Why does this Fall feel harder for so many of us? We know the end of the year is always challenging with the upcoming holidays and family obligations, but this year the elections added to our stressor – no matter who you are. We either view change as a threat, where we either go in to fight-or-flight mode or we accept change as a part of life and learn to adapt to survive and build resilience. How do we get from “I just can’t” to “I can handle this.” Los Angeles Psychotherapist, John Tsilimparis, joins the podcast to help us better understand our personal relationship with change and gives us ways we can learn to accept and make change work for us, to find our new footing, to recognize our own blind spots, and to not worry about the things that we cannot control. John gives us useful tools to keep our boundaries, manage difficult conversations and not sound weak, judgmental, dismissive, or harsh.

Social connection is a basic human need that is essential to our overall health and wellbeing. But as the world evolves from technological advances and person-to-person contact becomes more limited, those feel-good hormones that we get from simply being together are being replaced by shorter attention spans, irritability, more isolation, and a greater sense of loneliness. It is up to each of us to find our ikigai, a Japanese word for what we call “a reason to live/to get you out of bed” every single day to create flow in your life. Flow is the place where your needs, desires, ambitions, and satisfaction meet. Psychotherapist, John Tsilimparis, is back as we continue our discussion on loneliness and what we can do to stop the actions that leads us down a path to a very sad and unhealthy life. John shares his professional wisdom and understanding, and leaves us with nuggets of information we can all use every day to help us find a path back to ourselves so we can find our flow.

We all need healthy alone time or “me” time for self-care and quiet, down time. It’s a good thing, right? The fact is that too much time alone can lead to loneliness, isolation, and experiencing a lack of connection with others. The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, in 2018 declared loneliness a global health threat and it has only worsened because of the isolation mandated by the pandemic. But COVID-19 is not the biggest culprit for why people chose more and more want to be alone and not engage with each other in person. Technology has revolutionized everything including how we see, experience, value, and prioritize being together – in real life. When we were asked to isolate for health reasons, the safety and protection that we felt from cocooning at home, withdrawing from others, and living life online for the convenience to communicate, order food/groceries, educate students, and work all have contributed to the massive increase in loneliness. Psychotherapist, John Tsilimparis, helps us connect the dots between our day-to-day activities, life/situational circumstances, emotions, technology/social media, culture, the environment and the loneliness that we are feeling today. For many of us, we are not even aware that the heaviness we feel, the insomnia, and “just not feeling the need to go out” is, in fact, loneliness. Join the conversation where John helps us find ways to decrease our loneliness by incorporating incremental behavioral steps like using good social media hygiene and prioritizing togetherness.