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How to Unwind After Work | Hayden Finch, PhD | Psychologist/Therapist | | Des Moines, Iowa | Little Rock, Arkansas

How to Unwind After Work: 7 Proven Strategies

Anxiety, Blog, Burnout, Depression, Panic Attacks, Stress, Time Management /

Whether you’re working from home or you’re back in the office, chances are you are spent at the end of the day.  Tension builds throughout the day, and we end up carrying it home with us.  You want to relax, but it’s almost impossible — like you’re too stressed to de-stress.  Or maybe the only way you can unwind is with alcohol.  If this is you, I’m here with 7 proven (non-alcoholic) strategies to help you unwind after work.  

 

In this week’s article, I’ll share with you 

  • 7 proven strategies for unwinding after work
  • The reasons the strategies work
  • Ideas for how to incorporate them into your life
  • A checklist to make sure you’re implementing the strategies in your life — after all, they don’t work if you don’t do them!

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7 Key Differences Between Everyday Anxiety & an Anxiety Disorder| Psychologist Dr. Hayden Finch

7 Key Differences Between Everyday Anxiety & an Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety, Blog, Panic Attacks /

Anxiety is a normal part of everyday life.  Fear and anxiety and even panic have evolved as useful survival tools.  If there’s a threat to our survival, it behooves us to be able to activate our fight or flight system and GTFO.  Know what I mean? But fear and anxiety and panic that bleed into our everyday lives can sometimes push beyond what’s normal and become a disorder.  How do you know whether what you’re experiencing is anxiety or an anxiety disorder? I’ve got 7 key differences between anxiety and anxiety disorders for you.

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15 Coping Mechanisms That Are Keeping You Stuck| Psychologist Dr. Hayden Finch

15 Coping Mechanisms That Are Keeping You Stuck

Alcoholism & Substance Use, Anxiety, Blog, Burnout, Depression, Imposter Syndrome, Panic Attacks, Procrastination, Self-Criticism & Perfectionism, Stress /

Hey, we’re all doing our absolute best to just get from day to day and from week to week.  And over the years, we develop coping mechanisms to help us do just that. Sure, not all of those coping mechanisms are healthy, and we know it.  Of course smoking and drinking and spending too much are helping us feel “better,” and we know they’re not actually fixing the problem. But today, we’re diving deep into 15 coping mechanisms that you might not even realize are keeping you stuck.  Have you adopted any of these habits?

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The 4-Part Spiral That Creates Panic| Psychologist Dr. Hayden Finch

The 4-Part Spiral That Creates Panic

Anxiety, Blog, Panic Attacks /

Recently, we’ve been chatting a lot about anxiety.  I brought you 9 of my personal favorite ways to manage anxiety without medication and told you about 6 things that trigger anxiety.  Today, we’re chatting about the 4-part spiral that creates panic.  Panic attacks are super scary and bothersome, but knowing what creates them can help us stop the spiral and learn to master our panic.  

 

The spiral is kickstarted with a trigger.  True panic attacks often seem to occur out of the blue, but they’re frequently actually triggered by some sort of unusual physical sensation.  Once the attack has been triggered, a four-part spiral creates panic.  

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6 Triggers for Anxiety So You Can Stay Ahead of It | | Psychologist Dr. Hayden Finch

6 Triggers for Anxiety So You Can Stay Ahead of It

Anxiety, Blog, Imposter Syndrome, Panic Attacks /

Knowing what triggers your anxiety can help you predict when it’s going to flare up so you can double down on your healthy coping strategies (I brought you 9 of my personal favorites last week) and hopefully prevent a meltdown, breakdown, or shutdown.  Today, I’m bringing you 6 triggers for anxiety so you can stay ahead of it.

 

Everyone has their own idiosyncratic anxiety triggers.  For some people it’s being away from home, for others it’s public speaking, and for some it’s spiders or balloons or even puppies.  This post isn’t about listing every single thing that could trigger anxiety (that’d be impossible)…it’s about listing the general life factors that trigger just about everyone’s individual brand of anxiety.  

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9 Ways to Manage Anxiety Without Medication | Psychologist Dr. Hayden Finch

9 Ways to Manage Anxiety Without Medication

Anxiety, Blog, Panic Attacks, Stress /

Whether you’ve got occasional anxiety or it’s an all-day-every-day part of your life, having some high quality strategies for managing it is key to keeping it from taking over.  Medications can be helpful for some people in some situations, but some people prefer to keep things natural or don’t have anxiety that’s severe enough to warrant taking medication…and most people who take medications still have occasional anxiety.  So just about everyone who experiences anxiety needs a healthy repertoire of all-natural coping skills to maximize their wellness. Today, I’m bringing you 9 of my personal favorite strategies to manage anxiety without medication.  

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Anxiety vs. Fear vs. Panic: How to Tell the Difference | Psychologist Dr. Hayden Finch

Anxiety vs. Fear vs. Panic: How to Tell the Difference

Anxiety, Blog, Panic Attacks, Stress /

Anxiety, fear, and panic are such similar emotions and experiences that we often assume they’re just the same thing. But actually they’re different, and knowing the difference can help you communicate better with your doctors, know what information to actually be researching on your own, and hopefully finally find the right strategies to manage your mental health. In this week’s article, I’m telling you the key differences between anxiety, fear, and panic. Plus, I put it all together in a chart in case you’re a visual learner like I am. Charts are the best.

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3 Lessons Learned from CBT | Psychologist Dr. Hayden Finch

3 Lessons Learned from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Alcoholism & Substance Use, Anxiety, Blog, Depression, Panic Attacks, Therapy /

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most widely researched therapy intervention, and for most of the most common mental health conditions it is the absolute best therapy approach.  You might not know much about CBT, though, so today I’ll tell you 3 of the main lessons that underlie how CBT works. If you’re not in therapy, these lessons might help you know where to focus your energy in overcoming your own mental health struggles; and if you are in therapy (even CBT), these lessons should help you consolidate what you’re learning.  Let’s get into it.

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14 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Therapy Sessions | Psychologist Dr. Hayden Finch

14 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Therapy Sessions

Alcoholism & Substance Use, Anxiety, Blog, Depression, Panic Attacks, Self-Criticism & Perfectionism, Severe Mental Illnesses, Stress, Therapy /

So you’ve gone through all the steps of getting a therapist — it wasn’t easy, but you did it! Congratulations! Now you want to make sure you get the most out of your therapy sessions. In today’s post, I’ll tell you what to do before each therapy session, what to do during therapy sessions, what to do after therapy sessions, and what to do between your therapy sessions to make sure you’re squeezing every ounce of juice out of your therapy that you can. Plus, I put together a worksheet to help you organize it all and maximize your therapy sessions.

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