Blog

Finding your own peace in the midst of chaos of life is essential to keeping your energy and ability to focus on the activities and responsibilities of daily living.

Grief is an experience we would rather avoid, yet in each of our lives we deal with grief from the time of our youths when we may lose a favorite item or a pet to the times in our lives when a loss is much more profound and significant. When we lose a parent, a close relative, a spouse or a child, we can feel overwhelmed and sometimes paralyzed by emotions.

As many of us know, the key to successful relationships is communication. Healthy communication or lack of it can make or break a relationship -- whether it is a relationship at home or at work. Communication is an active challenge in the best of times, but when you add in the extra roadblocks of mental illness, the path can be even more difficult.

Most of our childhoods were full of happiness, fulfillment and good memories. Even as adults we all have times when childhood memories beckon us to the point where we daydream and sometimes even hope that we could relive our youth. But for many, those childhood memories are not so good. Unhappy memories might include recollections of times when one (or sometimes both) of our parents or caregivers were under the influence of alcohol. 

We as a society are aware of the need to be preventive with many aspects of our health. We know that we should be going to the primary care physician minimally once a year for a check-up. We go to the dentist every six months to prevent tooth decay. But when it comes to our mental health, we tend to reject the idea of professional help as only necessary for “really bad” problems.