Why Summer Isn’t Always Sunny: Coping with Seasonal Stress

 

When we think of summer, we picture sun-drenched days, beach trips, and carefree vibes. But for many, summer can actually bring more stress, anxiety, and pressure — and that’s completely valid.

☀️ The Hidden Pressures of Summer

While winter is often associated with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), summer has its own version: reverse SAD, or summertime depression. This can include:

• Disrupted sleep from longer days or heat

• Pressure to be “social” and “fun”

• Body image concerns during swimsuit season

• Financial stress from travel or child care

• A break in routine (which can be destabilizing)

If summer doesn’t feel light and joyful for you, you're not alone. Many people struggle in silence, wondering, “What’s wrong with me?” — when in truth, the season simply affects people differently.

🌊 How to Cope with Summer Stress

Here are some ways to navigate the mental challenges that summer can bring:

1. Protect Your Routine

Routines give your brain structure. While it’s great to be flexible, keep anchor habits like sleep, meals, and movement consistent.

2. Say No Without Guilt

Not every BBQ or pool invite needs a “yes.” Give yourself permission to skip out and recharge.

3. Dress for Comfort, Not Comparison

Wear what makes you feel confident, comfortable, and like you. Curate your social media if it feeds unrealistic body standards.

4. Rest Is Still Productive

We often treat summer like a race to have the most fun. But rest is healing — and that’s productive, too.

5. Talk About It

Share your experience with a trusted friend or therapist. Naming it often reduces the shame around it.

🌈 It’s Okay to Feel Mixed About Summer

You don’t have to “love summer” to enjoy it on your own terms. Find moments that support your version of peace, whether that’s sitting quietly on a porch, reading under a tree, or catching a solo movie in an air-conditioned theater.

Mental health is year-round. Be kind to yourself in every season.

What is Holistic Trauma Therapy?

 

So earlier this month we educated you about holistic therapy. Now we want to discuss holistic trauma therapy. Before we dive into holistic trauma therapy, we have to understand what trauma is. Trauma is a mental health condition in which people experience a variety of symptoms following a traumatic event. These symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, anxiety, avoidance, and changes in mood and thinking. Trauma typically happens due to the experience having an impact on how you cope and function.

 

There are different types of trauma that can happen throughout one’s life. The different types are as follows:

• Abuse
• Assault
• Car Accident
• Death of someone close to you
• Divorce
• Abandonment
• Imprisonment
• Natural Disasters
• Injuries
• Rape
• Serious Illness
• Violence
• Witnessing any of the different types of trauma already listed

 

Some of the symptoms of trauma are as follows:

• Intrusive Thoughts: thoughts that continuously occur when you have a reminder of the traumatic event trigger you.
• Hypervigilance: This is when you are very aware of your surroundings. You tend to be more on guard and very protective due to your body trying to protect you from any threats or danger.
• Hyperarousal: This is when you are very on edge. Anxiety is taking over, and you are then put into fight or flight mode. Typically, with this symptom you will have an exaggerated startle response like a loud noise happens and you jump.
• Avoidance: you will avoid any people, places, or events that will trigger any reminder of the traumatic event
• Loss of Interest: you lose interest in things you enjoyed doing before the traumatic event or you will start to push people away due to becoming detached from others.
• Negative Beliefs in Others or the world: You tend to feel as if no one can be trusted, the whole world is dangerous.
• Consistent Negative State: You may feel shame, guilt, sadness, or anger due to the event.

Other symptoms include:

• Sleep Disturbance
• Irritability or Angry Outbursts
• Concentration Issues
• Reckless or Self-Destructive Behaviors
• Blaming Yourself for The Consequences of The Event
• Inability to Feel Positive Emotions

 

Now that we have an overview on what trauma is and the symptoms you could experience, let's talk about how Enlightenment Counseling can help with your trauma in a holistic way.

 

First, we focus on holistic care. This means treating you as a whole person with mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual needs that are also within social and cultural aspects. These different aspects all intersect, interact, and affect each other and need to be treated as a whole rather than individually. We know that there is so much more to you than just your symptoms. We make sure that every part of your life is taken into consideration when treating your trauma.

 

Next, we are a trauma informed practice. Throughout your treatment with us from start to finish we are mindful that you have experienced trauma that is the cause of what you are experiencing today. We work to heal you in and out rather than just treating your symptoms.

 

Finally, we are all about healing. We are healing centered in our practice. I mean our slogan is Find Your Path to Healing. We focus on finding your path to healing by helping you understand that trauma doesn’t define you. You have more to offer. We pull in all of your strengths, abilities, and resources to help create a path to a place of enlightenment.

 

All of these aspects are combined with the therapies that we offer. The therapies we use to treat trauma are exposure therapy, cognitive processing, trauma narrative, trauma release exercises, and combining all of these things with our integrative, mind-body, and somatic therapies.

 

The following are descriptions of the different types of trauma-based therapies we use in our practice.

• Exposure Therapy: This type of therapy helps you overcome things, activities, or situations that cause fear or anxiety.
• Cognitive Processing: This is a type of cognitive behavioral treatment focused on helping you through your thoughts that are "stuck" about a traumatic experience.
• Trauma Narrative: This is a psychological technique that helps you make sense of the experiences you have suffered.

 

Check out our Holistic Therapy blog to get more information on our integrative, mind-body, and somatic therapies.

 

Holistic Trauma Therapy can be very beneficial when someone is dealing with symptoms of trauma. It can help you to process your feelings and emotions and process the event itself. Sometimes facing the trauma head on in a safe space is the most beneficial thing you can do for yourself on top of learning coping skills to help you function better on a daily basis. Some other benefits of holistic trauma therapy are as follows:

• Reduce fear or avoidance
• Improve coping skills
• Build Trust Again
• Challenge Negative Beliefs
• Offer Validation

 

When you begin holistic trauma therapy there are some things to take into consideration.

1. Are you ready: What is your commitment level? You have to be committed to wanting to change your current state in order for the treatment to be effective for you. It takes a lot of work to get back to a stable way of functioning and that work falls on you.
2. Risks: Always know that things will get worse before they get better. If you start to open up your trauma and process it, you are going to feel "icky". It will not be a fun time, but it will be therapeutic. Sometimes negative thoughts can take over due to everything being relieved again. Sometimes safety plans (an agreement with therapist if you have plans for suicide) are put in place to help keep you safe from harming yourself.
3. It’s a Process: Therapy in general is a process but that is especially so when trauma is involved. We want to make sure that you have a good foundation of coping skills and techniques to help manage your symptoms such as emotions, and behaviors before we dive into the heavy stuff. This is key to making sure you are safe but also to help you function better rather than the trauma taking over, and you lose ability to function. 

 

Overall, we hope that you found this blog beneficial. We hope that it will give you a good idea of what trauma is and how we go about treating it. There is so much that goes into holistic trauma therapy.  If you found this blog educational follow us on social media to keep updated on our practice and different holistic therapies that we plan to provide in the future.

What is Holistic Therapy?

 

If you have been following us on social media or checked out our website, you will know that Enlightenment Counseling is a holistic practice. We focus on holistic therapy and holistic trauma therapy as well. So, we thought why not provide an education post that explains what it is that we do with holistic therapy.

First, we have to understand what holistic therapy is. Holistic therapy addresses the mind and body to support your mental health and healing. It helps to bring in all the layers and aspects of yourself into therapy. At Enlightenment Counseling, we work to combine mental therapy, emotion therapy, and physical health into helping you heal. We

treat you as a whole person with mental, physical, emotional, spiritual needs that within social and cultural aspects.

These different aspects all intersect, interact, and affect each other and need to be treated as a whole rather than individually. We focus on finding your path to healing by helping one understand that trauma and or mental health illness doesn't define us. We have more to offer. We pull in all your strengths, abilities, and resources to help create a path to a place of enlightenment. Enlightenment, as we see it, means to find peace in all areas of your life. This is the overall goal of holistic therapy.

Next, we take a look at what holistic therapy can help with. Holistic therapy can help with many different mental illnesses. Specifically, we like to focus on treating the following mental illnesses,

• Trauma
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Emotional Difficulties
• Stress

Now let’s focus on the benefits of holistic therapy. There are many benefits to using holistic therapy. Holistic therapy promotes overall wellbeing. As we have mentioned, we are trying to get to that place of enlightenment which is finding peace in all areas of life so holistic therapy can help us to get there. Holistic therapy uses a whole-body approach that addresses mental, physical, and spiritual health. We love the whole-body approach because so often you see that people think you should only focus on the mental aspect of treating mental illness but the issue with that is there are so many other aspects going on in your life that contribute to how you are feeling mentally. If we treat all of those things, you have a better chance of healing as a whole. The final benefit that we see beneficial is that holistic therapy helps you to see different connections between aspects of your life and how it affects your health and wellness. This one is huge because we struggle at times to have that self-awareness that says hey this is happening because of x,y, and z. If we see the connections that everything has in our lives, then we can take steps to make changes and heal.

Finally, lets look at the different therapies that we offer at Enlightenment Counseling that are Holistic focused and help to understand how each therapy can help you overall. These therapies are broken down into different categories based on what they help. The categories are integrative therapy, mind-body therapy, and somatic therapy.

1. Integrative Therapy is an individualized, holistic approach to therapy that combines ideas and techniques from different therapeutic techniques of thought depending on the unique needs of a client. The main integrative therapies we focus on are as follows,

 

Holistic Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is first. This therapy has many different aspects that we use to provide Holistic focused CBT. The following are all the techniques that make up holistic focused CBT,

• Strengths based: This approach focuses on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, rather than on your weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings.
• Solution Focused: This is a type of therapy that places importance on discussing solutions than problems.
• Creative Therapy: This one-use art forms such as dance, drawing, or music to help treat your mental health
• Body-Mind Work: This approach uses therapies that use the body to affect the mind, such as yoga, progressive relaxation, meditations mindfulness and hypnosis.

 

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Talk therapy that helps you learn to acknowledge, bear, and put into perspective your emotional lives.

 

Motivational Interviewing: helps people resolve ambivalent feelings and insecurities to find the internal motivation they need to change their behavior.

 

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy: skills training to improve emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance and mindfulness.

 

Insight-Oriented Psychotherapy: help you understand how past experiences can affect your current behavior.

Techniques used:

• Free association
• Dream Interpretation
• Exploration of Past
• Interpretation of symptoms
• Confrontation
• Psychoeducation

2. Mind-Body Therapy is a different technique designed to enhance the mind's positive impact on the body. The main mind-body therapies we focus on are as follows,

Meditation Practices is a big one that we like to use. We find it helpful because meditation can help to regulate yourself. The following are different types that we recommend to our clients to use,

• Body Scan Meditation
• Concentrative Meditation
• Mindfulness Meditation
• Loving Kindness Meditation
• Breathing Meditation
• Grounding Meditation

Guided Imagery: This therapy focuses on mental images in order to evoke feelings of relaxation, is based on the concept of mind-body connection.

 

Mindfulness Techniques: It focuses on learning how to be more aware of thoughts, feelings, emotions, surroundings, and situations, and to reduce automatic responses.

 

Breathing Exercises: These exercises focus on your breathing and help you to self-regulate using breathwork.

 

3. Somatic Therapy is a body-centric approach that works by helping to release stress, tension, and trauma from the body. The main somatic therapies we focus on are as follows,

Stress Management is something that we all struggle with. This is very helpful when looking at a holistic approach. The following are different techniques we use to manage your stress holistically,

• Task Management: This is used to help manage your tasks better and provide yourself structure by creating a schedule or routine with your daily tasks
• Stress Journaling: This technique is used as a mind dump. It allows you to journal about whatever comes to mind that is stressing you out.
• Mood Tracking: We use mood tracking to help notice patterns in your mood throughout your day to determine if there are other environmental or social aspects to your mood shifts.
• Relaxation Techniques: These techniques are used to help create relaxation from stress such as grounding, self-soothing, and muscle relaxation.
• Self-Care Practice: We always recommend finding different self-care practices to add into your daily or weekly routine to manage your stress. This could be a bubble bath or a nice dinner. Check out our blog on self-care for more ideas.
• Mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy: This is a therapeutic technique in which we use practices like meditation and yoga to help reduce stress levels. 

Trauma Focused Therapies are the different types of trauma-based therapies we use in our practice. The following are different techniques we use to work through trauma holistically,

• Exposure Therapy: This type of therapy helps you overcome things, activities, or situations that cause fear or anxiety.
• Cognitive Processing: This is a type of cognitive behavioral treatment focused on helping you through your thoughts that are "stuck" about a traumatic experience.
• Trauma Narrative: This is a psychological technique that helps you make sense of the experiences you have suffered.

Overall, we hope that you found this blog beneficial and follow us on social media to keep updated on our practice and different holistic therapies that we plan to provide in the future.

 

How to create a routine to support your mental health and why it is important

 

 

The alarm goes off, its Monday morning. The idea of getting out of bad sounds like a horrible idea. Your body is dragging, and you can't seem to get your eyes to stay open. The amount of exhaustion that has come over you is unbearable. Do ya'll know that feeling? It means it's time to create a good mental health routine like yesterday.

 

Routines are so important to one's mental health. Creating good habits to incorporate into your life is helpful too. Routines help you to create stability for yourself, it helps to increase your energy, productivity and positivity.  

 

So if we are looking at creating a routine, what should be the components? What are the important things that you must do throughout the day? Wake up time, bedtime, breakfast, lunch, dinner, relaxing time, medication management, exercise, and work. Other things to add in are things you find pleasure in, relationships, and to do list. We want to create a routine that provides you a daily schedule that incorporates self-care, mental health wellness, daily chores, and work schedule.

 

For starting a routine let's start simple by putting in a few components into our routine first and then slowly find more ways to personalize your mental health routine.

 

Meditation

Add in a 10 min mediation practice to your routine to promote relaxation and calm. Meditation can help to clear your mind and provide balance.

 

Journaling

Providing yourself some time throughout the day to journal can definitely help your mental health. Being able to vent about your day or journal your thoughts or even practice gratitude and allow yourself time to go over the positive things that have gone right.

 

Exercise

I know exercise, ugh, but it can definitely be helpful. If you already exercise on a regular basis, maybe try to incorporate yoga. If you don’t exercise on a regular basis, I recommended starting with light exercise like 15-30 min exercises.

 

Nourishing Breakfast

Breakfast is something that nowadays people skip. Eating breakfast is helpful because it jumpstarts your system. It is helpful for many health reasons as well as mental health. You can do something as simple as a bowl of cereal or something a little more time consuming like homemade smoothies or an egg white omelet.

 

Medication or Supplements/Vitamins

If you have been prescribed medication, it would be helpful to pick up a pill box and remember to fill it on a weekly basis and take your medication on a daily basis. Supplements and vitamins can be added to those medications to help your mental health and body. Some people prefer not to take medication and just take supplements and vitamins which can also be helpful and give you the support you need to balance your mental health.

 

Relaxing time

Naps are life! We all know we miss preschool/kindergarten nap times. Allow yourself the same luxury again! Take a 30 min nap daily if you feel you need it. If aren't into napping then you can also just allow for some lounge time either reading a book, watching your favorite movie or tv series, or being outside in nature.

 

Positive Affirmations

Affirmations help rewire your subconscious mind, empowering you to overcome challenges and embrace a positive mindset. I always recommend that clients buy themselves a pack of sticky notes and write down a positive affirmation and stick it to a place in their home or room that they will see regularly like a bathroom mirror or refrigerator. This way throughout the day you can see the positive thoughts about yourself, and it will empower you to be your best self. 

 

I hope one of these positive mental health activities can make it into your routine! I hope this helps you to provide yourself a little structure and consistency.

 

Are you stuck in survival mode? How can we shift from survival brain to learning brain?

When dealing with trauma it is so easy for us to fall into the place or mindset of survival mode aka safe mode. We are so overwhelmed by life and stress that we struggle to complete tasks, forget things, and basically feel as if we are just existing for the time being. This is a very unhealthy state to be in but its more common than you think. Some causes of this survival mode is chronic stress, trauma, and PTSD. Increased stress or trauma can cause psychological issues, but it can also cause physical issues to our body and how it functions. Some of the psychological issues include decision making, imbalance in brain control, anxiety, depression, mood instability, and cognitive impairment. One of the biggest is high cortisol levels. Some of the symptoms of high cortisol are blood sugar imbalance, decrease in bone density, decrease in muscle tissue, high blood pressure, increase in weight gain, low immunity and thyroid function issues.

 

In order to start to heal from the survival mode or survival brain, we want to start working on ways to shift into learning brain. Learning brain basically means being in a state where you can grow, develop, and perform daily activities with no issue. Ways in which you can move into learning mode or learning brain is soothing your nervous system, addressing stress and trauma, resting, finding dopamine increasing activities, self-compassion, self-regulation, and self-care.

 

Soothing your nervous system

In order to soothe yourself you have to find good coping skills that help you relax. These coping skills can be meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, guided imagery, mindfulness, listening to music, and journaling.   Here are some links to therapist aid worksheets that I recommend for learning some new coping skills.

 

Deep Breathing (therapistaid.com)

Relaxation Techniques (therapistaid.com)

What is Mindfulness? (therapistaid.com)

Yoga for Stress Relief | 7 Minute Practice  | Yoga With Adriene

10-Minute Meditation For Stress

 

Addressing stress and trauma

When addressing your stress and trauma it takes a lot of insight and awareness. Looking at your current lifestyle, what do you believe are biggest sources of stress? Are the sources something you can easily cut out of your life, or do you think you would need help to do so? Are their things from your past that are keeping you stuck where you currently are? This could be getting involved with a therapist to help you navigate some of your stressors and or trauma. Taking action on your stressors and trauma are an important part of healing from survival brain. Take a look as to how you can accomplish this.

 

Resting or finding dopamine increasing activities

Stress and trauma can cause us to be so wiped out from life or burnt out. We spend some much time on edge or keyed up that we forget that we need to stop and relax and reset. There are ways to do that such as taking time off for yourself, doing something peaceful, read a book, watch your favorite movie, or take a nap. On the other hand, we can also benefit from things that give us a boost such as dopamine. This is the pleasure seeking chemical in your brain that can provide you joy. Some activities you could try would be exercising, a walk with your dog, arts and crafts, gardening, sex, or cooking.

 

Self-compassion, Self-regulation, and self-care

Self-compassion is something that we can struggle with as people who are dealing with trauma and stress. Self-compassion means to give yourself some kindness and care when it comes to human experiences such as making mistakes, caring for yourself, self-awareness, and self-talk.  Self-regulation is how we manage our emotions, thoughts and behaviors. We have to work on regulating by using coping skills and practicing emotion regulating skills. There is link below on emotion regulating skills. These are just a few skills for emotion regulation. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us to start DBT treatment. Finally, self-care, we have to engage in self-care often in order to help our whole self-heal. For self-care we look at the 5 dimensions of wellness. Spiritual wellness, physical wellness, intellectual wellness, social wellness, and emotional wellness. There is a link below from the Jefferson Center discussing each dimension in detail.

 

The 5 Dimensions of Wellness | Jefferson Center (jcmh.org)

 

Emotion Regulation Skills (therapistaid.com)

 

Overall, we have learned about the different ways to help ourselves shift from survival brain to learning brain and what it means to be in survival brain. Keep checking in on our blog for more educational pieces and coping skills. Check out our website at Enlightenment (enlightenment-counseling.com) if you are struggling with trauma and chronic stress and would like to start your path to healing today!

 

Sources:

Learning Brain vs. Survival Brain: What's the Difference? (verywellmind.com)

 

Cortisol: Definition, Levels, and How to Control It (verywellmind.com)

 

A “How-To” Guide for Surviving Survival Mode | Jefferson Center (jcmh.org)

 

5 Ways to Help You Relax and Use Self Care

 

Ahhhhh…. Pure relaxation! When you look at this picture does it make you punch that clock, call it a day, and buy a one-way ticket to the beach? It definitely makes me want to! Sometimes we need to find ways to relax, recharge and let go of our stress. Sometimes a vacation is necessary but sometimes we can't always do that.  I don’t know about you, but I can't constantly travel for stress relief. So, wouldn’t it nice to have other ways to relax that don’t require buying an expensive plane ticket? Being able to find something you can do daily? No need to worry! I came up with a list of things you can do to relax and do for self-care. Self-care? What's that? Self-Care is defined as the process of taking care of oneself with behaviors that promote health and active management of illness when it occurs.

 

Last week I discussed ways to know you need to seek therapy and, in that post, I discussed the different areas that can start to take a toll on you and can start to cause a lot of stress. With that stress, it causes some emotion irregulating, some tension, and feeling so disconnected. Relaxation is what helps those symptoms to calm down and allow you to connect again with yourself. The things you use to relax start to become coping skills to deal with your mental illness.  So, let's learn some ways to practice relaxation and get into a self-care space.

 

Some of my favorite areas of relaxation that I talk about with clients are as follows,

Aromatherapy

Hydrotherapy

Breathing/Meditation

Exercise

Music

 

The two biggest relaxation areas that I use the most are aromatherapy and hydrotherapy and typically combined. I love senses that help to promote relaxation. Candles, there is something about having a clean house and lighting candles and just lying on the couch smelling the candle permeate the house. Have you ever heard of Dr. Teals? The company Dr. Teals makes a ton of aromatherapy relaxing products. If you are into baths you can get the bubble bath and Epsom salt and spend time just allowing your body to soak.  If you aren't into baths, they also make shower melts that you can use while in the shower to get the same aromatherapy without the bath water. They have smells to fit your liking which is great! I will add a link below if you are interested in checking them out. When it comes to hydrotherapy, you can also get into a hot tub or pool or just give yourself time in a sauna.

 

Home - Dr Teal's (drteals.com)

 

Are you looking to find a way to relax yourself quickly? Breathing exercises/ meditation is probably the best go to. All you need is to take 5 minutes and do a breathing exercise and you will notice yourself calming down. Breathing helps to lower your heart rate and blood pressure. The process of breathing helps you focus on the technique you are doing instead of the stress you are feeling. When you breathe in you are taking in fresh air and releasing warm air with all your tension. Below is a link to a YouTube video of a meditation breathing exercise that I always recommend to clients to try when you are first starting out with breathing techniques and meditation.

 

A Beautiful 5 Minute Meditation Staying Connected to Your Breath

 

 

 

Exercise is a huge benefit for relaxation. Whether you are swimming, walking, doing yoga, running or any other exercise. When you exercise on a regular basis it can help to regulate your mental health and allow you to relax. I recently got into yoga, and it has been a game changer. I know I am doing exercise, but I feel so relaxed after I finish the session. Yoga is a great way to incorporate breathing and mediation as well. I suggest creating an exercise routine to be able to incorporate exercise into your life daily. Below is a YouTube video on a yoga exercise.

 

Yoga To Heal Stress  |  20 Min. Yoga Practice  |  Yoga With Adriene

 

 

 

Music is a huge stress reliever and a great way to relax. When you are listening to music to relax the music helps to regulate the nervous system. When we are stressed or angry or anxious, we tend to pick music that is going to pump us up more rather than finding music that is going to give us the opposite effect. Instead of listening to screamo music while angry. Listening to classical music or something soothing can be more effective in helping your mood and relaxing you. “Music can heal the wounds which medicine cannot touch.” —  Debasish Mridha

 

I hope you found these relaxation techniques helpful and start to practice them! There will be more posts to come later exploring more coping skills in depth until then practice these and let me know in the comments or in session how you liked them!