Consider It Wellness LLC

Getting back into a routine after a long break.

This whole move has felt like a really long vacation. With government offices, furniture stores, banks, and extended family, the past four months have just been a bunch of small plans sewn together.

I reflected on the past ten years and I think of how much of my schedule was dictated by my employer, which was dictated by the amount of debt. School debt for my two degrees, mortgage, medical debt for giving birth and for my kids getting regular colds and fevers. Yes, even with insurance, raising kids in America is infinitely more expensive because of how much office visits are because the visit doesn’t even include the tests and labs. Then there’s the deductible, too.

The past 4.5 months was the first time we both picked when we worked and how much we wanted to work. And with that freedom came a lot of responsibility as parents. Drafting a home schedule and finding enrichment activities when we had so many months to go before school started.

Even though the waking up early part is something I’m currently struggling with, I’m really excited to get the family into a routine that I didn’t come up with. There’s less of a power play when I’m not the one who came up with the routine. Plus, both my kids are incredibly social that they were really missing the interaction with peers.

Ready to truly settle into life here.

This third trip to Croatia was the first one that people started to assume I understood the language because of our interactions.

I’m not quite there yet, but I’m definitely still working on it.

But when looking for therapists, I think that it is so difficult in the Midwest for multicultural and multilingual people to find good therapists that can truly help.

Psycholinguistics play a more important role in wellness than people realize because language development in a culture is in line with that groups philosophy.

I also think it’s why American public schools trying to adapt Asian mathematics concepts is not effective. The understanding of numbers through the languages people speak also means something different between cultures.

I think a lot of therapists trained in the US lack psychotherapy training from schools and what they do learn we picked up on the job or from our supervisors.

What does this mean for cultural responsiveness?

Some people read books about things like ikigai and they think they can apply it to work with clients but they don’t speak the language nor do they have a deep knowledge and understanding of the culture they are taking it from. I can’t even count the number of professional developments where a white person who has never been to Japan is teaching me the wonders of ikigai.

It’s a bit of a hot take, but I think people are doing this appropriation with Kapwa, too. Sikolohiyang Pilipino is still Tagalog and English centric.

Leonardo N Mercado’s work The Filipino Mind is a better resource for understanding Filipino Mental Health. It shows us beliefs in many many languages across the archipelago about our beliefs and how they changed over time pre and post colonization.

Because in my opinion, psychology and behavioral sciences is just the modern day rebranding of Philosophy.

Why do the most effective therapeutic modalities always have some form of identifying values?

Because all the symptoms and all the challenges come from things we are doing and things we are experiencing that don’t align with our personal philosophies on living.

The first time we brought our family to Croatia and Bulgaria I was shocked how often I found myself saying, “Oh wow, this is like the Philippines.”

I’ve noticed when people travel they tend to talk about it how much better a place was or they do things better. But I think there also needs to be attention brought to how similar places are to home.

It’s nice to see a romanticized version of a place when traveling, but I think that same perspective taking can be used to start seeing the places you call home romantic, too.

When all you focus on are the differences, then it’s easy to believe that we are too different to get along. But really, there’s so much that connects us if we just take the time to see it.

Community supports get talked about, but what does it really mean?

I’ve noticed when times get hard in the US, people romanticize community support or they start reading about how things work in collectivistic societies, but this gets lost in translation.

I’ve noticed US societies craving resource based community support. There’s always a food drive, clothing drive, etc. the support looks like “let’s give away something’s that we have in excess” and it misses the other part of collectivism that forms a balance.

With mental health services being easily accessible in the US, I think what is also happening is people are getting assigned therapists that don’t fully grasp the family culture that they have in the home. I’ve noticed that more and more feelings of discomfort are becoming synonymous with emotional abuse. But the thing is just because we don’t like it that doesn’t make it emotional abuse. Yes, emotional abuse exists and it’s dangerous and harmful. But just because we don’t like something someone is saying, that doesn’t make it abusive.

Just like I tell parents in family therapy with young children, family support or community support isn’t just flowers and gifting. It’s not always about providing positivity. Sometimes a safe space also means a safe space to learn about ourselves, which can be incredibly uncomfortable.

Individual based mental health supports teach ‘healthy boundaries’ all the time, but when over used what ends up happening is a lack of group accountability and empathy and is actually breeding cultural segregation.

The one time I wish I could self disclose more when working with families is when parents are facing difficult behaviors at home and they are skeptical of my recommendations.

With all the environmental changes my kids have undergone in the past 4 months, it’s a true testament to how family structure and adult attachment is a great combination for healthy child and adolescent behavior.

It’s been fun watching them grow, and it’s been so great how much easier my parenting is the more they know how to regulate all their emotions.

Working with people in a therapeutic capacity, there’s this phenomenon where people are afraid to try new crafts because social media gives us access to watch really talented artists.

I’ve heard so many “I couldn’t ever” or “I’m not good at” and parents don’t realize how the words we use to talk about ourselves are absorbed by how our kids begin to see themselves.

If your family culture naturally says self deprecating comments, elements of identity exploration get harder and harder for our children. Those narratives about the self can start really early.

Language and communication are important tools for wellness.

Think about ways to show and model to children, whether they are yours, your students, or young family members, how practice takes time.

Teaching discipline doesn’t need to be harsh. It doesn’t need to revolve around rules and consequences all the time. We can teach self-discipline by modeling to kids what we practice, what we aren’t good at but we work on everyday.

Not being good at something right away is normal. Kids need to see more adults trying and practicing. Kids need to see role models with discipline to help reduce the idea of instant gratification.

If they don’t see it from us, who will they learn it from?