Category: Anxiety, Depression & More

What’s a Normal Level of Anxiety?

Stress and anxiety are connected but also different. Stress is related to feeling overwhelmed and incapable of managing the things that you have to do. Productive stress motivates you to get stuff done; poisonous stress contributes to worry and anxiety. You can’t get things accomplished to feel a sense of satisfaction. Stress can also be related to life circumstances such as poverty, illness and racism that cause you distress but have not clear resolution in sight.

Anxiety is a natural physiological and psychological response related to fears and worries. Panic, irrational thinking, reactivity, increased heart rate, perspiration, shortness of breath or insomnia are all signs of anxiety. Anxiety is about safety and security. Anxiety arises because people want to make uncomfortable feelings and uncertainty go away immediately–whether these concerns are based in reality or distorted and based on negative expectancy. Anxiety disorders often have a negative impact on several areas of someone’s functioning simultaneously.

It’s common for people to experience some type of anxiety seen as worry, dread, fear or distress. Some nervousness in a new situation or worry about chronic stress is expected. If these concerns fail to go away once you’ve learned how to manage the worry or stress and you experience persistent anxiety that is interfering with daily living, healthy choices, mood stability, or functioning at work, anxiety has become problematic and needs treatment. If your anxiety is higher than normal, first consult with your doctor to rule out any medical causes. Then, you’ve got to learn some tools to manage it. Meditation, yoga, daily exercise, therapy and medication can be extremely useful in reducing anxiety. You’ll benefit from learning how to soothe yourself and confront anxious, distorted thoughts to reduce their intensity. Don’t try to remove anxiety from your life: it doesn’t work because we need some anxiety to function, protect and aid us in dangerous or challenging situations. Instead, focus on anxiety reduction so that you feel like you have more control over it. The goal is teaching yourself how to manage the volume button on your anxiety rather than having blast you at full volume with its fears and worries.

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22 News Mass Appeal: Self-care tips to reduce stress and anxiety

Mass Appeal) – With the high levels of stress, anxiety and depression people are experiencing right now, it’s more important than ever to take the time for restorative activities. Dr. Sharon Saline, Clinical Psychologist from DrSharonSaline.com joins us with 4 easy ways to practice self-care. Click logo below to read more.

Psych Central: How to Help Your Family Cope with Numbness and Isolation During COVID-19

Do you notice that your child or teen is feeling more frustrated and hopeless as the shelter-in-place directive continues? I’m hearing from so many families that things seem to be getting increasingly worse. With thousands of schools switching their grading systems to Pass/Fail, many kids are doing the minimal amount of homework to get by. Some may not be keeping up with hygienic routines. Others have reverted to less mature coping skills, erupting and arguing more than they typically do. What can you do to combat their numbness, hopelessness or regressive behaviors? Click logo below to read more.

22 News Mass Appeal: Insight on helping kids cope with insecurity

(Mass Appeal) – The COVID-19 pandemic has turned lives upside down and it’s leaving many kids feeling more and more insecure. Clinical Psychologist Dr. Sharon Saline of DrSharonSaline.com, joined us with advice on helping children remember who they are. First, stated Dr. Saline, is normalize their feelings. Uncertainty is really the norm because we are separated from so many aspects of normal life. It’s reassuring to let them know the feelings they are experiencing are normal. Next, help them recall memories of who they are with pictures and video. They are currently unable to participate in the activities that define them, whether it be school, sports, chess club – all of this is on hold. Looking back on past accomplishments can help them stay in touch with who they are. Finally, pay attention to what they are doing well and don’t skimp on the hugs! Click logo below to read more.

Stressed Out and Overwhelmed: Managing Family Life During the COVID Crisis

FREE WEBINAR with Seth Perler and Dr. Sharon Saline May 6, 2020  8 pm EST Burned out on COVID-19?! We get it. Who would’ve thought that the world would change so dramatically? Schedules? What schedules? Kids are staying up late, sleeping to all hours, chores have gone by the wayside, parents are snippy with each other and the kids, and visa versa. Even the dog is unsure of what’s going on! Seth Perler, executive function and 2e coach and Sharon Saline, clinical psychologist, team up together to share the valuable insights they’ve gained during this pandemic. No crafts or meal-planning suggestions here, nor 5 simple steps to stay ahead of the school schedule. Instead, you’ll find in-the-trenches, boots-on-the-ground advice to take back the joy this pandemic has robbed your family of! We’re here to help you through the burn-out phase!

Register Here

Stressed out and overwhelmed: Managing family life during the COVID crisis In this 45 minute free webinar, with extended time for your questions, we’ll provide actionable advice on how to keep the peace and ensure fond, lasting memories once this pandemic is over. Themes we’ll discuss:

  • Stay connected: Prioritize the health of your relationships–to your kids, your partner and yourself.
    • Identify your feelings first – This is hard on you too. Accept your anxious feelings so you can meet your children and teens where they are.
    • Learn how to foster attunement and compassion – These skills are vital to maintaining secure parent-child attachments.
    • Empower yourself with the tools to deal with what’s coming at you – Learn how to be allies in creating good sleep, diet, exercise and meaningful contact with friends and family.
  • Manage ourselves first: Everyone has stress and concerns right now, but our own distress and anxiety must be managed first before we intervene with our children. otherwise, we can’t access our better selves in moments of upset and frustration.
    • Identify the bodily signs when your nervous system is becoming activated.
    • Learn effective, quick methods to self-regulate.
    • Own your feelings and be accountable: It’s okay to be upset but it’s not great to blow up about something or blame others and not take responsibility for it.
  • Reduce family reactivity: Acting out behaviors are messages that kids are overwhelmed and lack adequate coping skills
    • Understand your own patterns of dysregulation
    • Make different choices
    • Model alternative behaviors for your kids.
    • Improve how everybody interacts with each other.
    • Help your kids identify their body’s warning signs that they are triggered.
    • Create a plan for dealing with these inevitable moments when you are all calm that you can use later.
    • Be conscious of revving and call for a pause in the action.
    • Don’t judge and criticize others’ feelings, hold the space to let things be.
    • Use I statements, mirroring, reflective listening.
    • Put down electronics and pay attention.
  • Plan for work time and play periods:
    • Create a daily schedule that suits people’s needs and abilities.
    • Plan for quality time as much as study time.
    • Engage in family work time with planned breaks, distinct study periods and access to support.
    • Use incentives that matter to kids to improve their participation and buy-in.
    • Make sure you have daily fun time: have a daily activity that isn’t related to serious things such as playing board games, throwing a frisbee, shooting some hoops, riding a bike, baking, making music, etc.
    • Limit screens: screen-free dinners, digital sundowns, devices live in parents’ rooms.

Register Here

Feeling shut down? How to help your family cope with numbness and isolation during COVID

Do you notice that your son or daughter is feeling more frustrated, down and hopeless as the shelter-in-place directive and online schooling continues? I’m hearing from so many kids and parents that things seem to be getting worse as this confinement continues. With thousands of schools switching their grading systems to Pass/Fail, many kids are doing the minimal amount of homework to get by if not avoiding it altogether. Some may not be showering daily, brushing their teeth or putting on clean clothes. Others have reverted to younger and less mature coping skills, erupting and arguing more while cooperating less than they typically do. What can you do to combat their numbness, hopelessness or regressive behaviors?

The first step is acknowledging their very real losses and emotional pain. Nothing is familiar any more. They’ve had to let go of daily casual peer contact at school, planned social get-togethers, familiarity of learning environments and teacher interactions–the list goes on and on. Without having things to look forward to, they may get enraged or turn inward and shut down or both. This is especially true for kids who’ve had special events like graduation, sports seasons, dance recitals, drama performances and more snatched away from them without warning. You may well be experiencing pushback, non-cooperation and aggression in your family that you haven’t that you thought you’d moved beyond or is completely new. Let’s review common struggles for families and look at some useful tools for dealing with them more effectively:

  1. When kids are stressed, anxious and vulnerable, they will act out their concerns with you. A ten year-old boy shared his fear and confusion about living with COVID: “We don’t know when and if this is ever going to stop and if we’ll have our lives the way we want it. . .No matter how much you try not to think about it, you’re still going to focus on it. Like school and stuff but even going on a walk to refresh your brain, you have to wear a mask.”  He’s been arguing vociferously with his parents or running to his room, slamming the door and angrily crying more days than not. He doesn’t know how to wrap his brain around what’s going on. Sound familiar?

When kids act out towards their parents, they are showing us with their words and behavior that their emotions have overwhelmed their internal resources to cope. While it’s not pleasant, it is actually a positive thing in one important way. It shows you that they feel both connected and safe enough with you to share feelings that they can neither understand nor manage on their own. Whatever coping mechanisms you’ve helped them develop probably have weakened in the past month or two. Many kids with ADHD (and those without it too) are taking a few big steps backwards based on intense frustration, anxiety and disappointment. This kind of regression is normal during stressful situations. Nonetheless, you shouldn’t tolerate disrespectful, hurtful or inappropriate actions because of their struggles. Tip: Expect their pushback, notice when it occurs and plan for how to deal with it in advance. Avoid crises by planning and predicting issues that seem to trigger distress. Talk to your son or daughter, share your observations about their struggle and put a plan in place to calm things down when they occur. Create a timed break, a short regrouping to discuss how to move forward and then take that action: Use ‘Stop, Think, Act.’  2. Support their need for social connection by figuring out ways to contact and engage peers remotely and/or safely in person. Kids have to be able to experience themselves in relation to their friends to nurture their identity and make sense of the world. All of those casual “Hellos” and “How are you doing?” that occur while passing in school hallways, at lunch tables and on the playground contribute to how they see themselves and who they want to become. We have to assist them to reach out and stay in touch which often means you’ll be responsible for helping or supporting them to facilitate these activities. Tip: Try some of these ideas: Zoom sessions for Lego, drawing or games (Monopoly, Clue, Taboo, etc); chalk drawing outside (mark off sections that are 6 feet apart, put on their masks and watch them); tossing a frisbee or baseball with gloves and masks; share a baking project on FaceTime; bike riding with a friend who also has a mask on; group Zoom dinners, playing music or watching a show via screen share; creating videos with individual characters that are assembled by one or two kids. Anything that’s outside the box but still follows safety guidelines.  3. Families are tired of being together and everybody’s nerves are fraying. Neither you nor your child or teen can sometimes get adequate or enough space from each other. A thirteen year-old girl told me “Frankly, I’m sick and tired of them [her parents]. It’s been repetitive for weeks. I’d go anywhere as long as it’s not with them.”  Your kids love you and you them but 24/7 is A LOT OF FAMILY TIME. Everyone needs SOME time apart that isn’t instigated by arguments, tears or blame. Tip: Plan for quiet, alone time each day. Set a specific, timed period in your day for down time. This may or may not include screen time–that’s up to you. It’s best to talk together as family beforehand and list options for each person that make the most sense for them. You can all choose the same option daily or have rotating activities. Do whatever works best.   4. Things feel incredibly monotonous right now. When kids with ADHD and their Now/Not now brains look into an unknown future where things have already been canceled for this school year and summer activities are following suit, it’s very discouraging. Life can seem hopeless and they feel powerless and discouraged. You may well feel like this too. Tip; Think one to two weeks at a time. We really don’t know what will happen next month so let’s try not to focus on the unforeseeable future. Instead, create some simple things to look forward to now. Make specific plans for special, fun things like take-out from a favorite restaurant, home-made sundaes on a Thursday night, breakfast for dinner. Talk with your kids about some of their ideas to mix it up and then include their suggestions. 

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Hang in there. We are all struggling–kids and adults alike–to embrace our resilience and integrate the strangeness of our lives every day. As one of my mentors used to say, when you get to the end of your rope, make a knot and hold on. I’m certainly gripping the knot on my rope too. .   

5 Essential Emotional Survival Tips for Families Living with ADHD during Confinement

It’s hard to believe that we’re halfway through April and we are still living in confinement—all around the world. Although you may have established daily routines (and I hope you have because structure is comforting for kids with ADHD), emotions are probably running high. Each day, we face the same persistent stressors: home-schooling kids who are alternative learners, managing screen time, living with social distancing, trying to do your own work and getting chores among other things. While you manage the daily ins and outs well enough, you and your kids likely deal with the emotional fallout related to this situation regularly. Underneath any anger and anxiety lie sadness, disappointment, loss, frustration, and depression. Confusion about when this unpleasant period will end adds to the intensity of these feelings. What can you do to maintain calm, reduce conflict and offer support to your family?

Thinking all of the time about decisions and actions that used to be second nature is exhausting. How do we grocery shop? Who can I talk to and when? When can I get a minute to myself? Living in uncertainty adds to everyone’s fatigue and fosters helplessness. Sitting all day and spending a lot of time on screens may be necessary right now but it increases feeling sluggish and being cranky. We want to nurture an outlook for your son or daughter that encourages tolerating what’s tough without frequently acting out their frustration and hopelessness. Follow these steps to improve your family’s emotional stability and foster resilience:

  1. Accept where you are and what you feel: It’s natural for people to have low morale and feel stuck right now. Acknowledge these uncomfortable feelings without trying to fix them. Counter negativity with gratitude. Find one thing your family members appreciate every day, no matter how small: The privilege of eating a yummy dinner, seeing the tulips bloom, riding a bike or playing a game. It’s easy to dismiss what we have in favor of longing for what we don’t. Shift your perspective and help your kids zoom out like a camera to see the bigger picture without dismissing their real feelings about what’s been lost.
  2. Expect friction and strategize: When stuck in situations they don’t like and don’t see ending, people will rub each other the wrong way. Instead of expecting unrealistic harmony, plan for friction between siblings, your partner if you have one or other extended family members living at home. In a calm moment or planned family meeting, create two strategies for dealing with conflict: Option one and the back-up plan. Notice the signs when things are escalating and call a time apart for 10-15 minutes to cool down and regroup. Post a list of acceptable activities and tools to use to regain self-control. Build negotiation skills and practice forgiveness tools by relying on reflective listening (“I heard you say X, is there anything else?”) and focusing on moving forward through making amends and right action. What can your kids do for each other that shows they’re sorry rather than just saying it?
  3. Control what you can: Limit your exposure to the news by checking it no more than once a day. Things don’t change that much and all of the statistics can be frightening and depressing. Consider past difficulties and write down how you overcame them. Do this with your kids too and post this in the kitchen.  They just may glance at it when they’re having a snack and you can remind them about their survival skills if they don’t. Do something zany that injects some levity into the family and breaks up the monotony of our days. Set up a weekly ice cream or movie night; dance while cleaning up after dinner, dress up in costume for dinner one night. Do anything that brings some joy and laughter to your clan. This is what you can control so go for it.
  4. Give people the benefit of the doubt: No child or teen with ADHD wakes up in the morning and thinks “What can I do today that will really irritate my mom or dad?” They are trying their best with the limited resources of their developing brains and executive functioning challenges to get by. Take planned time-aparts: create specific short periods of low stimulation and calm for people to disengage from each other, rest and refuel. Focus on what really matters and shift your standards a bit. Neither kids’ homework nor home cleanliness has to be perfect and previous goals extracurricular activities can be lowered some. It’s okay to make adjustments and then ramp things up when we return to “normal.” We are living in an extended crisis that’s a marathon. Practice compassion for yourself and your kids.
  5. Connect with your posse and help your son or daughter do the same: Reach out to a circle of friends and family at specific times rather than checking Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, texts and emails throughout the day. Instead, set a few specific times to do so and then you can really enjoy your connections. We want to reduce media multi-tasking as much as possible which stresses our brain and leads to further exhaustion. Help your kids go for quality in their peer interactions by encouraging contact with one or two people at a time so there’s a better depth to the connection. Seeing caring faces smile back at you reminds you that we are all in this together: you matter to them and they matter to you.

Parenting in the Thick of It Podcast: Is Your Child’s Anxiety Escalating During Covid-19?

It can be so hard to be the sounding board for everyone’s worries during this time – it’s stressful for us. At times we can barely contain our own anxiety never mind help our children with theirs. Today on the show, I have Dr Sharon Saline, to discuss how we can handle anxiety during this stressful and challenging time. Tune in. Click logo below to read more.

Attention Talk Video : ADHD and Anxiety: A Basic Intervention

Many with ADHD have a lot of anxiety, but how do they manage it effectively? In this video ADHD coach Jeff Copper (www.digcoaching.com) interviews Dr. Sharon Saline on a basic intervention to manage worry and anxiety. While Dr. Saline shares the strategy, Jeff explains the role working memory plays and why the intervention works. If you are overwhelmed and have anxiety, watch and learn. Click logo below to watch the video!

Coronavirus Anxiety

Q: What is situational anxiety? A: Situational anxiety occurs when someone is worried about certain environments or events and what will happen in these contexts. When people suffer from situational anxiety, they feel frightened by and unclear about how to manage the circumstances that concern them. Sometimes they may exaggerate perceived negative outcomes as well. Q: What are some of the most common fears, anxious thoughts individuals are having in response
to coronavirus? A: In terms of coronavirus, common fears revolve around infection, lack of treatment and untimely death. People are anxious about how to protect themselves and their loved ones from contamination and not knowing what to do to ensure their safety increases their worries. Inadequate or incorrect information from the government worsens their fears. Q: What are the best ways to manage your
anxiety, particularly in relation to COVID-19?   A: It’s not easy to manage your anxiety about COVID-19 but you can start by learning about the facts of the virus and practical tools for managing infection in your home and community. Follow the CDC recommendations about hand washing, avoiding touching your face and other factors related to spreading germs. Repeat key points of this information to yourself when your anxiety rears its ugly head. You want to reassure yourself about the things you can actually do to promote and protect your well-being instead of the risks you can’t control that feed your fears. Read more about how to manage anxiety