When we push our emotions down, they get stuck in the body. We have phases where we feel stable, and life goes on until something takes the lid off. It might be your child spilling paint on the carpet, it …
Tag: Trauma
Interrupting Intergenerational Trauma
Reparenting helps you connect to the vulnerable part of yourself and learn to give it everything that was not received when you were a child. When we are parenting ourselves in a loving, supportive and safe way when we have …
Deciding to See a Therapist
You don’t need to be in crisis to work on any of these things. These are all valid reasons to see a therapist. Seeing a therapist is a great way to MAINTAIN your well-being. People go to therapy for lots …
Positive Outcomes of Therapy
Research shows that the benefits of therapy are more long-lasting than medication alone. Therapy teaches people skills to manage symptoms and helps them to address some of the causes of the symptoms. There is no doubt that therapy has changed …
Complex Trauma
I would love to re-name personality disorders and call them personality adaptations, because that is what many of them are, and it stands to reason that the worse the trauma, the more extreme the adaptations. If any of this speaks …
Healing Affirmations to Support Yourself After a Breakup
Going through a breakup can be one of the most difficult and painful times. There can be such an overwhelming feeling of disappointment, going over moments and scenes in your head, wondering if you could / should have been different. …
Healing Shame through Journalling
When we experience shame, our gut reaction is usually to run as fast as we can in the other direction. In the moment, this might be the safest thing to do, but after the moment has passed it can be …
Understanding Shame
Nathanson (1992) presents a fabulous tool to show us how shame shows up. When we look at the middle axis of withdrawal and avoidance, we see two different behaviours. With withdrawal, there is hiding and disconnection. We know from research …
Shame & Disconnection
“Shame is a painful emotion that is created because of a sense of failure to meet a certain standard. It sounds like: “I’m a failure, I’m a terrible person, I’m useless”. They are absolute statements about the self that make …
Indications of Hypoarousal
It is difficult for healing to occur when we are in hypo or hyper arousal. We need to be within our ‘window of tolerance’ where the prefrontal cortex is switched on, and our cognition is online. Different self-regulation tools can …