There is no better time than Mental Health Awareness month to pause and take some time for yourself and your mental health.
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Anytime we feel lost, hurt, or inspired to make even the most specific parts of our lives better in some way, we can find a website, article or paper about some self-help topic that speaks to us. This is often the first step taken before deciding to begin therapy with a helping professional. But rarely does someone talk about being the person who is married to or the child/parent/sibling of the person seeking help.
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October is Inner Child month at Relationship Enrichment Center and to celebrate this, I wanted to share an intentional inner child connection activity with you. I have written two previous blog posts about the inner child: Inner Child and Fun Ways to Connect With Your Inner Child. You can read these two posts to learn more about your inner child!
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I often struggle with internalizing and allowing something to fester up and become much bigger than it needs to be. Over the years I have learned how to implement techniques to let the little things go.
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If you’re struggling to make consistent changes in your life, it could be because your body has gotten used to operating as if there is a ticking clock above your head. Perhaps everything feels like it needs to be done NOW, while thinking of 8 other things. Or maybe you get so overwhelmed, you feel frozen and depressed, so doing anything feels monumental.
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As someone who is learning how to have fun, a big part of my recovery is learning how to connect with myself, my inner child, in fun ways! Of course, part of the healing process is feeling our feelings, often feelings we have worked really hard not to feel. In this way, healing our emotional wounds can often be exhausting and overwhelming. It’s important to balance out the hard stuff with fun stuff!
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“Let go or be dragged” One of the members from group last night shared with us this AA slogan, “Let go or be dragged”. It’s really speaking to me this morning as I am continuing to take back the illusion of control. I surrender, and turn this over and then a few minutes later I find myself obsessing about a detail or a way that I might be able to manipulate a situation.
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“In healthy families, the parents are there to meet the emotional needs of the children. In dysfunctional families, the children are there to meet the emotional needs of the parents.” Virginia Satir
In helping individuals in their own recovery, and or couples that are trying to lead their family in a healthier direction, this statement illuminates where some wounding may have taken place, or where some healing can still take place.
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Understanding our nervous system is the key to unlocking our capacity to experience peace, joy, calm, and connection with ourselves and other people. When we are experiencing a stress or trauma response, our bodies begin employing survival strategies (this is our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses).
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Do you struggle in your relationship? That should probably be a rhetorical question because I’ve yet to meet any person who doesn’t have some struggle in one of their relationships. You’re not alone. Do you become activated quickly and find it hard to remain calmly engaged with your partner or others? Do you find yourself retreating from relationships? Do you find yourself becoming anxious or depressed when your partner, friend, or family member is upset? If so, you may find healing in a group therapy experience.
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Have you ever been in the middle of a fight or argument with someone, maybe a spouse/partner, friend, parent, sibling, and thought to yourself, “How did we even get here?”
Me too.
People chose not to drink alcohol for many reasons and being encouraging of that decision is important to me. I try to focus on encouragement, understanding, and connection when someone has decided not to drink. Below are some things I have found helpful during Holiday celebrations, especially for someone who is new in their sobriety journey or is “sober curious”
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While there is certainly joy, love, and magic for some during the Holidays, what can also be true at the same time is that often there is also stress, resentment, shame, and sadness. The truth is- life, families, work, and finances are nuanced. Saying no is hard, setting boundaries when that’s not the norm is hard, speaking up for yourself is hard, feeling society’s pressure to look and operate to a certain standard is hard, and feeling emotions is hard.
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Misattunement can happen unintentionally. Before little ones can even speak, we are given toys when we are hungry, and food when we want toys. My Dad being immersed in a game and not responding to my pleas was unintentional. Was I harmed by this one, single episode of misattunement? Maybe, maybe not. What’s much more impactful than one event is the consistent misattunement over time.
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When I introduce Inner Child work to my clients, I often get a puzzled look as if to say “I think you might be crazy”. Or sometimes my clients initially respond with something like “it sounds like you’re saying I have multiple personalities”. This is not true of course, and the concept can be hard to understand at first.
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Religiosity: according to Wikipedia, Religiosity is difficult to define, but different scholars have seen this concept as broadly about religious orientations and involvement. It includes ritualistic, ideological, intellectual, consequential, creedal, communal, doctrinal, moral, and cultural dimensions. When I’ve seen it or heard about it in my office, it is often a form of spiritual bypass. I believe that Religiosity is a response to Trauma, much like medicating feelings with substances.
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There are hundreds of books written about trauma and the many different aspects of trauma, and I would love to touch on it all; however, I am going to focus on how our nervous system is impacted by trauma and how this impacts our behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs about self. Simply defined, trauma is defined as any experience that creates feelings of overwhelmingness and/or an event that is perceived as life-threatening
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In a previous blog post, I wrote about some of my first experiences with disordered eating and the vicious cycle of shame, guilt, and negative self talk and beliefs that ensued. At the time, I never would have thought that my relationship with food was anything other than “normal”. I acknowledged that I had a sweet tooth, and I thought everyone who enjoyed eating sugar struggled with the same internal battles that I did.
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I am the peeled orange who discovers that the skin no longer fits. I’ve expanded and grown and I need a new and different coat. This is how I felt this morning when I woke from a dream.
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As a Psychotherapist and Yoga Instructor one of the things I work on with my clients is learning how to re-regulate their nervous systems. Simply put teaching people how to soften in their shoulders and let go of muscular engagement, this helps clients tune in more intimately with body sensation, emotional awareness and personal needs.
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