DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) Group Info
Explore What’s Next is now recruiting new participants for virtual Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) Skills Groups! In the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic, a lot of people are struggling with increased isolation from their loved ones and friends. Depression,...
COVID-19 Stuck at home? 10 Tips For Parents
Stuck at home?Here are (hopefully) 10 helpful Tips For Parents for you and your family during this time: A snow day (or two) is fun…but more than a few days stuck at home can quickly become overwhelming. Given the current health crisis and closure of schools, many...
3 Ways to be Socially Responsible: Explore What’s Next Responds with Care
News about COVID-19, how to prepare and how to take care of ourselves and our families, changes every day. With every new piece of information, more worry seems to mount. That’s natural. We know how stressful this time can be. To do what we can to lower the stress and...
Explore What’s Next Speaker Series-Mindy Scime
People pleaser is a label I hate. That it is accurate when used to describe me just makes me hate it more. My ability to be a people pleaser was off to an early start when I first impressed my dad with my reading skills. The book was Little Bear by Elsa Holmelund...
Coronavirus Anxiety: 3 Challenges & What to Do About Them
Coronavirus. Just the word causes faster heart rates, shorter breaths and queasy stomachs, hallmark signs of anxiety. There have been many times when I’ve written about our psychological reaction to current affairs on this blog. Game-changing events, natural...
Three Steps To Control Your Anger
Anger is a perfectly OK emotion. A natural reaction to feeling threatened, the expression of anger, especially for women, has been given a bad rap. While growing up, I was encouraged to deny my anger, to feel somehow guilty or apologetic for it. Angry women are called...
Dream Made Manifest: The Studio at Explore What’s Next
The Studio at Explore What's Next is a long hoped for dream made manifest. The dream was to have a place where people, like me, who at some point or other, feel raw and vulnerable, can find a safe haven. In the center of that safe haven, there is the...
The Proposal, The Ring
Four months after I met John I proposed marriage to him. He said, “No. Thank you.” I was twenty-nine when we met. He was the life partner I had been waiting for. He loved me but he didn’t believe in marriage. OK, I thought, I’ll give him a year. ...
Do I have the winter blues or am I depressed?
Ah, the winter blues. As Game of Thrones fans often quote, “Winter is coming.” Most people cherish sunshine and the summer, especially in Buffalo! I know I’m not the only one who is hearing people complain about the colder, darker days that are happening. For many,...
Am I a bad parent for wanting to go back to work?
I’ve been avoiding writing this post because I’m a first-time parent and I’ve been struggling with some guilt for returning back to work myself. My son is almost three months old and I returned to work part-time after seven weeks. I was, am, and will likely continue...
The 5 Love Languages: What are they and how do they impact your relationships?
When my husband does the dishes (my chore since he cooks) or folds my laundry, I feel loved. To return the favor, I would often help him with his chores and remember feeling frustrated that it went pretty unacknowledged, especially because I expressed explicit...
Grand Opening The Studio
The EWN Studio is a place where mind+body+spirit thrives. Celebrate this special place with us at our Grand Opening!This Thursday, September 12, from 5:00PM to 8:00PM. Drop by any time between 5 & 8! Bring the family! It’s totally free!There will be...
The Bringing Baby Home program and what I learned from it (to my surprise)
“Being a parent is hard.” “Your whole life will be turned upside down.” “You have no idea what you’re in for.” “You just have one..wait until you have two.” “You just have two...wait until you have three.” Sometimes this (often unsolicited) feedback can be helpful....
Five Tips to Handle Toxic Food Culture in the Workplace
We have a problem in the modern-American workplace: toxic food culture. Our views around food—what’s acceptable to eat, what’s “good” and what’s “bad,” how people choose to eat their food—have become very distorted. We live in a culture of dieting and “lookism.”...
5 tips that help my recovery from depression and might help you
Recovery from depression isn't easy. Coming out of depression isn't like flipping a light switch, one day you're in the dark pit, the next you're in a room flooded with light. I'm going to try to describe what it's really like here because this is what is happening to...
Embrace the Bumps For Parents Of Tweens and Teen Girls
Embrace the bumps! Some of the therapists at Explore What's Next read the same article in the New York Times. Each therapist tackled one of the points in the article. Read the original article, The Confidence Gap for Girls: 5 Tips for Parents of Tween and Teen Girls,...
How To Break Up With Someone: 10 Tips
You’re with someone who isn’t right for you. You need to break up, but just the thought of doing it makes your anxiety rise to a point where you question everything you ever thought about the relationship. Then you shake your head and tell yourself, no, I have to stop...
New Beginnings Are Not For Wimps – via insidewink
A few months ago, I was approached to produce a guest writer article for insidewink. I was SO excited! Insidewink is an awesome website with the tagline: Share the Good. Founded by Jean Trebeck, Alison Martin and Trish Geiger, their intention is always to be uplifting...
7 Ways Therapy Can Help Relationship Issues
When you choose to go to therapy, you have opened a door to a myriad of possibilities for growth. You get to have control in your therapist’s office; you can talk about whatever you want, and work through the issues that you decide are important. For a lot of people...
Interview With Tacianna Indovina
Tacianna Indovina, Ph.D., has been working at Explore What’s Next, located in the Buffalo region of New York, since October 2018. Her position at Explore What’s Next allows Tacianna to specialize in helping teens, young adults, and couples cope with interpersonal...
Why am I damaging my hair, skin, & nails when I am stressed?
Why am I damaging my hair, skin, and nails when I am stressed?! Do you bite your nails or cuticles until they hurt?Do you pull your hair until you have bald spots?Do you pick at your skin until you have multiple bloody spots on your face? You are not alone! You are...
7 Tips! Kids with Attention Challenges & Remote Learning
Parent's all over the Western New York Region are experiencing the difficulty of connecting children with Attention Challenges to Remote Learning. Having the kids home 24/7 AND for many, also working from home, AND helping them each step of the way with their school...
4 Skills to Adapt to The New College Experience:
Clara Kuntz, Ph.D, discusses four skills college students can use to adapt to the new college experience. Helpful for college age families.
Near Me: 5 Parks to Visit After a Therapy Session
Therapy is great, but homework isn’t. At the end of my last therapy session, my therapist asked “So have you made any more headway in that workbook I recommended?” The smile on my face fell slightly. ‘Shit.’ I, in fact, had not opened that work book in over a...
Depression or Grief: Five ways to give ourselves a break
Here are some things I’ve learned from my experience of crashing and burning and getting back on track again. Five ways we can give ourselves a break You are not crazy. Stop gaslighting yourself. It’s not mental illness if you are reacting to an event in your...
EMDR Helps To Heal A Painful Past
When healing a painful past event requires more than talking it out, EMDR is there to help Intrusive memories: they can happen to all of us. You think that you’re over your parents’ divorce from over 20 years ago, but every now and then, and completely out of...
Daughter is a VSCO Girl, What Does That Mean?
First of all, don’t panic. It is perfectly normal to be a VSCO girl. Second of all, I am 26 years old and I just found out about VSCO girls in October. I went into work and one of my colleagues was playfully teasing the other. He turned to me and laughed “Isn’t...
Chronic Illness in the Time of COVID
In the old movie Broadcast News, the Holly Hunter character, I forget her name, would take time for herself every morning to cry. She just cried. There was no apparent trigger, no reason or justification ever given for why this intelligent, intense, professional woman...
RE-OPENING!
AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR EXPLORE WHAT'S NEXT CLIENTS REGARDING RE-OPENING OFFICES! All of us at Explore What’s Next sincerely hope this finds you well. Thank you so much for your patience, flexibility, and resilience during this time of great change. The transition to...
Will Tele-Therapy Work For Me?
Throughout the United States and around the world, people are connecting with Explore What’s Next for therapy sessions through tele-sessions. Geography is no longer an obstacle to getting the help you need! Tele-sessions are more like office visits than you think....