Kelley Counseling and Wellness

    Written by: Amelia Kelley, PhD, MS, LPC Many people with ADHD find it hard to manage their symptoms of brain fog, forgetfulness, distractibility and physical agitation. Most want to know how to manage their symptoms and, some would like to do this without medication. The HIIT for ADHD Program discussed below has been researched and proven to help reduce ADHD symptoms and improve general wellbeing and focus. Scott, 35-year-old male who suffers from adult ADHD was excited when he tried this program and told his wife, “I feel more awake and alive then I have in years. Even more then when I tried ADHD medication last year!” How did Scott find this alert, excited feeling that helped him become more focused without using medication? He found it by using a home-based, exercise program using high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that he easily accessed on a free website and only had to commit a few minutes a day to completing. To truly under...

Thus far we have touched on developing a sleep schedule and a before bed routine so you are really ready to fall asleep when your head hits the pillow. But what if you are doing these two things already but still having trouble falling sleep? If you get in bed and it takes more than twenty minutes to fall asleep you should get back out of bed. That might sound counter intuitive but there is a good reason to do so, a couple in fact.  First your body and mind need to associate your bed as a place of rest and relaxation. Likely if you have been struggling with sleep your bed may consciously or subconsciously be associated with stress, exhaustion, anxiety, or frustration. To help break that association you need to be sleeping while in your bed rather than laying awake wishing you could sleep. So after twenty minutes if you are still awake, get up.  Now that you are up you need to do something slow down and relax so when you return to bed you can sleep. Maybe that wou...

Intention With 2017 right around the corner, New Year’s resolutions are a frequent topic of conversation. I have heard many clients, friends, and family members talking about ways they hope to better themselves in the year to come. One theme I have noticed has been, “be more intentional and help others”. Intention and controlling the things that one can control is a subject I discuss with clients frequently. Not only in terms of their own actions and the impact on their lives, but also in terms of modeling healthy behavior for their children.   Teaching kids from an early age that, while they may be small, they can still make thoughtful, intentional decisions gives them a stronger, healthier sense of self. We can further aid the healthy development of a child’s sense of self by empowering them to help others. This not only shows them the impact they can have, even when they are not yet adults, but also helps them become more connected to their community. None of us live...

Enough Here is a reminder for anyone that may be struggling right now. You are enough.  It is important to remember that you have to give yourself credit for what you ARE  doing, as opposed to thinking negatively about what you are not doing.   If we focus completely on the negatives of our situations, it may feel like we are never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough, never happy enough, etc.  However, this is all relative, and measured based on opinion.   When thinking about Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences  (see more here ), one can see that there are so many different ways to be "smart".  So, to assume that you are not smart because you score highly on musical intelligence as opposed to logical-mathematical, is simply a matter of opinion and what you place value in.  We must learn to recognize our own strengths and see the positives within ourselves, and not compare outwardly to the strengths of oth...