Nicole Lee Rocha, LMHC, LLC

Music & Healing. 🎧❤️

Many of us recognize music encourages emotional support through
🎧helping us feel better and or
🎧helping us feel our feelings.

But, did you know there’s neuroscience 🧠to back this up?
Let’s take a closer look:

🎶Music stimulates the reward pathways in the brain
➡️ this means: more dopamine=feeling good, motivated
🎶 Musical compression waves stimulate the hippocampus
➡️ this means: more support regulating our cortisol (stress hormone), and reduction in our stress level
🎶Listening to a song on repeat
➡️ is a form of self-stimming and offers self-soothing. This also creates predictably, which increases feelings of safety

The next time you turn on your favorite playlist, be mindful of all the healing you’re doing simply by listening 🎶

Happy Healing Friends ❤️🎧

Sexual Assault & Survivor (self) Blame.

In all my years of being a therapist, I’ve never worked with a single survivor of sexual violence who didn’t blame themselves for their trauma in some way or another.💔

❤️This is a gentle reminder that any sexual assault is fault of the perpetrator and them alone.
❤️It is in no way any fault of the survivor.

While this concept might seem like it makes perfect sense, let’s break it down:

How many times have we heard or maybe even said ourselves after hearing of a sexual crime:
💔”Why wasn’t she with friends?”
💔”She should have known better than to go with him alone”
💔”Well he was using drugs—he knows the risks.”

Let’s be clear:
🖤Someone out without friends is not consenting to sexual violence.
🖤Someone consenting to go with another person is not consenting to sexual violence.
🖤Someone consenting to substance use is not consenting to sexual violence.

Social and cultural pressures are very much responsible for survivor self-blame as they stem from the stigma of sexual assault and how our society looks to victim blame and shame after a sexual trauma. 🤯

We can do so much better.
To all the survivors, it was never ever your fault. ❤️

Generational Trauma:
Invalidation= Current Abuse 🖤

Adult survivors of childhood trauma by parent(s) often feel the need to discuss the abuse that existed with their abuser during their adulthood.

This need comes from a place of
❤️desire to heal
❤️need to break generational trauma cycles
❤️need for our inner-child to (finally) have validation
❤️Possible desire to repair the relationship

✨This moment is so crucial because if we are denied the validation
💔that the abuse existed;
💔That it was wrong;
💔That it should have never taken place; and
(💔Hopefully) a genuine apology,

This means the abuse is still continuing now in adulthood. 💔

🙈🙊🙉The denial or minimization of abuse is in fact abuse.

🖤Invalidation= current Abuse

If you are a survivor of complex trauma,
able to practice bravery by asking for this conversation with your abuser,
pay close attention to how they respond.

You should have never been mistreated. ❤️
You should have never been abused.❤️
You deserve healing and love—then, now, always❤️

Invalidation ends relationships

Recovery versus Social Pressures.

When we think of peer pressure pertaining to substance use many of us think of teenage years or years of young adulthood.

The reality is,
🖐🏼a choice to abstain from alcohol is often met with resistance from others, and

🖐🏽alcohol (compared to other substances) comes with the most peer pressure no matter what age we are.

So as the summer months approach 🌞with more social gatherings and more alcohol, 🍹keep this in mind when offered something alcoholic to drink:

Respond genuinely.
Are you
🤔in recovery?
🤔sober curious?
🤔newly sober?
🤔just don’t feel like a drink?

And if your genuine response is met with peer pressure,

That says more about them than is does about you.

Happy Healing Friends ❤️

Mother’s Day for Cycle Breakers.

Just in case your day yesterday was filled with both

grief💔 and
Gratitude❤️,

Here’s a fantastic way to reframe Mother’s Day.

Keep Healing Friends ❤️

From todays blog:

To the broken hearted daughter who has never known her mom: May today be a day for you to grieve and know your pain matters. May that grief bring lasting and deep peace.

To the angry son, who has cut himself off because loving his mom made his life unpredictable: May you find the tenderness that young boy needed long ago. May that tenderness remind you, the little boy in you deserves love.

To the young mom, who is afraid of repeating the cycle: In your stillness, may you find each day a gift to give differently than what you got. May you enjoy the results for many years to come.

To the adult kids of an abusive mother: May you find peace for your heartache and protection from all the things people say when they are afraid of your story.

To the heavy hearted child who tried and it was never enough: May you resign from what takes and never gives back. May you rest in your enoughness.

To the many who are spending their first year without the mom they loved–may her memories, her gifts, be honored and held, so they spread to those she left behind.

To the mothers who did some hurting, and aren’t sure how to repair: May you find the words to comfort that younger mother in you, to hold her close, to let her breathe and know your love.

To all who need healing from Mother’s Day: May you see things for what they are, and what they are not. May this day be what you need to heal and find peace on your terms.

I’m so glad you’re here.

***Registration for online group opens soon (including sliding scale spots). Linktr.ee/natepost 🫶🫶

Mother’s Day & Childhood Trauma. 💔

Mother’s Day is a challenging holiday for many of us. And while many of those triggers are more openly addressed,

Healing from childhood trauma by those who should have loved us the most, our mothers, still seems to be left out of that list of triggers. 😔

❤️This post goes out to those who spent their earliest years of life trying to stay safe from the people who should have loved us and kept us safe: our parents.

If you’re healing from complex childhood trauma from your Mother, I stand with you. 💗

If you’re trying to learn how to navigate healthy parenting with your own kiddos without any modeling from your own Mother, I see you. 💗

If you’re working to break abusive generational cycles, I’m with you. 💗

This Mother’s Day,
If we’ve grown into the adult that would have protected us as children, that is profound healing, Friend ❤️

Be kind; be gentle with yourself this Mother’s Day.

💜 My childhood of constantly being berated and walking on eggshells to keep safe and the peace 💜

Maladaptive Behavior Patterns…

Might look like:
💔 People- Pleasing / poor boundaries
💔 Substance Use
💔 Self- Injurious Behaviors: Cutting, picking, burning
💔 Co-dependency & Unhealthy Attachment

We often recognize certain behaviors are harmful before realizing that they in fact serve a purpose to us.

When we’re finally ready to change our behaviors, we want to first ask:
🤔But how has this unhealthy pattern actually helped me?

This is the reason for the start and continuation of our unhealthy behavior.

When we are curious, this allows us the space to get our need met in a healthy way and truly give ourselves the opportunity for real and sustaining healing. ❤️

Let’s approach change
free from self-judgment and
with curiosity instead. ❤️

Communication in Relationships. 🗣️🗣️

Lack of communication or poor communication
are common reasons for couples and families to seek counseling.

Lack of communication can contribute to what I call “story telling”. 📖📚

Let’s take a closer look 👀:

🤔Did you know the human brain is hardwired toward predictability?
🗺️We like to be able to map out our future.
😌We like consistency.
Craving predictability is what makes change so challenging for many of us.

🤔So what happens when we lack communication within a shared relationship?
➡️Our brain tries to fill in the missing pieces with “story telling”.
Here are the problems with story telling: It’s based on emotion It’s not based in logic/ truth It often connects to past traumas It can contribute the the further breakdown of a shared relationship

An example might look like this:

Partner A: shuts down and leaves during difficult dialogues with parter B.

Partner B feels dismissed and story tells.
📓Story includes Partner A’s feelings about Parter B changing, and fears possible abandonment.

Reality: Partner A isn’t sure how to navigate healthy communication. Partner A continues to feel a strong connection to Partner B and isn’t considering ending the relationship.

Healthy communication is one of the ways we support healthy relationships, both with ourselves and others.

Let’s aim for more dialogue with less story-telling.
Happy Healthy Friends ❤️

Boundaries and Empathy.

While both of these exist when creating and maintaining healthy boundaries,
they are not one and the same.

Let’s break it down with some examples:

❤️Feeling: Feeling like we’re disappointing someone declining their invite;
✋Boundary: but knowing we need rest and will not have the social battery to say accept

❤️Feeling: Feeling bad having blocked a family member
✋Boundary: If anyone engages in long-term toxic patterns and is unable to treat us with kindness, their company is not be welcome in our life

✅Empathy and other feelings will always exist when doing boundary work.
✅The key is to acknowledge any feelings that come up,
✅and resist the urge to bend out boundary into something it’s not to reduce challenging feelings.

Our boundaries will exist whether we acknowledge or ignore them;
and acknowledging and sharing our boundaries is one the greatest ways to practice
self-love❤️

Cycle Breaking: Empathy & Responsibility.

💔Generational trauma is often passed from one generation to the next when empathy is experienced.

Let’s take a closer look:👀
Grown children are much more likely to EXCUSE their parents’ behaviors knowing the traumas their parents experienced,
and experiencing EMPATHY for their parents.

But what would things look like if we were to define our feelings separate from our boundary?

What if we were to define feelings such as
❤️empathy,
❤️compassion,
❤️sympathy,
❤️love,
and they were SEPARATE from the boundary and expectation?

🚫Generational trauma would not be excused.
Specific family generational trauma would be better understood, but never excused. 🚫

We always want to keep our feelings separate from our boundary.

❤️When we have empathy for what someone has endured, this does not give them the right to hurt us.

We can have understanding 😌without excuses. 🚫

Keep healing Cycle Breakers ❤️

Gratitude alongside Grief. ❤️💔

Many of us experience a sense of self-judgment 😞when experiencing feelings of loss, grief, and acknowledging our past traumas
if our life in the present is “good”.

Phrases like:
🗣️”I should feel so grateful for (XYZ)…”
🗣️”I shouldn’t be complaining because I know I’m lucky/ blessed…”
🗣️”I should be grateful it wasn’t worse…”

Are examples of this.

But here’s the thing:
Our losses, and traumas existed.
We’re allowed to experience feelings attached to those.

And if our lives improved and we’ve got things to be grateful for now, we’re also allowed to feel gratitude and appreciation.

Both feeling sets can and SHOULD coexist. 💔❤️

Without working through our traumas, we increase our risk of
💔 gaslighting ourselves
💔 denying traumas and our feelings
💔 engaging in toxic positivity
💔 staying emotionally stuck

So here’s your gentle reminder that
Your grief and gratitude should both be acknowledged. One does not negate the other.

Keep healing Friends❤️

💜

Dissociation.

When healing from long-term trauma, many of us can become easily frustrated with dissociation, and that we still find ourselves doing it despite no longer living within trauma.

We often ask: “why do I still dissociate if I don’t need to?”🤔

Let’s take a closer look:👀
Dissociation feels like zoning out, and Disconnects us from our thoughts, Disconnects us from our feelings, Disconnects us from our current moments, and Disconnects us from our memories

🧠When we experience prolonged trauma (think cPTSD), our brain learns to do this automatically as a means to
❤️take us away from current trauma
❤️remove us from trauma memories/ flashbacks

So how do we deal with frustration around dissociation when no longer needed?🤔

😌I like to think of dissociation as a way that our brain was able to protect us when no one else did.

And now, outside of trauma, our brain is learning (and healing) that it no longer needs to dissociate.

Let’s remember: our brain is an organ, and like many of our other organs is capable of healing.
It takes some time for our brain to unlearn this skill that was so helpful for so long. ❤️

💜

Self-Sabotage.

🧠Did you know that our human brains are hardwired toward making decisions where we can better predict the outcome? 🤔

This is often a large factor to consider when we look at situations such as

🖤staying in toxic relationships
🖤maintaining a career despite knowing we hate it

Many of these situations can also be considered self-sabotage, 💣and explain why we
Do more of the same
🖤Negative
🖤Harmful
🖤Dissatisfying
Things versus opt to try something new.

We get comfy in the familiar, even when the familiar is destructive.

If there’s any pattern in your life that contributes to more hurt than healing,
here’s your gentle reminder to take a look at what a different choice where we cannot predict the outcome might look like. 🤔

It may be just the choice toward exiting out of the self-sabotaging cycle ❤️

At its core, self sabotage is what we do when we’re afraid and want to control the outcome. One of the most fascinating (and misunderstood) aspects of human behavior is how strong the pull towards the familiar is, even if that familiar is miserable or keeping us stuck. When someone says they self sabotage, what they’re really saying is: “I make sure I can control the outcome because that feels the most safe”

Rest ❤️

Our culture widely glamorizes
🤯doing all the things,
🤯being all the things,
🤯excessive scheduling,
Even to the point of exhaustion.

Let’s take a closer look at what rest, sleep and reprieve offer us:
😴improved immune support: get sick less often
😴metabolism support
😴reduce stress and cortisol levels
😴improve mood, anxiety management
😴improved executive functioning: better working memory, word recall, sentence formation, thinking more clearly
😴reduce risk of health concerns such as heart challenges and type 2 diabetes

Considering these benefits, the healthier, more supportive choice is clear:

We are allowed to say no, and decline plans, most especially if it means us saying yes to rest and prioritizing our wellness. ❤️

At the end of life no one says “I’m so glad I kept going and going” or “I’m so glad I worked so much that I never spent afternoons in the sun imagining and dreaming.” We’re conditioned to go and go because quite honestly— it’s addictive. And it helps us escape ourselves. The joy is in learning how to be instead of constantly doing

Chronic Stress & Autoimmune Diseases.

I wish there was no correlation, but in fact it’s quite significant. Let’s take a closer look 👀

Chronic stress 😱can cause Inflammation Immune dysregulation Problems with gut health, and
And all of these contribute to autoimmunity.

So why does this happen? 🤔
Our stress hormones (released during times of stress) can be damaging to our bodies when Released in greater amounts➡️ think high stress Released for longer durations➡️think chronic stress

How do we reduce ⬇️psychological stress, thus reducing our risk of autoimmune disease?🤔
1. Talk about it: with friends, family, professionals
2. Get moving: any physical movement, exercise, stretching
3. Reframing Inner Dialogue: less self-judgment; more self- curiosity & acceptance
4. Control Inventory
5. Managing substance use: many substances create higher levels of stress
6. Breath Work

Happy Healing Friends ❤️

Complex Trauma during Childhood.🖤

Here’s a gentle reminder to all of us who experienced complex trauma within our early years and childhood:

💕We are not only trying to learn healthy coping skills
💕but also trying to unlearn coping skills that only ever served us during the times of ongoing trauma.
💕We are trying to heal our nervous system and body from always anticipating more trauma
💕 We are trying to reduce our hypervigilance, and our overactive fight or flight response

So if you find yourself wondering why healing has taken some time, here are the reasons.

There are so many steps to healing where our start in life included complex trauma.

Keep going Friends.
You’re doing great. ❤️

💜

Dysfunctional Relationships.🖤

Most of the couples I work with have heard me say that I have to continue to remind myself:

My partner is not a mind reader.

Yes, we’ve been together a long time and he knows me well,
but he will never be a mind reader,
and It would be unfair for me to expect him to function like that. ❌🧠

🖤Unreasonable Expectations 🖤can lead to dysfunctional cycles within any relationship.
These can look like:

🖤 Assuming our partner should be able to read our mind, knows what we want / need without saying it
🖤 believing it should be easy for our partner to show love in our love language when it is not their own
🖤 expecting our partner to change when we want them to, but they don’t
🖤 Expecting our partner and or relationship to be perfect

💔Unresolveded Trauma 💔Can also lead to further dysfunctional cycles within our relationship, and may present like:

💔past trauma: broken trust
➡️ shows up now in our relationship as inappropriate hypervigilence, significant challenges trusting a trustworthy partner

💔past trauma: neglect
➡️ shows up now in our relationship as hyperindependence and lack of genuine connection with a partner

💔past trauma: psychological abuse
➡️ shows up now in our relationship as always doubting if we are a good person and partner, always needing external reassurance and validation from our partner

If we can continue to work on ourselves, the result is both a healthier us, as well as a healthier shared relationship ❤️
🤔Let’s check in with our own relationship expectations to make sure they’re realistic; and
😌Let’s make sure we continue to work through our individual traumas so they don’t show up in our current relationships.

Grief following the End of a Toxic Relationship🖤

Ending relationships that are
💔Abusive
💔Neglectful, or
💔Harmful to us and our wellbeing
Is often necessary to maintain our own emotional wellness, and comes along with grief. 💔

Despite these difficult decisions (to end toxic relationships) often being the healthiest option for us, we find ourselves experiencing feelings of
🖤Grief
🖤Sadness
🖤Loss

Additionally, it’s common to experience dual feeling sets, including both
😊happiness seeing others share similar healthy relationships in their own lives,
😔while also longing for what never existed for us.

This might look like
experiencing happiness seeing our partner have a healthy relationship with a supportive parent;
As well as experiencing sadness knowing our healthiest decision was to end an abusive relationship with our own parent.

Last, it can be helpful to be mindful that our experience of grief is not reason for us to return to a toxic relationship, and should not be seen as a cue that we made a mistake. Grief is merely part of the process of any loss.

Grief is hard and complicated.
We are also capable of hard and complicated things.

Take care Friends ❤️

💜

Healing & Apologies🖤

Here’s your gentle reminder that…

apologies. are. not. required. for. our. healing. ❤️

When we consider an apology necessary for our healing and growth,
we put our healing journey in someone else’s hands.

It doesn’t belong there.

❤️Remember Friends,
We are the only ones who are able to make the decision to heal.
Only we can write our own stories. 🖊️

“You have the power to heal from things no one ever apologized for.”

- Nakeia Homer

Control Inventory.

Anxiety and fear is often exacerbated when we concern ourselves with what is outside of our control and try to gain control over those things, people, situations.

Taking a quick control inventory can support us to:
❤️practice self-regulation
❤️practice healthy coping
❤️actively reduce anxiety, fear (and other heavy emotions)
❤️reduce or reframe intrusive thoughts
❤️reduce self reactivity
❤️deactivate “emotional brain” and engage “logical brain”

❤️

Seasonal depression or Seasonal Blues 💙❄️🌫️

💙SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder
is much more prevelent in northern areas of the world where there is much less daylight
during daytime hours.

Many of us who don’t meet the symptom criteria for SAD, still experience weather conditions and less light having a negative impact on our
🌫️mood,
🌫️energy level,
🌫️sleep,
🌫️motivation.

So here’s our gentle reminder that we are now past the darkest day of the year, and with each day, comes more light ☀️☀️☀️

If SAD or Winter Blues exist for you,
Lets take a look at ways to best support ourselves through the remainder of the winter months:

☀️GET OUTSIDE even on those dark grey and cold days—bundle up and get out in nature
➡️ this supports emotional regulation, mindfulness, vitamin D

☀️MOVE whether inside or out, incorporate some kind of movement
➡️ this supports energy level, mood regulation, physicalical wellness, dopamine production

☀️OPEN YOUR BLINDS
➡️ this increases opportunity for vitamin D from sunlight & is a great daily practice

☀️BE MINDFUL OF SUBSTANCE USE
➡️ its common for us to access substances in attempt to regulate depression or boredom, when in reality many substances such as alcohol and THC can actually exacerbate depressive symptoms

☀️VITAMINS & SUPPLEMENTS: talk w your doc
➡️vitamin D, B12, B6, Omega 3/ Fish/ vegan fish oil, Magnesium, Folate help to support serotonin & dopamine production and regulation

☀️TALK about it. With friends. With your therapist or provider.
➡️ this accesses us support and connectectedness

And remembermber, every day
it’s getting lighter and lighter ⛅️☀️✨

Self Promises & Intentions ❤️

Do you make daily, weekly or regular promises or intentions for yourself? 🤔

This regular intentional mindful practice can support us to
😌 Practice Self Love
😌 Practice Mindfulness
😌 Create Measurable Goals
😌 Prioritze Ourselves

What promise will you make for yourself today? ☺️

Which of these reminders do you need this week?
•
•
•
•
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Heal & Recover. ❤️

Who do you heal for?🤔

I often hear responses that include
👶🏻our children,
👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩our partners,
👨‍👩‍👦‍👦the ones we’re closest to…

In the list of people that come to mind,
I hope YOU are on that list.

Our inner-child forever has deserved someone to love and accept her.
How amazing would it be if your adult self did the healing work for…
❤️Our adult self,
💕Our inner-child

You deserve all the best, Friend.
Let’s make it happen ❤️

Acknowledging Our Own Toxicity 🖤

This is a tough one for all of us Friends,
however to truly continue to grow and heal, it’s vital that we recognize we all have the potential to be toxic. 💣

💥To Ourselves.
💥To Others.

Let’s get vulnerable:
Are you familiar with your potentially toxic traits, or patterns?🤔
Have you engaged in them in the past?🤔

Did you know, many of our toxic traits begin as a means of self-protection and survival?
Let’s break it down:

Toxic Traits like
💣substance use,
💣self-harm,
💣using manipulation,
💣being confrontational,
💣People-pleasing,
💣Fawning,
💣Being dishonest
💣Being selfish

All begin as a means of surviving.

❤️The true goal is learning how we replace our toxic patterns into something healthy, while genuinely supporting ourselves in a sustainable way.

Happy Healing Friends 🌱

True Opposites. 🖤🤍

Many of us struggle with “❤️all or nothing thinking💔” or “black and white thinking”.

A common one I’ve heard from maybe almost all of the folks I’ve ever worked with is:

“I know a lot of people have it much worse than me, and I feel like I shouldn’t be complaining.”

A statement like this can leave us feeling
💔shameful,
💔doubtful of our own challenges or traumas.

🤔Let’s talk how to support ourselves while acknowledging opposite truths simultaneously.

This might sound something like:

😌”Others might have it worse than me, and
My pain is still valid”

Here’s your reminder that our dialogue
should NOT be one or the other,
as the truth is often in both opposite statements;

Thus supporting us to exit out of all or nothing thinking.
Which statements might support your practice of True Opposite Thinking? ❤️

This is the energy we’re bringing into 2024✨✨

Dog Whistling in Narcissist Abuse. 🐕

Have you heard of it?👂
Let’s get more familiar with the term.

Dog Whistling is an abuse tactic
often used in front of others,
that appears harmless to those others or witnesses,
but is in fact harmful to the person being abused. 😪

Similar to a real dog whistle, the dog is able to hear, but others are not. 🦮
With this abuse tactic, others present are not able to detect the abuse, but the target person is.

This might look like:

Narcissist saying “look at how beautiful my daughter is.”, ➡️knowing that the daughter does not like attention from others, struggles with compliments and or physical self acceptance

Narcissist sharing “good news” like “he’s planning on buying his first home/ new car/ going for a promotion.”
➡️knowing that specific news was shared in conference and the person explicitly did not want to share this with others

If Dog Whistling sounds like a tactic that makes sense to you, it may be helpful to reevaluate your shared relationship with the person doing the whistling.

Remember Friends, we deserve safety, genuine connection and love ❤️

💜 Definitely written for my mother! 💜

Recognizing Our Heavy Feelings.🖤

Let’s talk difficulties around Millennials naming our feelings.

🤔Can you name your emotions?
🤔Do you take regular Feeling Inventories?

If you answered “no”,
maybe you’re a Millennial whose parents raised you without the tools to name specific feelings.
Many of our parents raised us with the

“you’re fine; you don’t need to cry” 💔response around challenging feelings, resulting in our generation lacking tools to identify any heavy feelings, and even leaning into toxic positivity.

Where we are now adults with many of us trying to raise our own children,
how to we make sure we support ourselves and our own kiddos with the tools we weren’t raise with?😞

Let’s take a moment to get familiar with different Feelings, including the more challenging ones including basic categories like:
🖤fear
🖤anger
🖤surprise
🖤disgust
🖤sadness

When we practice increasing our own tolerance to naming challenging feelings when we experience them,
❤️we support our own healthy change and growth
❤️We learn how to emotionally regulate and work thru a feeling versus advoid it
❤️We provide healthy modeling for our children and millennial peers
❤️We increase our own comfort with educating our kids how to support themselves with hard feelings

Body Doubling. 👯

😞Do you struggle with motivation to get tasks started?
😞Do you struggle to maintain energy to complete the task?

In short, body doubling
looks like conquering a task together 🤝with at least one other person, and
can be a helpful coping skill for ADHDers or anyone else struggling with motivation to get started and or sustain a task.

Examples can look like:
👥Cleaning one space or multiple spaces together
👥Getting started and or completing homework together
👥Running errands with someone else

❤️Let’s also be mindful of reasonable and specific goals when working on tasks.
These might sound like:
🧹”Our cleaning goal is the kitchen today”, instead of “the whole house”
📚”I’m going to work on my school essay for an hour”, instead of “get all of my homework done today and stay here until it’s done”
🚘”Most important errands are (name two to three) so we can work on those today”, instead of “I’ve got a million things to get done”

True !