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Hard Talks

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Hello FPA Friends- and happy November! We’ve all just experienced the conclusion of a tumultuous election cycle. However you’re feeling about the outcome, you probably have people in your life who feel differently than you do. I’ve been talking with a lot of people lately about how to talk to their friends and family about their political opinions, especially when the beliefs underlying the opinions are in stark contrast. We want to be able to express ourselves, while we protect the health and the longevity of our most important relationships. Here are some basic suggestions to make your political conversations more productive and less harmful: Time, Place, and Temperature Don’t attempt a conversation when you’re already emotionally escalated, intoxicated, or distracted. Choose a time and a setting to talk when you won’t be rushed, and you have the option to end the conversation should it become unproductive. I highly recommend your conversation take place at least over the phone r
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Harvesting

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Happy October FPA! It’s harvest season! The weather is turning, the leaves are changing, fall is arriving. What does it mean to harvest? To gather the fruits of your labor? To dig up the product of your hard work and enjoy and rest and celebrate? The harvest season means many things to many cultures, but the themes of harvest season tend to be abundance and joy. This is a season to celebrate and be at ease. So many of us aren't familiar with peace and rest. We stay busy. We stay busy with kids and family and work and friendships and hobbies and communities. We forget how important resting is, how vital a harvest season is to the goodness and fullness of our spirits.   Abundance and joy . Close your eyes for a mindful moment and reflect on the words abundance and joy . Think hard about the last time you really felt joyful, about the last time you really felt at peace. Picture yourself in that moment, just content. A moment when there was nothing to do and nowhere you needed to be,
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Making Friends with Your Feelings: The Grief Edition

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Hello to September and hello to our FPA friends. This month I wanted to share with you something I’ve noticed in my 7 years practicing therapy that I find a bit strange. My patients’ concerns seem to come in waves of certain themes. What I mean is, I experience these clusters when a lot of people come in saying the same things to me in a marked period of time. I’ll have a few weeks where it seems like all of my patients, or a huge proportion of my patients, are dealing with the same thing. It’s always very specific. I don’t know how to explain the phenomenon. There are a few problems that I talk with almost everyone I treat about. I imagine that because we’re all humans navigating a wild world we’ll all experience flavors of the same dishes. We all know what it’s like to be sad, we all know what it’s like to be stressed, but every once in awhile I’ll have a few weeks when I hear over and over about a specific pain point. The theme of my work lately has been grief. Specifically, latel
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Transition Anxiety Anyone?

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  Hello FPA friends, and happy August! It's back to school season! Let's talk about getting back into the swing of things and how to ease the anxieties that might come with transitional times.   If you have small kiddos (like me), or even big kiddos, or work in the education system, you're preparing for a familiar transition in the next couple of weeks. Summer is coming to an end, which for the youngers is a very sad reality and for the parents is probably a reason to celebrate! Structure and routine are so helpful and for all the fun that summer is, structure usually lacks. It can be hard to shift back into a regulated sleep schedule, a routine that might include homework or after school activities, and adjusting to the social and intellectual demands of being a student. Maybe your little is starting kindergarten this year! What a mixed bag of emotions. Maybe your big is returning to college in a few weeks, and you know it'll be strange to have them out of the house fo
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Good News

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  What is the best news you’ve heard today? Someone asked me this question a few days ago. “What is the best news you’ve heard today?” It really caught me off guard, and I’m pretty hard to catch off guard. What an excellent question to ask another person. It immediately shifts our focus from all the demands that take up space in our minds to the topics that bring us joy and peace. Good news. Bad news. News. By nature, news is the recollection of the current events happening around us. If you’re a person who regularly consumes media via the internet or your television, you’re probably exposed to lots of news stories every day. Stories about what’s happening in our communities, our nations, stories about winners and achievements, stories about the economy and international relations, and on and on. There are stories available to us almost every moment of every day. Friends, be mindful of the media you consume and the stories you absorb on a daily basis. The stories we tell ourselves ha
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