Trauma can change the way we experience our bodies, leaving us feeling tense, on edge, disconnected, numb, or like a live wire, buzzing with residual activation. This can happen even when we are no longer in danger. For some trauma survivors, the body may feel overwhelming, unpredictable, or even inaccessible, rather than the place of comfort, belonging, and familiarity we hope for.
Read MoreYou might know the feeling: a heightened sense of alertness and sensitivity to potential threats to your relationship with your partner. You might fear too much space from your partner, leading you to double down in conflict or reach out for more contact even when they’ve asked for space. These can be signs of relational hypervigilance and a fear of abandonment.
Read MoreAre you exhausted by trying to be a perfect parent? And/or wracked by guilt when you don’t get it quite right or reach your limit? Your intentions are so good. But perhaps it’s not actually necessary or even best to parent that way? Let’s talk about “good enough” parenting and why it may be the saving grace for you and your kids.
Read MoreYou may know the feeling of unease in your body, when it feels like anxiety is taking up more space. You might notice your chest feeling tight, or a hot burning sensation in your sternum, a pit in your stomach, a tight jaw, or a tangle of something at your throat. Anxiety can really take over. Let’s explore the steps for containing the unease of an anxious mind-body system.
Read MorePerhaps you’ve lost someone. Or are losing someone to dementia or chronic illness. Maybe you’re grieving the lack of something––a relationship, a family, health or stability. Sometimes people will ask, “Yeah, but what do I do? How can I fix this?” And the challenging part is that grief is not something to be fixed, and there is rarely much to do about it.
Read MoreDo you ever find yourself in a familiar pattern of dysfunction or dysregulation? Maybe you have a familiar trigger or a context that is consistently activating. Maybe you have repeated sources of conflict with a partner. Perhaps you’re thinking: “I can’t keep doing the thing I’m doing, but I’m terrified to stop.”
Read MoreDo you ever find yourself making yourself small or holding back who you are or how you feel for fear of it overwhelming the other person? Do you worry that if you were yourself it would be too much? Do you have trouble knowing what you want or need?
Read MoreWhen doing attachment work in therapy, this often starts with understanding the nature of your childhood experiences, how you were parented, nurtured, cared for, or what was missing. Are there unmet needs from childhood that you’re still trying to get met in an adult relationship?
Read MoreThe rupture and repair process hopefully makes good sense for your closest relationships. But what might it mean for our relationship with ourselves? What happens when we’ve betrayed our own values? We are deeply relational beings, which might mean sometimes there has been a rupture or conflict within our internal relational system.
Read MoreDo you ever find yourself unclear or unsure of your boundaries or limitations? Maybe you sense you or someone else has violated your boundaries? It can help to put some more particularity to the boundaries you have, need, and how to support your relationship to your boundaries.
Read MoreYou’ve likely heard of fight, flight, and freeze. But you may not have heard of the fourth “F”: fawn. You might think of fawning as people-pleasing, over-accommodating, not rocking the boat with your own boundaries, needs, or wants.
Read MoreTalking about sex and expectations around sex is one of the more vulnerable conversations couples have. There might be shame about wanting or not wanting sex, confusion over mis-matched desire, changing bodies and needs.
Read MoreSomething that regular therapy offers is the consistency and availability that may have been missing early on. For relational and attachment oriented therapy, this is a critical part of the healing process. The consistency of a therapeutic space, time, and person, is the foundation for attachment therapy.
Read MoreIn a world marked by rapid change, economic instability, global crises, and constant information overload, uncertainty has become a regular state of being. Understanding how this ongoing uncertainty fuels anxiety can help us respond more skillfully.
Read MoreThere’s been a true uptick in political unrest over the last couple of weeks. It’s a lot to take in, and you may be feeling the powerlessness that comes with watching things unfold and not knowing what you can do about it.
Read MoreThere’s a lot of memory in a family system. It can feel like it’s frozen in time, suddenly you’re back to your 15 year old self––angsty, upset, tearful, and annoyed by everyone. You may be a competent adult with boundaries, but you’re suddenly back to that familiar role.
Read MorePerhaps one of the unexpected challenges of life after trauma, is the struggle to connect and linger with enjoyable or pleasurable experiences. Sometimes a nervous system stuck in a trauma response, doesn’t have much tolerance for enjoyment. This can be the result of shut-down, hypervigilance, fear, and anxiety.
Read MoreI recently heard this phrase “the grief of lost time” and it hasn’t left my mind. I heard it used in the context of acknowledging the time lost in this current age of technology, where we lose hours of our lives to scrolling mindlessly.
Read MoreYou might appear like you’re functioning just fine––going to work, sleeping, eating, taking care of your family, etc. But inside you may be struggling, feeling down and disconnected from yourself and others.
Read MoreOur news is obviously filled with suffering and global crises. We need to be mindful of how these crises can affect our mental health, the signs and symptoms that your nervous system is totally overwhelmed, and ways to support yourself when this happens.
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