Glenn Zermeño is a member:
How to Be a Queer Person in the World Post-Quarantine
them.
The good news is, we’re in this together. “It levels the playing field that we’re all navigating this low-grade traumatic moment in different ways,” says Glenn Zermeño, LCSW-R, a queer psychotherapist practicing in Brooklyn. “Everybody’s experiencing it.” Below, we spoke to mental health experts and advocates about strategies for maintaining a strong sense of self, including positive body image, truthful gender expression, and fealty to what we really want, as we head back into a changed world — feeling differently than when we left.

Kari Tabag is a member:
Emptying the Nest. Again.
The New York Times
Kari Tabag, a licensed clinical social worker and professor at Adelphi University with a private practice on Long Island, said that after adult children move out, organizing the home or areas where they lived may be empowering, allowing you to “take your house back.” Ms. Salasin and her husband, Casey Deane, rearranged every room in their house, including turning one of the kids’ bedrooms into a room for exercise and music. “It was an intense process, but I needed to do it to reclaim the house as ours,” she said.

Carla Naumburg is a member:
‘When my daughter was getting married, I tried to be the perfect mum. I ruined everything.’
Mamamia
They need to see us fail, and then pick ourselves up and try to make it right. They don’t need us to be perfect since that is not in our power. They just need us to be good enough. Carla Naumburg, PhD, a clinical social worker wrote: “There’s one other important point we need to remember about the good enough mother — she’s not only a gift to her children, but she’s also unavoidable. It is, quite simply, not possible to do better than good enough. Perfection is not an option.”

Scott M. Granet is a member:
Tallulah Willis ‘resented’ looking like dad Bruce: How she copes with body dysmorphic disorder
USA Today
Scott M. Granet, a 66-year-old licensed clinical social worker at the OCD-BDD Clinic of Northern California, said body dysmorphic disorder (often also referred to as body dysmorphia) impacts approximately 2% of the population. Having been diagnosed himself, Granet told USA TODAY in March it took him years to discover that he had been struggling with the disorder.

Gloria Osborne is a member:
Señoras, Stop Asking When I’m Having Kids — I’m Not
Refinery29
Emotional implications also lie in questions like “When are you going to have kids?” “It implies that somebody wants kids,” says Gloria Osborne, a cognitive behavioral therapist, and licensed clinical social worker. “You’re asking them when they want to have kids as opposed to asking, ‘Well, have you thought about having kids?’ It’s a very different question. When you ask a question like ‘when,’ it causes somebody to call what they’re doing into question.” It’s also important to remember that questions about having children can create an uncomfortable situation or have psychological effects on those who might be struggling with infertility.

Elijah Nealy is a member:
Kids Are Coming Out Earlier Than Ever—Here’s How to Give Them the Support They Need
Health
“Visibility and safety are part of it,” says Elijah C. Nealy, PhD, a trans clinical social worker in West Hartford, Connecticut, and author of Transgender Children and Youth. “There’s a greater degree of acceptance. It also seems more wrapped up in identity than sexual activity”—that is, your child could identify as gay even if they aren’t having sex yet.

Stacey Spata is a member:
[Video] The New Normal: How to help children handle the toll of the pandemic
News12
News 12’s Elizabeth Hashagen was joined this morning by Stacey Spata and Lea Theodore to talk about the toll the pandemic has taken on children. Spata is a licensed clinical social worker with over two decades of experience working with nonprofits. She is the executive director of the YMCA of Long Island’s Family Services branch. She also provides direct therapy for individuals, families, and children. Theodore is a child psychology and school psychology professor from Adelphi University.

Jennifer Teplin is a member:
How To Combat ‘Waiting Brain’—The Reason It’s Impossible To Get Anything Done Between Meetings
Well + Good
First, know that the brain doesn’t love when things don’t go according to plan. According to Jennifer Teplin, LCSW, we often have an ‘ideal scenario’ for getting a task done. When something interrupts that routine or expected schedule, we short circuit, in a sense. So, if you have an idea for your day is going to go, with, say, a meeting at 1 p.m. and then another at 3 p.m., unless you intentionally plan to finish something between those meetings, your brain may interpret any additional information as a curveball that poses to interrupt the laid-out schedule it’s comfortable following.