, papers, other media, and wall art.  His room is a minimalist's (and gamer's) dream:  a large closet for storage, a nice bathroom with plenty of counter and cupboard space for health and hygiene items, and his bedroom:  high-quality mattress on a modern black frame (with coordinating designer-look linens thanks to a bed-in-a-bag where everything matches), matching black-out curtains for better sleep, big screen tv, table, gamer chair, and PS5**.  He's living the dream with ADHD.

You can too!  Try some of these tips, and make your life easier.

But go finish that boss battle first!

To your best health,

Teresa

Teresa Heald, LCSW

*Bonus tip for people with ADHD, depression, anxiety, or who are experiencing high stress: 

Make, prepare, or purchase one-dish meals:  

  • stews/soups/chili/roasted meat with vegetables in slow cooker
  • casseroles 
  • hearty salad
  • burritos/tacos
  • pizza
  • Angel-hair pasta or gnocchi with canned sauce (these types of pasta take 2-5 minutes to cook, start to finish, and after draining them you can use the same pan to briefly heat up the canned sauce)
  • stir fry with pre-cooked rice added (or egg roll in a bowl).

**Full disclosure:  There's usually a pack of soda on the floor by my son's gamer chair, and empty cans surrounding it too, and sometimes a floordrobe, and his fully color- and pattern-coordinated bed is rarely made, you know.  Just keepin' it real...  But he can clean it all up in like 3 minutes.

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Depression, Anxiety, Stress, and Irritability

Do you feel that recently you have developed a shorter temper?  

Do you become overly angry when someone cuts you off in traffic?

Are you grumpy for no reason?

Is it difficult to NOT take things personally at home, at work, at the grocery store, or with friends?

Do you frequently become impatient while standing in lines at the post office, cafe, or movie theater?

These are all examples of irritability.  

Irritability can be a symptom of depression or anxiety (and also of stress, lack of sleep, being really busy, and many other situations and conditions, so please don't try to diagnose yourself with depression or anxiety).

When we become irritable, we tend to say and do things that we may later regret.  Maybe not big things, but smaller things that impact our jobs, our marriages, our kids, our neighbors, our friends, and our larger communities.

If you suspect that your irritability may be a symptom of something else, perhaps it's time to get some professional help.  A good place to start is with your primary medical provider, or a counselor or psychotherapist.  These professionals can provide screening for depression and anxiety, and they can also treat these health condition so that you begin to feel better and not so grumpy.

You don't have to suffer with irritability.  

Be nice to yourself and get some help.

To your best health,

Teresa

Teresa Heald, LCSW

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Test Anxiety

Are you a student?  Are final exams (sometimes called EOC's, or end of course exams) fast approaching?  Do you struggle with nervousness over taking tests?  

You might have test anxiety.

It's a thing.

It's not a mental disorder per se, but it is very real.  And the fall-out is real too:  individuals with test anxiety perform worse than their actual potential, and it can impact long-term quality of life.*

So, how do you "fix" it?

There are so many strategies to help you reduce text anxiety.  Here are a few general tips.

1.  It starts with good preparation the week or day before:  being well-prepared for a test will help you to feel more in control, and feeling more in control of a situation reduces the anxiety you will feel.  So, review your homework assignments, re-read or skim specific chapters, make flash cards (Quizlet.com allows you to make your own flash cards on your smart phone!) and complete the study guide given out by your instructor.

2.  Get a good night's sleep the night before your exam.  Here are some tips.

3.  On the day of the exam, try to eat a healthy breakfast, make sure you arrive at the test site early, and take deep breaths to lower your anxiety.  When anxious, humans take small, shallow breaths.  You want to breathe deeply, as if you were inhaling the aroma of a beautiful rose.

4.  Continue to breathe deeply during the test.  This will help you to think more clearly, and thus, perform better.

Bonne chance!

Teresa

Teresa Heald, LCSW

* Zwettler, C., Reiss, N., Rohrmann, S., Warnecke, I., Luka-Krausgrill, U., & van Dick, R. (2018). The relation between social identity and test anxiety in university students. Health psychology open5(2), 2055102918785415. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055102918785415  Retrieved on 04/20/2022 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069033/

Sunday, March 27, 2022

ADHD Treatment Options

Contrary to what you might have heard on social media, ADHD treatment is not solely limited to taking prescription medication.  Medication is just ONE way of treating ADHD in children, teens, and adults.  

Here's another way of looking at it:  if you have a toolbox and all it contains is a hammer, you would be missing out on all the other wonderful things you could build if you had a full toolbox with various other tools inside it.

Medication is just ONE tool.  It's a good one, but it's not the only one!

If you or some you love has been diagnosed with ADHD, please consult with a counselor or psychotherapist to discuss treatment options.  Medication is just one tool in the toolbox of helping individuals with ADHD to thrive. 

Be well!

Teresa

Teresa Heald, LCSW