by Karissa Mueller | Aug 15, 2020 | Mental Health
Sometimes, my job as a therapist is to share a hard truth with clients. Today, I’ll cut right to it: your feelings are real – and – they may not be reflective of reality.
This particular “hard truth” is one I find myself sharing a lot with not just with clients, but with friends, family, and hell – even myself. What I find interesting is that usually, only one half of the statement is the “hard truth” part for people. Either accepting that their feelings are real is hard – or – accepting that how they feel might not be reflective of objective reality is hard. But – like I wrote about here – both can be true.
by Karissa Mueller | Aug 1, 2020 | Mental Health
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you’re here, you probably need to hear this: you look like an empty tube of toothpaste.
You know the one I’m talking about, right? The one that’s dangerously close to empty for a week now and yesterday morning you roll it just a liiiiiiitle bit tighter so you can hopefully squeeze out juuuuust enough to successfully rid your mouth of that morning-breath-plus-coffee film, all the while thinking “I’ve gotta remember to get toothpaste on the way home from work tonight because I think it might actually be empty now” and then you pray to the toothpaste gods for just a little more to come out when you’re doing the roll n’ squeeze routine again that evening before bed.
by Karissa Mueller | Jul 15, 2020 | Mental Health
I’m gonna let you in on a secret – I repeat myself in therapy. A lot.
I have four or five or twenty-seven of the same things I find myself saying to clients (and friends and hell, even to myself). Because I work with women who have similar struggles, over time I have developed these little phrases, nuggets, affirmations, challenges, and alternative perspectives that represent some of the core areas where I see my clients get stuck. So, welcome to a blog series – Therapy One-Liners by Karissa. Today’s edition is just four little ANNOYING words: both can be true.
by Karissa Mueller | Jul 1, 2020 | Mental Health
You can’t let go of something you don’t own.
This (^^) is quickly becoming my new mantra in regards to dealing with difficult emotions. So many times, our instinct is to turn away from difficult or painful feelings. We deny them or mask over them because we don’t know what to do with them, or we’re afraid that if we turn towards them and engage them, we might get stuck in them. In my personal and professional life, I’ve found that the best approach to dealing with difficult emotions is actually fairly logical…
by Karissa Mueller | Jun 15, 2020 | Mental Health
I really love that I cuss. Like, it might be in my top-ten-favorite-things-about-myself list. It is not, however, on my husband’s top-ten-things-I-love-about-my-wife list and realizing this caused me to get curious about why I love profanity so much. To the day I die, I will defend my belief that we don’t do anything that isn’t serving us in some way – even when those things cause problems in our life, and my cursing is no exception…
by Karissa Mueller | Jun 1, 2020 | Mental Health
Over last several weeks it’s never been clearer to me that we are all so unique and individual – yet we are literally all going through a 100% universal experience – a collective time of suffering and uncertainty. Everyone knows about coronavirus. You would have to LITERALLY be living underneath a rock to not be affected by it in some way, shape, or form. The struggle is shared and it’s real for each of us, but it’s also affecting each of us differently, and that’s perfectly okay.
