Ever felt like stress and anxiety are constricting your every move? You're not alone. Today we're joined by Lauren Wolf, a skilled professional counselor who offers her deep insights into the intricate dance between these two powerful emotional states. If you're shouldering the load of New Year's resolutions or the everyday grind, this episode is a toolbox of strategies to keep you from feeling submerged by life's demands.
-We uncover the critical role of downtime and self-care for all of us.
- We tackle the tough approach of teaching reality testing and problem-solving skills, ----We share practical steps to navigating the tumultuous waters of growing up
Tune in and arm yourself with the insights and techniques to help yourself and young overachievers in your life find their footing on the tightrope of success and well-being.
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🚀 I'll help you rediscover who you truly are, provide clarity towards your future and be your personalized coach with Multiple Service Package options. Your Coach Sonia is ready to help you!
"Stay well, be present, and enjoy the journey"
Ever felt like stress and anxiety are constricting your every move? You're not alone. Today we're joined by Lauren Wolf, a skilled professional counselor who offers her deep insights into the intricate dance between these two powerful emotional states. If you're shouldering the load of New Year's resolutions or the everyday grind, this episode is a toolbox of strategies to keep you from feeling submerged by life's demands.
-We uncover the critical role of downtime and self-care for all of us.
- We tackle the tough approach of teaching reality testing and problem-solving skills, ----We share practical steps to navigating the tumultuous waters of growing up
Tune in and arm yourself with the insights and techniques to help yourself and young overachievers in your life find their footing on the tightrope of success and well-being.
Connect with Sonia Cacique
LinkedIn
Instagram
JOIN OUR CAREER NEWSLETTER here.
🚀 I'll help you rediscover who you truly are, provide clarity towards your future and be your personalized coach with Multiple Service Package options. Your Coach Sonia is ready to help you!
"Stay well, be present, and enjoy the journey"
Am I or my child suffering from stress or anxiety? How do we know if we have piled too much on our to-do list and activities and, if so, what should we do? Welcome to the College and Career Ready podcast, your go-to resource for all things related to preparing our students for success in their college and career journey. My name is Sonia Casique and I will be your host and guide on this exciting journey towards a bright future. Our mission is simple who empower our parents and students by elevating their confidence and resourcefulness? We believe that you deserve all the tools and support necessary to open the doors to endless possibilities of success, and with our community, you don't have to do this alone, so come with me and let's get started. Well, hello to any new listener. Welcome to the College and Career Ready podcast.
Speaker 1:Whether you're a new listener or have been listening to us for some time, you pick the best episode today. Our guest, lauren Wolf, will be helping us understand and identify today the differences between stress and anxiety. She will be showing strategies on how to manage both, after identifying if we are going through a stressful situation or anxiety, and we also talk about how each of us can be uniquely different, yet also need to learn how to slow down, to be able to take a deep breath. We will be sharing about how we see different seasons of life and is it true that we can have a balanced life. And if you are already feeling stressed about those new year resolutions that you feel you have already dropped the ball on, let me tell you not to worry, as this episode is packed with great strategies, so you don't feel overwhelmed. I am super excited that she is here with us today, so, without further ado, let's get started with this episode.
Speaker 1:Today we have Lauren Wolf with us, so let me give you a little bit of an intro to Lauren. Lauren has worked as a licensed professional counselor supporting children, teens and families for over 20 years. She provides individual and group counseling, specializing in decreasing symptoms of anxiety, and that is actually the topic we are going to be touching on today with her. She has a private practice in Connecticut, so I know she's going to provide us with very, very helpful information. Lauren is also the creator and host of the Year Zend Friend podcast, so after you listen to this episode, make sure to check her out, because it's actually one of my favorite ones. Lauren also shares her knowledge and experience to help listeners boost their mental health and overall well-being. Now you know why I love her so much, so we're excited to have her here. So thank you, lauren. Thank you for being here with us today, and why don't you introduce yourself to our audience? Give us a little bit more bio from you, something that I haven't covered, just to give us an overall big picture of your experience.
Speaker 2:Thank, you so much, sonia. It's so nice to be here. I love your podcast and the content that you're putting out. My son is a senior in high school this year, so it's been especially relevant for us.
Speaker 2:So my name is Lauren and I do work, as you said, in Newtown, connecticut, in a private practice, and I do specialize in working with individuals with anxiety and, in particular, most of my population are children and young adults or teenagers. So, always working with parents when I support children, because I'm with them such a short period of time in their lives and they need that help from parents and that support as well. And, yeah, so my son is a senior in high school. My daughter is 20, and she is a sophomore at oh my goodness, no, she's a junior at college. So, yeah, been a bit of a transitional time for me having two young adults, but I love what I do. I love working with the population that I work with and I'm so glad to be here and talk to you today and I'm glad you brought up anxiety, because let's go ahead and start there.
Speaker 1:There is constantly a misrepresentation of both and we tend I'll say we tend to put it all together right. We're stressed, we're anxious. So can you tell parents a little bit about the difference between stress and anxiety?
Speaker 2:Sure, so really, in a way, it's kind of like potato-potato for me, and I'll tell you why. You know, if you look up what is the difference between stress and anxiety, you're likely to find something that says that stress is a reaction to a particular event and it's not something that is coming up constantly. So I'll give you an example. Imagine you have a kid that doesn't usually have a lot of anxiety symptoms around test taking, but he or she has this giant test and their teacher has told them it's a large part of their grade and your child is telling you how afraid they are to take this test. So that would be probably a stress response, as opposed to a kid who maybe every time they take a test, thinks it's going to be you know they're going to fail it and they have all of these high anxiety symptoms and fear about taking that test. That's probably more of anxiety symptoms, and I think that we often get the idea that anxiety is bad. But anxiety is actually good, and I teach my clients this we don't want to get rid of anxiety altogether, because if you're standing in a parking lot and here comes a speeding car, you want your amygdala that part of your brain that alerts you to danger to take action and release cortisol and adrenaline and have you get up and quickly move to safety. So we don't want to get rid of anxiety.
Speaker 2:Where anxiety gets a bad rap is that sometimes our amygdala is telling us that there is danger everywhere. It's kind of like a smoke detector and I don't know about you, Sonia, but if I cook like a roasted chicken up at a high temperature my fire alarm always goes off. So there's not a fire, but that detector is telling me there is. So the same thing with sometimes we get to be in such a state of just going, going, doing, doing or we might be predisposed to having a lot of anxiety symptoms from our just our parents or who knows. But for whatever reason our amygdala is telling us there's danger everywhere. It could be a trauma symptom and we have to train it to relax and work on decreasing our symptoms of anxiety, really by training our amygdala. So stress typically is a natural response to a situation. Really true clinical anxiety is having a sense of danger really much of the time. I hope that helps.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense and you know, let me ask you this Is it found to be genetic anxiety?
Speaker 2:It is thought to be there is often thought to be a genetic component. But what's challenging is is it genetic or is it that you have an anxious parent who's looking at the world as a dangerous place, and so now you're learning to look at the world as a dangerous place? But we also know now that trauma can be passed down through our DNA. So I think there are individuals that are just kind of wired for anxiety, Right, I think you can sometimes see it in infants, like I had one child who came into this world super chill, and I had another child who came into this world really alert and crying quite a bit and having trouble soothing. So I think it. I don't know, I don't think there's an easy answer for that. I think it's a number of things, but I do think our wiring can kind of predispose us to it.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense. And I say that and I'm going to put myself out there because I do have a mom. That is probably less now, but growing up she was a very anxious person and of course that trickled down to me. And you're right, it could have been just learned behavior, it could have just been that predisposition genetically. But thankfully I've overcome that because of a lot of being very resourceful as an adult and realizing oh wait, this is actually hindering my performance. So I can definitely relate with that. Tell us a little bit more about the signs of stress. So if I'm a parent and I'm trying to understand, is this just a unique situation that's causing stress on my child, or is this more of a clinical anxiety? So how can parents distinguish them both? From a parent perspective, is there anything they can do to kind of hone in if it's one or the other?
Speaker 2:Oh, great question, Sonia. So I think if it's just your child is sometimes experiencing stress, it's going to kind of, you know, to kind of flare up here and there where, again, if you take that test, taking example, it's not every test but it's certain tests, right, it's not every class, maybe it's one class where the professor is really strict and a very challenging grader, and so that you see your child is reacting to that situation and that professor. And then I think you know you can, as a parent, talk to them and help them to process their feelings, really normalize their experience. Maybe tell them a story about when you were little I had a French teacher that scared the pants off of me, and so I will tell my kid clients about Mrs Bartamall and how she stressed me out and why and you know they can often really relate to that, like especially kids who are telling me I have a really strict teacher. I'm like, oh, I had a strict teacher too. You know this is what freaked me out about Mrs Bartamall what, what makes you feel nervous around your teacher? So it's again like it's popping up at times.
Speaker 2:But if it's really more of anxiety, where they are just that anxiety part of them. I do believe we all have different parts right, so our anxiety part can get really big when that amygdala is sensing danger all the time. If that's what's happening, you're more likely to see things like your child's having trouble going to sleep every night, or they're having trouble going to school every morning, or they are at your side and not wanting to leave you to go off to their soccer practice, or they're having constant thoughts of worry and constantly checking with you, mom, like mom, am I safe? Mom, are you sure I'm safe? Mom, what if this happens? Mom, are you sure this isn't going to happen? Those are more signs that it's probably anxiety that's running the show, rather than them just having a stress response.
Speaker 1:Oh, good response, and I think that provides a very clear vision for our parents. So let's say that helps. We're able to determine if it's one the other. What do we do next?
Speaker 2:So what do?
Speaker 1:we do? What do we do? Let's start with anxiety. So if it is anxiety itself, if we, if we see a pattern, what do we do next as a parent?
Speaker 2:Great question and I'm going to say Sonia, really for either of them.
Speaker 2:If you think your child is under a lot of stress, like there's just circumstances where they are, or you think your child's exhibiting anxiety symptoms In each case, I think one wonderful thing to do is take a look at their schedule, see if perhaps they're over scheduled, see where they can have some downtime, because many of our children, I do believe, are over scheduled.
Speaker 2:As a kid it's important to have time to play, to be creative, to get into an argument with their sibling or a neighbor, to have to work it out right, to just sit and stare into outer space. So sometimes one easy way to just reduce those feelings of either stress or anxiety is having unscheduled downtime and just looking at how you are kind of behaving at home too. Do you have a life where both you and your partner have a really high level job and you're really stressed and you're just always running from one thing to the next? How can you also model for them? Turning things off, taking quiet to read a book or to just take a walk outside, right, like kind of look to see where can you slow down and help your child to slow down?
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, you're just giving me ideas here because you know you're right. I mean, we I know we say this as well we serve as an example by the actions we do. But you know, maybe just having the conversation with, with my son or daughter, like, have you had downtime today? Or we can even. We can even I mean they're 10 year old, they're 10 years old, so being great, like a creative word, like your rest time, or something that they might find find engaging. So we model um, trickle in, sprinkle in some slow down time, some, like you said, downtime in their, in their daily schedule.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't tell you, sonia, how many kids come to me and they are just complaining that they have no time to themself. And I think that it's great for kids to have experience like trying sports or Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or, you know, music lessons or whatever. However, I do think that it's also equally important, if not more important, for kids to learn to manage boredom and to just be in stillness and not feel like they have to go all the time. If we're modeling for that, them that too and look, I am guilty, right, I like to go all the time. I really believe you teach what you need to learn in my podcast.
Speaker 2:Every week I have a full length episode and then a short guided meditation that drops a few days later. It's really hard for me to meditate. I work on it, but it's really easy for me to just go all the time and I like that. So I have to be conscious of that too, because otherwise I'm modeling to my children that my self-worth is that I'm busy and that I'm doing and that I'm achieving, and I think there's so much value in just being, and if we're setting that example for our children and they're just going all the time. It's going to be hard for them to come and regulate their central nervous system, which means that they will most likely be feeling anxious. Right, they're on high alert, and so just really thinking about that, and what does their week look like? Do they have a few days a week that they don't have anything after school? Do they have time before bed where they're just unwinding and reading a book or sitting with you on the couch and watching a show? You just want to have that quiet time too.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I think you know downtime for each child would mean something different. So I think, as parents, it would be nice to be a little proactive and just have a sit-down conversation. Say what does downtime look for you? Because my downtime is grabbing a book sitting in my favorite lounge chair and just sitting and reading.
Speaker 2:Yes, great point. I think you have to honor where your kid is at, who your kid is, what their interests are. I'm thinking of a little boy years ago who I just adored. He was a sweetheart. He had a lot of symptoms of anxiety and he was not an athlete. He was a kid that liked to play with his Legos, liked to be outside, loved to fish, had like a zipline in his backyard and liked to just ride on it. And he would tell me he liked to sit on a rock and just look at the woods.
Speaker 2:But his family had so much value on athletics that every season he was, the parents had him sign up for some type of athletic and he hated it and he was miserable. So, you know, the parents got to a point of realizing for this child. He was in a situation, as he got a little bit older, where it wasn't even safe because he was out on a lacrosse field, just daydreaming and not paying attention. So they then changed their roles. He didn't have to participate in a sport, but he had to find ways to be active, and so for him that meant taking walks in nature. He liked to hike and to take walks. So I think it's really loving your child where they're at, honoring where they're at who they are. We are not all one way. Very often we get kids who we are like where on earth did you come from? Like you are so different than me, and that's okay, but, yes, helping them identify what brings them joy, what brings them relaxation.
Speaker 1:Perfect. We mentioned this as a strategy for both stress and anxiety. Is there any other recommendations for anxiety? So obviously that would take additional steps. So can you tell our audience, our parent listeners, what they should?
Speaker 2:do so. This is going to sound probably a little bit wacky or different than what parents would expect. But if your child's got a lot of fear and worries and if they're looking for a lot of reassurance which often happens with kids who are experiencing anxiety symptoms our go to as parents is often to constantly reassure them. So if you have a child who's scared that here I'm thinking there was a time when we had a bear in our backyard and the bear came and he just took that bird feeder down on a metal pole Like it was nothing and my son was so frightened because our dogs were outside at the time. Now they were in the front yard. The dog was in the backyard, or, I'm sorry, the bear was in the backyard. Dogs were in the front yard, my son but my husband. I wasn't home, I was at work. My husband said go, let the dogs in the front. So my son was probably like nine at the time and like open the door. You know, went and opened the front door. It's, he was in no danger, but I think he felt that fear of like what if the dogs won't come in? I mean, we do not have well trained dogs. They are not known for listening. So it was frightening.
Speaker 2:That night when he was going to bed he had a lot of concerns about the bear getting into the house. So I'm just using this as an example to say you can start with, try it once, and then we'll just walk, build, but we can turn around, we can use thisold the bike and go guard with the puppy, I can go or mill it once, reality testing. How could a bear get into our house, right, right, we have the doors locked, it's. The bear couldn't break through a door. Then he was afraid what if the bear got into my window? How could the bear get into your window? You're on the second floor, you know. Would the bear have a ladder? Like let's talk about how would that look? For some kids, that's enough.
Speaker 2:They then feel better and say like oh okay, yeah there's, I'm really safe, it's unlikely the bear is going to get in. If you have a child that you've reality tested and it doesn't matter, they are still stuck on. But could there be a chance that the bear could get in? This is what's crazy, and sometimes it's really nice to do this with the help of a therapist. But you go to maybe yes, maybe no, right, like, yes, there's a small chance that the bear could get in there is. Is it helpful for us to keep thinking about it? No, right, like. Does that help? Like you're worried part wants to know that you're 100% safe all the time. But instead we practice getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Right, like, okay, yes, there's probably a point zero, one chance that the bear could get in our house because our windows are locked, our doors are locked, right so, yes, and if that happened, we would work on staying safe. Nothing we can do. So that like, as I say that, sonia, I think that's hard for parents, but that's really. You really go to a place of we're going to practice getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable or get comfortable with feeling uncertainty.
Speaker 2:When the child is like, say, it's better example because the bear is a scary one, better example would be you'd start with say, like, if your child says I'm scared, I'm not going to get 100 on my spelling test, maybe you will, maybe you won't, right, so when I work with children in counseling, we draw their worried part, they give it a name and they learn how to talk to it.
Speaker 2:So in that case, like I'm thinking of a kid who's worried part is named Sam, and so she would say to Sam maybe yes, maybe no Sam, or she would say thanks for the information, sam, and then she would focus on what she's doing instead of continuing to think about the worry and try to figure it out.
Speaker 2:But I guess if parents take anything away, I would say don't try like if your child is scared to death about vomiting, that's a common one. Don't try to shield them from ever talking about vomiting. Don't try to protect them from maybe their sibling has the stomach bug. Don't try to like not let them find out. Right, sometimes we want to do that because we want to protect them from that big fear and sometimes, quite frankly, we don't want to go through the stress that we're going to go through from our child having a big reaction. But the best thing you could do is say something like yeah, your brother does have the stomach bug. I know that's uncomfortable for you. We can talk about it if you need to talk about it. It just is what it is. Sometimes things like this happen.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that and that's definitely sometimes contrary to what parents would think parents would be would be thinking on saying, oh, it's okay, nothing's going to happen, eliminating it completely. And yet the child is so smart enough that saying I can't trust my parent because there is a possibility.
Speaker 2:Right, you're absolutely right. And for some kids, like for my son that night talking through the possibility of the bear getting in, he felt much, much more comfortable after I just reality tested the situation. And then I do recall too, I think we looked up how, like something like how dangerous are black bears? And right, yeah, black, not that dangerous. Right, it was saying in most cases, like with dogs, the dogs are more dangerous to the bears because the dogs will chase them and they'll get up a tree or get into a tricky situation. So that was helpful for him too. Right, that's just part of that reality testing.
Speaker 2:With my daughter, who really did struggle more with anxiety. We would get stuck because the reassurance wasn't enough or it would be for a short amount of time, and then she'd come back Well, what about this? Well, what about that? Can you know for sure? And so we would just have to go up. Is that your worried part? Yeah, do you want to just tell it? We're going to practice getting comfortable, feeling uncomfortable, and they start to learn that that feeling doesn't last forever.
Speaker 2:But if you have a child who's really having a super hard time with that, if they're not sleeping or they're eating, habits have changed or they're refusing to go to school or activities, then I would encourage parents to get support from a therapist from a therapist who really does work with children. I do have an episode on my podcast about this how to find someone in your area. You just really want to know that they specialize in working with children. I would say, rather than like sure, I'll work with children. So I always encourage parents to make that appointment. Go yourself the first time, see what you think about the therapist, look around, make sure there's some indication of toys or artwork or games or something that shows that they're kid friendly, super.
Speaker 1:And now for older students. Right, because we know that stress and anxiety can definitely affect their academic performance, especially the students that we are targeting, which is those that are going to be getting for college and career. Tell us a little bit more about stress, because we're not going to be able to take their stress completely away. Right, because academic pressures etc and I've been told and correct me if I'm wrong but sometimes the hardest thing for our youth, our adolescents, is that our parents haven't really plugged in daily ways of really managing their stress, because stress can happen all the time. So when we are retroactive it's harder than we're just proactive and planting in little seeds throughout our day or throughout our week to balance our lives. So can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so beautiful, sonia. I think that absolutely goes back to what I was saying about having scheduled, unscheduled time right, having regular downtime, having more balance. And I do see that teenagers, especially many of them, are so focused on being high achievers in all areas of their lives that that is super stressful, and so for some of them, it's really managing that and saying like, look, if you're playing basketball and soccer at the same time and in AP classes and in honors classes and in the orchestra with your cello, there's going to be stress. Like you can either choose to let something go to have a little more balance that is going to positively impact your stress, by lessening it most likely, or you can say no, this is more important to me, and then you have to be prepared to feel stressed because it's a lot and stress is a normal response, and I love to just help them learn Like we can learn from our stress and sometimes our stress is there to say like, girl, there is just a lot going on in life right now and it's overwhelming, but it's just one of those situations where nothing is in your control and you have to just do your best, right. Like, maybe try to go to bed a little bit earlier or at least on time. Just know this is a just a time period of stress. It will not be this way forever.
Speaker 2:I listened to this podcast, happier in Hollywood, and they are TV writers and they call it a season of sacrifice For them. There are certain times during their job where it is a season of sacrifice. I talk to high schoolers and college kids about this like it's midterm week. It's a season of sacrifice. You're not going to be getting together with friends so much. You're not going to be. You know, watching TikTok videos as much or whatever it is that helps you relax. But just remind yourself it doesn't last forever.
Speaker 2:There are other times, sonia, when I think absolutely and I can definitely, you know, relate to this that we say, like, whoa, I am so stressed and I got myself into this predicament. I said yes to too much, right, or I knew that this. You know, I knew that this is a hard time for me at work because I've got a lot of clients right now, but I said yes to hosting my entire family for the entire week that I'm off between Christmas and New Year, or whatever that might be, and so, okay, here I am. Now I'm going to get through this. What can I do to get through this more easily? And how can I not get into this in the future? Right, why did I say yes to this?
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. Okay, we'll have a couple of points on just your response. I'm loving your response because one of the things that is we say it a lot and I think we'd really need to clarify we always say, oh, try to have a balanced life, right. Have a balanced life, and nothing is ever really imperfect.
Speaker 1:Balance Number one number one, and, and what we mean and that's what Lauren is is referring to is that there is a balance, whether it's weekly or monthly or seasonally. That's what we're trying to aim for, but it doesn't mean that every single day, your day is going to be balanced. But if you, if you identify, okay, this is a busy season, so in my rest season I really need to rest, Correct.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. I love that, sonya, absolutely. I think that we are never really in balance or so rarely. We are more likely moving towards balance Right and I think it's so helpful to just notice where are the scales tipped Right. Am I usually my scales tipped with like I'm working a lot and I'm not doing much for fun or relaxation? So constantly trying to find ways to bring that into my life, but also realizing it's it's so rarely, like maybe you have a day or an afternoon, or maybe you get really lucky and have a week, but we're so rarely really in a place of like I am in perfect balance. It's just not, it's not common.
Speaker 1:Not reality.
Speaker 1:No no sadly, yeah, and then something that that I I do share a lot, and I have to. I heard this and I'm like, oh, I'm taking this, borrowing this forever, because I always need to remind myself that not everything good is good for me, Because we always tend to say, oh, but it's, it's for a good cause or it's for good reason, and that's right, but it doesn't mean it's good for me right now. And so that's what we need to remind our parents and our students, you know to, to understand that sometimes we might have, we might have to say no, it doesn't mean that it's not something that's good, it's just that it's not good for me right now.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, Absolutely, Sonya. It makes me think of when my daughter was a junior. Her um, or maybe she was, I guess she was a sophomore and looking at making her schedule for junior year, One of her teachers recommended her for an AP class and she said to me I don't know if I want to take this, because my friends who are in AP classes are up till really late and they're really stressed and like she tended to lean towards having anxiety, Like that was a part of her that could get big quite often. So I thought you know, wow, so smart.
Speaker 2:And I basically said that to her I think you're identifying something important which is that might work for them, but that doesn't work for you right now. And I think you're saying you don't want to have that sacrifice of giving up rest. And she was like I don't. I was like that's okay. She was like, is it? I said yes, 100%, that's okay. And then, when she was a senior, she did take an AP class and challenged herself. It was something she was interested in. She was ready for it at that point. But yes, some, you know, that's good for lots of kids. That's not good for every kid. So I love that, Sonya, I'm going to remember that, that saying.
Speaker 1:I had to read again, I had to remind myself, because I'm always saying yes, because I'm like, oh, but it's for good cause, but then you know we're kind of paying the effects of it later Totally, yeah, yeah. So any other mental health issues that we just want to make parents aware of, especially for our teens and young adolescents?
Speaker 2:Well, I think just back to the idea of so often we are over scheduled, so often our children are over scheduled. I think that there's a lot of pressure in our culture for our kids to be these incredibly high achievers. And what was that? How did you say that expression? Again, sonya, not everything good is good for you. Not everything good is good for me, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, 100%, and I think that it can get really easy to get caught up in that kind of rat race, as the expression goes, but it doesn't mean it serves you or your family and to just give yourself permission to do what's right for you. I have worked with some kids that have crazy schedules and love it, and they're here to you know work on grief or something completely unrelated to stress or anxiety, but I work with other kids who are just not thriving when they don't have time to themselves. So I think it's about identifying what works for you, what works for your children, and giving yourself permission to live your life in the way that it works, and I think that is proactive for your mental health right there.
Speaker 1:Perfect, you know, and this made me think that this made me think of our, of our overachievers, because you know we're talking about not everything good is good for me. But I bet, if you add, not everything is good is good for me right now, it at least gives you hope that you know, especially to the overachievers, right, you're like, but okay, just not right now, right?
Speaker 1:There might be a better, better season. And then the other thing that came to mind is really reflecting and identifying the down time, because I'm talking specifically for for my type A high achieving students is we're sometimes so actively involved that we forget that we actually did have downtime. And if we plug it into like calendar, into our agenda, like downtime and what we did, it brings awareness to it because, quite honestly, I think some students do have downtime and let me tell you why because they're on Instagram and on Facebook yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:But it's just identifying and putting a name to it into your schedule. It really reaffirms you like okay, I did have downtime, Maybe I didn't use it to the best, but you do have downtime.
Speaker 2:It's a great point, sonia, absolutely. And you know, I know I do this. I'll take five minutes to be on Candy Crush and that does not make me feel relaxed. That makes me feel really tense and stressed. And then I'll be like why didn't I just take five minutes and meditate or just sit and breathe for five minutes? It would have served me so much better. So, what a great point. Absolutely. Notice, like what did I do and how did I feel? Is that working or do I want to do something else? Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, you have had so much great information for us. Of course, is there any book recommendation that you have for parents or students?
Speaker 2:Oh, great question, Sonia. I love the book by Lisa D'Amore. D'amore, it's like, I think, d? A-p-o-u-r. It's Untangled, which is all about adolescent. Girls Love that book and I think a lot of what she talks about has crossover for adolescent boys also.
Speaker 2:I'm going to forget. I'm going to go to my Audible so I can find the other book I like for boys. I know it's by Rosalind Weissman and I know it's something to the effect of. It's got the word wingman in there, but I can't think of the title here. I'm going to my library Unfortunately I have about 450 books. You know what I'm going to do. I'm going to Google Rosalind Weissman instead.
Speaker 2:Rosalind Weissman people probably know her and don't even know that because she wrote a book called Queen Bees and Wanna Bees and that book was what was used to create the movie Mean Girls. So yes, and that's another great book. Queen Bees and Wanna Bees has a lot of information all about kind of the hierarchy of popularity. It's mostly based for girls but does definitely have some crossover. Here I'm going to say Weissman's books, because she's got a great book on the lives of boys and she did a lot of research that went into that also. So let's see if I can find it. Masterminds and wingman, helping our boys cope with school yard power, locker room tests, girlfriends and new rules of boy world. Oh yes, yes, so it's not brand new. Let's see if there's a date, because I think it could have been a little bit more inclusive to say boyfriends doesn't have to be girlfriends. But there's a lot of good information in here for sure.
Speaker 1:Super. Thank you so much. Is there anything that I have not asked you that I should have asked you?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, sonia, I think you asked me wonderful questions and I would say too, if it's available to parents counseling and they do think that their children are having a hard time managing their stress or anxiety and they have the availability or the means or I guess, availability and means to get them counseling, then I think it is really beneficial for kids just to have someone to kind of help them Through whatever they're feeling.
Speaker 2:And it can be, you know, that person, that therapist can kind of zoom out and be able to kind of help the family and the parents too, because sometimes, as parents were so close to a situation, it's hard to be the ones you know to fix everything. I feel like there's a lot of pressure on parents in our generation and I know I'm a little bit older than you, sonia, so probably even worse for you to like do everything right, to kind of be the therapist, to know better than the doctor at times, like the pediatrician, to just do all the things. So if you are feeling really worried about your child's worry or stress, then seek out help.
Speaker 1:I love that. Where can people find you, lauren, or connect with you?
Speaker 2:Thank, you, sonia. So my podcast is called your Zen Friend, your and then Zen ZEN friend. That comes out every Tuesday, and then I have a short guided meditation that also comes out through that podcast on Fridays. And they can also find me at your Zen friend pod on Instagram or they can find me. I've got a lovely Facebook group and they can just search for that in groups on Facebook. They just search for your Zen friend.
Speaker 1:I love that. You see, guys, now you know why I love her so much, just listening to her. You are kind, I love it. Thank you so much, lauren. I appreciate you being here with us and sharing with us your knowledge and your experience.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Sonia. I appreciate all the wonderful content you're putting out there for parents. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you, lauren. Thank you for joining us, sweet friend, and, as always, stay well, be present and enjoy the journey. I'll talk to you next week. Hi friend, thank you for listening in. If you enjoyed this episode, you would mean so much to me. If you share it with a friend, share it with them right now or, even better, tag me so I can personally thank you for helping us build our community. I'm so thankful for each and every one of you. Let's keep in touch and I'll talk to you soon. Adios.