I served as clinical advisor for a series The Extractors on cable network Arts & Entertainment (A&E). My role was to advise production of treatment options in light of client needs.

Similar programs such as Intervention have had a long run given the public outcry to a health & safety risks of addiction.

The importance of the work done by this team cannot be underestimated. Their heart & soul shows through every episode in helping to find a solution to addiction for each individual. I hope you can watch to gain a sense of how far families must travel to get the help for their loved ones. And in the end, how the ends lead to the means of helping families access appropriate care.

Red Mountain Sedona encourages youth to transition into young adults in an active, mindful, and intentional way. I have watched this program grow from a small group of four individuals to 21 at present census. I find the program to still remain intimate and sophisticated in the staff’s ability to work with varying types of personalities.

This is a program that utilizes meditation, yoga, interpersonal relations with similar age peers who are transitioning between adolescence and adulthood. It contrasts with other programs in promoting introspective therapy and allowing for more transcendence into emotional and reflective states. In this way, for the right individual there is the opportunity to then recognize oneself within the bigger or greater schema of life.

I had a very nice visit with my clients who were both very surprised and appreciative of my presence. We spoke for hours while watching martial arts, touring the new recreational room equipped with guitars and healthy food. I spent equal amount of time with the therapists going over their progress and next steps. Soon these two will be graduating back home to complete college or another ‘home’ to study theatre.

I chose these photos of two ‘calm’ and ‘focused’ young adults who have come a long, long way! If you have a young person at home needing a quality program to guide them, let’s think about ‘fit’ and what makes sense in providing efficient program to support transition to responsible adulthood. So, let’s talk!

It’s not a diagnosis; it’s not a syndrome. It just ‘is’. (Note I didn’t use the term ‘post’ before the term ‘holidays’.) And as I said ‘safe travels’ to my son boarding his KLM flight back to the States at Schiphol airport, I felt it; and it was real. And for that day, my mood was more melancholy, more ‘reserved’. Inside, I felt kinda like a lyric in a country song: “Did you feel it too? The ‘After Holidays Blues’”.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to recognize the signs, or take steps to remedy the situation. You keep yourself busy, now, focusing on the ‘tasks at hand’: Get back to doing taxes, household chores, paying bills, clearing the last pieces of ‘Christmas Cheer’ from the kitchen counter.

However, as a psychologist and one who tries to be reflective, I have to stop myself and ask: Am I ok? No. There’s still unresolved feelings of ‘in-between-ness’ in saying ‘welcome, Son, happy holidays’ and then ‘goodbye (for now), and see you next year’.

So, to practice what I preach, I wrote him a simple, heart felt letter —- well, an email that he will receive upon landing LAX. Yes, it took a tear or two to write, and it’s likely to disrupt my ‘tasks at hand’ planned day, but maybe not. In fact, I feel better and more grounded already, to put my ‘energy’ into something more meaningful.

So, my advice? Keep the holiday spirit alive, even after loved ones leave by keeping in touch via one form or another. My way was to write a follow up email— yours may be a simple voice mail, or something else. But the sooner you do it, the quicker to resolve that feeling of ‘sitting in muck’ after saying goodbye.

Tag Line: Don’t let the ‘After Holiday Blues’ get to you, ’cause the holidays ain’t over until we say so!’