Ashley Junghans-Rutelonis, PhD, PMH-C, R-PLC’s Post

I am celebrating a win!🎉 In August, I applied to join the RETAIN Parental Leave Coaching Certification program with the Center for Parental Leave Leadership. On September 20, I attended my first class with my cohort and buckled in. I was adding a coaching certification course on top of my private practice, coaching, consulting work, parenting, partnering, and human-ing. For the past 6 months, I have attended classes, read books and articles, taken quizzes, played catch up at times, worked with practice clients and peers, taken time away from family on weekdays and weekends, and struggled to integrate these facets while enjoying the heck out of it all. I found out I passed my exam on February 29th and officially earned the title of Certified RETAIN Parental Leave Coach (R-PLC). For me, serving working parents is personal. As a working mother, I am personally invested in this topic and in this (large) group of adults who are in the middle of parenting transitions. It is also an important time to acknowledge the systems involved. So many incredible women (and yes, some men but less so) leave the workforce after becoming a parent. For those who feel the path is chosen for them by breakdowns in organizational support and childcare concerns, the poor mental health outcomes and losses to their organization can be huge. But we know better now and there are proactive approaches to helping parents (and their leaders and colleagues) as they transition to leave, take leave, and return to work. Thank you to the Center for Parental Leave Leadership for providing an opportunity to push myself, grow in the field of parental leave coaching, and build the skills to support individuals and organizations who want change. #parentalleave #maternalmentalhealth #womenatwork #education Celebrating my new certification!

In honor of women’s history month, please vote today if your state has a primary. I have been reading “The Women’s Hour: The great fight to win the vote” by Elaine Weiss over the past week. If you haven’t read it yet… run, don't walk!! It is an inspiring, dramatic account of the fight in 1920 Nashville to secure the final state needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. No matter who you vote for, please vote in this primary. I leave you with the following from Weiss’ book and ask you to take it from here… “Winning the vote required seventy-two years of ceaseless agitation by three generations of dedicated, fearless suffragists, who sought to overturn centuries of law and millennia of tradition concerning gender roles. The women who launched the movement were dead by the time it was completed; the women who secured its final success weren’t born when it began. It took more than nine hundred local, state, and national campaigns, involving tens of thousands of grassroots volunteers, financed by millions of dollars of mostly small (and a few large) donations by women across the country.” #womenshistorymonth #vote #womenempoweringwomen

I want to talk about ADHD and women. Oh wait.... I did that! Want to hear about ADHD diagnostics, strengths, struggles, and my own ADHD journey? I spoke with LifeSpeak Inc's VP,Content Marianne Wisenthal on the LifeSpeak Inc. podcast last month. Check us out on Spotify... https://lnkd.in/gZVVmizf #adhd #womenshealth #mentalhealthatwork

I lead with Input. Any other Input folks out there? 🧠We crave information and always want to know more. 📚We collect books, ideas, facts, and resources. 🌎We have a natural curiosity and sense of wonder about the world. 🐿️We squirrel things away and get excited when we get to add something to a conversation or project. One of our organizational superpowers: We can bring up-to-date subject matter expertise to teams and organizations. One of our people super powers: We can encourage growth in others. One of our muscles to strengthen: Accepting that we will never feel like we know enough. If you lead with Input, here is your homework for the week. 👓1. Read one article or blog post you saved to read later. Let yourself have some protected time to honor your desire to learn and relish in it. 🏆2. Take one opportunity to acknowledge a win for someone else. Tell them in a meeting, by email, or in a text. ⛰️3. Practice a moment of self-compassion: Acknowledge your desire to know more. Remember you are not alone and that there are other Input folks out there. Tell yourself what you need to hear, "There is time to learn and grow so enjoy the journey." Happy Tuesday everyone. #input #mentalhealthatwork #personaldevelopment #womeninleadership

I need recommendations, please! I am looking for a new accountant/tax professional who works with mental health professionals in Minnesota. The one I was working with just shifted out of the business. I would love to find someone who can meet with me a on a quarterly basis, is knowledgeable about mental health practice and coaching, and who can run a tight ship (e.g., detail-oriented and direct in what she needs from me). Please send any ideas my way!! #minnesota #womeninaccounting #taxaccountant #recommendations

I finished something that was 9 years in the making during my break from LinkedIn. While I was pregnant with my son and working at the Mayo Clinic, I had a grant application funded to study physical activity and sleep in patients with chronic pain. The project we conducted took an enormous amount of work. The simplified version is ... We incorporated use of a wearable device (in other words, a Fitbit) to measure physical activity and sleep for 3 weeks before patients participated in our intensive rehabilitation program. We also collected this information during their program participation. We then examined changes from baseline to treatment. We found amazing gains in physical activity. But this wasn't the thing that excited me the most. Two things made this study memorable. First, we looked at feasibility of the approach. That means we wrote about what went well, what didn't go well, and examined if the information gathered was actually usable. Studies like this extend beyond themselves to help inform other research and hopefully help researchers make informed decisions about how they structure their studies. Second, patients and their families loved the feedback they received at the end of their rehabilitation programs. While this aspect is only mentioned once in the paper, it is one of those glimmers as a researcher that stays with you. It is one thing to think you are moving more, it is another to see those numbers in front of you. Patients and their parents reported empowerment, saying they could continue their increased physical activity (meaning moving about and engaging more with the world) when they returned home. THAT is the good stuff!! I will forever love this study. Both of us grant authors were pregnant at the time. My colleague's daughter was born half way through the work. My son decided to come early, after a night of data entry. The rest of the team continued the work while we were out on mat leave and did a fantastic job. This was truly a labor of love! #womeninresearch #womeninstem #workingmoms #psychology https://lnkd.in/geqFd2xA

If you are looking for a place to donate a gift this year, this is a wonderful and really easy way to do it. NAMI Minnesota still has gifts on its Amazon gift drive for children and adults with mental illnesses who will be hospitalized or in residential treatment over the holiday season. My son and I just purchased comic books and talked about how some kid's mental health, just like physical health, will need extra care over the holidays. He picked out Marvel comic books and a comic book a kid can create all on their own. All we had to do was follow the wish list link, select the two items, and have them sent straight to NAMI. If you have 5 minutes, consider donating to this wonderful drive. #holidaygiving #mentalhealth

Nothing like running into a virtual meeting after stuffing a chicken salad sandwich in your face during the literal 3 minutes you have to eat lunch. And.... having a large chunk of mayo covered chicken stuck to the end of your nose that is immediately pointed out to you. 🥪Hope you all can laugh at yourself a bit today. #virtualmeetings #laughter #lunchandlearn

I put the laptop and social media aside to spend a holiday week with my family. It felt good to have the time together and, honestly, odd to lose the structure of my day to day work. Work-life integration is important and sometimes there is this pressure to love the life side of it. Holidays can be amazing and we can love time with our family and friends. But it can also bring stress, routine changes, sleep disruption, family system realities, long travel days, and fatigue. 🧠💖Allow yourself to live in the duality of joy/stress work-life integration in the holidays. Both can be true and that is okay. #workingmom #maternalmentalhealth #holidaystress

Go break something. Now do it again. ... How do I shift my ADHD procrastination to productivity? 💵Yes, this is the million dollar question. There is not a one-size approach that will fit all individuals with ADHD but here is an idea. Break tasks into smaller tasks.  No, not like you have been doing before.  You have to break it down smaller. Let me give you an example. 📃You have a deck to prepare.  Wrong to-do list item: Make slide deck Wrong to-do list items: Find images then make slide deck These are too big. Yes, they are smaller than a to-do list that says “work on projects for company x” but they are still not small enough. 🔍Each to-do list item needs to be something you can do in one sitting and that you could no longer break down anymore. Right to-do list item: Read article X to research X for slide deck.  Right to-do list item: Complete Slide 1 text Right to-do list item: Insert Slide 1 image you selected yesterday   ⏲️This approach will absolutely take longer on the front end. If you have ADHD, however, it will benefit you to spend the time on the front end to make a set plan so that it will be there to support you when your interest, motivation, or focus wanes. Now go break stuff!! #adhd #mentalhealthatwork #professionaldevelopment #skill