Andrea Gargano, LCPC Counseling and Therapeutic Services, P.C.

The Most Important Part of Therapy Is Often Misunderstood The therapeutic relationship: more than meets the eye.

May the hope that this day brings resonate all year through. ✨ Welcome 2023!

How to stop overthinking: 8 top ways If you ask yourself, "Why do I overthink?" this article is a great way to start. Use these 8 effective methods to stop overthinking & achieve success.

Dear friends, please feel my gratitude and love as we walk this path together! 🙏🏽💕🍂

"I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what’s best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we are doing what God does. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we are participating in something truly sacred." - Fred Rogers

EMDR can be help you resolve deep-seated patterns, beliefs, and emotions that are holding you back or causing you to feel stuck. This is a nice little breakdown of the phases that are involved.

Focal Point blog: How Artwork Makes More Approachable https://www.emdria.org/children/how-artwork-makes-emdr-therapy-more-approachable/

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Support my work and see many comics like these ahead of time: Patreon.com/theawkwardyeti

Good way to think of emotions.

Burritos for the win. 🌯

When we experience an event that’s stressful past a point of tolerance, we cope by leaving our body.

This is our bodies way of protecting itself. If our nervous system becomes overwhelmed it becomes dysregulated. When we become dysregulated, we enter a state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (please or appease) to survive or protect ourselves in the situation. This is when we leave the body.

Our brain enters survival mode. Often times we act in ways that seem like an “overreaction” or as if a switch went off + we are totally out of character. This begins a cycle of shame. We might have remorse for our behavior. We may feel anxious of guilty. We may feel confused like “how did that even happen?”

Leaving the body can look like:

1. Screaming, yelling, extreme venting

2. Becoming combative, highly defensive, or emotionally reactive

3. Engaging in uncomfortable or insecure sexual relationships/behaviors to cope

4. “Ghosting” a situation. Avoiding, hiding, out of deep fear of conflict

5. Disassociating: appearing fully present but mentally elsewhere (numbing)

We all leave our bodies. This is how we’ve adapted— + managed to stay alive.

Thank you, body.

Our nervous system is protecting us. Our work is to become more conscious, more in tune with its messages so we can learn to stay in the body regardless of external events + respond in *new* ways more aligned with who we actually are

T H I S.
a beautiful reminder
from
Tyndal Schreiner, MA, LPC

My childhood environment was stable— meaning my parents were home + all of my physical needs were met. Dinner was at the same time. There was routine.

But, it was also unpredictable. My dad, overwhelmed with pressure would erupt into yelling fits. My mom would completely shut down into silent treatments that would last for weeks. Because they could not regulate their own emotions, I developed severe anxiety as a child. One of my own childhood memories is around age 7 thinking someone would break in. Or cyclical thoughts that I’d wake up + someone would have died. A manifestation of the stress held in my body— + a nervous system that couldn’t cope.

This steady stream of hormones (adrenaline + cortisol) has all of us in an emotional cycle of highs + lows. Or chaos then lifeless exhaustion of irritability. Unconsciously— I would seek this in my adult romantic relationships. I’d push or knit pick.

When nothing was ‘happening’ I was bored.

I became accustomed to connection + love through my own bodies stress response. It’s how I felt like ‘me.’ It’s how I felt connected to others.

Emotional states create hormonal responses that when experienced long term— imprint both mind + body.

If we learned these states as children, we become adults living in a cycle of our bodies seeking these hormonal responses. All of this is unconscious.

Many adrenaline junkies are seeking that familiar pattern. So are many of us who engage in ‘on + off’ relationship dynamics.

Or spend hours of days consuming content that leaves us feeling angry, helpless, + resentful. Just as we did as children.

Healing is becoming conscious to when we unconsciously seek chaos + stressful states— why we do it + how often. With this awareness, we can begin to choose moments of peace + teach our bodies safety in the present moment.

There’s no shame in being caught in these cycles that the body has learned. The addictive nature is very real + so is the withdrawal