Rising Resilience Counseling, PLLC

04/02/2024

I’ve been fighting the Monday blahs all day. Being stuck inside of the office on a beautifully sunny spring day hasn’t helped, so I decided to bring the springtime inside with me with these Gerbera daisies.

Behavioral activation is a strategy used to combat depressed moods. Trying to utilize strategies within my office such as coloring and listening to music didn’t work, so I needed to drop what I was doing, head outside for a change of scenery to the co-op a few blocks over, and treat myself to some flowers and a vegan milkshake.

Sitting outside in the sunshine, enjoying my drink and the cherry blossoms, my mood began to shift. As the saying goes, “Move a muscle, change a thought.” Engaging in different behaviors that activate us rather than keeping us stuck in sluggish states of inertia can help make room for more positive moods to take over. So listen to Miley and buy yourself the flowers. 🌼🌸🌺🌸🌼

02/28/2024

🫀 Expressive arts and the power of the subconscious🫀

During my own personal therapy session today, I chose to color abstract shapes with crayons as a way to self-soothe. The glide of the crayons on the paper, the sound of them scribbling back and forth, that unmistakable crayon smell—all of these sensory aspects combined to create a relaxing atmosphere as I processed some early attachment trauma. When my session was over, it was time for me to attend to others: I had to move from the client role to the therapist role. Thus, my drawing was temporarily forgotten.

Picking up the crayon drawing at the end of the day, however, I was struck by the shape. Unconsciously, I had drawn an abstract anatomical heart. 🫀 Without revealing too much, the heart was definitely a theme in my personal therapy session today. It was at once surprising but also validating to make this discovery. Expressive art therapy can be so healing. Without consciously trying to, there was an inner wisdom guiding my hands to create this drawing, wanting to communicate a message from the heart, about the heart. I gratefully receive this gift of love from my subconscious mind, and am reaffirmed in my belief that healing takes so many more forms than just talk therapy. 🙏🏼 🎨 🖍️ 📄

02/12/2024

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As part of my personal and professional developmentent, I have been taking courses at Northwest Creative & Expressive Arts Institute to work towards a certificate in Expressive Art Therapy. Here is some response artwork and a reflection I wrote after an all-day poetry workshop:

“I greatly enjoyed the Poetry module yesterday with Bobbi and Cleo. After so much amazing cocreation and collaboration through communal poetry writing and meaning making, I wanted to sum up my day with a piece of art that is at once created by me, but also utilizes and repurposes the work of others. Collage letters gathered from various reading materials, rearranged into new words with personal meaning. Confetti rain that I hand cut from a friend’s holiday card. Green paint gifted by a neighbor. Paper straws snipped and transformed into tiny blossoms. The person in the cloud I reached for and cut out while in conversation with a dear friend on the telephone. This painting was made by me alone in an office, yet together with my friends, neighbors, peers, colleagues, printers and writers and factory workers around the globe. Each of these materials passed through many hands to reach me, then they passed through my hands to construct their own collaborative meaning through synthesis of their disparate parts. Just like how each person passes through different hands holding and guiding them, pointing them in the right direction, but sometimes also pointing them in the wrong direction. We are all made up of disparate parts, cobbled together to construct the people we are now. And as surely as the sun will rise and set every day, we also shed certain parts and gather certain parts daily to tinker with this gorgeous and messy masterpiece know as the Self, an ever-changing and ever-evolving masterpiece that continues to live on through memories and lessons long after our physical forms have transitioned on. Thank you all for meeting me, sharing with me, and generously imparting wisdom and ideas and care and love that I use to construct who I am from moment to moment. I hope I can provide the same to you.

12/27/2023

Some practical self-care tips. Taking care of your body helps take care of your mind!

12/06/2023

The Anxiety Monster! When it appears, you may feel your body freeze. It may try to run (flight) or become aggressive (fight). No matter how your anxiety presents, externalizing it through art-making can make it easier to conceptualize anxiety as a visitor in your body, as opposed to something you are. It is the statement, “I have anxiety” rather than “I *am* anxious.” Creating a physical Anxiety Monster can also make it easier for you to think of ways to “talk back” to it. In session today, a young client and I worked on our own Anxiety Monsters. Mine is named “The Blah Blah Monster” because it has many mouths that are all saying negative self-talk at once, making it hard for to hear myself think. To quiet The Blah Blah Monster, I put my fingers on my temples, take a deep breath, and exhale a “shhhhhhh” sound slowly and evenly until I have no breath left. Slow exhales activate the parasympathetic nervous system, bringing our bodies to calm sooner. I repeat the shushing until The Blah Blah Monster is talking no more, or is at least talking at a more manageable volume. What does your Anxiety Monster look like? How would you talk back to the negative things they have to say?

09/10/2023

In a guided meditation, I was invited to explore the questions, “Who is your creative muse,” and “What gift do they have to offer you?” In my mind’s eye, I found my creative muse in an old growth forest, rich with the smell of pine and moist, fertile earth. My muse was a nurse log, one who continues to nurture new life as she degrades. She showed me clusters of oyster mushrooms growing upon her bark, and left me with this poem:

🍄 A Fruiting Body 🍄

You, too, are a fruiting body.

You are of the earth.

Your roots and connections spread underground, wider than cities, further than man can comprehend.

You grow in the smallest and strangest of spaces.

You are nourishing for others.

You are resilient, you are perennial.

When your fruits are depleted, they will be replenished.

I am you, and you are me.

We exist in harmony.

07/19/2023

Much is made of down-regulation strategies for managing stress: mindfulness, breathwork, yoga, and the like. Up-regulation has its place, too! When your nervous system is experiencing hypoarousal-you are feeling numb, bored, unmotivated, blah-you can use an upregulating strategy to help give yourself a boost of energy and dopamine to keep you going. There are many ways to achieve this: through vigorous exercise, stimulating your brain with a puzzle or game, spending playful time with friends.

This afternoon, I was having fun spinning in my office chair and listening to upbeat music. I played with rolling my head around, focusing my eyes on different places of the room, basically creating new sensory input for my mind and nervous system to take in. Tune in with your body right now and ask yourself: Do I need upregulating or downregulating at this time? What is your body telling you it needs?

Check out 🧠 Jennifer Alsdorf, LMHC 🧠's video.

06/29/2023

FREE Summer meals for kids and parents in N Seattle and Shoreline. Kids’ activities also included! Please share this community resource so more families can take advantage. 🥦 🥪 🍎 🥛

06/23/2023

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8JCt48j/

Check out 🧠 Jennifer Alsdorf, LMHC 🧠's video.

06/23/2023

Life is a bowl of cherries, as they say, even though sometimes you get the pits. 🍒

I was rushing to work this morning, forgot my keys at home, and had to circle back after dropping the kids off at school. Heading back to work, harried and frazzled, I saw a fruit stand on the side of the road selling Rainier cherries, my favorite! Despite having to take a long detour due to a median, I decided to take the extra time to stop for some cherries. The gentleman told me he picked them that morning, and their juicy ripeness told me he was right.

Sometimes the antidote for a busy, stressful day is to take a mindful moment to stop and smell the roses. Or do like I did, and get the cherries. Their juicy sweetness has been just the pickmeup I needed after a hectic start to my day. 🍒

06/04/2023

I’ve said it many times, this new generation is so in-touch with their feelings and so emotionally literate. It makes me happy to see!

https://m.facebook.com/watch/?extid=reels&v=212435711678852&paipv=0&eav=Afb_A-JllNDlyQBkmHG-0aqydSi07nD4cEa4CZY6nTBfc0X8M9iQbeb4Hd1ZeOiLTBg&wtsid=rdr_0dxMj3gA3elElXbI2&_rdr

05/24/2023

I don’t always have my sandtray set up for clients, but when I do, I love to create my own sandtray scene to process the events of the day, reset, and refresh before heading home to my family at the end of the day.

I don’t always have my sandtray set up for clients, but when I do, I love to make my own sandtray scene to process the events of the day, reset, and refresh before heading home to my family at the end of the day. ...