Blog — Vivian Nunez

Therapy For Beginners: Finding A Therapist

I shared a post on my IG that told the story of my first time in therapy. It ended up resonating with many and inspired me to start a series on the blog dubbed “Therapy For Beginners.” If I’m honest, I think we’re all beginners in therapy, no matter how long you’ve gone for, because of how much you continue to learn about yourself every single session.

Nonetheless, I do think that as a society we’ve gotten used to encouraging people start therapy without holding their hand through the real beginning stages.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezOctober 11, 2021mental health, therapyComment

Your Everyday Routine Is More Powerful Than You Think

I have lofty goals. Currently I’m working on launching courses, finishing a book proposal, coaching clients, and the list goes on and on. I aspire to meet all of the expectations I set for myself. Yet lately the most important expectation isn’t any of the work or life related ones I’ve set. It’s shifting my everyday routine to include my joy.

I know that sounds really sad, like “Vivian! Have you not been including your joy?”, but stick with me here. All of the things on my to-do list, they make me so happy. This book I’m working on? Lord, I cannot wait until I can hold it, hand it to someone, and say, “I promise, this will help.”

blog, creativity, mental healthVivian NunezSeptember 27, 2021Comment

My September Mental Wellness Routine

Our mental health is impacted by our mental wellness routines. Whenever we overload our routines or fill them with things that don’t serve our current circumstances, we do more harm than good. Working in the wellness space I’ve realized that many people and brands push a more is more approach. I’ve been writing these wellness routine recap since January and over these few months have realized that the routines that serve me best are the most simple ones.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezAugust 30, 2021mental wellness, wellness routinesComment

How COVID Should Change How You Look For A Therapist

I’ve earned a reputation as the person in my circle that people come to when they want to figure out how to find a therapist. I wrote a blog post years ago that has a ton of tips around finding a therapist and what the “dating” during those beginning stages can look like. It’s been my cheatsheet link I send to friends, but it’s also been a super helpful resource that others have come across and used as they figure out starting therapy for the first time or restarting therapy after a long time.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezAugust 26, 2021Comment

Getting Off The Anxiety Treadmill

Starting to explore my mental health years ago was a humbling experience. I was a novice. Yeah, I’d learned the alphabet in grade school and with it I was taught to piece together sentences around subjects like biology, history, and every day conversations, but I was never taught the alphabet or dictionary of words that I would need to describe the world that lived in my head. For a long time, it felt unfair. I had an entire experience I lived through daily and that impacted my world endlessly, but no way to tell others what it felt like or how much it actually shifted the trajectory of my day.

I had to learn to use colloquial words — elephant, chest, treadmill, alphabet soup — to build visuals in hopes someone would understand, in hopes someone would throw a life raft so I wouldn’t drown in the soup.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezAugust 16, 2021anxiety, mental health, mental wellness, mental health tipsComment

How I'm Protecting My Mental Health Amid More COVID Variant Cases

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mental health as COVID variants (like the Delta variant) have increased over the last few weeks. My mental health has been easily triggered since our move and while some of the triggers are things I can’t control (like a COVID outbreak), there are others I can (mostly my routines).

Since I got my vaccine back in April I’ve been treading lightly with my own re-entry into “regular” life or society. A big part of this is that we moved just two months after getting our vaccines, so we’ve been knee deep in adjusting to life back on the east coast anyway. But, an even bigger part is that I just wasn’t ready to commit 100% to regular life. I felt skeptical of whether others were taking their responsibility towards their community seriously or whether people were just really fed up with being home and needed to be out at all costs. While I can’t pinpoint other people’s motivations or know their vaccine status, I can control my own personal decisions, how I move in the world, and what I expect of myself.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezAugust 5, 2021mental health, pandemic, covid, mental wellness Comment

4 Places To Turn When You Feel Like You Don’t Have Anyone To Talk To

It’s one thing to feel like you’re going through a hard time, it’s another completely different thing to feel like you’re going through that moment in time alone. Hard feelings tend to do this to us. They can lead to isolation or an “I’m the only one” mindset that makes it harder to see that there may be others who are working through the same things.

I’ve been there before and honestly find myself there sometimes now. Years ago I had that feeling surface when I lived through the loss of someone I loved, now I’m feeling it with our move. In these instances what has always helped me has been leaning on others. I don’t want answers or quick fixes, I just want to feel less lonely as I let time heal and show me the joy in right now. I also believe that it’s easier for us to see the power of our present moment when someone else who loves or cares for us holds up a mirror.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezAugust 3, 2021mental health, support groups, grief groups, mental health supportComment

My August Mental Wellness Routine

It has been a while since I’ve worked on one of these and I’ll admit that it’s because my mental wellness routine went out the window with our move. Since April I’ve been pulled between feeling incredibly overwhelmed and encouraging myself to try my best. Some days were better than others. I know through it all I ended up having to work through a lot of grief and overwhelming feelings that came with moving back.

Since my life changed so much so did my mental wellness routines. Naturally I went from having a ton of time to dedicate to my routines to not having much at all. The last few months actually inspired what will be my first month long course (look out for more on IG!) which will focus on embracing minimalism in your mental wellness routine.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezAugust 2, 2021mental wellness, wellness routine, august mental wellness routine, yoga, waterComment

Sticking To Therapy Even When It’s Boring Or Extra Hard

I have been in therapy for the last 8 years. I go weekly, every Monday, and sit with her for 45-minutes. During some seasons of my life, I’ve texted her in the middle of the week for extra help or support because making it to the next Monday felt impossible. During other seasons of my life, Monday would come around and we’d talk about the happiest and most inconsequential moments of my life because that was all I had to report.

I’ve learned since starting that the reality with therapy is that not every session is an unpacking of wounds and not every session will be interesting. There will be many “boring” sessions where you’ll leave wondering if you should even still be in therapy. The feeling will feel similar to the times you’ve walked out from the hardest sessions and wondered if you should even be digging up those wounds.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezJuly 26, 2021therapy, mental health, mental wellnessComment

Keep These Tips In Mind When Setting Boundaries

After a year or more of playing, living, and working where we lived, two things are true — we got better and worse at setting boundaries. We aced keeping to our bubbles and saying “no” to outings or day dates that could expose us to COVID. We got rusty though when it came to the blurry lines between work and life at home. I can admit I’ve struggled a ton with setting those boundaries for myself or respecting the boundaries my partner has set. So, I think we’re all do for a refresher course on boundary setting.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezJuly 21, 2021boundaries, setting boundaries, mental wellness, productivityComment

Are You Overpacking Your Self-Care Routine?

Are you overpacking your self-care routine? I don’t think we ask ourselves this question enough. I’m editing an interview I did with Rainesford Stauffer, author of An Ordinary Age, and it’s one of the main topics we discussed. The economy around personal development has become so fruitful that everyone from big brands to smaller influencers (like me) are conscious of how much money comes in and out of pushing products, or lifestyle choices, or a routine that honestly may not really make sense for your real life.

I’m incredibly aware that the lines between self-care and consumerism are overlapping more than they ever have. It’s prompted me to revisit how and what I share with my community. I choose to embrace a less is more approach in my own life because less is more manageable, more intentional, and less driven by the comparison game. I rotate what my “less” is regularly because I’m always trying new things and that’s the process I’ve chosen to share with you all.

blog, wellness, mental healthVivian NunezJuly 12, 2021mental wellness, self-care, self-love, personal growthComment

Navigating Post-Quarantine Life After A Cross-Country Move

I’ve heard this time get called “re-entry”, which makes sense because we are re-entering. No season has ever felt like more of a re-entrance than this one. We moved from Portland back to the east coast before our first anniversary on the west coast. We did it all in under a week and it felt similar to the whiplash that came with the wave of COVID vaccinations across the nation. One day I had finally gotten to know the ground that I was standing on (after trying so hard to understand it since March 2020), only to have the entire planet turned upside on.

Admittedly, all in a great way. Both re-entry into our east coast life and into a post-quarantine world have been what I’ve been praying about for the last year. I’ve yearned for a time where seeing our friends and family felt easier and less risky. I wanted a time where we felt more at peace in our own home because it didn’t have to be the only place we existed in anymore.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezJune 29, 2021Comment

My April Mental Wellness Routine

I’ve been writing these recaps monthly since January and am officially entering the second quarter of the year feeling pretty proud of myself. Writing down my mental wellness routine is a new habit for me. I, like most people, got used to managing my mental health on a day-to-day basis and never put time aside to see the routines I was forming.

Comparing the last few months to each other has made it clear that I’ve been missing out on an opportunity to understand myself better. In January I was pretty locked in on growth and setting up a successful morning routine for myself, but if you jump to March’s wellness routine you can see just how much the winter months impacted me.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezApril 12, 2021Comment

The Little Things I Do To Manage My Anxiety

I think I’ve lived with anxiety my entire life. I can remember being 7 years old and telling my mom that I had a really bad stomach ache and didn’t want to get in the car. She thought I was just feeling physically off, but looking back I know now that my stomachache was a symptom to a larger reality. My anxiety manifests in my stomach, in the tension in my shoulders, and in a looming fear over most things in my life.

I wasn’t officially treated for anxiety until I was 21 years old and started therapy. My long-term care routine for my anxiety has up until now been talk therapy. It’s helped me so much to have a dedicated space where I can work through the ins and outs of how (and sometimes why) my anxiety manifests. I’ve written before that this last winter re-triggered a lot of dormant fears and anxious reactions. It has been a time when I’ve especially turned to the small ways I can help myself manage.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezApril 8, 2021anxiety, tactics, habits, mental health, mental wellnessComment

How To Spring Clean Your Mental Health Routines

It is April and the sun is officially out in Portland. After a few months of struggling with my mental health it’s also starting to feel like I have a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to how I’ve been feeling. I’ll dive in more on a separate post about what this past winter has taught me, but first I want to share how intentional I’m being with spring cleaning.

Last weekend I started dividing up my books into two piles, those I was going to donate and those I was going to keep. I’ve been committing to a more minimalist lifestyle, which includes paring down my closet and most of the things that I keep just for the sake of keeping them. I’m embracing the same spring cleaning tactics when it comes to my mental health.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezApril 6, 2021mental health, spring cleaning, routines, habitsComment

Create A Mental Health Defense Kit

During one of my first therapy sessions way back when, my therapist lovingly stared my way and said, “You need things outside of yourself to help anchor you on bad days.” At the time of her telling me this, my bad days were very, very bad. My hours were consumed with anxiety or depressive thoughts. The idea of cultivating a full roster of actions or safe spaces I could turn to on bad days felt incredibly difficult because I barely had the energy to walk out of the apartment in the first place.

Thinking back on those days, it was the most humbling season of my life. The perfectionist and problem solver in me wanted to be able to sit down for 15 minutes and brainstorm her way to a quick fix. Mental health doesn’t work on quick fixes though. Each day became a challenge and a reminder that the only way out of a bad day was through it and the only way through it was with acceptance and understanding the difference between what I could do and what I wanted to do.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezMarch 30, 2021mental health, grief, anxiety, coping, how to cope, how to cope with bad mental health days, lossComment

My March Mental Wellness Routine

February was by far one of my hardest months yet. I kept my mental wellness routine simple as a result of knowing that going back to the basics was going to be what served me best. My biggest struggle (or trigger) over the last few months has been how rainy and grey it has been. I’d never been one to wrestle with much seasonal depression, but this year it hit me tenfold.

What helped over the last few weeks was to stay to myself and to simultaneously give myself things to look forward to. March’s wellness routine has consisted of more of the same.

blog, mental healthVivian NunezMarch 15, 2021Comment

A Vet Answers: What Do I Do For Puppy Separation Anxiety And Puppy Blues?

There were so many things that I couldn’t have imagined would come with puppy parenthood — long nights, unexpected “do we think he actually ate that?” accidents, and lately a big focus on both our puppy’s mental health and our own.

We got Chauncey last spring when we were already a few months into lockdown in New York City. Given his age (he’ll be 1-year-old on March 9th!) the only world he’s really known includes us being home all the time and having very limited contact with other humans or the outside environment. We didn’t realize just how much this small world setup would impact him until he got all his shots and was able to start going on walks in NYC. He hated it. We would have to drag him to make it as far as the corner and we’d both be frustrated and anxious that we would just turn back around and go home.

all posts

let’s talk

navigate