Kelly Younkins, Clinical Consultant

12/24/2025

Offering up some last quarter journal reflection prompts on this Christmas Eve Morning🎄✨

Reflection doesn’t have to be elaborate to be meaningful. Sometimes it’s just about pausing long enough to notice what shaped us.

What theme quietly ran through the last three months of my life?

• One moment from each month that truly mattered — and why it still stands out.

• How am I thinking, feeling, or responding differently now than I was in early September?

Energy Audit
• What drained my energy this fall? What gently restored it?
• Where did I practice a boundary — intentionally or by necessity — and what did it protect?

• What lesson showed up that I didn’t ask for, but needed?

• What am I intentionally carrying forward into the next season?

• What am I ready to set down before the year closes?

✨ When I look back on Fall 2025, I’ll remember it as the season when I ______.

If you feel called to share any insights or experiences journaling these prompts , you are welcome to drop them in the comments.

Sometimes pausing to name what’s already happened is the most powerful form of closure.

12/24/2025

Plan a Big A # # Year! Start by seeing your entire year at a glance. When you see everything at once, it’s easy to say yes to what matters and no to what doesn’t.

12/23/2025

Wishing all my friends, followers, and colleagues a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday!🎄

I am out of the office until January 5th, 2026.

If you are in need of immediate assistance for a mental health crisis, please remember to call 911 or go to your local emergency room. I’ve also enclosed a few resources below that are also available, even if you aren’t in crisis called warm lines.

🎁Resources for support over the holiday☃️

☎️24/7 Crisis & Support Lines

1. 988 Su***de & Crisis Lifeline
Call, Text, or Chat — 988
Free, confidential support any time you’re in emotional distress or crisis (24/7). Helps with suicidal thoughts, anxiety, panic, or overwhelming feelings. 

✨✨2.Crisis Text Line – Ohio
Text: 4HOPE to 741741
Confidential text support with trained crisis counselors 24/7. Great if you prefer texting instead of talking. 

3. Ohio CareLine
Call: 1-800-720-9616
Free, 24/7 emotional support for Ohio residents from trained behavioral health professionals. 

🤝 Peer Support / Warm Lines (Non-Crisis Emotional Support)

❤️These are great if you’re not in immediate crisis but want someone supportive to talk with.

4. The P.E.E.R. Center Warmline (Ohio)
Call: (614) 358-8255 (Daily 5 pm–3 am ET)
A peer-run warmline for emotional support, shared experiences, and non-judgmental listening. 
5. The Nord Center Warmline (Ohio)
Call: (800) 888-6161 (Ask for the Warmline; hours vary)
Peer support line offering understanding, support, and connection (not emergency crisis response). 

🧠 Notes
• 988 and 741741 are available 24/7, free, and confidential nationwide, including Ohio. 
• Warmlines are not crisis hotlines — they offer supportive conversation and emotional support rather than emergency intervention. 

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

As I step away for this brief pause, I’m practicing what I often encourage others to do …resting, recovering, and allowing space to reflect.

That includes slowing down, healing from a round of elementary-school germs 🤒, and soaking in time with my family while taking stock of the growth, lessons, and meaningful work of 2025.

I head into 2026 deeply grateful. To those who trusted me this year — as a clinician, coach, consultant, educator, or collaborator — please know that I do not take that trust lightly. It is truly a privilege and an honor to walk alongside you in your healing, growth, and performance.

I look forward to returning on January 5th, 2026, rested, restored, and ready to continue the work we’ve been building together. Until then, may you find moments of rest, care, and gentleness for yourself this season.

With gratitude and warmth,
Kelly

12/23/2025

The journey to a healthier you starts this January 1st, 2026! Join us from 8 am to 1 p.m. for an uplifting morning of wellness activities, including Stretching, Chair Fitness, Seated Tai Chi, Yoga, Line Dancing, and Relaxation. The schedule with times will be announced soon. Tickets are only $20 in advance, or $25 at the door, and your ticket purchase enters you into a raffle! Contact us today to reserve your spot!

12/23/2025

💛 Holidays & Healing 💛 The holiday season can be a tender time for those grieving the loss of a loved one. Join us for a special Holidays & Healing gathering with Amy Zell — a gentle, supportive space to honor those we’ve lost and explore ways to care for our grief through the season.

📍 Natura Behavioral Health – Boardman office
📅 Wed, Dec 24 at 1 PM or Sat, Dec 27 at 11 AM
📌 7010 South Ave., Suite 2, Boardman, OH 44512

Let’s navigate this season together—with remembrance, creativity, and compassion. 💚

12/23/2025

When I wrote that post the other day about Christmas, preparation, and nervous system regulation, it reminded me why the Prepare for Success workshop is something I’m so committed to offering twice a year.

The workshop is the container; the time and space where you can build your foundation or sharpen it.
But the process it teaches is meant to be lived all year long. Christmas, or end of the year reflection time, just makes the pattern and the fruits of our labor perhaps more obvious.

So many things in life — health, career decisions, finances/retirement planninv, relationships — suffer when we wait until we’re overwhelmed to respond.

Playfulness doesn’t happen under pressure.
Joy requires time.

And sustainable success requires enough preparation that your nervous system can stay regulated while you’re building it.

That’s what Prepare for Success invites people into.

Not a one-time reset.
Not a seasonal hustle.
But a way of planning, pacing, and preparing that becomes a lifestyle. A lifestyle that protects your energy, supports regulation, and allows you to stay present in the process.

I offer the workshop twice a year because we all benefit from pausing, recalibrating, and setting intention together.

But the practice itself? That continues every day.

Preparation isn’t pressure.
It’s protection.

Will you join us? I’d love to have you!

12/19/2025

12/18/2025

December tries to take us moms out man I’m telling you.

I had a revelation last night before I went to bed.

I’ll share it with you because thats what I do.

(Especially fitting because I’m about to go record a podcast with a colleague on trauma & stress in the workplace and I’m willing to bet a lot of people’s stress is really showing up at work right now thanks to the holiday season.)

I realized last night that some things in life, like the Christmas season, have to start early enough if you want any chance of enjoying it.

Turns out, those November people really arent as crazy as you think they are because there’s so much to do. Now, I do believe Thanksgiving needs its own time and decorative space 🤪BUT

✨Playfulness doesn’t happen under pressure.
🎄Joy requires time.

Preparation isn’t about perfection. It’s about giving yourself enough runway to actually feel the season instead of surviving it.

::: As I write this, I’m surviving it more than thriving in it and so it’s making me take a breath and recalibrate::::

Christmas is a lot like life (IMO): when you start early(or start as early as you can), you get to enjoy the process and season more fully present.

When you don’t, you’re just trying to hit the target while exhausted.

I know some people will read this and think, “Must be nice to be present instead of just surviving.”
But presence isn’t a personality trait or a privilege-only experience — it’s a nervous system state.

We can slow things down.
We can regulate enough to create pockets of playfulness, meaning, and even joy even while we’re still in the middle of the hard.

I’m doing it right now. Taking some deep full breaths. Enjoying my coffee. Recentering myself on the feeling state of being I want to show up in and not letting the pressure take the joy out of me!

And the more I sit with it, the more I realize this isn’t just about Christmas.
Health. Finances. Retirement. Career decisions. Relationships.

So many of the things we wish felt calmer, clearer, or more meaningful are the same way ; they need time, intention, and a regulated nervous system to unfold well.

Starting early isn’t about being ahead. It’s about giving yourself enough space to actually live inside the process.

Signed,
me in a festive snap filter — because playfulness is joy 🎄😎🎅🏼❄️

12/17/2025

12/16/2025

❤️

💔They don’t talk about the siblings enough.

The ones who didn’t use.
The ones who kept their grades up.
The ones who learned how to be “easy” while the house burned.

The ones who held their breath every time the phone rang.
The ones who watched their sibling unravel
and quietly lost their parent to fear, hypervigilance, and survival mode.

Because addiction doesn’t just take one child.
It fractures the entire family system.

And sometimes, without intending to,
it teaches the siblings that their job is to not need too much.

They grieved too.
They just did it quietly.

They learned early how to read the room.
How to shrink their feelings.
How to be responsible for other people’s pain.

That’s how people pleasers are made.
Not from kindness. From survival.

I didn’t always see it.
I was drowning in fear, guilt, and desperation.
I was trying to save one child while unknowingly disconnecting from the others.

There was resentment.
There was silence.
There was damage.

And pretending otherwise helps no one.

Healing didn’t come from a perfect rehab or a family weekend workshop.
It came slowly. Through truth-telling. Through space.
Through letting everyone have their pain without comparison or hierarchy.

And watching my children find their way back to each other
on their own terms
was one of the most humbling things I’ve ever witnessed.

This is why families need guidance.

Not because they’re broken.
But because addiction ripples outward
and siblings are often expected to absorb the shock quietly.

There is hope. Even for relationships that feel beyond repair.

And sometimes the quietest healing
is the most profound.