The Lifeworks Group, Inc.

By: Dwight Bain, LMHC, NCC, Certified Coach & Critical Incident Recovery Expert Facing Depression in 2024: Understanding, Coping, and Reaching Out The holiday season often highlights joy and connection, but for many, it magnifies feelings of loss, sadness, and isolation. Unfortunately, depression doesn’t take a holiday break. In fact, for many, it’s even more pronounced as the world around them celebrates. If you’ve noticed yourself or someone close struggling this time of year, know this: you’re not alone.  Recent job uncertainty, family estrangements, and the rise of mental health struggles have made it clear that depression doesn’t discriminate. 2024 statistics continue to show troubling signs of increased depression, with experts estimating that nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. will experience a mental health disorder this year, and 1 in 6 teens will face depression before they turn 18.  Depression remains one of the most common mental health challenges,...

By: Megan Brewer, LMHC Gratitude: More Than Just a Seasonal Emotion Every holiday season, we start seeing an outpouring of posts, pictures, and advertisements about gratitude. Words beautifully scripted in calligraphy across warm fall landscapes beckon us to search for those warm feelings and happy memories. I don’t know about you, but when I encounter these reminders, it often feels like whatever is going on in my life or in the world needs to be tucked away so I can start searching for the gratitude I’m supposed to be feeling. I don’t think we do this intentionally; it's just something that happens inside of us. It's as if, to be truly grateful, we must do so at the exclusion of any other emotions that might seem opposed to it. What's more, we're led to believe that gratitude is supposed to be equivalent to a warm, feel-good experience we can wrap ourselves in, making it feel true. But real gratitude isn’t like that. It’s powerful and transformative. It changes us fro...

20 Strategies to build unity using healing topics designed to block political conflict. The holiday season can create loving connection between family members or be a time of conflict, arguments, rejection and hurt. Especially after the emotionally charged 2020 Presidential election left many family relationships strained or even shattered. How can you have a calm conversation with your relatives when there is so much political pressure and unrest? As host you must set the tone that your Thanksgiving table is about connection – not conflict. It is a time of unity not division. The conversation is about family relationships of the people who live at your house, not debate about who is elected to serve at the White House. Talking about personal life allows stress to go down because it allows for empathy and understanding about normal life challenges instead of national ones. Everyone is stressed and everyone needs more support to manage the pressure. The questions below a...