Align Therapy and EMDR PLLC

Why are many people (especially non binary, trans and female folx) often not diagnosed as ADHD (or some other form of innate neurodivergence) until later in life? Often people have dismissed our symptoms as “just trauma”, practitioners are poorly informed and told “adhd is over diagnosed, and we are potentially gifted (twice exceptional) and therefor we’re able to figure out accommodations for our needs on our own. Being innately neurodivergent (born with this brain type) means we are even more likely to experience ptsd trying to navigate a world designed for neurotypical people!

Repost from neurodivergent_insights. Image is a Ven Diagram of ADHD symptoms in the left circle and PTSD symptoms in the right circle, with shared over lapping symptoms in the center.

Many adult ADHDers remain undiagnosed, yet seek mental health treatment (for other conditions) at high rates. One study found that 28% of people referred to clinics for mood and anxiety had undiagnosed ADHD (Sternat, T., Mohamed, M., Furtado, M., et al., 2016).

One of the most tricky conditions to tease apart is ADHD and PTSD. This is for several reasons:

🔸They co-occur at high rates, as ADHDers are more likely to experience traumatic events and more likely to develop PTSD in the aftermath of a traumatic event.

🔸They can present similarly in the brain/nervous system. Both impact executive functioning and lead to hypervigilance/restlessness and activation of the sympathetic nervous system. This can look like distractibility, heightened startle response, constant movement, difficulty focusing, intrusive thoughts, sleep issues, and so much more.

When a person presents with both, it can be difficult to tease out what is what, leading to a lot of diagnostic overshadowing. This is where the traits of one experience are attributed to the other. For example, a person's working memory and executive functioning struggles may be attributed to PTSD when both ADHD and PTSD are contributing to this experience.

For more of a deep dive you can find the full article that goes with this graphic here: https://neurodivergentinsights.com/misdiagnosis-monday/adhd-vs-or-and-ptsd

📝 Misdiagnosis Monday Background & Disclaimer: This series, initiated in 2021 after my autism and ADHD discovery aims to demystify the complexities of conditions that often overshadow each other. Realizing that many Neurodivergent adults navigate therapy with overlooked or misdiagnosed conditions, I created these diagrams to highlight how and why many adults go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. While based on established diagnostic criteria, I maintain a critical perspective on the DSM. These visual tools are meant to foster dialogue, not to serve as diagnostic instruments.⁠

Are you interested in unlearning diet culture? We have all been fed a diet of healthism and diet culture from childhood. These social accounts have been so helpful in our unlearning journey.

Image is a white platter with a small round chocolate cake topped with white powdered sugar. It is bordered by strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Alt text reads: Unlearning Diet Culture (social accounts to follow)
Diets Don’t Work
The Nutrition Tea

RDs for Neurodiversity

It's OK if your recovery and healing journey does not look like those around you. It has to fit YOU.

It's natural to compare ourselves to others to some extent. Whether we are recovering from trauma or substance use, our path is unique and what works for others may not be the thing that works best for us. This does not mean there is something wrong with us, only that we need the freedom to find our path.

Understanding trauma bonds. It’s not your fault and people experiencing these need support to be able to escape the abuse.

Repost from day dreamer.

What others think of us is largely a reflection of how they feel about themselves and their past experiences.

Repost from Soulosophy333. Image is a multicolored vertical strip background (purple, blue, teal, yellow, gray) and a rectangle frame center text stating:
It is possible to value recognition while also know that my value is not determined by others’ opinions.No matter what someone else sees, there is more to me.

~MHN

There can be many layers trauma. The event itself is traumatic, but when we attempt to reach for comfort or support from others and we are met with invalidation, gaslighting, indifference, or someone protecting the perpetrator, this creates another depth to our suffering. These events can make it extremely difficult to ask for help again because of the belief that our feelings or needs don’t matter, something is wrong with us, or we can’t trust anyone.

Repost from Nicabm. Image is a blue and white background with two female presenting people. One is in color (white skin, blue hair and blue shirt) with their hands covering their face. The other person is in black and white, signifying that they are not there for the other woman’s suffering. Alt text reads: The first trauma is the actual abuse. The second trauma is not having support.”

One of the harder parts of experiencing complex trauma is that the very thing that protects us (dissociation) can also keep us from recognizing signs of abuse. We can see abusive behavior as normal if we have experience it before and we are “used to it”.

What do red flags look like in relationships?

-Not being able to say no or change your mind without upsetting the other person
-Actions and words that do not match (saying one thing but doing another
-Gaslighting (turning it back on you and blaming you or criticizing you for their behavior
-when the other person cannot take accountability for their actions or learn from mistakes (changed behavior)
-Stonewalling (ignoring, silent treatment)
-Verbal criticism
-Any unwinding or harmful physical touch
-Separating you from your friends and family
-Power and control dynamics (telling you what to do, controlling the finances)
-Verbal threats of any kind
-Manipulation and anything that does not value your autonomy
-Guilt trips

The list goes on but these are some of the big ones. It can be difficult realizing these things are happening when we love someone. Talking with trusted friends, therapists can also help get an outside perspective (so long as you are not consulting someone with the above behaviors)

It is not your fault and we need help to see clearly.

Repost from Mantra Wellness Magazine. Image is a blue background with various abstract shapes in white, peach and teal. Text reads: Sometimes we don’t recognize Red Flags now because we mistook them for love in our childhood.

Having a history of trauma is often accompanied by living with chronic illnesses. Another source of trauma is medical gaslighting. This happened when we are not heard, validated or taken seriously. When doctors are unwilling to dig for answers. Degrees often hinder medical professionals from being curious and open to what they may not know or may be different than they were taught. Know your symptoms are real and valid. You deserve a medical team that listens and investigates.

Repost from Living with trauma and dissociation.image is a pale blue background ground with a male presenting White doctor with a white coat saying “Don’t confuse your google search with my six years of medical school”. Below is a White female presenting adult with long hair and arm folded over each other saying “patient: don’t confuse your one hour lecture on my condition with 30 years of living with it”.

💜

Steve Jones LCSW-S LCDC has several openings for therapy utilizing EMDR/IFS (trauma, substance use, men’s issues). He takes Aetna, United, Oscar or private pay. [email protected] or 512-553-8445

We love this reminder that no matter where we are in our healing journey, we have been and will always be whole. Healing includes connecting with parts of self we may have lost touch with.

Image a black sky background with white stars and all the versions of a waxing and waning moon in gray. Alt text: the moon is a reminder that no matter what phase I’m in I’m still whole. Author/artist unknown.

If you are fighting to reclaim your voice, we are cheering for you!!

Repost from Tiny Buddha. Alt text: Sending love to everyone trying to rediscover their voice after the life made them believe that it was safer to be silent. Image is a multicolored background of pink orange blue and green dots. Text is white letters with a black block background.

Trauma is not your fault. Our society tells us otherwise so we internalize this message. Much like a cut serves care and attention to heal, your heart body and mind deserve the same care and attention after a wound. Healing allows us to understand that we were never broken, only injured.

Repost from Persephone Distorted. Image is a pink arched structure with a shadow of a person standing beneath. Alt text: I thought.i was broken and needing fixing but that wasn’t true. I was deeply hurt and needing healing. That’s a completely different concept

Have you heard of Interoception? Neurodivergent folks (Autism, ADHD, OCD,PTSD etc) often have low or high Interoception. This means we may not notice we are hungry, thirsty, or need to use to bath room until we are dehydrated and low blood sugar. It allows us to identify how we feel. Conversely, we may be hyper aware of these sensations as well as feeling things like pain which can heighten anxiety and create difficulty in emotion regulation. Working with an OT can help someone to set their environment up for success, increase awareness, making regulating emotions and socialization much easier, and enhancing the mind body connection.

Repost from Seed Ability.

Ageism can happen at any age. The new professional just starting their career are as vulnerable as older people are. Bringing this unconscious bias conscious (by being curious about it, non-judgmental, and compassionate), we can unpack the biases we have been sold about age defining someone’s worth or anything else about them! Research shows that it is our beliefs about aging (not the aging itself) that is harmful to our emotional, physical, cognitive, and spiritual health.

Repost from A life in Progress. Image is a nature seen of green hills, trees, and grass at sunset. The sky in the distance is orange and pink with light clouds.

Although text: Ageist beliefs are deeply engrained and commonly thought of as fact instead of stereotypes. To thrive in every season, we need to be conscious about the stories that we believe and re-write those that do not serve us. Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui

The freeze response is a hypoarousal trauma response when the body deems that any kind of movement or decision making would be more unsafe that than remaining still. Often, the parts that help us with these trauma responses do not know that trauma is over even years or decades after the fact. This leads to struggles in other areas in our lives because our body is not able to discrimiate when it is safe. Parts work and Emdr allow these parts to understand the trauma is over a digest the memory to get unstuck.

Repost from . Alt text:
Trauma can freeze a part of you at the age it happened. That means that a part of you might still be frozen at that age and feel as if that trauma is still happening now. It’s possible to be an adult with a much younger part of you running your life, business or relationship. Image is a dark blue background with white lettering.

What if attachment was about more than just our relationships with our caregivers in the first three years of life? What if it also includes our relationship with nature, chosen family, animals, and the energy that runs through us all? Many people with complex trauma connect beautifully with animals, nature, and the spirit world even when attachments with humans have been painful. Thank you for sharing this beautiful knowledge with us .

Alt text: Attachment theory is a euro-western understanding of child development that rightly places profound importance on the bond between mother and child but goes wrong in disregarding the equally profound importance of our bond/ attachment to other kin, ceremony, the living land, non-human animals, and the spirit world. Image is a view from the forest bed looking up at tall trees reaching toward the green circled center with white text.

For many of us with complex trauma, our childhoods involved ongoing denial of our wants and needs. Healing is reclaiming these, protecting them, and can involve leaving situations and circumstances that ask us to dismiss ourselves. Recognizing that there is privilege in being able to walk away at times as well.

Repost from Rebranding Middle Age. Image is a red background with black letters reading: I will not stay, not ever again, in a room, conversation, or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself. Glennon Doyle.

Y’all mean ALL 🌈🌈

This is freedom.

“The older I get, the less I care about what folks think of me. Therefore, the older I get, the more I actually enjoy life”. Repost from Healing over Everything.

Society, oppression, perfectionism, and trauma can paralyze us to prioritize what others think of us over what we think of ourselves. Healing allows us to loosen this grip and skip happily into a world where we are free to live the life that makes sense for us and makes us happy, even if others don’t understand. Wishing you this freedom!

Yes..

Dissociation is a necessary and protective mechanism in the brain. We dissociate from our bodies where it does not feel safe to be present. This is why those who dissociate more can have a high tolerance for physical pain and somatic symptoms. If our bodies believe the threat is not over, we will continue to experience a lack of presence in both threatening and non threatening scenarios. The analogy is that the body believes it is in a battle field. Enjoying connection or experience with others is not something you do on a battle field. Parts work and reprocessing emotions allows our bodies and mind to more accurately discern when a protective stance is needed so it can take breaks from fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and collapse.

Repost from NICABM. Image is the outline of two heads from the neck up. One head is red and shows a brain that is represented by squiggly white lines and is in protective mode. The other head is blue and shows the outline of a brain at rest. Caption reads: Individuals dissociate as an escape when there is no physical escape possible. It’s a psychological escape when no physical escape is possible.

Sharing if you or anyone you know would like to explore their relationship with alcohol. Run by my supervisee, Lizzy Crowne LPC-Associate. Open to women and LGBTQ+. Starting virtually in June.

We can’t talk about mental health separelt from the toxic society we all live in. Our struggles are normal reactions to an abnormal environment. Misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, racism, disregard for our planet, Zionism, war culture, genocide, r**e culture, fat phobia, ageism, ableism, perfectionism, classism, etc are all traumatic and affect us all in conscious and unconscious ways. If you are struggling, please know there is nothing wrong with you. There is something very wrong with society. Yes we are responsible for our unlearning of these toxic messages so we do not pass them on to our friends, families, and children. But they are not your fault. Image is a black and white scratched picture of a hairless human head with a view into the brain and the spinal cord through the neck. The inspections listed above are written around this brain. The caption reads : “The colonized mind, systemic change for collective liberation”.

Repost from Decolonizing Therapy

“Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth. “ Author unknown. Generally, when people are unable to see our worth it is a statement about how they actually feel about themselves. Sometimes, however, we can internalize experiences of rejection or abandonment as something is wrong with us. This actually functions to give us a semblance of control, if there is something is wrong with me I can change it to prevent the tejection from happening again. Thankfully, emdr is a tool to help rewrite these experiences in our nervous system so we can know our worth independent of others actions.

Repost from rebranding middle age. Image is a profile picture of a female presenting person with shoulder length red hair looking down/eyes closed in a black v neck top.

Understanding that capitalism was always meant to put money over humans, the earth, and peace. The standards capitalism holds are incompatible with being human. This is not a personal problem of not being enough (although capitalism wants you to believe you just need to work harder) and is rather a toxic ideal that is literally making us sick. Capitalism is one facet of White Supremacy that is so ingrained and insidious in our society that we are taught not to notice it, question it. And to see it as normal. Nothing about working ourselves to death and feeling that we are never enough, never have enough is normal. We cannot have mental health if we cannot rest.

All bodies are beautiful! Thank you Donna Ashworth!

SUMMER BODY

Summer is going to have to make do with my winter-body again this year…
Unchanged.
Except perhaps a little lighter;
oh not from less food and more exercise, no, not that.

From releasing the weight of society’s expectation,
of how I should look in a swimsuit,
from detoxing my brain of the conditioning drummed into us from childhood.

I’ve much better things to do, than look great for the eyes of strangers on a beach.

I have magic to make, stories to weave and adventures to begin.
I have food to taste, wonders to see and seas in which I must swim.

Summer is going to have to make do with my winter-body again this year.
No apologies from me.

Donna Ashworth
From ‘life’:
https://amzn.to/3JVMJlZ 🤩

Gorgeous Art by Lisa Aisato (please do check out the beautiful books and artworks on her page)

Part of life is unlearning what we think we “should do” and beginning to do what is right for us. This may look very different than your friends and family. Listening to your own inner voice (and not the internalized voice of society) is often the path to contentment and peace.

Repost from Action for Happiness. Image is a white background with rainbow colored letters that reads:
Friendly reminder: You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. Rainbow lines outline the text in a circle border.

Friendly reminder: you don’t have to do what everyone else is doing

Image: https://www.instagram.com/adoseofreminders

In the words of Dan Levy, “nobody knows what they are doing. It’s all a fluke. Everyone has doubts about themselves and everyone has fears about their capabilities. There’s this amazing thing about acknowledging the fact that you don’t know what you’re doing. And, all you can do is try”. Repost from . Image is of Dan Levy, a gay White male presenting person with short brown hair and dark black glasses. He has a mustache, goatee, and is wearing a blue collared shirt with white and orange flowers.

People pleasing is a trauma response. Also called fawning, people pleasing plays a protective role in childhood to help us avoid rejection or further harm. In adult healthy relationships, however, it can result in fear of intimacy/authenticity, depression, anxiety, resentment, confusion about what you want or need, over working, substance use or disordered eating, and physical or somatic symptoms. When we heal from trauma, we learn to identify and verbalize our needs. We learn we are not responsible for other people’s feelings. We learn we are not self centered, we are centered self.