Shannon HJ Psychotherapy, PLLC

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Surgeon general warns of emerging youth mental health crisis in rare public advisory The advisory is to call attention to a "youth mental health crisis" and recommend resources to call on and actions to take.

This is so timely as we are in the thick of the holiday season.✨

Boundaries and the Self | Dr. Arielle Schwartz This post addresses the role of boundaries as instrumental to healing trauma, especially childhood trauma. Boundaries are the limits that help to define...

✨you hold your healing…beautiful, resourceful you.✨💕

“You have permission to be Wild. So wild
To live in, under, to live *through*.”

~Rachel Alana (R.A Falconer) Midwives of the Soul

Permission~
You have permission to inhabit your own life.
To say no
To say yes.
To inhabit your own knowing
Your own body,
And all you allow or do not allow
within it.

To love who you love.
To feel.
To inhabit anger,
contentment,
joy. And heavy sorrow.
To be full of strength,
and to know weakness.

Permission to stand for something. Or to walk away.
To find rest. To tell your story.
To give or take what is yours,
And to never explain why you leave --
Or why you stay.

You have permission, grand permission,
to have a voice. And to use it.
And to let others have theirs too.
To add your voice to the Grand Mosaic,
Your brilliant tile to humanity,
and not be silenced.

You have permission to tell the truth
and to let others tell theirs. Or to be in quiet.
To choose to engage in the old wars
To win the game. To lose it,
or to stand firm.
--Or to find something higher.

To know. --When not to listen,
Or when to be cracked open.
To let the silver spores of being, infuse your life
Or to watch your tender soul unfurl,
and come to flower.

You have permission to be Wild. So wild
To live in, under, to live *through*.
To experience belief. And what it is to follow.

To Lead,
Or to gather all you own, your whole being, if need be,
and take up your sacred path.
You have permission to live in your full truth today,
Even if it that truth is gone, tomorrow.

To be reborn.
Stunned like a babe, gasping from the womb,
only to find rest in the warmth and soft breast
of new Knowing.

You have permission to follow the call of your soul --
Even if it doesn't make sense.
Even if it is inconvenient.
Even if it only forms more questions --
Even if it only brings you freedom,
Or a heavy burden.
For you are not a herd beast.

*You are a Being of Light*
Individuating your way out of the sleeping tribe.

You are an archangel, exalted to human,
Spreading the great arms of your wings
into Life.

You are a Boat Builder,
A Clock Maker,
A Worker at the Compass.
Full of beauty. Complexity,
and magnificent contradiction.

You, my dear, are a Singer of the Soul.

Never,

Ever,

ask for permission.~

~Rachel Alana (R.A Falconer) Midwives of the Soul

art: Tamara Phillips

Shannon HJ Psychotherapy, PLLC updated their address.

Adapting to survive?! 🧠

Yes. Survival responses like fight, flight, or freeze get lots of airplay. However, please and appease (sometimes called “fawn” or “people-pleasing”) is an automatic survival response too.

We’re born with the need to connect with our caregivers and receive warm reassurance, also known as co-regulation. We can learn “I and thou” - what one is feeling and what the other is feeling. We also learn to self-regulate our emotions.

When caregivers neglect to raise us with warm, attuned response and reassurance, we adapt to that for our survival.

Physiologically, our vagus nerve is working in high gear on the ventral and dorsal side. In ventral vagal, we’re reading the social/emotional cues of others to attend to their needs.
In dorsal vagal, we’re cutting-off, or going numb, and dissociating from our own needs.

So we may feel exhausted, and at the same time fearful about what may happen if we say “no.”

Healing is possible! We can update the job responsibility of this protective part of ourself. Step one is to recognize when we engage in people-pleasing behaviors now. In the present.

Learning to recognize when we engage in the behavior and tuning in to how our body feels take practice! Be gentle with yourself.

Identify who you can be around and/or where you can be and feel relatively safe noticing in to your body sensations. It might be in nature, or while with a friend who makes you laugh.

Read a book, follow an account 💗 like mine .psych 💗, or listen to a podcast on boundaries.
Some of my faves are:


Sources: Dr. Arielle Schwartz, Dr. Sandra Paulsen
Disclaimer: this post and this account are not a replacement for therapy. ✨Please give yourself permission to get set up (call, email, click) with your own therapist today. ✨

Take charge of the narrative✨In ecology, snag trees are essential habitats for animals and provide vantage points for raptors to hunt (see next pic). It’s not just a dead🌲It is literally teeming with and sustaining life.
“We adapt to adversity by orienting to our strengths, attending to our pain, and taking charge of the narrative that defines our lives. I believe that we all have the capacity to overcome adversity. However, this requires that we have compassionate support and intelligent guidance. Our injuries do not occur in a vacuum, so our healing cannot occur in one either. Our hurts and losses need to be repaired interpersonally. We cannot heal alone.”
-Arielle Schwartz 💚

Happy Friday meme drop!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsTUUf2HIdY/?utm_medium=copy_link

😩😩😩😩

For whole 🧠, whole body healing we need to activate more than our thinky parts.✨

Repost from
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When our energy is not used for self protection it can then be used for our aliveness and engagement with life. Learning how to release the bound energy of trauma allows us to finally release, let go, and rest. This rest is our guard being let down and a re orientation to safety in our nervous system and safety in our environment. This allows for our survival responses to no longer be stuck around events of the past that are triggered in the present. It allows us to be fully here with out having to protect. We are meant to experience overwhelming events, release them through our nervous system, and return to safety and well-being. The result is a sense of empowerment that we made it through and can now be fully.
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🌎🌍🌏
Register for the 2021 Somatic Experiencing® Virtual Conference! https://traumahealing.org/conf1
🌎🌍🌏

As we reflect on the week…or are just super happy it’s Friday afternoon. 🙌

Happy Monday!!

Ah yes… The beginning of the work week! So, I thought it would be clever to talk about “Burnout”.

Burnout is defined as a “state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion caused by repeated or prolonged stress.”

Emotional Signs of Burnout:
Sense of self-doubt
Loss of motivation
Detachment, feeling alone.
Feeling helpless and defeated
Increasingly negative outlook
Decreased satisfaction and sense of accomplishment

Physical Signs of Burnout:
Feeling tired and drained most of the time
Change in appetite or sleep habits
Frequent muscle pain and headaches
Getting sick frequently lowered the immune system

Behavioral Signs of Burnout:
Withdrawing from responsibilities
Isolation
Procrastination
Taking out frustrations on others
Using food, drugs, and alcohol as coping mechanisms

Can you resonate with any of the signs mentioned below? I know I can.

One of the best ways to help combat burnout is to develop self-awareness to recognize the signs, allow yourself to ask for help, say “No, I’m good,” set boundaries, nourish your creative side, eat a healthy diet, exercise, and exercise allow yourself to REST.

Because, of course, rest is PRODUCTIVE.

Don't forget to like, follow, and share to help spread the importance of mental wellness ❤️❤️

Shannon HJ Psychotherapy, PLLC updated their phone number.

Ahh…the play I read in high school that made tragic, comedic, existential sense then and now. 💗
“What if instead of waiting, you act or think differently instead of trying to go back to the way things were?”
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/09/waiting-for-godot-beckett-delta-variant/620033/

‘What If the Thing You’re Waiting for Never Arrives?’ Waiting for Godot is a classic that feels like it was written for the Delta era of the pandemic.

https://www.facebook.com/484627281585316/posts/4224497824264891/

Shannon HJ Psychotherapy, PLLC updated their business hours.