Article | March 1, 2023
How to Prevent and Respond to Workplace Burnout
Burnout is a psychological syndrome that has become more well known due to the pandemic. Even with experts retiring the “pandemic” status in the US, burnout amongst healthcare workers persists, with one in three providers experiencing burnout at any given time.
So, what exactly is burnout? Burnout occurs when a person experiences heightened stress for a prolonged period of time....
Article | January 30, 2023
Understanding Interpersonal Violence
If you need immediate help, call the Oklahoma 24-hour Safeline at 800-522-SAFE (7233) or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE (7233).
Interpersonal violence (IPV), often called domestic violence, relates to a wide array of behaviors that are rooted in power and control and are implemented to maintain strict control of one’s partner(s). The number...
Article | January 27, 2023
Exam Day: Helpful Hints
Exams are extremely important in graduate school, but YOU are more important, and you have to take care of yourself as a human in order to be successful at taking exams as a student. Making sure your body is nourished and rested and you have social support helps lower anxiety to create a good, solid internal foundation for studying!
Manage your expectations.
Do not set...
Article | January 4, 2023
“We Were on a Break!”
When a relationship ends, everybody hurts. Most conspicuously, the partner who’s been broken up with experiences the sudden shock and loss of the end of the relationship. But the one doing the breaking up isn’t immune to pain, either. There’s a great deal of advice on the internet about how to survive a bad breakup, but comparatively little about how to end a relationship as...
Article | December 19, 2022
I Just Cannot Sleep
Do you have difficulty falling asleep? Does it take more than 20 minutes for you to fall asleep? Do you agree with the statement, “wired but tired?” Initiating sleep is a common challenge for many in the United States. Sleep issues can occur for many different reasons. One reason is poor sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene relates to the quality of your sleep routine or lack thereof. If...
Article | December 1, 2022
Extreme Studying
My first time around in graduate school I was not in a romantic relationship and I did not have children. This time around I am married with two young children. Add to that the impact of all of a sudden being forced to engage in all my studying and class efforts at home due to the COVID pandemic. The difference has been night and day.
I have always been interested in extreme sports, at...
Article | December 1, 2022
Coping with Winter Break
The semester is coming to an end. The temperature is dropping, and the holidays are approaching. Thank goodness for time off, right? Right?? For some, winter break is stressful because of difficult family dynamics, being far from loved ones, feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of what the next semester entails, and a dozen other reasons. Ideally, a break from school is relaxing, but for many...
Article | October 31, 2022
Grey’s Anatomy Lied: Relationships in Health Sciences School and Beyond
When you think of relationships in grad school, you may picture a complicated but passionate & worthwhile romance…something like Dr. McDreamy and Meredith from Grey’s Anatomy…but if you recall 1) that was a fictional TV show, and 2) they had so many ups and downs, it is a miracle any of their patients made it out alive with all the relationship turmoil they...
Article | October 28, 2022
Mindfulness: Living in the Here and Now
Mindfulness has become a buzz word in many mental health circles. The meaning of this practice is sometimes hard to understand, largely because it is used in so many different ways. In this article I will try my best to help untangle some of this confusion and provide some suggestions on where you can go if interested in digging deeper.
The concept of a mindfulness practice was...
Article | September 30, 2022
What is this Love Word Anyways?
Love is a complicated phenomenon often thrown around and often poorly understood. Many individuals contend that love is a recent “invention,” but evidence suggests that the concept of love has existed for at least 4,000 years. Defining it has remained a challenge for many people and scholars. One possible reason for this is that love is multi-faceted. Sternberg took...
Article | September 30, 2022
What Gaslighting Really Means
Do you know what gaslighting really means?
In the last few years, the term “gaslighting” has taken off faster than Tik Tok during quarantine. But do you really know what it means, or do you casually use it the way you use “literally” to describe something that is far from literal or similarly to how you often text “LOL” when you aren’t...
Article | March 4, 2022
How to Have Difficult Conversations
One of the first steps in engaging in difficult conversations with others is to better know and understand yourself. Often times we have something that we want to talk about and our energy pushes us to have a dialogue when we have not yet taken inventory of why we want to have the conversation, what our goal in the conversation is, what values are guiding us, and what we might expect regarding...
Article | December 1, 2021
Gratitude
Gratitude. We hear it often, especially as the holidays come up. We feel this expectation of experiencing and vocalizing a heart of gratitude. However, sometimes it can feel difficult to feel gratitude when life is throwing what feels like punches in all different directions.
What are the benefits of having gratitude?
Gratitude boosts the immune system as it increases...
Article | October 25, 2021
Reducing Stress through Mindful Practices
In their 2005 psychological research, the National Science Foundation found that the average person has somewhere between 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. That same year, a follow-up study done by Cornell University showed that 85% of what we think about never happens. Furthermore, for the remaining 15% of what we think about, 79% of participants expressed that they could handle the...
Article | September 27, 2021
Diet Culture
“This is my cheat meal,” “I look so fat,” “I need to exercise more,” are some of a few statements that have slid into our culture that unconsciously support diet culture. As we label “good foods” versus “bad foods” and skip breakfast to account for the “heavy” meal that was eaten the night before, we are buying into a...