Playa Vista Counseling - Blog

Turning Towards Your Partner

9/15/2022

By: Emma Eskildsen

Turning towards your partner is a simple but vital way to strengthen the connection and intimacy of your partnership. Looking into your partner’s eyes when they tell you about their day, asking them for their opinion on a tough situation, winking at them from across the room - these are all examples of turning towards your partner.

When two people are dating or in a relationship, their interactions are filled with bids for connection. Being receptive to and responsive to these bids makes our partners feel heard, appreciated, and loved. No one has the capacity to turn towards their partners one hundred percent of the time, and that’s okay! Sometimes we are preoccupied with other thoughts or responsibilities and miss opportunities to turn toward our partner. When there is disconnection or frustration in a relationship, it can be difficult for people to tap into their vulnerability and turn toward each other.

At Playa Vista Counseling, we work with couples to understand their communication styles and habits of interaction. Talking with a therapist can help couples attune to each other more effectively and more often. As a couple becomes more receptive to each other’s bids for affection, they are able to turn towards each other more frequently and foster a more intimate and fulfilling connection. Watching these connections grow is a true privilege that comes with couples therapy work!

Dating Therapy

9/6/2022

by Rachel Thomasian

Dating Therapy in LA, Couple in dating therapy

Dating Therapy in LA

Something that has changed significantly since I started providing therapy more than a decade ago is the kind of couples that enter my office seeking help for their relationship. What we’re seeing more of as therapists are couples who are dating or engaged seeking professional guidance to improve their relationship. What gets me most excited about this shift is providing dating therapy to start a young relationship on the path to success before negative patterns are created and established. Counseling for a dating or engaged couple provides the opportunity to establish healthy habits and behaviors. When providing dating therapy, we can practice positive communication, conflict resolution and emotional attachment that will help a relationship long term. With dating therapy, we’re providing tools, skills and scaffolding to help prevent or work through problems in a healthy way in order to prevent the corrosion that can come from resentment or unhealthy habits.

Another approach our therapy practice takes in helping clients is by providing individual therapy focused on their dating concerns. Our therapists work with people who are struggling to find fulfilling relationships as well as helping those who need guidance in their existing relationships. Dating therapy can be an excellent resource to those seeking support and skills to help make their relationships healthy and successful.

We love working with individuals and couples at every stage of their relationship. If you are curious about dating therapy and would like to learn how a Marriage and Family Therapist can help, please contact us to start a conversation!

The Gift of Grounding

9/1/2022

By: Emma Eskildsen

Whether you’ve just been given another demanding project at work, or your child just spilled something on the carpet, everyone has moments in their day where they would benefit from taking a moment to reconnect with themselves and feel grounded. When someone is grounded, they may feel less tense, more centered, and more balanced in their emotions. Grounding is an excellent tool for when we need to take a step back or take a breath after dealing with something frustrating or stressful.

Grounding can also be a vital practice for working through conflict with your romantic partner or your family. Studies have shown that when couples attempting to resolve a conflict are asked to take a twenty-minute break and read a magazine, they come back together to have a much more productive, empathetic conversation. Although sometimes in our society couples are encouraged to “not go to bed angry” and so on, sometimes it can be beneficial to take some time to cool off and ground yourself to re-enter a discussion with a clear head.

If a situation is particularly distressing, specific grounding techniques can be used to calm our nervous system and center on our breathing. One of these is the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise, where you take deep breaths while counting 5 things around you that you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can feel, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. Another way to ground yourself is to simply count your breaths, either with box breathing (5 seconds in, 5 second hold, 5 seconds out, 5 second hold) or counting 10 deep breaths and then starting over. However you prefer to do it, deep, intentional breathing helps us to regulate our emotions and indicates to our bodies that we are safe.
Utilizing grounding to work our way through tough conversations and stressful situations becomes more intuitive and natural the more that we practice. Even if we’re coming out of a casual or less hectic day, grounding is a skill that can help us connect to our bodies and our surroundings in a mindful, balanced way.

Featured on the HuffPost

12/29/2020

Rachel Thomasian was recently featured in an article on the HuffPost, which discusses how to address going to therapy with your parents. The article breaks down different ways to talk about going to therapy and how to help parent's with this process.

Feelings Wheel

7/27/2020

By: Stella Michon

When I start working with new clients they often struggle to identify language that properly captures their emotions. Most of us are able to determine if we feel negative or positive/pleasant or unpleasant/good or bad, but the specific feeling gets lost. The Feeling Wheel can be an amazing tool to help individuals increase emotional literacy, emotional awareness and resilience.

Putting language to our experiences can be a powerful way to harness our resources and strengths. Once we are able to access that we feel angry (or more specifically disrespected etc.); we are more able to identify the unmet need. Identifying the need can then allow us to understand what we can do for ourselves, or ask of our loved ones and community. If I know I am feeling scared or anxious, I may then recognize that my need for safety or security isn’t present. If I am feeling lonely or rejected, I may have a desire for connection or to be understood that is absent. Through the process of more accurately identifying, articulating and expressing our feelings we can then take better care of ourselves.

I recommend folks start by trying to access the core emotion found in the inner circle and work outward to find the more specific descriptor. Then pause, do a quick body scan, and ask a few questions. What does it feel like in your body when you are ____ (feeling word)? What thoughts accompany this feeling? What was the first sign this feeling was coming forward? Does this point to an unmet need or potential boundary violation? And finally, can you find a way to tolerate the discomfort of this feeling or do you need to find a coping skill to manage it and move through it? Is there something you can do (or not do) that will allow you to get some space if this feeling is negative or distressing?

Deepening your understanding of your inner emotional world can allow for emotional freedom. Give this process a try

The Feeling Wheel was developed by Gloria Wilcox
Image sourced: https://imgur.com/gallery/q6hcgs

Practice Gratitude, Not Guilt

5/25/2020

By: Stella Michon

As we navigate the effects of a global pandemic, I have been recommending my clients connect with a gratitude practice to maintain emotional well-being. Gratitude has an incredible way of grounding us; reminding us of our deeper values and essential needs. It helps us connect with our optimism and see the best in our community and in ourselves.

It’s natural to take pause in crisis to reflect on our blessings, but a word of caution about gratitude. Gratitude is not guilt. Pausing to take stock of what you appreciate should not become an opportunity to experience guilt or shame about how you have no reason to struggle. Thoughts like, “I shouldn’t complain”, “I don’t deserve to worry”, “I know this is stupid...but”. This form of comparison thinking can be detrimental to your mental health. In what ways are these thoughts mobilizing you to help yourself or others? How are they allowing you to be kinder to yourself or your larger community? My guess is they aren’t. Can you instead hold the understanding that you may have benefits in this moment; but you also have challenges?

This isn’t an excuse to turn away from the reality of hardship in others lives or deny your privilege; this is a way of holding space for the complexity of this experience. Others can be challenged with more hardship than you, but your sets of challenges are still important to recognize. Honoring your personal struggles, giving permission for sadness and grief to appear, will move you through this moment more gracefully than denying yourself the opportunity to feel. This is hard. This is scary. And yes- others may have it worse. But your experience of struggle needs space so that you can return to days where you feel hopeful and regain the ability give support to someone is need.

Managing Your Mental Health During The COVID-19 Pandemic

3/24/2020

by Rachel Thomasian

The past few weeks have been difficult and trying for all of us. While we're all working to manage our physical health, I'm here to offer some tips to help manage mental health. We're all living under circumstances prime for increased anxiety and depression.

Remember this is temporary
Like everything else, this moment is temporary. Come back to this mantra when you feel overwhelmed by the largeness of this moment. It doesn't help that we can't quite see an end in sight yet, what we do know is that there will be an end.

Limit access to news
Watching news is not conducive for mental health in normal circumstances, and this situation only makes it worse. Getting stuck in the news cycle can make it hard to escape any anxiety you're feeling about the situation. Limit your news intake to about 30 minutes per day and stick to print media over TV or social media.

Take it one day at a time
When I think about having to stay home and away from my loved ones for another month or more, feelings of hopelessness quickly arise in me. It's just too much to make sense of. But I know that I can get through this day, and I'll worry about tomorrow when the sun rises on it. Take this one day at a time and you've got a better chance at decreasing anxiety and depression.

Help someone in need
Studies show that we feel better when we're able to help others. Whether you donate money to a local food bank or help an elderly neighbor purchase groceries, find some way you can be helpful in your community. Being able to help someone else, no matter how small the gesture, helps us feel a little more in control of this world where we may feel so little of it right now, and just makes us feel good all around.

Feel your feelings
You might feel pressure to try to stay happy right now, but that's hard to do when you have so many other big feelings competing for your attention. It's okay to feel any of our feelings and ignoring them actually make them worse. It's okay to feel angry, sad and fearful. Make some time to feel and journal about them and they won't feel as powerful.

Maintain your physical health
Our physical and mental health go hand in hand. Staying indoors and eating pantry staples is not really best practice for either. Make some time to move around, go for a walk and make nutritious food choices as much as possible.

Keep in touch with family and friends
This level of isolation is difficult even for introverts. Use technology to your advantage as much as possible. Phone or video chat with family and friends to help you maintain some level of connectedness when we're all forced to distance.

Check in with a therapist
Now, more than ever, our mental health is going to be effected by the climate around us. Every aspect of life is counter-indicated for a healthy state of mind. Most therapists are offering telehealth sessions over phone or secure video conference tools to offer help. They can help manage your feelings of depression or anxiety with tried and true techniques. At Playa Vista Counseling, our therapists have recently completed courses to stay compliant on HIPAA regulations of telehealth as well as trainings to help clients through a pandemic. We're happy to offer a complimentary consultation to discuss how we can help.

The Iceberg of Conflict

2/21/2020

By: Stella Michon

Most couples walk into therapy hoping to minimize or eliminate conflict. They don’t know why they are getting into fights about seemingly worthless topics, or why these fights can become so explosive. So what causes our perpetual patterns of conflict with our partners? Why do you we keep getting in the same fight about trivial things? And how come the small daily bickering can bring up big emotions?

One of the key concepts I explain is that conflict is like an iceberg. There is a small portion of the conflict that is visible; above the water, the part that pertains to what we are fighting about in that moment. Beneath this there is a much bigger force influencing the conflict that remains unseen and unaddressed. Things like our unmet or unexpressed needs in the relationship, our family history and personal triggers, or building resentment towards our partner all compose this larger piece. In other words, couples aren’t just fighting about the dirty dishes. Couples are in conflict as a way to get the underwater problems addressed, or their desired needs met.

When we make the mistake of just focusing on the surface conflict, we miss the potential to create a greater understanding and emotional connection with our partners. In order to shift this I encourage clients to begin to check in with their emotional states, locate their most valued needs in their relationship, and notice the moments of conflict when they might be longing to express something deeper.

Reframing Resolutions

1/23/2020

By Stella Michon

As we step into the New Year we start thinking about big plans and resolutions, but how often do we actually employ change in the long term? And how helpful is the idea of a “resolution” in order to spark growth?

By now most of us know that the promises we make ourselves usually fall off the radar within the first month of the New Year. At this point, most of my clients have forgotten their initial intentions to change and find they are falling back into old patterns. There are a few issues with “resolutions” that can hold people back from meaningful changes.

Firstly, New Years resolutions have been socially characterized as making big changes. Most of the goals we set don’t feel tangible and require a total lifestyle overhaul. I suggest focusing on small more realistic goals instead.

I have also noticed that resolutions become an opportunity for self-reflection through an overly critical lens. There is little to no emphasis on our strengths and how we managed to navigate our year, even if it was a hard or disappointing one. Trying to find motivation after looking at your weaknesses is tricky. Instead, I often pose questions like, what from the last year would like to bring forward into the next year? What have you been doing right? What do you want more of that you’ve already managed to invite into your life?

Finally, most culturally encouraged resolutions surround external change. Loosing weight, getting a new job, finding a new hobby etc. Although some of these might be important to us, they don’t reflect the internal growth that can often hold more meaning. These external resolutions send the message that the new hobby or weight loss will create the fulfillment we are searching for. I challenge my clients to consider focusing on mindset work as a deeper and more sustainable way to achieve happiness. Making simple changes to our internal dialogue- catching ourselves in negative self-talk, setting healthier boundaries, learning to rely on internal validation vs. external validation are all examples of how to start this process.

Turning the Mind

12/17/2019

By: Katrin Steinert

It is human nature to want to avoid painful emotional situations and turn towards comfort. Avoiding pain can become automatic and in emotional situations it can be easy to seek comfort in maladaptive behaviors. Accepting painful psychological moments can become mentally taxing and become a big commitment. Turning the mind is a conscious decision to accept the reality of the situation and cope accordingly so it does not turn into denial. Turning the mind requires the act of choice, it is like hitting a fork in the road. The decision to accept is one that takes an inner commitment. The commitment does not mean acceptance has to happen first; it just means the road towards acceptance is the choice that has been made. To the turn the mind means the commitment must be made over and over again. The commitment must be conscious and consistent in order for the wave of pain to dissipate. Some examples of when to use turn the mind is when you are between a rock and a hard place. To choose the more effective choice can be very difficult when the maladaptive choice is the more comfortable choice. The maladaptive choice could be impulsive, not aligned with overall goals or can cause more suffering in the long run. The choice to reduce suffering can be a difficult one, which is why the commitment to acceptance is crucial.