Assessment & Testing

Someone might find certain classes or settings challenging to focus or perform at their best. Assessments can provide a clearer picture of their learning style and what/how information might be easier or harder to process. Moreover, assessments can show someone how factors outside of the learning setting may be impacting their learning style.

Try as hard as they might, someone might notice feeling like their brain reflexively juggles a lot of things at one. Mental juggling can make it hard to focus, organize thoughts, or remember things. Mental juggling can also make it easier for someone to get distracted, act before they think, or sit still.

Someone might notice big or intense changes in mood or behavior, such as sadness, tearfulness, fatigue, sleeping noticeably more or less, feeling indecisive or irritable with things that normally would not bother you. This can also look like feeling intense sadness, anger or happiness (euphoria) for hours or days at a time.

Children, teens, and adults are all susceptible to distressing emotions or behaviors that can be hard to manage or change. Assessments aim to help someone understand what factors drive or reinforce behavior patterns or distressing emotions, and can offer suggestions for working through them.

Assessments can teach us about how someone experiences interactions or relationships, how someone understands themself, how they connect and relate to others.

I often hear people describe feeling confused by or avoidant of social interactions. To some, this might feel like navigating a room full of people who speak a different language. Some might describe it as a sense of feeling "different" in such a way that they feel alone and disconnected, even among people they know well.

Assessments can help people understand their style of engaging and interacting with others, including what factors make it easier or harder to develop or maintain meaningful and strong relationships.

Someone may notice thoughts that pop into their head with little-to-no warning and cause a lot of distress. Thoughts could be about past events, worries or fears, or thoughts about death, injuries, or illness befalling one's self or a loved one.

Intrusive thoughts can disrupt any part of someone's day, make it hard to focus, as well as make it hard to engage (or complete) in daily activities.

Traumatic or stressful life events can shape how an individuals experiences (or sees) themself, others, and the world around them. Some people describe these as emotional wounds that influence how they interact or navigate the world, relationships, problem-solving, life goals etc. Trust in others or one's self may be harder. People or relationships may seem untrustworthy, unreliable, or feel confusing to navigate. Sometimes emotional wounds make us more sensitive or reactive to certain situations in a way that hinders our ability to reach our goals, connect, or thrive in social and/or personal settings.

In a society that stresses the importance of performance, speed, productivity, and multi-tasking, it can be hard to make time for self-care. When our mind and body withstand chronic stress, it can take a serious toll on our mental and physical health.

This can feel like a chronic fatigue, a loss of enjoyment or satisfaction in one's work or role(s), feeling disconnected or alone, difficulty sleeping, trouble relaxing or taking breaks, feeling overwhelmed by routine or familiar tasks, avoiding or procrastinating on responsibilities.