Jamie Krause, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Good morning everyone ☀️☕️

Today choose to break the cycle. Choose yourself and heal. Take the time to fulfill your needs that have been long neglected.

Protect your peace 💛

Happy Sunday! ☀️ ☕️ Here’s your reminder to take a mindfulness break before the weekend ends ⏰

Yesterday I took a walk outside listening to the birds and enjoying the sunshine ☀️ because it’s an easy and quick way to:

-Lower stress and anxiety
-Increases physical relaxation
-Helps the body prepare for sleep and improve sleep quality
-Increases concentration and awareness

🧘🏻‍♀️ What mindfulness practice did you do this weekend?

Good evening everyone. After a 14 months social media absence I have returned and I am excited to be back.

As we often tell our clients, listen to your body and hear what it’s trying to tell you👂🏻

Sadly after having Covid 3x during the last 3 years, my health deteriorated from long Covid. During this time I had to step away and prioritize my health. It has been a uphill battle since but I’m finally at a point in my health journey that I have the capacity to resume.

I hope you all have been well and look forward to reconnecting and engaging going forward 😊

Just a reminder that the purpose of Krause Therapy is to provide a safe space where tools and resources can be provided as well as decreasing Mental Health stigma through increasing awareness.

Instagram posts do not replace real therapeutic sessions, however, if you have questions or wish to discuss the mental topics I post about, feel free to set up a consultation or DM me.

Motivation is frustrating when you have ADHD. Fluctuating back and forth between super motivated leading to periods of hyper focus and fixation, or no motivation and procrastinating on tasks for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years.

There are techniques that can help. The first part is understanding what types of techniques can work best for each individual.

Competition, Challenge, Passion, Interest, Importance, Novelty, and Creativity are all healthy techniques.

Often times however, people with ADHD rely solely on Urgency to help overcome Procrastination and improve Motivation. Urgency is inconsistent, and overtime people become dependent on it which is why it’s not a healthy technique.

Identifying Emotional & Time Blindness Barriers also help improve motivation because techniques can be implemented to counter and reduce the impact.

Lastly using visual aides and time chunking help individuals organize their tasks and steps, and increase their productivity, thus increasing dopamine produced by the tasks.

Comment below with what motivation techniques you find helpful ⬇️

✨Anxiety about adjusting to reentering society after two challenging years of Covid is to be expected. New habits were created out of fear and a need for safety.

✨As a result, it will take time to transition and find a new balance. During this time self-compassion and compassion toward others are needed.

✨Here are 5 tips to help manage pandemic social anxiety.

✨Comment below with what you've found most helpful 👇

💫 Nutrition is important when it comes to managing ADHD. By fueling the body with healthy foods, it helps improve mood, memory, cognitive function, and behavior. On the opposite, sugary, high bad fat diets can intensify ADHD symptoms and lead to a decline in mental health, negatively impact emotional and physical regulation, as well as impact focus and cognitive functioning.

💫 Here are 5 nutrition tips to consider to support improved ADHD nutrition management.

💫  Share below what tips you have found helpful! 👇🏻

Daily Reminders 🧡 💚

✨Constantly feeling like you have muscle tension? Muscle tension is one of the human body's stress responses to anxiety and fear.

✨Carrying around constant muscle tension can also lead to physical exhaustion 😴

✨ Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) is a great anxiety tool to help relax the body, turn off the fight, flight, or freeze response 🧘🏻‍♀️ 🧘‍♂️

Have you tried it before? Share below if it's helped during moments of anxiety!

💫 Have you tried multiple ways and continue to struggle with managing ADHD when it comes to organizing your space? Here’s part 2 of helpful organization techniques.

💫These 5 tips will help you start feeling less overwhelmed, more organized, and less stressed.

💫 Organizing is stressful due to challenges with working memory, self-monitoring, task initiating, and planning as a result of having ADHD.

💫 Step 1: Categorize your home into different areas. Once you’ve categorized them, set small daily organization goals until that area is organized. For example, with a bedroom, designate the floor, closet, dresser, and tables as areas.
💫 Step 2: Set a goal. Example, pick up clothes from the floor for 15 minutes with a timer and put them either in the hamper or make a clean clothes pile. The next day continue sorting until all the clothes have been picked up.
💫 Step 3: Make a goal with your hamper and clean clothes pile.

💫 Creating a Sunday Basket is the idea of making mental space by having a designated basket where you write down your thoughts on paper or put tasks/items you need to do in one space, then every Sunday you revisit it and do some of the items in the basket. It is a designated place that you can put into your weekly routine. For example, say you have mail doom piles around your home. Put the mail into the Sunday basket until you make a mail organizing system.

💫 Now vs. Later is the idea of doing something immediately or within 5 minutes with the use of a timer, vs telling yourself you’ll do it later, but knowing you’ll procrastinate on it. It reduces procrastination, anxiety, overwhelm, and stress.

💫 Comment below with what organizing tips you find the most helpful 👇🏻

💫Have you ever been so busy that you didn’t know you were anxious or overwhelmed until you paused? Or ever been so anxious but didn’t know what to do?

💫With anxiety management, it’s about slowing your mind and body down. Bringing yourself back to the present moment, and checking in with yourself. Additionally, it’s about learning to recognize where you are feeling the anxiety within your body and what’s triggering it.

💫To do that you have to turn on your parasympathetic response to help your body relax and return to being calm when your autonomic nervous system has activated your fight, flight or freeze response.

💫These 5 tips help you turn on your parasympathetic nervous system.

💫Give these a try and let me know below which is your favorite! 👇🏻

💫 Is your ADHD impacting your ability to get your home organized?

💫Here are 5 tips to help you start feeling more organized, grounded, and less stressed.

💫 Comment below with what organizing tips you find the most helpful 👇🏻

Double tap if you agree that it’s ok to give yourself permission to show yourself the love and support you give to others, and to take the rest of the day to recharge 💙

Here’s to all who constantly give to those around them, and need some much needed love and time for themselves.

Happy Valentines Day 💝 everyone, whether you’re celebrating with friends, family, partners, or alone, sending everyone love and good vibes. Especially those who are needing some extra self-love today ❤️❤️❤️

Have you found yourself stuck in survival mode and unsure how to transition out of it?

First it’s important to understand how we get stuck in survival mode. Life is busy, often to the point of being overwhelming. As a result we find ways to help complete tasks and juggle hectic schedules. But those coping techniques are not always the healthiest option. We turn to them because sometimes they’re convenient in the moment or we don’t know other options and are too overwhelmed to look for what other options are out there.

Survival mode is all about the reaction our bodies have to help us respond to the stressors being juggled. When stressed, our body goes through physiological responses and hormonal changes and responds in 1 of 3 ways (fight, flight, or freeze). While this protects us from immediate dangers, overtime if we are chronically stressed, it can result in us feeling disconnected, emotionally and mentally exhausted, result in physical health deteriorating, increase anxiety and depression, and feeling detached from loved ones and our lives.

As a result of all of these stressors eventually we shut down and we disconnect. While this might be necessary and helpful sometimes, to constantly be in a state of disconnection and detachment is unhealthy. We stop sensing and receive survival related needs, as well as threats. We go into a place where we feel physically and emotionally safe, but completely numb to the situations and people around us. To be healthy and functional we need to feel and connect with all emotions both positive and negative.

Here are 5 strategies to help you transition out of survival mode and back into feeling reconnected with your life.

✨Have you ever felt like you’re just trying to get through the day and it’s overwhelming to think or plan anything beyond today?

✨You might be in survival mode. Here are 5 symptoms of what it looks like to be in survival mode.

✨The upcoming post will be tips for how to cope and transition out of survival mode.

✨What is it? It’s the idea of putting off sleep to regain hours that were lost during the work day, and spending time getting to do enjoyable activities.

✨It can affect anyone, however, individuals who have ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression, stressful lives, and struggle with time management are found to more often engage in this behavior.

✨Sleep is necessary for both our physical health, but also our mental health. Without it, our focus and memory are impacted.

✨Also we are more likely to get sick due to our immune system is weakened and can lead to increased risk of mortality.

✨It can also negatively impact our mental health, by impacting our ability to manage stress, anxiety, depression, and emotional regulation.

Comment below 👇🏻 What tips do you find most helpful? 🤔

Are you struggling with time blindness? ⏰ Here are some helpful tips 😊

What is Timeblindness?

✨Time blindness is when some people experience the passage of time differently. They struggle to recognize that time is actually passing, how much time has gone by, and be aware of deadlines or future events.

✨Time blindness impacts work, friendships and relationships, commutes, daily activities such as cooking, cleaning, personal plans, and productivity.

✨It causes stress, anxiety, and frustration for the person struggling with time blindness as well as potentially those around them.

✨While time blindness primarily affects people with ADHD: inattentive, combined and hyperactive-impulsive, it can also impact people who have Anxiety and Depression Diagnoses.

✨Are you or a loved impacted by time blindness? Read the following post for 6 tips on how to better manage it.

Double tap if you agree that moments of “failure” are life lessons from which awareness, change, and growth can emerge from 💜 Here’s to all who never stop trying 🙏

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Double tap if you agree you are courageous for trying even when things get hard 🧡 Here’s to all who never stop trying 🙏

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Happy Wednesday all ☀️

Here are 6 moves to help you physically release the stress and anxiety you’ve been carrying all week 🧘🏻‍♀️

Share below which is your favorite 😊

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Grief ultimately doesn’t shrink or go away, we simply learn to grow around it and move forward 💔

Even 20 years later, the trauma and grief still lingers from the events of that day.

Thinking of those who’ve lost loved ones today and those who have had to live 20 years without them, as well as the survivors who have struggled with guilt, trauma and grief. Thinking also of anyone else who is experiencing new grief or is still struggling to grow around their grief and work through their trauma.

You are not alone.

I hope today, you are self-compassionate toward yourselves and others. I hope that you take an extra moment to tell your loved ones how much they mean to you, and spend some quality time together if possible. I also hope today you make some time for self-care. Life is precious and we never know how quickly things will change.

May you all have a compassionate and self-care filled September 11th 🙏✨

✨Our thoughts hold power. They can be a source of comfort or a source of distress.

✨At the end of the day we all possess the ability to comfort ourselves, to be able to problem solve through difficult situations, and make realistic goals come true.

✨By remembering we do hold power in our thoughts and perspectives, we are able to empower ourselves to make the positive changes we desire. We all are capable of change and growth as long as we are open to it.

Double tap if you agree 💜

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Happy Labor Day all, hope you’re having a safe long weekend 🌊

A lot of different situations and emotions can cause us to lose our grounding and lead to dissociating, shutting down, or having an escalated emotional response.

This is one of my favorite tools that helps you reorient yourself with your present space, reconnect with your body, and allows you to feel more emotionally in control.

Steps
💫 Take in your immediate surroundings and select an object.
💫 Mentally describe or say out loud the object (shape, color, texture, function)
💫 Select at least two more objects and repeat the process with each one.
💫 Once completed, check in with yourself and see how emotionally you’re feeling, and how your body feels.
💫 Ask yourself do you feel more grounded and present?

☀️ With all that is going on currently in the world it’s important to make time for grounding work🧘🏻‍♀️

☀️Benefits of grounding techniques:
💫stress reduction
💫improved health
💫increased feelings of peace and calm
💫increased emotional and mental focus on the present
💫allows you to let go
💫increased energy

☀️ This holiday weekend I will be doing:
💫deep breathing
💫working out
💫having quality time with my partner
💫listening to sound baths

☀️What grounding techniques will you be using?

✨All of us are deserving of rest, self-love, self-care, and peace.

✨ What do you think you are deserving of?

Share below ⬇️

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Hi all 👋 it’s been a hectic couple of weeks, but thankfully things are settling down.

Trying something new with weekly affirmations 💜

✨Affirmations are positive statements that are used to rewire our subconscious and challenge and counter negative and self-sabotaging self-talk.

✨What are some of your favorite affirmations?

Share below ⬇️

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Happy Tuesday ☀️

Here are some of the plants in my little pandemic garden 🪴 🌵 🌱

Both plants and being out and nature have been proven to positively improve mental health 🧠

Being surrounded by both produces feelings of calm, relaxation, decreases anxiety, stress, and depression, improves self-esteem, memory and focus.

It also gives us a sense of responsibility, makes us feel connected to living things, improves mindfulness, promotes exercises, and depending on the plant improves the air quality in your home.

Have you noticed a positive effect of having a home garden, house plants, or being out in nature?

Share your experience below ⬇️

🔅Reminder for the day, it’s ok to take time to unplug and recharge 🧘🏻‍♀️ 🏖

🔅If we are not prioritizing refilling our self-care cup on a daily and weekly basis we won’t be able to be there for those we care about during the times they need us.

🔅Have you given yourself permission this week?

🔅Share below what activities did you do to unplug and recharge? 🔋

🔅Wishing you all a wonderful rest of your week 😊

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