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KidNews Today is my newsletter, which has been going out to counselors, physicians, nurses, clients, and friends for
11 years. Here are a few recent articles.
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Substance Abuse Resources: Click Here!
Something to Talk About with Kids & Teens:
Why should I have to do things I don't want to do?
So, you signed up for soccer, or basketball, or volleyball, or karate.
Everyone said it was fun...but you don’t enjoy it. Your parents
say, you asked for this activity and you need to stick with it. Perhaps they’ve
invested a lot of money in equipment and uniforms, and probably, if it’s a team sport, your teammates are counting on
you. You’d like to quit.
Why shouldn’t you quit? Here are some possible explanations:
Someday you’ll be in college, or in a job, or even part of a family, and get bored or annoyed and
want to quit. Practicing sticking with things now will give you mental muscles
in sticking with people and situations even when it’s hard. Every time
we make a decision to persist, we develop new connections in our brains and become stronger at keeping our word, and being the kind of person our friends and family can trust and respect.
Besides the practice at building your character, you might need to stick with a new activity for a while,
develop the skills it takes and make friends, before you can really tell whether you like the activity or not. A lot of things (like sports, scuba, art, dancing, cooking )are not nearly as much fun while you’re
learning the early steps and then, when things start to “click,” you realize how fun it is.
It’s something to talk about!
Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT
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Tip of the Month: Gratitude
Produces Happiness
From a
cognitive (thinking) psychology standpoint, happiness is the emotional result of having our expectations met. Now,
we may not want to use the word “expectation,” but you can exchange hope/wish/dream/want/demand, etc. Happiness has to do with met expectations, just as anger has to do with unmet expectations.
So one way to increase happiness is to refuse
to burden yourself with lots of unreasonable or unfair expectations. If you convince
yourself you cannot be happy unless you look 25 again, you will miss out on the happiness available in being a healthy, happy,
loved and loving person of whatever age you happen to be! That’s one, goofy example, but how often do we create unhappiness
by creating and then clinging to unrealistic expectations for ourselves and others?
We can turn all that around by developing
a habit of gratitude and appreciation. If you spend some time each day
deliberately focusing on the things for which you are grateful, and the things, people, and circumstances you appreciate,
you will gradually develop an increasingly strong mental habit of recalling those parts of your life. Some research points to doing this shortly before bedtime, so these are thoughts that accompany you into
sleep and may be processed into emotional memory as positive experiences.
Don’t keep gratitude to yourself;
share it with others. Simply expressing satisfaction or enjoyment with an experience can be a way to reinforce the positive
aspects of the experience for yourself and possibly change the course of a negative conversation. Remarking on the beautiful morning or how delicious the pizza is at lunchtime may sound trite, but it’s
better for you and everyone else than more kvetching about the bad news on the television or the boring/annoying/burdensome
tasks of the day at work. Those things will still be there whether you give them
lots of extra mental space or not. We have to live in the real world, but we
don’t have to give all the misery in it the penthouse suite in our heads. Let
it have the little studio apartment in your brain instead; you’ll feel much better! - Dr. Lori Puterbaugh
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Dolores (Lori) Puterbaugh, PhD, LMHC, LMFT
801 West Bay Drive, Suite 436
Largo, FL 33770
727-559-0863
Mental Health Counseling, Marriage & Family Therapy, Christian Counseling & Coaching
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