As a child, your caregiver had the ultimate power over your life, death, and happiness. It wasn’t safe to play, make noise, or be noticed, and your emotional and physical safety, and maybe your life, depended on your brain’s ability to pick up on tiny cues that might signal upcoming harm to you. Now, you may be fearful of things others are not. This is normal, you are normal, and you are not alone.
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You know the feeling: a dull pressure in your head, pit in your stomach, narrowed vision, feeling white hot or icy cold. You might feel like you can’t sit still - your heart racing, and your jaw clenched. You want to yell, cry, or kick something.
Read MoreIf you grew up in home with chaos or distress, rages or silences, you probably got really good at hiding your feelings, watching for cues in adults' behaviors.
Read MoreIf you are alive and awake, you’ve likely read or heard about Josh Duggar, of the television show 19 Kids and Counting, molesting his sisters and a babysitter. What can you and I, as parents, do differently? Value our children, believe them, report their molester.
Read MoreSeattle is a lovely vibrant city, with the requisite attractions like the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and the Troll under the bridge. It’s also very hustle bustle and, some say, is known for a phenomenon called the Seattle Freeze. If you experience loneliness, isolation, or sadness, you may benefit from working with a counselor in Seattle.
Read MoreI made decisions, changed decisions, and meditated on it.
Read MoreEye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is one of the great counseling techniques to lessen the triggers and flooding that can come with anxiety. It works on the stuck memories that come out with physical sensations when you are confronted with smells, sights, people, places, or sounds that are similar to trauma, pain, or fear you experienced in the past.
Read MoreWith Father's Day right around the corner, here is a repost of blog on how to manage the holiday with a, shall we say, less than loving father. Celebrating YOU!
~ Robin
"We are affected by our past, but we are not prisoners of our pasts." ~Robin Custer, MSW, LICSWA When we have trauma, we can feel stuck, mentally, at the age the trauma first occurred. While we can't go back and redo our childhoods, we CAN use tools help get unstuck. One simple technique you can do at home is to write with your right (or dominant) hand on one side of an open notebook. Write to your early you.
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