The Wellness Diary

Insights, advice, new research, tips and tricks, and new resources to help you with your mental health journey.

Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

5-Conditions Which Contribute To A Healthy Relationship

The past 40 years have yielded unprecedented knowledge about what we need in order to have “healthy” relationships. In this case, I use the word “healthy” to mean that it is a relationship in which there is a good chance that each person will have their emotional needs met and that the relationship has the potential for long-term happiness.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

How To Sit With Negative Feelings

Unpleasant or more commonly known as “negative” feelings are often misunderstood and poorly handled in our culture. We are conditioned to believe that it is best to experience as many pleasant or “positive” feelings as possible and avoid negative feelings as much as we can. This principle misguided, because the entire range of our feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant can be of great service to our lives.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

Ideas for Practicing Self-Care for Good Health

Self-care is a vital habit for all those seeking to live a healthy, sustainable life. Nowadays, the lives of many people are hurried and noisy. In such circumstances, feeling healthy and rested can be very difficult. When you’re stressed and burned out all the time, your health is bound to take a hit. The key is in practicing self-care. This term refers to a range of activities that nurture the body and soul. The intention is to restore health, enhance energy, and reduce stress.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

COVID-19: How Humans Are Changing

There is little doubt that the global pandemic is going to change life as we know it forever. But how, exactly? Look out below for a few temporary – and sometimes hilarious – ways life has changed, as well as a few of the more impactful ways that the world will never be the same.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

Work-Life Balance: What Can You Do?

There are ways you can make changes to your current work routine that enhance work-life balance. Nevertheless, it’s always ideal that you think about how your pursuits outside work will coexist with your workplace responsibilities before you apply for or accept a new job. Either way, work-life balance is primarily dependent on what you do and not just what your employer allows you to.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

Tips for Living with Someone with Dementia

Seniors with dementia will see a decreased ability in memory, communication, focus, reasoning or judgment, as well as a decrease in their visual perception ability. Initially, those living with dementia are fairly independent. As the disease progresses, limitations become greater and the individual with dementia may no longer be able to live on their own.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

VLOG: Covid-19 Impact on Mental Health and IVF Treatment

Dr. Vitaly Kushnir from Eden Fertility Centers in New Port Beach, CA sits down for a conversation with Sandra Kushnir, LMFT on the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic is having on individuals going through IVF. We are here to share ways to cope better with the feelings/stress that is coming up during this crisis.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

How To Improve Your Memory By Yoga and Meditation?

For thousands of years, meditation has been practiced by people for their physical as well as mental well being. As per the researchers, meditation helps people in decreasing their anxiety and depression levels. With that, their pain tolerance also increases. Meditation helps in focusing on yourself by eliminating many thoughts apart from yourself. This process helps in memory improvement and self-awareness.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

How to Mentally Prepare for a Career Change

There are some easy options to help prepare your mental health when going through a career change. Exercises to keep the brain thinking positively and at its optimal performance are crucial. Here are some to consider.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

Collective Crisis: How And Why People Respond So Differently To Fear

When life-threatening emergencies arise, fear begins to work in mysterious ways and it invokes a wide range of individual responses. To better understand the collective crisis and process the seemingly odd behavior of others, let’s demystify the varying degrees of the fear response. More importantly, building awareness around why you may react in a certain way and why others may respond so differently has the power to transform exasperation and judgment into empathy and collaboration, in a time where we are in dire need of the latter.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

Vlog: Attachment Styles

Vlog: Sandra Kushnir, LMFT discusses the impact of attachment styles on your relationships, emotional regulations and self-image.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

An Open Letter To My Fellow Women

Women have been pitted against one another for centuries. Whether it be for the attention of men, careers, looks, or even family life, women are no strangers to the fight. Moving forward, we have turned our fight from one another to the betterment of our own and to nurture the quality of our society.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

Understanding The Difference Between Loneliness vs. Being Alone

In our highly social culture, it’s typical for us to flat out reject the idea of spending time solo. We assume that alone time means that we are anti-social, unwanted, or even unloveable. Essentially, we confuse spending time alone with loneliness, although there is a marked difference. Loneliness is finding ourselves alone when we crave company while being alone is an active choice for solitude.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

5-Signs You Are In a Healthy Relationship

How can you tell if your relationship is healthy or not? There are a few important things that make a relationship healthy! Here are a few things to look out for!

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

5-Warning Signs You Might Have a Drinking Problem

For many people, an addiction to alcohol can be somewhat of a surprise. It's not a dependency that happens immediately, it progresses and builds over time. Sometimes it's difficult to see the signs before it's too late. Addiction is a progressive disease, so to become aware of it is not usually so obvious. So how can you recognize whether or not you or a loved one might have a problem with drinking? Read on to see if you can relate to any of these 5 warning signs.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

Dating Yourself and Your Partner

In the month of February, we celebrate love! Love of our partners, of our friends, family, and ourselves? Recently a friend of mine reminds me of the importance of teaching others about dating ourselves and our partners at the same time. This is more than just a practice of self-love but, a topic of creating a relationship of mutual love, respect, and confidence in ourselves.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

The Ultimate Secret of Yoga for Mental Health

Yoga is therapy, the full practice serves us work with the nature of being a human, the nature of the mind, how feelings live in our bodies, how they influence our minds and our behavior. In fact, yoga is much more than holding poses and stretching; yoga is a more widespread practice indeed, a lifestyle that includes several life principles.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

4-Tips for Sleeping Better with Mental Illness

A number of mental illnesses impact sleep, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and ADHD. These disorders can make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep, cause restless nights, and in some cases, cause you to sleep too much.

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Sandra Kushnir Sandra Kushnir

How To Silence Your Inner Critic

Your inner critic is the voice inside your head that judges, demeans, and disapproves of your thoughts and actions. This voice is a manifestation of your fears and doubts. In fact, The New York Times notes that people beat themselves up because of a negative value they've attached to past experiences. This self-criticism can easily lead to poor mental wellbeing, low self-esteem, and a greater risk of failure.

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