StressBox

Jo Clarkson, Clinical Psychologist

StressBox provides a psychological assessment and treatment service for individuals experiencing stress, anxiety, depression and other related difficulties.

10/07/2025

We often wait for the "right" moment—when we feel happier, stronger, more confident—to start living fully. But the hard truth is, that moment might never come on its own. Healing isn’t a prerequisite for life; sometimes, life is the very thing that heals us. Go live anyway. Go scared, go messy, go uncertain. Show up for your life even when it hurts. Growth doesn't wait for perfection—it begins the moment you choose to keep going, even with a heavy heart.

20/06/2025

Seriously wrong...

17/06/2025

Bravery isn’t about having no anxiety — it’s about finding the courage to take a step forward, even when anxiety is there.

Children, young people AND adults!!

I see this kind of bravery in anxious kids all the time — and every small step they take matters. Even when it’s hard, they’re growing stronger and rewriting their story, one moment at a time.

And parents — your support means everything. You're not just helping your child manage anxiety, you're helping them build resilience, confidence and emotional strength that will stay with them for life.

04/06/2025

You’ll lose yourself for a while.
In the doing. The giving. The holding it all together.
You’ll forget what it feels like to rest, to laugh, to just be.

But you’ll find your way back.
With boundaries. With support.
With the courage to ask, What do I need?

And when you meet the woman you’ve become,
you’ll realize she was always in there,
just waiting for permission to rise.

(shebangsmenopause)

20/05/2025

Remember...

07/05/2025

🖤

04/05/2025

Of course we’ll never ever stop loving them. But when we send them away (time out), ignore them, get annoyed at them - it feels to them like we might.

It’s why more traditional responses to tricky behaviour don’t work the way we think they did. The goal of behaviour becomes more about avoiding any chance of disconnection. It drive lies and secrecy more than learning or their willingness to be open to us.

Of course, no parent is available and calm and connected all the time - and we don’t need to be.

It’s about what we do most, how we handle their tricky behaviour and their big feelings, and how we repair when we (perhaps understandably) lose our cool. (We’re human and ‘cool’ can be an elusive little beast at times for all of us.)

This isn’t about having no boundaries. It isn’t about being permissive. It’s about holding boundaries lovingly and with warmth.

The fix:

- Embrace them, (‘you’re such a great kid’). Reject their behaviour (‘that behaviour isn’t okay’).

- If there’s a need for consequences, let this be about them putting things right, rather than about the loss of your or affection.

- If they tell the truth, even if it’s about something that takes your breath away, reward the truth. Let them see you’re always safe to come to, no matter what.

We tell them we’ll love them through anything, and that they can come to us for anything, but we have to show them. And that behaviour that threatens to steal your cool, counts as ‘anything’.

- Be guided by your values. The big ones in our family are honesty, kindness, courage, respect. This means rewarding honesty, acknowledging the courage that takes, and being kind and respectful when they get things wrong. Mean is mean. It’s not constructive. It’s not discipline. It’s not helpful. If we would feel it as mean if it was done to us, it counts as mean when we do it to them.

Hold your boundary, add the warmth. And breathe.

Big behaviour and bad decisions don’t come from bad kids. They come from kids who don’t have the skills or resources in the moment to do otherwise.

Our job as their adults is to help them build those skills and resources but this takes time. And you. They can’t do this without you.❤️

(Karen Young, Hey Sigmund)

01/04/2025

Life can be so much lighter when we let things go 🖤

23/03/2025

🖤 🕺

11/03/2025

Hormonal shifts affect mental health. Many women experience increased anxiety, depression, and cognitive changes—yet traditional medicine often overlooks progesterone’s critical role in brain function.

Progesterone and the Brain: Progesterone is a powerful neurosteroid that impacts multiple neurotransmitter systems in the brain, influencing mood, anxiety, cognitive function, and neuronal excitability.

🧠 GABA – The Calm Keeper
Progesterone and its metabolite allopregnanolone enhance GABA-A receptor activity, increasing relaxation and reducing anxiety. This explains why some women feel calmer during certain phases of their cycle and why progesterone therapy may benefit mood disorders in menopause.

⚡ Glutamate – The Brain’s Gas Pedal
While estradiol increases glutamate (excitatory neurotransmitter) activity, progesterone helps counterbalance this excitability, which may protect against mood swings, anxiety, and neuroinflammation.

🔥 Noradrenaline – Stress & Mood Regulation
Progesterone reduces noradrenaline levels in the brain, which may explain why hormonal fluctuations impact mood stability.

Progesterone modulates acetylcholine signaling, which is critical for memory and learning. This may be why some women report brain fog in perimenopause when progesterone levels drop.

Let’s keep changing the conversation on menopause & brain health!
(Dr Mary Claire Haver)

25/02/2025

A visionary book... 🖤
Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter, by Dr Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate.

For many children today, it is friends and classmates who shape their identity and values, and no longer their family. But this can undermine family cohesion and interfere with healthy development.
The book addresses the severe lack of attachment to parents that is incidentally replaced by an attachment to peers. Why is this problematic? But our children need friends, right? Actually no. They address this in the book, but your toddler doesn’t need to be “socialized” despite what culture tells us.
But wait, there’s more! It turns out that there is a right and wrong way for your children to attach to each other, and the first and most important attachment that needs securing is child to parent.

“Our children’s peers are not the ones we want them to depend on. They are not the ones to give our children a sense of themselves, to point out right from wrong, to distinguish fact from fantasy, to identify what works and what doesn’t, and to direct them as to where to go and how to get there” (p 19).

“Given the central importance of attachment in the child’s psyche, whomever the child is most attached to will have the greatest impact on her life” (p 25).

Address

Hamilton
3204

Website

http://www.stressbox.co.nz/

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