Rhythm Wellness

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Rhythm Wellness 🤫 Therapy for the stuff you don't tell friends. Licensed anxiety, burnout & life transitions therapists. 💻 Online across New York State. In-network. No judgment.

Jack Szary, LMHC-D | Lindsay Levine, LMHC. 👇 Book a free 15-minute call.

In 1990, 3% of American men said they had no close friends. By 2021, that number was 15%. That's not a lifestyle trend. ...
10/13/2026

In 1990, 3% of American men said they had no close friends. By 2021, that number was 15%. That's not a lifestyle trend. That's a health statistic.

Over the same stretch, the share of men with six or more close friends was cut roughly in half. And in a 2025 Pew Research Center report, 54% of women said they'd be very likely to turn to a friend for emotional support. For men, it was 38%.

THE 2 AM PROBLEM
Which brings us to 2 AM. The night something goes wrong, the ceiling fan hums, and you scroll through a phone full of contacts without landing on one name you'd actually call.

Nobody warns you about this part of being a man. The work gets handled. The family gets provided for. The small talk at the barbecue goes fine. Then 2 AM arrives, the room is quiet, and there's no one on the other end.

FRIENDSHIP IS NOT A MOOD
We treat friendship like weather. It happens or it doesn't, depending on luck or personality. Wrong category entirely.

In acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), friendship is a values commitment. You don't find it. You practice it. And like anything you practice, it responds to reps.

Think about how you treat the things you actually value. The gym slot. The standing appointment. The thing that gets protected no matter what. Friendship belongs in that column, and most men never think to move it there.

THE AWKWARD THIRTY SECONDS
Here's where willingness comes in. The whole game is the awkward thirty seconds of reaching out first. The "we should grab a b**r sometime" that dies in the parking lot because nobody turns it into a day and a time.

Willingness means sending the text while the awkwardness is still sitting in your chest. The awkwardness is the price of admission, and it's a lot cheaper than 2 AM.

ONE TEXT THIS WEEKEND
So here's the committed action. One text this weekend. Not a friendship renaissance. One text to one person you used to be close to. Something like: "Thinking of you. No agenda. How are things?"

The friendship doesn't need to be profound. It needs to be repeated.

You don't need more friends. You need one person you can be unimpressive in front of.

IF THE LIST COMES UP EMPTY
If no name comes to mind right now, hear this clearly. Building one connection is a skill, and skills respond to practice. There's no defect here. There's a practice gap, and practice gaps close.

So, real question: who's the one person you can be fully unimpressive in front of? Tag them, or just tell us when you last talked. Somebody scrolling this thread needs the reminder to send the text.

If the one-text move keeps not happening, or there's no name to send it to, that's workable. Men's mental health is a core focus at Rhythm Wellness, and we offer virtual therapy for adults across New York State.
👉 Book a Free 15-Minute Call

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988.

Your move. 🔥

Jack Szary, LMHC-D | Co-owner, Rhythm Wellness

Tomorrow is World Mental Health Day. This year's theme from the World Federation for Mental Health is "Lived Experiences...
10/09/2026

Tomorrow is World Mental Health Day. This year's theme from the World Federation for Mental Health is "Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change."

So let's talk about the voice most of us silence first. Our own.

WHAT WE GET WRONG
We treat emotional struggle like a character flaw. Like reaching out is a confession that something in us is broken. That might be the most expensive misunderstanding in adult life.

Watch a six-year-old with a scraped knee. They don't hide it. They run to the nearest grown-up, say what hurts, and get help. Nobody tells them asking makes them weak.

Somewhere between the playground and the performance review, most of us traded that instinct for "I've got it handled."

THE PLUMBER TEST
When a pipe bursts in your kitchen, you don't stand in the rising water feeling ashamed of your plumbing. You call a plumber. You call the person whose whole job is the thing that's breaking.

You don't apologize for making the call. You make it because you're a capable adult solving a real problem. Your inner life deserves at least the same respect as your pipes.

It's okay to not be okay. The sentence we usually skip is the next one: it's also okay to call the plumber.

WHAT IT ACTUALLY FEELS LIKE
Most people don't arrive at therapy feeling brave. They arrive tired. And what many describe after that first real conversation isn't drama. It's relief, almost embarrassing in how simple it is. Someone is finally on the other end of the line whose work is exactly the thing that's been hard.

REAL VOICES, REAL CHANGE
That's what this year's theme is asking for. A voice only becomes lived experience when it stops editing itself.

So here's my question. Think about the first time you said the true thing out loud, to a friend, a partner, a doctor, anyone. You don't need to share the details. Just tell us in the comments: what finally made you say it? Your answer might be the push someone else needs this weekend.

If this is the week you've been thinking about saying it out loud, we'd be honored to listen. Rhythm Wellness offers virtual therapy for adults across New York State, and we're in-network with insurance.
👉 Book a Free 15-Minute Call

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988.

Sometimes it only takes one shift to break a cycle. 💚

Lindsay Levine, LMHC | Co-owner, Rhythm Wellness

4:47 PM on a Thursday. An email lands from your boss. No context, no tone, just "Can we talk tomorrow?"By 11 PM you have...
10/06/2026

4:47 PM on a Thursday. An email lands from your boss. No context, no tone, just "Can we talk tomorrow?"

By 11 PM you have written the whole disaster. The meeting. The termination. The conversation where you say the wrong thing and years of work quietly unravel.

Nothing has actually happened. You haven't been fired. You haven't even replied. You've been screenwriting.

THE FACTORY PRESET
Your brain is a prediction machine, and it comes with default settings. For a lot of high achievers, those settings were tuned during seasons when being unprepared had a real cost. So when a message arrives with no tone, the machine does what it was built to do. It fills in the ending. Worst case, full color, opening night.

The clinical term is catastrophizing. Think of it as the factory preset. Every mind ships with one.

The preset is a security system that never got the memo. It's trying to protect you. It's just working from old news.

CATCH IT EARLIER
Arguing with the spiral at full volume is a rigged fight. You won't out-reason your own alarm at 11 PM.

The window is earlier, in the first few minutes, while the email is still just an email. That's when three questions from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) do their best work.

1. What's the worst that could happen, what's the best, and what's most likely? Run all three, slowly. Your brain jumps to the finale because the finale feels like preparation. Most of the time, it's rehearsal for a play that never opens.

2. If a friend told me this exact story, what would I tell them? You're usually kinder and more accurate with other people than with yourself. That clarity is already in you. Borrow it.

3. If the worst did happen, what would I do? And have I handled hard things before? Stay with that second part. Most people realize they're sitting on a whole résumé of getting through things that anxiety never mentions.

THE SPIRAL GETS SHORTER
Default settings don't get deleted. Anyone promising you a brand-new brain is selling something. What changes is the timing.

You catch the 11 PM screenwriting session at 10. Then at 9. Same brain, shorter screenplay. That's the win, and it's enough.

Your turn: what's one time your brain wrote the disaster and real life went a completely different way? Drop it in the comments. Someone is sitting in their own 11 PM screening tonight, and your story might help them catch it sooner.

If your spirals are getting longer instead of shorter, that's a very workable pattern in therapy. Rhythm Wellness offers virtual anxiety therapy for adults across New York State.
👉 Book a Free 15-Minute Call

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988.

Your move. 🔥

Jack Szary, LMHC-D | Co-owner, Rhythm Wellness

Sober October Started Yesterday. What Is the Third Drink For?Sober October started yesterday. Today is the day most peop...
10/02/2026

Sober October Started Yesterday. What Is the Third Drink For?

Sober October started yesterday. Today is the day most people quietly decide whether they meant it. So here is a question worth sitting with: what is the third drink for?

Not the first. The first drink is easy to explain. A toast, a celebration, a cold one after a long week. The second is social too. Part of the table, part of the conversation, part of the ritual of being with people.

The third drink is different. Nobody hands you the third drink. You go get it yourself. And in that small private moment, drink three becomes a conversation with yourself. So what is it for?

ASK IT WITHOUT SHAME

This is not a gotcha, and it is not about labels. Most people who wonder about their drinking are not in any category. They are in the gray area, and the gray area is where a good question does its best work.

So ask it honestly. After two drinks you are warm, social, relaxed. What is drink three adding? For a lot of people the honest answer is simple: it turns the volume down on a feeling. A long day. A brutal quarter. A conversation you keep avoiding with yourself.

Notice that. No judgment. Just notice.

NUMBING OR CONNECTION

Here is the distinction that matters. Drinks one and two are usually about connection. You, people you like, something to mark the moment. Drink three is often the opposite. Less connection, more buffering. The trade nobody mentions at the time is that ease tonight is usually borrowed from tomorrow, and tomorrow always collects.

THE MONTH IS STANDING IN FOR SOMETHING

Sober October is interesting for a reason that has nothing to do with October. It gives you structure from the outside. A rule you did not have to invent, a reason you do not have to defend, a complete sentence at a bar.

But a dry month is rarely the real point. The month stands in for something. Maybe presence. Maybe self-trust. Maybe health you keep meaning to get to. Maybe the version of you who shows up on Saturday morning instead of sleeping it off. Maybe self-respect, the kind you feel at 7 AM and not just the kind you talk about.

When the month ends, the structure goes with it. The value does not have to. That is the part worth keeping.

BEFORE ANYONE GOES COLD TURKEY

One safety note, because it matters. If you drink heavily every day, do not stop abruptly on your own. Alcohol withdrawal can be medically dangerous and in some cases life-threatening, and it needs a doctor's guidance rather than willpower. A ten-minute conversation with a physician is worth more than a month of bravado.

JUST CURIOUS

Whatever you do with this month, it is not a verdict. Full sobriety, moderation, or quietly paying attention for thirty days are all valid. There is no scoreboard. The only thing on the table is an honest answer to one question, asked with zero shame.

And if your honest answer is "nothing, it is just a habit wearing a costume," that is useful information too. Curiosity is not commitment. You are allowed to just look. 🔥

Genuine question for the comments, no wrong answers: if you did the month, what would it be standing in for? Presence? Self-trust? Saturday mornings? Curious what comes up for people.
If drink three has been asking you a question you keep avoiding, that is a good thing to bring into the room. No labels, no lectures, just an honest conversation. Free 15-minute call: https://rhythmwellnessnyc.com/free-consultations?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=week_1002_third_drink

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988. 💚
Jack Szary, LMHC-D | Co-owner, Rhythm Wellness

Grieving Someone Who's Still AliveThere is no funeral for a living loss. No casseroles, no bereavement days, no script. ...
09/29/2026

Grieving Someone Who's Still Alive

There is no funeral for a living loss. No casseroles, no bereavement days, no script. But the grief is real.

Some losses do not come with an ending you can point to. The person is still here. Still breathing, still posting, still living in the same world as you. And yet something that mattered is gone. Psychologist Pauline Boss gave this kind of loss its name: ambiguous loss. It is the grief of loving someone who is still alive when the relationship as you knew it has ended.

If you have carried this, you already know how lonely it is. Nobody knows what to say, because there is nothing to announce and no service to attend. So the loss goes unnamed, and unnamed grief has a way of making people wonder if they are the only one.

You are not. Not even close.

THE FAMILY MEMBER WHO IS STILL OUT THERE

In a national survey led by Cornell sociologist Karl Pillemer, about 27% of American adults reported being estranged from a family member. More than one in four. It is one of the most common losses in the country and one of the least discussed.

If this is yours, you may grieve a parent who is alive and unreachable, or a sibling you no longer speak to. You may be holding two truths at once: stepping away may have been the healthiest thing you ever did, and it still hurts. Both can be true. Grief does not require a mistake.

THE CHILD WHO IS GROWING AWAY

Then there is a quieter loss almost no one warns you about. Your child, alive and well, becoming their own person. The little one who needed you is still here, just not in the same way. There is so much pride in that. There is grief in it too, a door closing softly, season after season.

Both are allowed. Loving their independence and missing the smaller version of them are not in conflict. That is not wishing them small. That is loving them at every size.

THE MARRIAGE THAT CONTINUES

And sometimes the person who is gone is sitting across the table from you. The marriage continues on paper. The partnership ended a long time ago. The house is full and the person beside you feels miles away. That is a loss too, even though no one would call it one. You can grieve a relationship that never officially stopped.

WHAT THIS GRIEF NEEDS

Here is what I have learned from sitting with grief like this. It does not need to be fixed. It needs to be witnessed. It needs language, which is part of why I wanted to write this. A name is not a cure, but it is a light in a dark room. You cannot tend what you are not allowed to see. 💚

If this post named something you have been carrying, you are welcome to say so in the comments. No advice needed, and no one needs to be fixed. Just witnesses. We read every one.
And if you are carrying a loss that has no name yet, we would be honored to sit with you in it. Grief support is one of the things we do best. Free 15-minute call: https://rhythmwellnessnyc.com/free-consultations?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=week_0929_ambiguous_loss

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988. 🕯️
Lindsay Levine, LMHC | Co-owner, Rhythm Wellness

Waiting to feel like it? That's the trap.If you are a depleted parent, you know the script. You will rest when the house...
09/25/2026

Waiting to feel like it? That's the trap.

If you are a depleted parent, you know the script. You will rest when the house is quiet. You will call your friend when things calm down. You will start taking care of yourself when you feel like yourself again.

Here is the problem. The feeling you are waiting for is not coming first. In most cases it comes second.

MOTIVATION FOLLOWS ACTION

This is one of the better-researched ideas in therapy, and it runs backwards from what most of us believe. We assume the order is feel motivated, then act. It is usually the reverse. Act first, even a little, and the feeling tends to follow.

That is the engine of behavioral activation, a CBT approach used with depleted and burned-out people for decades. Not because it is a trick, but because your brain watches what you do. When you do something, even something small, your brain updates. Oh. We are still a person who does things.

WHY PARENTS GET STUCK HERE

Parents have a particular version of this trap, because parenting runs on invisible fuel. You are not just tired. You are the kind of tired that sleeps and does not refresh. Then comes the shame on top: I have nothing left, and I do not even care that I do not care.

If that sentence landed, hear me. That numbness is not laziness and it is not bad parenting. It is what depletion does to a person. The not-caring is a symptom, not proof that you are failing, and beating yourself up for it only spends the little fuel you have left.

SHRINK IT UNTIL IT IS ALMOST SILLY

Here is the move. Do not aim for the version of self-care that belongs on a magazine cover. Aim for something so small it feels almost silly. A five-minute walk to the corner and back. One load of laundry, start to folded. Texting one friend the word hi. Sitting outside with your coffee for three minutes before the day begins.

That is not nothing. That is activation, and the size is the point. When you are depleted, a big plan is another way to fail by Friday. A tiny action is a promise you can actually keep, and kept promises are how motivation gets rebuilt.

Rest counts too. Real rest, chosen on purpose, is an action. The difference is that you chose it rather than collapsing into it and resenting everyone afterward.

TODAY, NOT MONDAY

You do not need a new routine. You need one small thing today, before the day talks you out of it. Not a plan for the month. One action before noon. 💚

Say it in the comments so we can cheer you on: what is your one small thing before noon? Make it small enough that you cannot reasonably say no, then come back tonight and tell us you did it. The report-backs are our favorite part.

One more thing, gently. If the emptiness has been sitting with you for a long time, or nothing brings any pleasure anymore, that is worth bringing to a professional. Not because something is wrong with you, but because you deserve support before you hit empty. We work with parents on exactly this. Free 15-minute call: https://rhythmwellnessnyc.com/free-consultations?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=week_0925_smallest_action

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988. 🍂
Lindsay Levine, LMHC | Co-owner, Rhythm Wellness

You Are Not Multitasking (And It Is Making You Anxious)You're not multitasking. You're doing nothing well, and it's maki...
09/22/2026

You Are Not Multitasking (And It Is Making You Anxious)

You're not multitasking. You're doing nothing well, and it's making you anxious.

Fifteen tabs open. Three half-finished emails. A document you have read the same paragraph of four times. Your phone face-down but somehow still glowing. You have been busy for three straight hours, and if someone asked what you actually got done, you would go quiet.

Here is the part nobody put on the motivational poster. Your brain does not multitask. It task-switches, fast, and every switch costs you.

THE MATH NOBODY SHOWED YOU

Researcher Gloria Mark has tracked attention on screens for two decades. The average now sits around 47 seconds, down from about two and a half minutes twenty years ago. Her work also found it takes roughly 23 minutes to fully return to an original task after an interruption. The American Psychological Association has cited lab research suggesting that heavy task-switching can cost as much as 40% of productive time.

Twenty-three minutes. For one glance at a notification.

THE PART NOBODY TALKS ABOUT

Everyone frames this as a productivity problem. Get more done. Hack your focus. For a lot of people it is also an anxiety problem.

Every switch is a small threat scan. What did I miss. Who needs me. What just came in. Your nervous system never gets to stand down. It holds a low hum of alert all day, and by nine in the evening you are wired and hollow at the same time. Busy all day, satisfied by none of it.

That feeling is not a character flaw. It is what fractured attention does to a human brain. There is a reason you can feel behind even when the inbox is empty. Part of you is always still somewhere else.

IT IS ALSO DESIGNED

Worth saying clearly: this is not a willpower issue. The attention economy profits when your attention is fractured, and a great many well-paid engineers are working to pull you back, one more scroll at a time. You are not weak. You are outnumbered. Knowing that is not an excuse. It is the starting line.

ONE THING AT A TIME

DBT has a skill for this. It is called one-mindfully, and it is exactly what it sounds like. When you eat, eat. When you walk, walk. When you are in a conversation, be in the conversation. One thing at a time, with your whole attention on it.

Pair it with effectiveness, another DBT idea. Effectiveness means letting go of how a task is supposed to go and doing what actually works. What actually works is rarely the heroic version. It is the undistracted version.

THE PRACTICE

Do not aim for a mindful day. Nobody has one. Aim for one mindful hour. Pick the hour that matters most tomorrow morning. Close everything except the one thing. When the pull comes, and it will, name it quietly and come back. The return is the whole skill. You will fail at it ten times in the first ten minutes. The eleventh return still counts.

As the light shifts this week and the year bends toward its last stretch, you do not need a new system or a new app. You need one hour of one thing. 🔥

Be honest in the comments: how many tabs are open right now? And what would one hour of one thing actually feel like? No judgment here, and we read every reply.

If your attention feels like it belongs to everyone except you, that is workable. We help professionals build focus skills that hold up in real work life. Free 15-minute call: https://rhythmwellnessnyc.com/free-consultations?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=week_0922_one_mindfully

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988. 💚
Jack Szary, LMHC-D | Co-owner, Rhythm Wellness

The most expensive thing you own is the belief that you're supposed to feel okay. ⚡There's a tax on always being fine. M...
09/18/2026

The most expensive thing you own is the belief that you're supposed to feel okay. ⚡

There's a tax on always being fine. Most people don't notice they're paying it until the account is empty.

And here's what makes it hard to catch: you don't have to look anxious to be avoidant. Sometimes avoidance looks exactly like competence.

The performance of fine

You've built a life on handling it. The deadlines, the pressure, the expectations. You're the one people count on.

But handling your life and being in it aren't the same thing. For a lot of professionals, the gap between performing fine and feeling fine widens a little every year, and nothing in the calendar ever flags it.

Clean pain and dirty pain

There's a distinction in ACT worth knowing.

Clean pain is the natural discomfort of a hard conversation, a setback, a loss. It's proportional to the thing that caused it. It moves through. It's the cost of being engaged with your own life.

Dirty pain is what gets manufactured by running from clean pain. The rumination at 2 AM. The burnout that comes from never actually stopping. The conversation you've postponed so long that postponing it has become the problem.

What you won't let yourself feel tends to end up steering. 🧭

What it costs

The promotion you didn't pursue because failing at it felt unbearable.

The conversation still sitting there.

The evening you spend staying busy enough not to notice how you feel.

Each one is a payment, and what you're buying is comfort at the price of direction.

This isn't a toughness problem. It's an honesty problem. You don't need more grit. You need a clearer answer about what actually matters to you.

In professional work especially, the avoidance is rarely obvious. It's buried under achievement. The title, the income, the schedule packed tight enough that there's no room left to ask whether any of it means anything.

Willingness, specifically

Willingness isn't feeling ready. It isn't gritting your teeth. It isn't pretending the hard thing doesn't scare you.
Willingness is having the conversation while your heart is pounding.

It's making the thing even though it might be bad.
It's feeling inadequate and showing up regardless.
Not the absence of anxiety. Action alongside it.
You don't have to feel ready to be willing. 🔍

The actual question

Not whether you can afford to feel uncomfortable. Whether you can afford not to.

So: what's one thing you've been avoiding feeling? And if you already know the answer, what would one small move toward it look like? Not a grand gesture. One degree of course correction.

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988.
Jack Szary, LMHC-D | Rhythm Wellness

If you're tired of performing fine and want to look at what's underneath it, Jack is currently accepting new clients. Book a Free 15-Minute Call.

The fight is never about the dishes. 🌿It's about the tone. The silence. The way they looked at you when you walked in. T...
09/15/2026

The fight is never about the dishes. 🌿

It's about the tone. The silence. The way they looked at you when you walked in. The forgotten errand. The text that sat unanswered just long enough to make your chest tight.

You've had this fight before. Different words, same shape.

And underneath it, there's usually a quieter one running. Something that started long before this relationship.

Where the pattern comes from

Your earliest relationships taught your nervous system what to expect from people. A parent whose mood you couldn't predict. A household where feelings weren't discussed, so you learned to read the room instead of naming what you felt. The stretch where staying safe meant managing someone else's state before your own.

Those lessons don't disappear. They become defaults.

So when your partner goes quiet now, your body responds to something older than this moment. The alarm is real. It's just calibrated to a different time.

None of that is a life sentence. Patterns that got learned can get relearned. But they tend to run underground until someone looks at them directly.

Seeing it and changing it are different skills

You might already recognize the loop. One person withdraws, the other pursues. Or both go cold. Or both escalate.

Recognizing the choreography doesn't stop you from dancing it.

That isn't a willpower failure. Your nervous system built a strategy that worked when you needed it, and it's still running the program. The starting point isn't judgment. It's noticing.

What interrupting it actually looks like

Not a perfect response. A different one. 🤍

Notice it while it's happening. Not forty minutes later in separate rooms. Right then, when you feel the familiar rise in your chest and the pull toward the line you've said a hundred times.

Name it, even silently: this feels old. That recognition buys you a second of space, and space is where the choice lives.

Then do something off-script. If you usually shut down, stay in the room ten more seconds. If you usually escalate, try naming the feeling instead of the accusation. If you usually blame, get curious.

One reframe worth keeping

The patterns in your relationship aren't a verdict on your compatibility. They're information.

The question isn't whether you're with the right person. It's whether you're willing to look at what's actually happening instead of what's on the surface.

What's the pattern you keep circling back to? You don't have to solve it here. Naming it out loud is its own step. 👇

If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988.
Lindsay Levine, LMHC | Rhythm Wellness

If you keep landing in the same fight and want to understand why, Lindsay is currently accepting new clients. Book a Free 15-Minute Call.

By the second week of September, the narrative has already set in.You should have the routine down. You should have meal...
09/11/2026

By the second week of September, the narrative has already set in.

You should have the routine down. You should have meal-prepped Sunday. You should feel grateful the kids are back in school rather than flattened by the schedule you are now running. You should be more organized. You should be handling this better.

Should, should, should.

CBT has a name for this: should statements. They imply a correct way to feel, a correct way to parent, a correct way to move through September, and they position you as failing an invisible standard nobody ever showed you.

Here is what I want you to hear first. The second week of school is often harder than the first. The first week has novelty carrying it. The second week has reality, and reality is a lot.

A DBT skill for this exact moment

Check the Facts comes out of the emotion regulation module, and it is built for when your emotions are loud enough that you can no longer tell what is happening from what your anxiety says is happening.

1. Name the emotion. Not "stressed." Be specific. Overwhelmed, guilty, resentful, ashamed. Specificity gives you something to work with.
2. Name the prompting event. What actually happened. "The kids missed the bus Tuesday." "I forgot the permission slip." "We ordered takeout three times." Those are events. "I am a terrible parent" is not an event. It is a judgment about an event.
3. Check your interpretations. This is where the shoulds live. "I should have remembered the permission slip" assumes good parents never forget. Is that true, or is it a story? "I should meal prep" assumes everyone else is. Is that a fact, or is that something you saw on Instagram?
4. Check whether you are catastrophizing. Ask what you are actually afraid will happen, then ask how likely it really is, then ask what you would do if it did. That last question is the one people skip, and it is the one that usually helps, because the answer is almost always "I would handle it."
5. Check whether the emotion fits. Does the intensity match the event? Forgot a permission slip, mild frustration fits. Shame and panic do not. When the emotion is much bigger than the event, something older is usually attached to it. That is worth noticing rather than judging, and it is often exactly what therapy is for.

The part that matters

The fall shoulds are not descriptions of reality. They are a story about what fall is supposed to look like, written by people who do not know your life, your capacity, or your kids.

You do not have to have it together by week two, or week six. You have to keep checking the facts instead of believing the shoulds.

What is the should that has been loudest for you this week?

Lindsay Levine, LMHC | Co-owner, Rhythm Wellness�Virtual therapy for adults throughout New York State. Grief, parenting stress, life transitions, relationships.

Educational content, not a substitute for therapy.�If you're struggling, support is available 24/7. Call or text 988.

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