The interwebs loves to throw around terms for mental health diagnoses all the time and what armchair podcasters think they mean, but a hallmark of every mental health diagnosis is distress or impaired functioning. Impaired daily functioning can take many forms, but one issue that we see on the rise is difficulty opening your mail, email, texts, or phone messages resulting in enormous backlogs of unanswered messages, unpaid bills, and full voicemail boxes that can no longer take messages. 

The end result? Friends and family that are frustrated or feel rejected by the lack of response, which may end up in them no longer attempting to contact you, interpreting your behavior as no longer being invested in the relationship. Or it may result in fines, overdue fees, missed appointments, missed court dates, missed tax filing deadlines which in turn may result in more bad news- losing access to your doctor/therapist/psychiatrist/case manager, losing child custody rights, losing a legal battle, or even eviction. 

Unfortunately, many people who are struggling get caught in a shame spiral and don't disclose what is going on to their loved ones and the problem continues to grow and sometimes involves them too.

Some years ago the movie The House of Sand and Fog came out giving a great example of the perils of not opening your mail after a mental health crisis. The movie begins with the main character suffering a loss and going into a deep paralyzing depression. She has difficulty getting out of bed or functioning and stops opening her mail. As a result, she doesn’t realize that she has stopped paying her mortgage and her home is foreclosed on. She is forced out and another family moves in. In her loss, she ends up pulling the new family into further crisis and tragedy.

Thankfully, most people’s situations aren’t as bad as the film depicts, but variations of this issue show up in the therapy room on a regular basis.

What does this mean?
If you see someone you love, or see yourself having difficulty opening the mail, texts, returning calls - recognize it for what it is, possibly an early sign of a mental health crisis or unmanaged ADHD. The person may be struggling with depression or anxiety or psychosis or substance abuse, a financial crisis, or just generally overwhelmed with the demands of life. Their daily lives have gotten unmanageable. They are overly stressed and under-skilled and under-resourced. They have started to use avoidance as a tactic to manage their distress, only ignoring these demons doesn’t make them go away, it just creates a bigger army of them.

What do you do about it?

• Recognize this as a sign for help and lean into it. Contact your friends, family, doctor, mental health provider, church community, 988 crisis line, united way 311 resource line, or whoever you can for extra help
• Challenge the avoidance- the worst thing you can do for anxiety is to give into avoidance, the cure is always challenging the avoidance and leaning into the discomfort and doing the opposite of what the avoidance is telling you
• Break the project into smaller chunks- force yourself to open a few pieces of mail everyday and toss out the junk mail. Re-open your voicemail. Delete the spam calls. Block any unwanted senders.
• Prioritize opening up anything of high importance immediately and responding immediately.
• Schedule weekly or monthly purging sessions where you go through your inboxes and purge anything you don’t need and make sure you set aside a pile for bills and important things to manage right away. - This may be helpful to have someone go through this with you to keep you on-task and challenge your urge to avoid.
• Schedule a therapy or coaching session to help you work through your anxiety and manage your mental health symptoms by opening your mail together and helping to organize and prioritize life tasks.

If you are needing help, reach out to us at Healing Reflections Therapy. We have therapists who are ready to help.

​Author: Megan Garza, MA, LMFT is therapist and co-owner of Healing Reflections Therapy

Summertime is full of excitement, vacations, outdoor activities, festivals, and celebrations- things that keep us so busy that we don’t seem to have time for that weekly or bi-weekly therapy session.
Go, do the things, enjoy the sunshine! Also, don’t forget to keep up those healthy therapeutic habits and skills in all the excitement!

Remember: Therapy happens outside of sessions too.

• Keep up with your self-care and practices like journaling, meditation, affirmations, stretching, going for walks (when the weather allows), and caring for emotions when they come up.
• Check in with your body and mind to see if your needs are being met. Especially, make sure to HYDRATE! Those of us on certain medications (antidepressants, stimulants, antipsychotics, etc.) are at higher risk for heatstroke, dehydration, and other adverse reactions to the increased temperatures.
• Jot down things you want to talk to your therapist about when you do see them.
• Give yourself enough time to recharge and decompress between social events and activities.
• Prioritize connecting with your partners and people in your support system.
• Your routine and schedule might look different right now, which can be disregulating. Think about creating an alternate routine that still meets your needs but accounts for summertime differences.

It’s okay to reach out for a session sooner than planned.
We are here when summer winds down, but we’re here before then as well. Don’t stress about needing an earlier appointment. In the meantime, check out the article below for some helpful tools our therapists use and recommend.

Written by McKayla Robinson, MS, PLMFT
​McKayla is a Therapist at Healing Reflections Therapy. Schedule with her today.

In doing counseling with clients who have substance abuse concerns and disorders, I
often draw from the world of 12-Step recovery. One of the concepts that comes out of
the wisdom of AA is the idea of People, Places, and Things. In order for someone who
abuses substances or things like food or sex to change their behavior and maintain their
progress, it is usually necessary to change the people with whom they associate, the
places they frequent, and items with which they regularly come in contact. The world
that someone in that situation has created is often filled with other people who abuse
substances, places the person goes to use those substances, and items that are
components of their use pattern.

The comedian Bill Hicks once said that the only things a man needs in order to be come
someone who has an alcohol use disorder are, “the right bar, the right girl, and the right
friends.” I have always liked that quote because it acknowledges that anyone can
become someone who abuses something or other given a few circumstances. While I
appreciate the wisdom of the disease model of addiction and also see people who
abuse substances as having a likely chemical imbalance and a genetic predisposition to
addictive behavior, there is also a role that habit, modeling, and circumstances play in
substance abuse and life in general.

I have always felt that in the “nature versus nurture” debate, the answer is both. As
such, people who abuse substances tend to think in such a way as to maintain the
addiction and the circumstances that give rise to it. Changing people may be the
hardest of the three. It may mean cutting off contact with family or close friends
temporarily or indefinitely. Sometimes new ways of interacting with them can be
negotiated, but sometimes not. When I quit smoking cigarettes many years ago, having
a romantic partner who believed I could and should do and did not smoke herself was a
huge factor in the longevity of my ability to cease and desist from using tobacco. If
someone has a problem with methamphetamine and chooses to stay with their partner
who abuses meth also, one can imagine all of the temptation and other challenges that
will continue to bring into their life while they try to pretend that they are quitting in a
vacuum.

I have seen some of the places people should consider avoiding be the route to the
liquor store they normally go to, places that are trauma triggers that may make them
want to use to self-medicate, childhood homes, their drug dealer’s house and so forth.
Sometimes if avoiding those things is not suggested by a peer or professional, it does
not occur to the user. I have seen numerous people with alcohol problems believe they
can/should work in a bar and have encouraged them to consider other options. There
are countless rituals and routines around using that the person will benefit from
breaking or at least interrupting.

“Things,” can be paraphernalia, numbers in ones phone, the actual substance they use.
I have seen people hold onto a stash of tobacco, drugs, or alcohol because they say
they feel more comfortable still having it if they need it. While this may work as a form
of harm-reduction at first, it is likely not sustainable long-term. Initially keeping alcohol
around with hopes to one day drink in moderation also seems premature in my
experience. In short, every person who abuses substances or struggles with other
compulsive behavior has a list of people, places and things that they need to evaluate
and possibly partially or completely liquidate in order to best prevent relapses into old
behavior. These are always unique to each person.
​
Once someone is far enough along the stages of change to take action, they are more
likely to take this recommendation or see that this work needs to be done without
guidance. Sponsorship within AA/NA, counseling, or just some serious conversations
with concerned loved ones can also wake a substance abuser up to a lot of their
patterns of behavior and once they have this solid information, it is up to them to
personalize it and choose to take it from there.

Avoidance can cause prolonged grief, traumatic reactions and the like and, as such,
therapists typically advise clients to face their fears, explore underlying emotional
responses and the like. By contrast, avoiding people, places, and things is an adaptive
tool for people to use in recovery because they have likely already identified the
underlying emotion, have no sound reason to be around their substance of choice given
the corresponding cravings that may ensue, and are or will become aware that trying to
master regularly being tempted just isn’t worth it.

Author: Chris Scarberry, LPC
Chris is Therapist and CO-founder of Healing Reflections Therapy and is available to see clients in recovery.