DR. RODRIGUEZ-SIUTS: SCOTTSDALE PSYCHOLOGIST I THERAPIST I COUNSELOR IN WOMEN'S HEALTH
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Relatable Orangutan Mom with No Time For Baby's Tantrums Pulls Kid Around Zoo Exhibit

4/1/2020

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PicturePHOTO: KOEN HARTKAMP/PAIRI DAIZA/CATERS NEWS

The mother-son duo made up after the adorable incident
By Kelli Bender| February 28, 2020 1:10PM
"Its a familiar scene: a mom trying to do her best with a tired, whiny kid refusing to budge from their spot on the floor or a public place. 

This time the tantrum didn't play out at a shopping mall, grocery store or playground; it was at the Pairi Daiza Zoo in Belgium.

According to the Daily Mail, three-year old orangutan Berani didn't want to leave playtime when mom Sari came calling. when mom tried to move the little primate from his spot, the kid threw a bit of a tantrum. 

Instead of giving in, Sari, a skilled and doting mother, literally took matters into her own hands, grabbing Berani and dragging him to a different spot in the zoo exhibit. 

The relatable moment was captured by photographer Koen Hartkamp, who also witnessed the mother-son duo make up after the silly incident.

"Just like all small children, Berani still has to listen to what mum says even though he's getting a bit more independent. ..and judging by the picture he didn't like it," the photographer told Daily Mail." 
Finish Reading About The Struggles Of Dealing With Your Children's Tantrums
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Be Brave Enough

4/1/2020

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By The Powerful Mind
6 Reasons Why Failue is Actually Good for You

"It can be difficult to get back up when it feels like life is constantly knocking us down. 

Blow after blow, we keep trying to trudge through our failed experiences to try and reach the moment of success.

Each time we fall at a new venture, a new relationship, or a new career, it gets more and more difficult to keep going-at least with the same stamina and optimism as before. 

We start internalizing all these failures and it becomes a little voice at the back of our minds telling us we are a failure. 

Once this voice takes over, the threat of giving up and giving in becomes all too real. 

Contrary to that littel voice, failure is actually a good thing. 

Winston Churchill defines success as the ability of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. 

There are many benefits to experiencing failure, even though you may not think so initially."
Read More About the reasons failure is actually good for you
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NICU Nurses Babywearing Proves They are the Best People on Earth

2/10/2020

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July 4, 2019
By Lana Hallowes
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"How awesome are these NICU nurses? They are going about their important tasks while babywearing the bubs they care for when their parents aren’t able to."

​Nurses ROCK

"The photos, shared by Kangatraining Austrailia show the hardworking nurses in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Germany doing what they do best-loving and caring for needy babies.

As any babywearing mama, or dad, will know, all babies love to be held close and carried, with the movement soothing them and often putting them to sleep."
Read more about hard working nicu nurses loving and caring for needy babies
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NPR: Special Series

1/29/2020

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Women's Mental Health At Key Stages In Life

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Photo: Katherine Streeter for NPR
​Menopause Can Start Younger Than You Think: Here's What You Need To Know

By Emily Vaughn & Rhitu Chatterjee
"Would you recognize the signs that your body is going through the big hormonal changes that lead to menopause? Here's what to look for-and what you can do about it."

"Sarah Edrie says she was about 33 when she started to occasionally get a sudden, hot, prickly feeling that radiated into her neck and face, leaving her flushed and breathless. "Sometimes I would sweat. And my heart would race," she says. The sensations subsided in a few moments and seemed to meet the criteria for a panic attack. But Edrie, who has no personal or family history of anxiety, was baffled.

She told her doctor and her gynecologist about the episodes, along with a few other health concerns she was starting to notice: Her menstrual cycle was becoming irregular, she had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and she was getting night sweats. Their response: a shrug.

It wasn't until Edrie went to a fertility clinic at age 39 because she and her partner were having trouble conceiving that she got answers. "They were like, 'Oh, those are hot flashes. It's because you're in perimenopause,' " she says.
​
If you haven't heard the term "perimenopause," you're not alone. Often when women talk about going through menopause, what they're really talking about is perimenopause, a transitional stage during which the body is preparing to stop ovulating, says Dr. Jennifer Payne, who directs the Women's Mood Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins University."

Read more about menopause and its effects on women's mental health
HOW PUBERTY, PREGNANCY AND PERIMENOPAUSE AFFECT MENTAL HEALTH
Listen to the four podcasts below:
"January 14, 2020 • NPR's Morning Edition explores the key reproductive shifts in women's lives — puberty, pregnancy and perimenopause — and how the changes during those times could impact mental and emotional health."
"​January 16, 2020 • Women with a history of depression and anxiety are at a higher risk of having a flare-up during the time leading up to menopause. And getting doctors to take the issue seriously can be challenging."
"​January 15, 2020 • Nearly 1 in 7 women suffers from depression during pregnancy or postpartum. But very few get treatment. Doctors in Massachusetts have a new way to get them help."
"​January 17, 2020 • NPR's Rachel Martin talks to menopause expert Dr. JoAnn Pinkerton, division director of the Midlife Health Center at the University of Virginia, who answers listeners' questions."
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Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid

9/10/2019

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By Guy Winch, Ted Talk
"​We'll go to the doctor when we feel flu-ish or a nagging pain. So why don't we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness? Too many of us deal with common psychological-health issues on our own, says Guy Winch. But we don't have to. He makes a compelling case to practice emotional hygiene — taking care of our emotions, our minds, with the same diligence we take care of our bodies."
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The Brain Changing Benefits of Exercise

8/27/2019

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By: Dr. Wendy Suzuki, Ted Talk
Wendy Suzuki is researching the science behind the extraordinary, life-changing effects that physical activity can have on the most important organ in your body: your brain.

"What's the most transformative thing that you can do for your brain today? Exercise! says neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki. Get inspired to go to the gym as Suzuki discusses the science of how working out boosts your mood and memory -- and protects your brain against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's."

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The Power of Setting Meaningful, Achievable Goals

5/3/2019

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Setting meaningful goals can help manage symptoms of anxiety and depression. By setting meaningful goals, you eliminate feelings of being lost or stagnant in life and create a clear path for achieving your goals. This clear path and your connection to the "why" will help you stay motivated by keeping your focus on achieving such a meaningful goal. You'll have the ability to visualize your success. 
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It Takes 50 Hours To Make A Friend

8/16/2018

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Photo: Strelka Institute/Flickr/Attribution License
​According to a study conducted by University of Kansas professor Jeffrey Hall and published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, you can forget about fast friends. The path to becoming BFF’s requires time-and not just any hours will do. “For working adults, more time at work was associated with less closeness in friendship,” Hall says. “Instead, time spent in leisure, at home, or at play really mattered.” In all, you’ll have to dedicate 50 hours to graduate from acquaintance to “casual friend,” 90 hours to jump to “friend,” and 200-plus hours to claim “close friend” status. The good news? That gives you plenty of time to finish making those friendship bracelets. 
Read More About The Reality Of How Much Work It Takes To Make a Friend
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The first step to overcoming procrastination: Know thyself

7/5/2018

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By: Dr. Drew Appleby
Do you have a procrastinator personality?

Procrastination is one of the most damaging characteristics that students display because it robs them of good grades and prevents them from maintaining productive and healthy relationships with their teachers, families and friends. Procrastination can have both external (e.g., situations involving work overloads) and internal causes (e.g., personality characteristics).
The following six procrastinator personalities identified by Sapadin (2012) in her book "How to Beat Procrastination in the Digital Age: 6 Unique Change Programs for 6 Personality Styles" are examples of the internal causes that can fuel procrastination. I highly recommend Sapadin’s book because it provides thinking, speaking and action strategies tailor-made for each of the six personality styles designed to help students lessen their tendency to procrastinate. If you are a procrastinator, these six descriptions will help you to know thyself better, the action strategies from Sapadin’s book will teach you how to be true to thyself, but it will be your responsibility to just do it.

​Here are the six styles. Do you recognize yourself in one or more than one?

The perfectionist believes that her value as a human being is at stake every time she undertakes a task. The world is an all-or-nothing place for the perfectionist, which means that if the project she is working on fails, or is not the best, then she is a failure too. Her greatest fear is that she will not measure up to her own expectations or the expectations of others, a belief which may have its origin in a parent who looked at the 98 percent on her term paper and asked what happened to the other 2 percent. Procrastination allows the perfectionist to postpone completing an assignment because if it’s not complete, it can’t be judged.

The dreamer yearns for an easy, painless and nonthreatening life. When the world disrupts this dream by presenting difficult challenges, the dreamer retreats into his mind, creating an ideal world in which he is a "special" person who does not have to play by the same rules as everyone else. This dream is very comforting, but it also creates damaging academic, occupational and social/romantic consequences by producing late assignments, unfinished tasks and broken promises.

The worrier has an overpowering need to feel safe, but pays a high price for this feeling. Her most fearsome foes are risk and change, which paralyze her because she fears they will push her outside of her narrow comfort zone. Expecting the worst, she creates a stream of negative “what ifs” that predispose her to assume that taking an action will produce a disastrous outcome. The worrier has "better safe than sorry" tattooed on her soul. Hence, worriers experience less joy and fun in their lives than most other people; but they believe it is an acceptable price to pay for feeling safe.

The crisis-maker creates lots of drama in his life by waiting until the last minute to get things done. He under-reacts to situations that provide plenty of time to work by saying, "I don’t work well until I really start to feel the pressure," and then over-reacts with great frenzied bursts of activity just before the deadline. This burn-the-candle-at-both-ends strategy may work for the young, but over time it will fail because it will become harder and harder to transform yourself into superman/woman with jolts of adrenaline and caffeine.

The defier harbors a deep resentment toward authority, and has learned that the safest way to rebel is to use passive aggressive techniques. When asked to perform a task, a defier will almost always say “sure, I can do that,” but then “forgets” to do what he promised. This strategy provides the defier with a sense of power over others, but unfortunately it often leaves the important people in his life feeling betrayed, manipulated and/or used. When this strategy produces its inevitable negative consequences (e.g., failing a course), the defier consoles himself by thinking that this is the inevitable price he must pay if he wants to do things his own way.

The pleaser is always busy, so it doesn’t seem like she is procrastinating. Her focus, however, is not so much on getting her work done, but on pleasing others so they will like her. There is really no problem with that strategy unless she gets distracted from focusing on her own obligations. Pleasers may think they can do it all, yet, over time, they lose the balance between school and fun, work and leisure, and the professional and the personal. Soon she is disappointing not only those she wants so desperately to please, but also herself by producing mediocre work and making up excuses to explain why her work is late.
​
Do you recognize yourself in one or more of these descriptions? If your answer is yes, then you have taken the first step in a journey that can transform you into a happier and more productive person. But don’t forget that this journey has the following three parts: 
  • Know thyself.
  • Be true to thyself, and then.
  • Just do it today, not tomorrow.
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It's Time To Take The Mental Health Of Mothers Seriously

5/9/2018

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By: Kate Rope
The Myths
  • We are just talking about depression. Experts now understand that women experience a range of symptoms and disorders that include anxiety, OCD, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. And some of the most common symptoms—such as rage and anxiety—look nothing like the sad woman on the hospital brochure for PPD.
  • We are just talking about the postpartum period. Half of all PMADs develop during pregnancy. And treating them in pregnancy lowers the chance that a woman will experience a disorder after pregnancy. Plus, a woman can experience these conditions any time in the 12 months after giving birth.
  • This is your fault. Nope. This is a medical condition, and—while the cause of these conditions is not well understood—experts do know that the hormonal fluctuations that occur during and after pregnancy leave some women susceptible to developing them. And there are other risk factors—such as financial stress, poor social support, a history of trauma or a mood disorder or anxiety disorder—that can increase the likelihood that a woman will develop a PMAD. But anyone can develop one.
  • You don’t love your baby. Women with PMADs are no different than any other mothers in how much they love their children. They just have a medical condition that means the beginning of motherhood is a much greater struggle than it needs to be.
  • You just have to get through it. These conditions do not resolve on their own without treatment. You should have whatever support you need to feel strong, and there are risks to moms and babies when these conditions go untreated.
  • The only treatment is drugs that you cannot take during pregnancy or breastfeeding. Actually, one of the most effective treatments for anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and there are many other kinds of psychotherapy that are effective. There are also supplements and medications that can be used safely during pregnancy and breastfeeding under the care of an experienced clinician.
  • You are a danger to your baby. You have probably heard stories of women who have harmed themselves or their babies. Though rare, these tragedies get a lot of media attention and often the media assumes a mother has postpartum depression. In fact, the majority of these rare events occur when a woman is suffering from untreated postpartum psychosis, an extremely rare but treatable psychiatric emergency in which a woman experiences a break from reality and may believe things that are not true or see and hear things that are not there.

The Facts
  • Some 15 to 21 percent of women will have depression or anxiety during pregnancy.
  • Eighty percent of women will have the “baby blues”—a period of mood swings, weepiness, and feeling overwhelmed in the first two weeks after giving birth. When symptoms go beyond two weeks there is a chance she is experiencing a perinatal mood or anxiety disorder (PMAD)
  • One in seven women will experience a PMAD with symptoms that affect their day-to-day functioning anytime in the year after giving birth.
  • About the same number of women who have adopted a baby will experience post-adoption depression.
  • One to two in 1000 women will experience postpartum psychosis (which often shows up in the first four weeks after delivery). Very few of those women will harm themselves or their children. But there is a risk they could, so postpartum psychosis requires immediate medical care.
  • All of these conditions have effective treatments that work surprisingly quickly. With the right care, you can feel so much better in a relatively short period of time.

​What This Means: That becoming a mother is a stressful event. In fact, pregnancy itself is actually considered a “stressor” in the medical literature. Struggle is going to be part of the process. It’s like labor and delivery. It is a tremendous physical and emotional undertaking to bring a person into the world. We accept that physical pain and other medical complications can be part and parcel of making and birthing a human being. Why do we think our brains would get away Scott-free? That doesn’t make sense.
Read more about the importance of taking maternal mental health seriously
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​SANDRA RODRIGUEZ-SIUTS, PH.D., LLC 

8585 E Hartford Dr., Suite 120
Scottsdale, AZ 85255
Phone: (480) 473-5411
Fax: (480) 436-6900

© Copyright 2020 Sandra Rodriguez-Siuts, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved
Photos used under Creative Commons from edenpictures, Martin Cathrae
  • Scottsdale Psychologist
  • About
  • Therapy Services
    • Prenatal and Postpartum Therapy
    • Reproductive Mental Health Therapy
    • General Maternal Mental Health
  • Patient Info
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