May
"boundaries are not walls"
Saying no to one more thing is saying yes to your longevity in this field. You can care deeply and still protect your energy. This month is about building sustainable boundaries — not walls that shut people out, but limits that keep you showing up.
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💡 May Tip
📋 Mid-Year Prep Check-In
You're almost halfway through 2026. How are you holding up?
- What's draining your energy the most right now?
- Where have your boundaries slipped — with clients, colleagues, or your own schedule?
- What's one thing you could stop doing — or do less of — in the second half of the year?
- What would "sustainable" actually look like for you right now?
✅ May Checklist
Mental Health Awareness Month. Mother's Day. National Prevention Week. Here's what to focus on.
💡 Tip: Screenshot this list or bookmark this page. Come back at the end of the month to see what you actually did.
📅 May Awareness Dates
Click any card to see related resources.
💚 Feeling overwhelmed? Pick one or two that connect with your caseload right now — and come back for the rest later.
Mental Health Awareness Month
SUD and mental health are not separate lanes. This month is a reminder to screen for the whole person — and to check in on your own mental health too.
📊 Co-Occurring Disorders: The Clinical Reality
- More than half of people with a substance use disorder also have a co-occurring mental health condition — and most are undertreated for both
- Depression and anxiety are the most common co-occurring conditions with SUD. They often precede the substance use and drive it.
- Trauma underlies a significant portion of SUD — especially in women, justice-involved clients, and those with histories of childhood adversity
- Integrated treatment produces significantly better outcomes than treating SUD and mental health separately
- Stigma cuts both ways. Clients may minimize their mental health struggles because they already feel stigmatized for their substance use. Create explicit space for both.
- Your own mental health matters. Mental Health Awareness Month isn't just for clients. When did you last check in with your own provider?
💡 Use This Month in Session
- Normalize the dual conversation. "May is Mental Health Awareness Month — a good time to check in on how you're doing emotionally, not just with the substance piece."
- Screen proactively. PHQ-9 for depression, GAD-7 for anxiety. If you're not using standardized screens routinely, start.
- Ask about trauma history — not to dig into it, but to acknowledge it. "Have you experienced things that were really hard or overwhelming? We don't have to go into detail — I just want to know it's on my radar."
- Share resources. The Interactive Treatment Placement Decision Module is this month's free quick win tool — useful for any client where level of care is a question.
🔗 External Resources
NAMI — Mental Health Awareness Month ↗ SAMHSA: Mental Health Resources ↗ MentalHealth.gov — Condition Information and Resources ↗🛒 Related Items in the Shop
Tools for clinician wellness and self-assessment:
Mental Health Awareness Week
A focused week within the month. Use it to amplify the conversation — in session, in your agency, and in your own life.
💡 Making the Week Count
- Post something. Share a resource, a statistic, or a reflection from your clinical practice. Your voice in this conversation matters — especially as an addiction counselor who bridges SUD and mental health daily.
- Check in with colleagues. "How are you doing — for real?" Ask it this week and mean it.
- Use it as a session opener. "Mental Health Awareness Week is happening right now — what does mental health mean to you personally?"
- Reflect on your own mental health. Not performatively. Genuinely. When did you last check in with your own provider?
- Advocate in your agency. Is there a policy, a conversation, or a resource gap you could raise this week?
🔗 External Resources
Mental Health America — May Is Mental Health Month ↗AAPI Heritage Month
Asian American and Pacific Islander communities face unique barriers to help-seeking — stigma, collectivist cultural norms, and underrepresentation in research and treatment. This month, check your cultural humility.
📊 AAPI Communities and SUD: What Clinicians Should Know
- Stigma is a significant barrier. Mental health and substance use stigma is often more pronounced in AAPI communities, where help-seeking can be seen as bringing shame to the family
- Collectivist values shape disclosure. Clients may be reluctant to share personal struggles if they fear it reflects poorly on their family or community
- AAPI is not a monolith. The term encompasses over 50 distinct ethnic groups with vastly different cultural, linguistic, and immigration experiences — avoid generalizing
- Alcohol use patterns vary significantly across AAPI subgroups. Some populations have higher rates of alcohol flush reaction (ALDH2 deficiency), which affects both use patterns and clinical conversations
- Underrepresentation in research means clinical evidence is often extrapolated from non-AAPI populations — approach with awareness of this limitation
- Language access matters. Do your clients have access to services in their primary language? Do you know what resources exist in your area?
💡 Cultural Humility in Practice This Month
- Ask, don't assume. "How does your family or community think about mental health and substance use?" opens the door without presuming
- Explore family involvement. For some AAPI clients, family is central to recovery decisions. For others, family involvement could be harmful. Ask before you involve.
- Check your referrals. Are there AAPI-specific resources in your community — culturally specific counselors, language-accessible groups, or community organizations?
- Reflect on your own biases. Cultural humility is ongoing. What assumptions are you bringing into the room with AAPI clients?
🔗 External Resources
SAMHSA: Behavioral Health for AAPI Communities ↗ NAMI: AAPI Mental Health Resources ↗🛒 Related Items in the Shop
Tools for culturally responsive practice:
📚 Related Resources in the Library
National Prevention Week
SAMHSA's annual week dedicated to prevention. Share what's working. Add your voice. Prevention is clinical work too.
💡 How to Engage This Week
- Share a resource on social media. Use #NationalPreventionWeek. Your reach matters — especially if you work with families, schools, or community organizations.
- Raise prevention in session. For clients with children or younger siblings, this week is a natural opening to discuss protective factors, early intervention, and what healthy looks like for the next generation.
- Recognize the prevention role you already play. Every session where a client builds insight, skills, or support is prevention work — of relapse, of crisis, of passing patterns to the next generation.
- Connect with your community. Are there prevention events, coalitions, or organizations in your area you could plug into or amplify?
🔗 External Resources
SAMHSA — National Prevention Week Official Page ↗🛒 Related Items in the Shop
Prevention tools for groups, schools, and community outreach:
Mother's Day — A Complicated Holiday
Grief, estrangement, guilt about parenting during active use — check in before the day, not after the crisis.
💡 Who to Check In With Proactively
- Clients who have lost their mothers — to death, estrangement, or abandonment. Grief intensifies around Mother's Day even when the relationship was complicated.
- Clients who have lost custody of their children. Mother's Day can be an acute reminder of what active use cost them.
- Clients whose mothers were present but harmful — abuse, neglect, or chaotic households. The expectation to celebrate can feel invalidating.
- Clients with strained relationships where recovery has complicated family dynamics — guilt, amends, or unresolved tension.
- Clients whose family gatherings involve alcohol — assess the risk environment and build a plan before the day.
💡 How to Address It
- Ask the week before. "Mother's Day is coming up. How are you feeling about it?" Simple. Low-pressure. Opens the door.
- Map the triggers. Who will be there? What's the dynamic? Will alcohol be present?
- Build an exit plan. Having an out reduces the anxiety of feeling trapped.
- Address the grief directly. For clients who are estranged or have lost their mother, the holiday can be isolating — not just triggering.
- Debrief the week after. The session after a holiday is often more clinically important than the one before.
🛒 Related Items in the Shop
Family-focused tools for navigating complex relationships in recovery:
📚 Related Resources in the Library
Boundaries Are Not Walls
This three-page worksheet helps clinicians identify where their professional boundaries are thin and take action to protect their energy. It starts with a self-assessment covering common boundary issues, then moves into reflection on what thin boundaries are costing you — physically, emotionally, and relationally. The middle section offers ready-to-use scripts for saying no in softer ways, and the worksheet ends with a commitment section where you choose one boundary to set or strengthen this month.
Best for: Clinicians who struggle with overcommitting, feel guilty saying no, or notice they're running on empty. New counselors especially — who haven't yet learned that boundaries aren't about caring less, they're about caring sustainably.
Access ResourceMother's Day Check-In Guide
This two-page guide helps addiction counselors proactively check in with clients before Mother's Day — a holiday that can surface grief, estrangement, parenting guilt, and painful memories. It identifies who might struggle, offers conversation openers for different situations, and provides planning questions to help clients think through the day before it arrives. Includes guidance for navigating grief and estrangement, plus a list of protective factors to strengthen before the holiday hits.
Best for: Addiction counselors who want to get ahead of a high-risk holiday instead of doing damage control after.
Access ResourceMy Proof
A cut-and-keep tool for capturing the moments that remind you why this work matters. Fill one out when something lands — a breakthrough session, a client who showed up, a moment you're proud of. Fold it. Put it somewhere safe. Pull it out when the system makes you feel invisible.
Best for: Any clinician who needs a tangible reminder that the work is working — especially during Mental Health Awareness Month, when it's worth pausing to notice what's going right.
Access Resource — FreeVicarious Trauma Self-Assessment
Rate yourself across 12 statements in four domains — emotional, cognitive, physical, and behavioral. Scoring guidelines flag where you are on the scale from minimal signs to high risk, and a built-in Action Steps section helps you name what's happening and decide what to do next. Designed to be used monthly so patterns become visible over time.
Best for: Clinicians who keep saying "I'm fine" without actually checking. Part of the Clinical Screening Series.
Access Resource — Members Only💬 Bring to Supervision This Month
Not sure what to talk about in your next supervision? Try one of these:
- → "I have a client with co-occurring depression and SUD and I'm not sure how much to address the mental health piece directly. Can we talk through where my role ends?"
- → "I said yes to something I didn't have capacity for and now I'm resentful about it. I want to talk about where my boundaries are and how to hold them better."
- → "Mother's Day is coming and I have a few clients I'm worried about. Can we talk through how to approach those conversations proactively?"
- → "I've been thinking about my own mental health lately and I want to talk about how to take care of myself without it feeling like just another thing on my list."
💡 Tip: Screenshot one of these and bring it to your next 1:1. Sometimes the best supervision starts with a good question.
📝 Related Reading
Coming in June
LGBTQ+ Pride Month, National Safety Month, and Juneteenth. Clinical resources for affirming practice, summer relapse risk, and the work of equity in behavioral health.