Katrina Miller

How to Teach Children Gratitude

It is impossible to feel grateful and depressed in the same moment. . . Naomi Williams How was your child’s day? Worrywart Wallace noticed that by 5:30 pm, it was already dark. He was sure his parents would make him go to bed early. Picked-on Pa... Read >

How to Win the Battle against Excessive Behaviors

The very nature of a holiday . . . is excess; the holiday mood is brought about by the release of what is otherwise forbidden . . .Sigmund Freud This is the season for excessive behavior Holiday celebrations at the year’s end entice us to eat more f... Read >

Five Tips to Help you Stay Depressed or Anxious

Depression and anxiety are the two categories of mood disorders. Generally speaking, people who are “depressed" are downhearted or blue; they find little pleasure in life; and they go in slow-motion; they want to isolate. People who are anxious are in a... Read >

Bring the Gifts of Recovery into Your Life

Bring the Gifts of Recovery into Your Life: Can You Take This Challenge? Recovery from substance abuse is a big deal. It requires individuals who have the illness of addiction to “surrender", one inch at a time, the armor that they thought “protected" ... Read >

How to Help Children with Social Needs

Stacy was frustrated that Josh, her 10-year-old, was always being rejected by his peers at school. Josh’s behaviors around his peers could easily earn him rejection; but still, it hurt Stacy because she knew that it hurt Josh. During dance instruction, h... Read >

Teach Your Children Effective Social Skills

Teach Children Effective Social Skills: Using Workbooks for Ages 9-12 Workbooks can provide parents with instant expertise about social skills. The parent can adapt the workbook to the learning style of the child. Children who are independent learners... Read >

What to Do When Others Hurt You

What Do You Do When You Are Invalidated? Invalidation tends to trip some switch in our souls that lead us to reach into our bag of nastiness. Have you ever blamed, cursed, cried, shouted, or did something that you understood would create pain for the p... Read >

Recovery and Mental Health

Have you ever awakened in a terror, only to realize that the horrifying fate you had just witnessed was only a nightmare? How would life be different if nightmares were real? Perhaps there would be no more tomorrows, where you could continue to live wit... Read >

How to Accept Hurt: Insights from DBT

Do you need others to change in order for you to be happy? “If only. . . My spouse would spend more time with me. My boss appreciated me more. My child had more common sense." Do you need to change the past in order to feel okay about life?... Read >

How to Deal with Emotionally Explosive People

Do you have a relationship with an explosive person? Which of these survival strategies works the best for you? 1. Try to intimidate them so they’ll leave you alone. 2. Try to defend yourself. 3. Take the moral high ground and insist you ... Read >

Promote Competency By Using Everyday Experience

A year A year -old child does not care how many times he or she falls down when it comes to learning to walk. Most parents get as big a kick out of the persistent falling and standing up again as they do the big moment and the first unsteady step is taken... Read >

How to Teach Children Self-Efficacy

If you could use science to help your child earn better grades, would you? What if, at the same time, you could help your child discover that learning is a blast! The good news is—a strategy has been developed at Stanford University that makes this ... Read >

How to Have an Effective Conversation about Change

Is there someone in your life whose behaviors are making you miserable? Have you tried any of these approaches? 1. Tell them that their behavior makes you miserable. 2. Give them advice on how to change. 3. Talk to other people about how ba... Read >

Nurturing Curiosity in Children increases the Meaningfulness of Life

A startling “BOOM" rocked the neighborhood, and sent thick glass flying every direction. The two fifteen-year-olds scientists inside the exploded outbuilding-turned-laboratory struggled to reorient. Their stunned “what happened" gaze at each other was int... Read >

What to do When Someone Feels you’ve Hurt Them

Moxie mental health makes people stronger than strong. How is that possible? Consider this Aesop fable comparing the reed with the oak tree. An oak and a reed were arguing about their strength. When a strong wind came up, the reed avoided being uproote... Read >