1step2life

Blog Posts & Essays

How to Relax in 5 Minutes

Pain, stress, and emotional distress are in the mind, but express themselves in physical tension. You can feel it in that tight neck, those stiff shoulders, and in that clenched jaw and hands. Notice that your back teeth hurt just a little? Feel that twinge between your shoulders? Back ache just a bit? The relationship is…
Incomplete Acts, Everyday Anxiety, and Getting Things Done

Four strategies to organize work and decrease anxiety.
Thanks. I’d Rather Skip The Pain

It feels good to be recognized for being strong. Because overcoming obstacles is hard. Especially when many of those obstacles are not something that most people even see as an obstacle – like making it from your bed to the couch. Overcoming obstacles can reveal strength in us we never knew we had, shape us…
Taking Back Your Life

1step2life started with my son’s experience with severe chronic migraine disease. It made no sense to log pain when the pain is always there. What he needed was something that helped him celebrate his victories – making it to school, getting the mail, turning down the pepperoni pizza and sticking to his low tyramine diet.…
Almost there . . .

We’ve been feeling like that pilot attacking the Death Star in Star Wars.
School: The Big Picture

Families need to work together towards a shared goal: helping children grew into healthy happy adolescents and adolescents make successful transitions to adulthood.
Getting Kids In Pain To School

Concrete tips on moving a teen in pain out of bed and towards functioning.
Control Your Focus

I’ll be honest. I spend my life crazy stressed. I have a job that my husband describes as ‘flexible – you can work any 60 hours a week you like’. And then I have two more jobs – I am Editor in Chief of the Journal of Adolescence and I’m also starting this company. And…
Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this.

Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this! Well . . . don’t do this.
It’s hard being a parent

It’s so hard as a parent when you are desperately hoping your child will just make it to school and squeak through to graduation. And so hard to listen to even your dearest friends fret about things that you’d give your eye teeth to be worrying about. It’s just hard.
Everyone’s got a friend with ‘the’ cure.

You know they mean well. You know they care. In fact, they’re trying to be sympathetic and make a connection. But when you tell them you have severe chronic migraines and they say ‘oh yeah, my sister-in-law gets migraines too’, and then ask if you if you’ve tried Excedrin Migraine . . . . No,…
Refining the Interface

Many people living with chronic pain are sensitive to the environment. On the down side, there’s the pain. Allodynia is a condition where modest stimuli – like brushing your hair – triggers pain. It’s common in people who have migraine, regional pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, other conditions. I remember my son cringing from the sound of…
We are getting so close!

The developers have been working hard to take our dream and turn it into an app that you can download from the AppStore or GooglePlay. We are getting so close! We are currently working through our fourth version of the app, making sure the user interface is as clear and easy to use as we…
Starting college? Getting the right accommodation plan is essential.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece in my Psychology Today blog for college students about how to talk to their professors about accommodations. Most professors (not all) honestly want to help. But the letters we get from the offices of disability service are usually vague and don’t tell us what students really need.…
You can’t stop pain by thinking about it

Just a shout out to a good blog on the use of distraction in chronic pain published in Psychology Today.
Fantastic New Resource for Kids With Migraine!

Migraine Action has produced a fantastic resource for people with migraines and those who care for them. https://view.publitas.com/migraine-action/predict-the-storm-guide-for-those-supporting-cyp/page/1
Are you a young adult? Are you interested in moving our understanding of pain forward?

This is an ad for a study I’ve been working on with a student (Max Kramer) for the last year. My son took part in the first phase. Max is recruiting an additional 10 participants. It’s pretty easy and participants do get paid. It will contribute to developing a machine learning algorithm to help better…
Children and COVID-19: What Parents Should Know.

I just wrote a new blog for Psychology Today on COVID-19 and kids. As the parent of someone who is chronically ill, I not only worry that he’ll be sick with the flu or COVID-19 or a cold. I worry that getting any of those viruses will kick off another long spike in pain. Keeping…
Getting Kids to Open Up

When your child is in pain, it’s easy to focus in on the three things that worry us: pain, pills, and homework. I know for myself, just seeing my son’s face triggers that mental checklist.
New Edition Released of Parenting a Child in Chronic Pain

As a developmental psychologist who has studied parenting on four continents, I can tell you a lot about raising teenagers. But nothing prepared me for watching my son shaking under the covers flinching from the light, and unable to speak from pain.