Posts by Dana Pollack, LCSW, LADC
Gifts to Give Someone with Anxiety
If you do not have anxiety, it may be hard to understand what your loved one is going through. Whether it is your loved one’s birthday, a special occasion, Christmas, Chanukah, anniversary, or any other holiday, this present you give them will show them how much you care about their struggles with anxiety and that…
Read MoreLearning From Amanda Bynes’s Struggles with Addiction and Mental Illness
Amanda Bynes had a promising career as a child star with a lot of promise. What looked like bizarre behavior on Twitter and her series of arrests were just a cry for help for her mental health disorder. Bynes showed the world how with the use of the internet, we can see how mental illness…
Read MoreIs Social Media Anxiety Real?
Most people who have social media accounts are able to check their notifications without feeling any form of anxiety. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America says that 20% of people with social media account cannot go more than three hours without checking them which can be a symptom of social media anxiety. It is…
Read MoreHow to Help Your Depressed Child
Childhood depression can often be mistaken as just child-like hormones as a part of growing up. According to the Child Mind Institute Children’s Mental Health Report, 60% of children with diagnosable depression are not in treatment. It is important not to ignore the signs of childhood depression and to create a safety plan to ensure…
Read MoreWhat Happens When You Stop Drinking Alcohol?
Consuming large quantities of alcohol can have horrible effects on your body as well as your social life. You could be feeling very sluggish, sick, develop cancers such as towards your liver and colon, and you will not be the best you can be. When you stop drinking alcohol, you will get back everything you…
Read MoreHow to Overcome Anxiety on Your First Day of Work
It can be very stressful starting a new job. Even if this is familiar work that you have done for other companies, every company has their own rules and policies that must be followed. It is important to remember how normal it is to be nervous on your first day of work and to breathe,…
Read MoreHow to Go From Being Your Own Worst Enemy to Your Own Best Friend
We all have a tendency to be our own critic. We tend not to look at ourselves in a very appealing light when we compare ourselves to others. It is important to remind yourself every day why you stand out from the rest and how liking yourself is a very important quality people like to…
Read MoreHow Do Women Handle Anxiety Differently Than Men?
Because women are expected to be perfect in their roles of wife and mother, there is a lot of anxiety and stress that they experience to ensure they do a good job. The hormones of a woman tend to fluctuate more than a man which can affect their mood and they also do not hold…
Read MoreThe Addictive Qualities of Fortnite
Fortnite is one of the most popular video games in the world with over 125 million members playing. There have been reports of parents sending children to rehab as a result of their non-stop playing. In order to better understand what makes Fortnite so addicting, you should know the qualities that are in a video…
Read MoreWhat Gifts Do I Give Someone in Recovery?
It may be hard to shop for someone who is in recovery from substance abuse. If you ask them what kind of present they would want during a holiday, they may ask for money which leaves them the opportunity to buy more drugs. It is important to be mindful about what present you give to…
Read MoreSongs About Suicide Prevention
When the song “1-800-273-8255” by Logic premiered at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline rose up to 27%. Sometimes, you just need that one special song to remind you that it is time to seek help, especially when suicidal thoughts go hand in hand with substance use and…
Read MoreCo-Occurring Disorders: What Are They?
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) conducted a study in 2014 to assess how many people had substance use disorders (SUDs) and how many had mental illness. They found that 20.2 million adults experienced a SUD, while 43.6 million were experiencing a mental illness; of these, a total of 7.9 million people…
Read MoreDealing with Embarrassment after Relapse in Long-Term Sobriety
Relapse is one of the most commonly feared topics of addiction recovery, mostly because nobody likes to think of themselves as “starting over” or “going back to Day 1”. The reality is the relapse is a normal part of recovery; we’re naturally going to slip back into old addictive patterns of behavior from time to…
Read MoreJournaling Methods to Help with Anxiety
Anxiety means having a lot of troubling, worrisome thoughts racing in your head. If you do not find a healthy outlet for those thoughts, you might feel like you are going to explode one day. By using different journaling methods to clear your mind, you will feel like a huge weight has been lifted off…
Read MoreWhat’s New In Mental Health Science?
Because mental illness continues to have a giant stigma, this makes it continually hard to make advancements towards new treatment methods. The National Alliance on Mental illness say that 43.8 million Americans experience mental illness a year. With that many people struggling with their symptoms, researchers have been making huge leaps in 2018 towards new…
Read MoreThe Best Jobs for Those Living with Social Anxiety
Social anxiety can create a barrier when it comes to applying for companies. You get nervous when you are surrounded by people and in roles where you are forced to socialize with others. If you are struggling with social anxiety, you are better off trying to find jobs where you can work on your own…
Read MoreWhat Should Not Be Ignored When You Are Depressed
Depression can make you feel so sad that you feel no urge to want to get out of bed when you wake up. By doing nothing about your depression, you are only making it persist or get worsen. According to The Power of Positivity, there are certain elements that may seem minor in treating but…
Read MoreWhen Have You Lost Control with Exercise?
Exercising is very good for your body as you are strengthening the bones in your body, getting your heart pumping, and releasing all of those feel-good endorphins to keep you on an all-day high. But too much of a good thing can turn into a bad thing if you lose control of what makes you…
Read MoreCouples Rehab- Healing Together
It has been known to happen where couples are both suffering with addiction and can cause serious problems in their home in regards to their children, health, and finances. If one person in the relationship goes to rehab, there is a big chance of relapsing if your partner refuses to quit. If both people in…
Read MoreHow to Fight Through Depression at Work
Going to work can do wonders for your depression in that it will give you something to do every week that you will enjoy and feel rewarded by the end of your shift. Work can also worsen your depression from the sense of having no control or if you do not like your job. Since…
Read MoreWhat Are The Little Things That Can Help Someone with Depression?
While helping someone with depression can mean learning more about depression itself, it’s also the little things you do that can have a great impact in their overall well-being. According to Huffington Post, the smallest but most important things you can do for someone with depression can be offering gifts of kindness or looking for…
Read MoreStaying Motivated in Long-Term Sobriety
As human beings, we’re naturally going to “fall off the bandwagon” every now and then. We’re going to make mistakes, get lost, take a few steps back and find our way again – and it’s all part of the journey. Even those who have experienced 10 excellent, sober years may find their recovery motivation start…
Read MoreHow to Have a Sober St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day is known for going to pubs and drinking pints of beer with your friends. If you are in recovery, on the other hand, you should not feel like you need to miss out on the fun because you can longer drink. You can celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by remembering what the holiday…
Read MoreWhat Can Make Your Depression Worse
Having depression is when your sadness interferes with your everyday activities. Even if you are in treatment for your depression such as going to therapy and taking medication, or integrated treatment for depression and addiction, it can still mean that you are repeating habits that can make your depression worse. It is important to make…
Read MoreHow Weather Can Affect the Severity of Alcohol
If you are too hot or too cold and you are drinking, you will not be aware of your own body’s temperature. This can cause you to develop a lot of health problems whether it is heat stroke from being in the sun for too long or you freeze to death. It is important that…
Read MoreRelapse Prevention: How Can I Discover What Triggers Me Personally?
We’re all made up of different thoughts, feelings and life experiences. Just as a person entering a new relationship will need to learn more about what they can/cannot say to their new beau because of past experiences, you’ll need to learn about yourself in recovery to discover what triggers you. Not one of us are…
Read MoreContinuing to Build Your Spirituality in Long-Term Recovery: 12-Step Programs
12-Step programs have helped thousands of people strengthen their recovery over time, and much of it is because of their focus on spirituality, the same foundation behind our 12-step treatment program. Those in active addiction often find a void that they’re trying to fill: a sense of loneliness, anger, discomfort, pain, or something else that…
Read MoreWhat Strategies Are There to be More Mindful in the Present Moment?
Author Lawrence Peltz stated in his book titled, The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery, “Rather than feeling compelled to fall into our addictive behavior whenever we feel the urge, we discover that we can create a gap between impulse and action – we take a breath, feel whatever is behind our urge, and decide whether or…
Read MoreMaintaining Recovery Long After Treatment: Key Elements to a Lifestyle of Sobriety
Living a life of sobriety is easily one of the most rewarding paths you could take. You’ve spent so much time working on bettering yourself, and you can probably list many of the steps that you’ve taken over the past year (or years) that have lifted you up in recovery. A lifestyle of sobriety is…
Read MoreHow Can I Celebrate Milestones in My Recovery?
Congratulations! Whether it’s your 1-week, 1-month, 1-year or 1-decade of sobriety, you’ve been taking some amazing strides towards your health and wellbeing. Only you can take the steps that you’ve been taking to improve your life, and you’ve been taking them. Milestones are a huge part of recovery because they remind people of how far…
Read MoreCould You Be Sabotaging Your Sobriety?
A common assumption for those who’ve completed treatment is that they’ve got everything figured out. They’ve made it through a year, or two years, or twenty years or more of sobriety thus far, so they shouldn’t have to worry anymore about relapse, right? Well, not quite – recovery is a lifelong process, and that doesn’t…
Read MoreAcceptance, Gratitude and Strength: Positive Messages Received in Recovery
When we’re in the throes of addiction, we often lose sight of what’s real. We become confused about our sense of purpose in life, sometimes with the belief that substances are all we’re meant to seek out. We may lose aspects of our lives that were once near and dear to our hearts – such…
Read MoreWhat are the Dangers of Complacency?
Complacency is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as, “a feeling of calm satisfaction with your own abilities or situation that prevents you from trying harder.” We all become complacent from time to time; we stop pushing ourselves to achieve new goals at work, we become a bit too comfortable in our relationship, and we nonetheless…
Read MoreRecovery Life: The Importance of Establishing Structure in Your Daily Routine
When we’re actively involved in addiction, our daily schedule involves the intense desire to abuse substances. As Harvard Health indicates, craving, loss of control, and continued involvement in substances – despite their consequences – essentially hardwires our brain to want nothing else. In 2017, CNBC covered a study that surveyed 1,057 individuals who identified as…
Read More7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Hide Your Depression
Depression is the number one cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. In America, an estimated 16 million adults suffer an episode of depression every single year. Symptoms of a depressive epsiode can include persistent sadness, fatigue, disturbed sleep, physical aches, poor concentration, loss of appetite, slow movements, and thoughts of death,…
Read MoreCoping With Time Change When You’re In Recovery
For people in the US, daylight saving time begins on March 10. That means we set our clocks forward and lose an hour of the day. For most people, the beginning of daylight saving is harder than the end. Most people’s circadian rhythms are slightly longer than 24 hours, so losing an hour feels like…
Read MoreFinding Our Purpose
A universal part of the human experience, whether or not we’re living with addiction and mental illness, is the existential crisis of not knowing our purpose in life. When we’re recovering from addiction, we often feel an acute sense of overwhelm and pressure when we experience this kind of crisis. We already feel like failures…
Read MoreWhich Habits Will Make You Happier in Addiction Recovery?
Everyone wants to be happy, but for someone recovering from addiction, happiness can mean the difference between a sustained recovery and falling back into old destructive patterns. Much of what we do in life is determined by our habits, those things we do every day without even thinking about them. Bad habits can sabotage your…
Read More5 Ways to Exercise When You Aren’t “In The Mood”
Regular exercise is one of the best things you can do for yourself in recovery. Numerous studies have supported the many benefits of exercise. It has been shown to increase activity in your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for executive functions like planning, self-control, emotional regulation, concentration, and working memory. It has…
Read MoreCelebrating Sobriety
We live in a culture that glamorizes substance use but stigmatizes addiction. We celebrate drinking alcohol and using drugs, but we demonize addicts. Our mainstream culture, our popular media, our music, television, movies, video games, social media and entertainment all trivialize and normalize excessive drinking, drug use and addiction. We’re brainwashed to think that a…
Read MoreHow Do You Overcome Fear of Change in Addiction Recovery?
Change can be scary for anyone. You don’t quite know what to expect. You may face new problems you don’t know how to deal with. Your life might get worse. Fear of change is especially scary for someone considering getting treatment for addiction. Addiction is often characterized by set patterns and rigid behavior. People with…
Read MoreCreating Healthy Habits in Recovery
A successful, lasting recovery depends on our willingness to shed our unhealthy habits and replace them with new, empowering ones. Living with addiction, we’ve developed all kinds of habits that fed our insecurities and self-hate, that perpetuated our cycles of self-destructiveness and self-sabotage, that exacerbated our addictions and kept us living in pain and fear.…
Read MoreUnusual Ways to Improve Your Mood
Whether you’ve struggled with addiction, depression, or anxiety, you are likely to have days, or even weeks, when you can’t seem to get out of a funk. If you’ve struggled with depression, you might fear the onset of another episode. If you have recently started addiction recovery, you may be suffering from post-acute-withdrawal syndrome, or…
Read MoreDo Your Habits Sabotage Happiness in Your Recovery?
Finding happiness is challenging for anyone, and it may be especially challenging for someone recovering from addiction. Maintaining a positive attitude in recovery requires learning new skills and ways of thinking. On top of that, you have to learn to manage cravings and deal with life’s stress without resorting to old destructive coping mechanisms. Many…
Read MoreThe Journey of Recovery
After years of living with painful addictions and mental health issues, we’re inclined to think that our recovery will be straightforward and simple, based on a foundation of sobriety, committed abstinence from our addictive substance or behavior. While sobriety is a large part of recovery, it is only one part. Our recovery is not a…
Read MoreReasons to Stop Drinking Today
For some people, the reasons to stop drinking are obvious. They may have a health problem such as liver disease or heart disease and their doctor has advised quitting. They may have had a brush with the law, such as a fight or DUI. It may be obvious that drinking is hurting them in other…
Read MoreWhy Don’t People Seek Help for Mental Illness?
Awareness of mental illness and the need for treatment has been growing in recent years. This is in large part due to campaigns designed to raise awareness of depression, addiction, bipolar disorder, and suicide, as well as more celebrities being open about their own mental health struggles. Despite this progress, many people who need help…
Read MoreBreaking Down the Barriers of Shame and Stigma
One of the things so many of us continue to carry with us into our recovery, even after doing some great, transformative healing work, is our sense of shame. We hold onto intense guilt for years after the mistake or wrongdoing in question. We refuse to forgive ourselves. We see ourselves as shameful, immoral, bad…
Read More6 Ways to Make Relaxation Part of Your Addiction Recovery
Relaxation is an essential recovery skill for several reasons. First, and most importantly, stress is a major relapse trigger. When you feel stressed and overwhelmed, you become negative and feel like recovery is pointless. Often times, you have used drugs and alcohol for years as a way to cope with stress. Due to the way…
Read MoreCould Impostor Syndrome Threaten My Recovery?
Impostor syndrome is the feeling that your successes in life are merely the result of luck or deception and that you don’t really deserve to be where you are. People with impostor syndrome often feel like frauds. Whenever someone compliments them on having done something well, they feel inwardly guilty, like they’ve managed to pull…
Read MoreBenefits of Pets During Addiction Recovery
Loneliness is one major challenge people often face early in recovery. It’s usually a good idea to distance yourself from old friends who drink or use drugs since they can be a major trigger of cravings. However, you may not yet have any friends to replace them. People typically find loneliness stressful and depressing. Chronic…
Read MoreCreating a Recovery Community
After completing a treatment program, one of the most important things we’ll want to do in our recovery is create a community for ourselves based on sobriety, mutual support and connection. While living with addiction, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues, many of us grew accustomed to completely isolating ourselves from our loved ones,…
Read MoreGratitude in Recovery
Being grateful in life, and in recovery specifically, is a gift in and of itself. Gratitude allows you to find beauty in everything you see and experience. Gratitude turns painful experiences into lessons that we can appreciate and apply directly to our healing progress. Being grateful helps us to see the good in everything. Having…
Read More8 Tips for Living with Someone in Addiction Recovery
Finishing inpatient treatment for addiction is a great beginning to recovery. It creates a solid foundation to build on. If you have a loved one who struggles with addiction, you will play a role in building on that foundation if you want your loved one to succeed. Recovery is challenging for both the person in…
Read MoreResilience in Recovery
The process of recovering from our addictions challenges us mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Recovery shows us just how strong we truly are. It puts us to the ultimate test. Recovery from any addiction or mental health issue requires certain skills– willpower, resilience and resolve being some of the most important. Resilience is our ability…
Read MoreIs There Any Such Thing As an Addictive Personality?
The idea of an addictive personality is misleading. There are many aspects to addiction and so far no one has identified a single personality profile for people who develop substance use disorders. What’s more, only about half of people with a substance use disorder have more than one addiction, excluding smoking. If an addictive personality…
Read More8 Subtypes of Depression
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 16 million American adults suffer from depression every year. Although we typically talk about depression as if it were one condition, it is actually an umbrella term that includes many related conditions. It may be helpful to know something about these different subtypes, since they often…
Read MoreIs This the Year You Get Sober?
Sobriety may seem like the biggest decision you’ll make all year, but it’s more achievable than you may realize. When alcohol becomes the centerpiece of our lives, for a while there it feels like everything is fine. We go out more, we have fun and socialize, and we drown out any of the pain that…
Read MoreWhy Goals Are Better Than New Year’s Resolutions
Around this time of the year, it’s common to hear people talking about New Year’s resolutions. Weight loss, fitness goals, smoking cessation, travel plans and more fill the air as friends and family share with one another what they hope to complete within the next 12 months. For years, New Year’s as served as a…
Read MoreApplying the 12-Step Program to Your Recovery in the Upcoming Year
With the New Year having just taken a turn, many people are looking to change their lives for the better. If you’re currently in recovery, you may plan to become stronger in using the coping skills you’ve learned, or to continue to remain diligent in your sobriety. It’s quite an accomplishment to have sought treatment,…
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