When you have an anxious adaptation in relationships, conflict signals danger to the nervous system. When this happens, your nervous system fills with energy and prepares you for fight or flight. This is super helpful if a tiger is chasing …
Tag: Trauma
What is a Dis-Order? Through a trauma-informed lens.
I have been considering the word ‘dis-order’ when referring to anxiety. Anxiety makes sense when our nervous system has gone into fight or flight (sympathetic activation) when we have to do something scary or have just had a fright. It …
The Healing Journey
As we heal, we grow. We connect with a more profound sense of self. We begin to feel more embodied and happier. We make healthier choices and have healthier boundaries. This gives us more capacity than before to have greater …
Healing Old Communication Styles
When we play games, more often than not, we don’t get our authentic needs met. Instead, we end up pushing our partner away and feeling more unsafe. Learning to communicate clearly and break the habit of game-playing is a total …
Being a Secure Home Base as a Therapist
f you didn’t have these experiences, therapy is one way to have the corrective experiences we need to change our attachment style and heal childhood wounds. I talk about this in greater depth in my signature 6-week course, Relationship Cycle …
Supporting a partner with Disorganised Attachment Style
Children are wired for survival. To survive, they will adapt to their environment to get their needs for food, love, and security met. In children who show disorganised attachment, the primary caregiver has been erratic, unpredictable and sometimes abusive and …
Foundation for Disorganised Attachment
This attachment style is a combination of the previous two (avoidant and ambivalent/anxious). Disorganised children give inconsistent responses in the presence of their primary caregiver (often the mother). They seem disoriented and confused. This is likely the result of erratic …
Validating Your Trauma
These three things will vary depending on the individual. We all start with a different nervous system. We are all in differing social-economic environments, surrounded by varying levels of support. We are all connected to our core or our spirit …
Implications of Childhood Trauma
Let’s expand the definition of trauma. Historically, we think of trauma as big events that caused stress and shock and impacted your old view of yourself and the world. This is big ‘T’ trauma. It has become more apparent that …
Trauma Can Be…
When we think about trauma, we usually think about big things; abuse, car accidents, death, etc. But trauma responses are activated by many other things. I have noticed in my practice that people who have not experienced events that we …