BACI Counseling

05/01/2025

Some helpful conversations tips to improve your relationships with your teens.

Learn tips for communicating more easily with teens, plus conversation starters for talking to adolescents about mental health.

11/26/2024

A reminder if you are going thru grief during the Holidays with self compassion, self-love and self-care. May you be at ease.

08/26/2024

DID YOU KNOW?
For our Asian-American, Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community, our Mental Health Program offers 5 free sessions of one-on-one mental health therapy. With over 18 different AANHPI-licensed mental health therapists that we're partnered with, our program seeks to help connect you with therapists who understand your unique experiences and challenges. Our partnered therapists specialize in: trauma, relationships, family dynamics, LGBTQIA+ and many more!

If you are interested, please can the QR code on the bottom right to fill out the intake form.

Connect with us further by calling 253-383-3900 or email mhprogram@asiapacificculturalcenter.org

08/26/2024

August is . Explore resources for yourself and others on our Black Mental Health resource page at https://bit.ly/3Sqm4Ff.

08/26/2024

Sending some your way today and every day.

08/26/2024

While the difficult parts of aging are unavoidable, we can try not to add to them. For example, I have seen, throughout my life, the tendency to rehearse some catastrophe and thereby live it several times. So I think the first question is always, “What are we adding onto a situation which is already hard enough?”

Not being able to do something I used to be able to do, or being in physical pain, or losing people we love – these are already very hard. But we often add more suffering onto them, like thinking it shouldn’t be this way, or feeling shame or fear. One possibility of mindfulness is to notice where we’re adding to the suffering that’s already there, and try not to fall so much into it.

I learned an interesting form of lovingkindness meditation from Ananda Matteya, then an energetic, 94-year-old Sri Lankan monk visiting the Insight Meditation Society in 1993. He taught us what he described as his favorite meditation: combining loving-kindness meditation and a body scan. He would go through the body, part by part, wishing each part well: may my head be happy, may my eyes be happy, and so on through the whole body. Even “may my liver be happy!”

I’ve taught that meditation to people with injuries, scars, diseases, difficult diagnoses, and all kinds of things, and it makes a difference. It can help counteract our tendency to add shame or resentment to whatever is already there.

07/12/2024

Even after meditating for fifty years, I’ve found that troublesome emotional issues don’t just disappear, but rather I have an opportunity to relate differently to everything I’m going through. A friend sent me a mug emblazoned with a phrase I use often: “We feel what we feel.” The reason I say that a lot is because it’s been an important lesson for me. I’ve seen we can allow the dignity of every feeling, without blaming ourselves or trying to push away anything. But we also don’t need to take every feeling to heart, identifying with it, and imagining it is all we will ever feel.

We can be with painful feelings differently, with compassion for ourselves instead of judgment. We can practice to not forget or overlook the joy and goodness that are also there. The wisdom of equanimity reminds us that we don’t have to get over how we’re feeling. It takes courage to turn toward ourselves with compassion and tenderly hold both our fear and joy. Somehow, we have space for both to be true because they both are true.

07/12/2024

01/16/2024

Great mindful quotes lessons for our mental health mindset. Thank you Ajahn Chah, teacher to my teacher, Dr Jack Kornfield. 🙏🏽🙏🏽