As we usher in the Year of the Dragon, let's harness the strength and resilience of this powerful symbol to prioritize our mental well-being. Just as the dragon embodies courage and vitality, cultivating inner strength to face life's challenges with resilience and grace can be work done in therapy. Remember, it's okay to seek support and take care of your mental health journey. As an Asian American therapist, I have noticed that our visibility, our strengths and our challenges tend to be placed on the back-burner for the sake of assimilation, or as an effort to stay culturally humble. However, our voices need to be heard, we have cultural collective and individual strengths to share with our spheres of influence. This new year, let's cultivate self-compassion, seek support when needed, and embrace our cultural strengths to promote resilience and well-being. Wishing you all a year filled with peace, prosperity, and mental wellness. Happy Lunar New Year! 🎊🏮🧧 

When Elmo—yes that Elmo from Sesame Street—recently asked everyone how they were doing on X, many folks took the opportunity to vent their emotional response to the state of the world. It was bittersweet to read what folks posted. Responses to his (can we refer to an imaginary muppet as a person-based pronoun?) post, delved into the psyche of society-at-large these days. “Trauma-dumping” was the best way to describe what Elmo got back from his innocent, off-the-cuff inquiry. So, what is trauma dumping, and are there positive effects?

Healthy mental health tips as we end the year and look ahead.

Support is the most effective way to promote your wellness, health, mental health and collective wellbeing.

Whether it’s finances, existential worries, grief and/or tension from our global realities, cultivating a healthy mind, body and soul to navigate through this season will help you feel good, despite.

Sometimes we underestimate our mental health and our mental well-being. We aren't taught how to care for ourselves mentally often enough in school. Or, often our families neglect the psychological experience that we have when growing up. There are so many other issues and needs that we need to attend to in life, it seems.

However, the foundation of our wellness and our ability to make good decisions, and our capacity to take on the things that we want to (including responsibilities or obligations) are really related to our mental Health capacity.

For instance, do you wonder why you get exhausted when you've had a conflict during the day or feel stress? That’s because our bodies respond when we have limited mental health capacity–we push ourselves, psychologically.

And, when you push your feelings down–whether you do so consciously or unconsciously, delaying therapeutic help can lead to negative emotions that feel more and more out of your control.

Christian mindfulness practice can help you get to the heart and soul of your practice. When we are burned out, we often feel numb, overwhelming stress, detachment, and loss of purpose and concentration. Unaddressed, burnout can lead to increased anxiety or even depression.

Christian mindfulness helps us re-center our thoughts and experience of life in the larger purpose that God has for you. As divine image-bearers, we already have purpose, we can exercise our agency and freedom to work, live and move in the world with dignity.

Three ways that mindfulness can help with burnout. We grow in peace in therapy when we can take what we have learned and practiced into our every day lives. There is direction and flow when we begin to address our nervous system and regulate our emotions with somatic practices such as mindfulness.

Walking meditation is a way for you to build mindfulness skills. As you take steps, it is a journey of growth therapy. Therapy that takes you into nature helps regulate your body and prepares your mind for the work of therapy. It is a type of somatic therapy and helps your memory stores in your brain. We can come back to the images you see and sensory inputs to help bring you back to a peaceful state.

Walking meditation is a relaxing mindfulness skill that can help you re-process memories, make meaning of your experience. Used therapeutically, it can help you move away from just needing to sit. Our bodies are meant to work in concert with our thoughts and emotions. We use mindful walking in concert with the work we have done, whether to prepare for session, or debrief, walking in mindfulness can help you get out of your head and into your soul and heart.