Mental Health Insights | Blog
Welcome to the ARCH Counseling Center blog.
Here, you’ll find articles written by our clinicians on a variety of mental health topics, including anxiety, depression, trauma, relationships, parenting, grief, life transitions, and emotional well-being. Our goal is to provide clear, accurate, and practical information that helps readers better understand common mental health concerns and the therapeutic approaches used to address them.
Toe-Dipper or Cannonballer? Finding Your Pace This School Year
If you work in education, you are likely already deep into new schedules, new policies, and new students and families, each with different needs, expectations, and demands. Even for the most passionate professionals in education, the shift back to school can feel...
OCD Isn’t Just Being Organized: Understanding What OCD Really Looks Like
When people hear the term OCD, many people think of someone who likes things neat, organized, or arranged in a specific way. While cleanliness and organization can sometimes be part of OCD, the condition is much more complex than simply being “particular” or liking...
Back to School Starts with Connection
As summer comes to an end, families, teachers, and school communities are preparing for another school year. There are supplies to purchase, classrooms to prepare, schedules to organize, and routines to rebuild. While all of these things are important, going back to...
Back to School: A Fresh Start Worth Preparing For
There's something about the week before school starts that feels different from the rest of summer. The backpacks are new, the shoes still smell like the store, and everyone in the house is a little more on edge than they'd admit. That mix of excitement and nerves...
Anxiety, You’re Not the Boss of Me! Helping Kids and Teens Take Charge This School Year
For a lot of young people, the start of a new school year comes with a familiar houseguest: anxiety. For younger kids, it might show up as stomachaches on Sunday nights or tears at drop-off. For teens, it might look more like a racing mind before the first day or a...
You Are More Than Your Performance: Building an Identity Beyond Sports
For many athletes, sports are more than just a game. After years of practices, competitions, training, and sacrifice, sports can become a way of life. They shape not only daily routines but also how athletes see themselves. There is nothing wrong with being passionate...
The Invisible Playbook: Unpacking Coaching, Family Systems, and Team Dynamics in Sports
When we watch athletes perform—or step onto the field ourselves—it’s easy to get caught up in the final outcome: the scoreboard, the stats, or the highlight reel. But behind every triumph or setback, there’s a whole ecosystem at play. An athlete’s mental health and...
Making the Most of Your Senior Year and Preparing for What Comes Next
Senior year is here—and with it comes a year full of change, decisions, excitement, and possibility. For high school seniors, going back to school can feel different than any year before. There are familiar classes, friends, activities, and routines, but there is also...
Returning to School After a Difficult Year or Bullying
Returning to a new school year after a difficult experience can present a significant challenge for families, particularly when navigating the aftermath of bullying, a lack of support, or academic burnout. However, the start of a new academic year also offers a...
On Creating Distance Between You and Your Thoughts
Some researchers estimate we have up to 70,000 thoughts a day, and they say around 90% of these thoughts are repetitive and negative. Thinking is the trademark of our species. Although other animals “think” in the sense that their brains produce electrical signals,...
Friendships in Adulthood: Battling “Mid-Life” Loneliness
“Making friends used to feel so much easier.” Does this thought sound or feel familiar? You are not alone. For those of us who have reached adulthood, many of us find ourselves having a similar quiet realization. In childhood and early adulthood,...
The 5-Minute Journaling Practice That Helped Me Get Out of Autopilot
Have you ever wanted to change a habit, the way you think, or how you respond in certain situations—only to find yourself ending up in the same place? If you’re anything like me, those moments can quickly lead to thoughts that sound something like this: Why can’t I do...
Back to School, Back to a Schedule: Supporting Your Child’s and Your Own Mental Health During the Transition Back
Summer's long, unstructured days are coming to a close, and the school routine is about to begin again. For many families, this transition brings more than just packed lunches, homework, and earlier mornings; it also comes with an emotional adjustment. If you or your...
Understanding the Adolescent Mental Health Hospitalization Process in Illinois
For many families, the possibility of psychiatric hospitalization can feel overwhelming and uncertain. Caregivers often have questions about what the process involves, what their child’s experience will be like, and how hospitalization can support their mental health....
Relationship Diversity, Attachment, and Building Secure Connections
Relationships come in many forms, and there is no single "right" way to build a meaningful connection. While monogamy remains the most familiar relationship structure in our culture, many people choose consensually non-monogamous (CNM) relationships, including...
When Silence Feels Heavy: The Power of Talking and Feeling Heard
Opening the Door to Difficult Conversations Suicide is one of the hardest topics to talk about. Even hearing the word can bring up discomfort, uncertainty, or fear of saying the wrong thing. As a result, many conversations about suicide never happen. While this...
Job Search Burnout: What It Is and How to Cope
A couple of years ago, I started applying for what I assumed would be entry-level positions. After three months of rejections and unanswered applications, I had submitted more than 50 resumes. I felt exhausted, discouraged, confused, frustrated, and sad. Eventually, I...
Juneteenth: Honoring Freedom, Resilience, and the Right to Feel
Juneteenth is often called America’s second Independence Day, but for many African Americans, it is much more than a historical celebration. Observed on June 19th, it commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned they were...
Easing Loneliness
Around 2019, I looked around and noticed that despite our phones, social media, and the internet making us appear more connected than ever, loneliness had become an even bigger public health issue. Researchers have been studying social connection and loneliness for...
Pride Month: Celebration, Resistance, and the Healing Power of Community
A reflection on minority stress, resilience, and support during Pride Pride Month is many things at once. It is celebration, visibility, joy, and hard-won affirmation. It is also resistance: a reminder that LGBTQ+ lives, relationships, and identities have always...
Supporting Children Through Summer Break: A Parent’s Guide to Transitioning Home, Maintaining Routine, and Building Emotional Regulation
As the school year comes to an end, many families look forward to slower mornings, vacations, and more quality time together. While summer can be exciting, it can also be a difficult adjustment for children who are transitioning from the structure of the classroom...
Listening to the Body while Navigating Summer Changes
Summer often arrives with an unspoken expectation: to feel lighter, freer, more alive. The days stretch longer, the sun lingers, and life seems to move outward, toward connection, activity, and spontaneity. But while the world around us shifts in brightness and...
Making Time for Self-Care: A Realistic Guide for Busy Moms
Motherhood can be deeply meaningful, but it can also be physically, emotionally, and mentally demanding. Between caring for children, managing household responsibilities, working, and attending to the needs of others, many mothers find that their own needs are...
Parenting a Neurodivergent Child: Flexibility, Regulation, and Letting Go of Perfection
Being the parent of a neurodivergent child requires a lot of compassion, especially toward yourself. These kids will amaze you, challenge your ideas, and often change the way you thought parenting would look. It can be a beautiful process, but also an exhausting one....
Decolonizing Mental Health: Expanding the Way We Understand Healing
When many people think about therapy, they picture sitting in an office talking about feelings, coping skills, or childhood experiences. Therapy can absolutely include those things, but healing is often more layered than traditional mental health models have taught us...
Eco-Anxiety: Not a Disorder, but a Grief Response
Earth Day has passed, but for many people, the emotions connected to climate change do not fade once online conversations slow down. Some people carry a quiet but persistent fear about the future. Others feel emotionally exhausted by climate news, guilty about...
A Different Kind of Mother’s Day: Healing from Complex Parenting Dynamics
Mother’s Day can be an emotionally complicated day for many people. It can bring grief, longing, love, anger, guilt, relief, numbness, or several emotions all at once. Maybe your relationship with your mother is loving but painful. Maybe it feels distant, strained, or...
The Strengths of Biracial and Bicultural Identities: Looking Beyond the Struggle
Biracial and bicultural identities are often talked about through struggle first. People tend to focus on confusion, feeling caught between worlds, or not fully belonging in one space or another. And to be fair, those experiences are real, they matter, and they...
The Therapeutic Benefits of Companion Animals for Mental Health
For many people, coming home to a pet after a long day provides immediate comfort. Whether it is speaking aloud about daily stressors or simply sitting quietly while petting a dog or cat (or other types of pets), these interactions often feel instinctive. What may...
Coping with the Unexpected: Navigating Your Child’s Diagnosis
Whether it is a chronic illness or developmental concern, receiving an unexpected diagnosis for your child can feel like the world has stopped. The moment a doctor shares news you weren't prepared for, it can unleash a wave of intense, confusing, and often...
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Individual Adult Therapy
Often, we associate therapy with childhood or times of significant crisis. However, therapy is a valuable tool for adults of all ages, regardless of their circumstances. It’s a proactive approach to mental wellness, empowering individuals to navigate life’s challenges, build resilience, and unlock their full potential.
Couple's Therapy
Couples therapy is a valuable tool for strengthening relationships and overcoming challenges. By seeking professional guidance, couples can improve communication, resolve conflicts, and deepen their emotional connection.
Family Therapy
Family therapy is a powerful tool for addressing a wide range of family challenges, from communication breakdowns to significant life transitions. By involving all family members in the therapeutic process, family therapy can help improve relationships, enhance communication, and promote overall well-being.
Children's Therapy
Just as adults benefit from therapy, children can also gain immense value from seeking professional help. Therapy provides a safe and supportive space for young minds to explore their emotions, develop coping skills, and build resilience.
Adolescents/Teens Therapy
Adolescence is a time of significant physical, emotional, and social change. As teens navigate the complexities of growing up, they may encounter a range of challenges, including anxiety, depression, and relationship difficulties. Therapy offers a safe and supportive space for adolescents to explore their feelings, develop coping skills, and build resilience.
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Getting started at ARCH Counseling Center is simple—reach out, and we’ll guide you through the first steps toward healing and growth. Your journey to well-being begins with a conversation.