Typically when we think of addiction, we think of alcohol, drugs, sex, or gambling. Although not yet an official diagnosis, a more common, yet far less known form of addiction is an addiction to people. Research from 2016 suggested feelings of intense romantic love activate regions of the brain’s “reward system” — the same regions …
Narcissists And The Mother Wound
You may have a mother wound if you were invalidated or made to feel that your weren’t important. If your feelings were ‘wrong’ or you were blamed for things you didn’t do. By your mother. If you weren’t allowed to ever express or explore negative emotions, this may result in chronic low self-esteem. Do you …
Can Trauma Cause Anxiety?
Trauma and anxiety are closely linked. After experiencing a traumatic event, it’s natural to go through a range of negative emotions, including anger, fear, guilt, sadness, and confusion. Anxiety is also a common symptom of trauma, due to its role in our stress responses, also known as fight, flight, freeze, flop or fawn. Anxiety isn’t …
Do You Fear Abandonment?
Abandonment trauma can stem from being left alone or neglected as a child either physically or emotionally. It can relate to the death of a parent, having your parents divorce, the loss of a partner or close friend, or finding out a partner has been unfaithful. Whether you experienced painful abandonment during your childhood or …
Do You Keep Attracting Emotionally Unavailable Partners?
An emotionally unavailable person is typically seen as someone who has a fear or block to sharing their emotions, and feelings. They delay making plans, don’t really want a label to the relationship, can’t commit, are inconsistent, they lead you on, or worse. They can be emotionally abusing you (gaslighting, stonewalling, lying). They likely …
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How Your Attachment Style (and trauma) Shows Up In Friendships
Growing up, I could always make friends easily. I was funny, popular, a fabulous raconteur, and the life and soul of every party. At school, I had girl friends arguing over who was going to sit next to me in class. I was one of the ‘cool’ kids who all the boys wanted to date. …
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PTSD and EMDR
The word ‘trauma‘ comes from the Greek word for ‘wound’. So trauma is literally a wound in our mental state. Like any physical wound. Post-Traumatic Stress means anything that leaves an emotional residue in the system and interferes with its normal function. The various facets of Post-Traumatic Stress are innumerable; however, we can categorize them …
When Trauma And Pain Show Up As Crazy In Relationships
My daughter asked me recently where the term ‘bunny boiler’ comes from. I laughed, as I recalled Glenn Close’s psychotic character in ‘Fatal Attraction‘ and how, after the huge success of the film in the 80s, any female who demonstrated a glimmer of insecure behaviour was labelled a bunny boiler, relating to the scene where …
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Do You Have A Dysregulated Nervous System?
Our autonomic nervous system, causes us to think, feel and behave in ways that are driven by unconscious patterns and generates automatic responses. The autonomic nervous system’s job is to keep us safe and alive. It is made up of 3 systems: • Sympathetic nervous system: This system activates body processes that help you …
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Understanding Your Triggers
For most of my life, I would fly off the handle over the slightest thing, going from 0-200 in a matter of seconds. I was always told that I was ‘born arguing’ and when I look back, I can recall so many times losing my temper whenever I perceived that someone was ‘out to get …