Are your panic attacks and anxiety overwhelming you?
Have they left you feeling as if you lost ability to control your thoughts and physical reactions? Maybe paralyzed at times?
Anxiety takes on many different forms and is brought on by different reasons, different experiences. It may merge out of stress, a traumatic event, a difficult loss, or possibly a significant change in life or series of changes occurring all at once. But,
Have you experienced a traumatic event? Are you suffering from lingering fear and anxiety? Do you feel like you no longer have any control over how you think, feel, and behave?
Posttraumatic stress disorder - also known as PTSD - is a mental health challenge that may occur in individuals who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a terrorist act, an act of war, a serious accident, rape, or any other violent personal assault.
It is believed that PTSD affects nearly four percent of the U.S. adult population.
Most people will experience at least one traumatic incident in there lives. When a person experiences multiple traumatic events and unable to escape, for example, a child unable to escape abuse by a parent, safety is not met. There is an inability to develop a secure attachment or a core sense of self. In addition, these events will have an impact on the developing brain and nervous system, creating defensive reactions.
But just as our internal system has an alarm to warn us of danger, it also has the ability to turn off. Our brains can rewire, create new neural pathways, and calm the nervous system. With Complex PTSD, a combination of therapeutic approaches is especially important and effective.
Are you tired of your depression holding you down?
You want so much to feel happy again but feel like you just can’t physically get there. It takes too much energy and effort to do anything. So, you withdraw even more, falling deeper and deeper in the well of depression. Hopelessness starts to seep in.
But even from the darkness, you can still see that shiny, little speck of light at the top, providing you a glimpse of hope, encouraging you to reach out.
You are an intelligent woman, but why do relationships have to seem so difficult?
You feel in constant conflict of what is right and wrong within your relationships. Is this normal? Healthy? Are you giving up too much or is this a healthy compromise? You start to question if what you are feeling is real and valid or is it just the pain from past experiences clouding your judgment. You know you can’t bare another failed relationship, but you also don’t want to be alone for the rest of your life.
Self-esteem is a concept that speaks to how we feel about ourselves. When one has high self-esteem, they feel confident, centered, and worthy of love. People with low self-esteem often feel shame and self-doubt. They often feel critical of themselves and are unworthy of love or praise.
EMDR therapy is an integrative psychotherapy method that uses a technique called bilateral stimulation to repeatedly activate opposite sides of the brain. Therapists often use eye movements to facilitate bilateral stimulation. These eye movements mimic the period of sleep referred to as rapid eye movement or REM sleep, and this portion of sleep is frequently considered to be the time when the mind processes the recent events in the person’s life.
EMDR seems to help the brain reprocess the trapped memories in such a way that normal information processing is resumed.
Our body is continuously scanning our environment to detect if there is safety or danger. It will base this decision on past experiences that are stored in the mind and body, and what your body is detecting around you in the present moment. It will either determine that your safe and you will remain in a calm state, or believe you're in danger and turn on your alarm system of Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn.
Ego State Therapy allows you to identify the different states you're carrying, learn to be accepting of them in order to gain understanding, and begin healing the thoughts, emotions, and reactions they carry. A "reparenting" of yourself, so to speak. The goal is not to get rid of these parts of you but rather, to integrate it with the person you are in the here and now of your life so that you're living fully engaged in the present. You still have that playful child within you, but with a wise adult that is not easily overwhelmed by the need to make adult decisions or face adult responsibilities.