Millington Psychotherapy

06/19/2025

colours are brighter when it is overcast.

03/07/2025

Dear Constables, Military Service Members, and First Responders,
Your service exposes you to experiences that leave a lasting emotional imprint—residue that is not caught by your kit. Everyone has different cultural and personal understandings of emotion, but at its core, emotion is data. It is your mind’s way of communicating what you need, what you value, and what affects you. When this emotional residue lingers after a shift, it can interfere with off-duty coping, especially when away from the protective identity that your uniform provides.
Unfamiliarity with processing emotions in this way can lead to avoidance. While it is possible to suppress or “shelve” emotions for a time, space on that shelf is finite. Maintaining unresolved emotional burdens consumes energy—energy that could be better spent connecting with loved ones, enjoying moments of peace, and fostering friendships. If left unaddressed, this emotional weight can lead to isolation, further straining your well-being. As social beings, isolation is rarely sustainable or healthy.
Through your service, you witness not only criminal behavior but also the suffering of victims. This will impact your humanity. This is normal. A simple "thank you for your service" cannot fully acknowledge the emotional cost of your sacrifices. When you remove your kit at the end of a shift, some of what you have witnessed stays with you, demanding attention.
However, simply recognizing this challenge is not enough. As a society, we owe it to you to support and care for the pain you may carry due to frequent exposure to loss, suffering, anger, confusion, and desperation.
It is important to understand that emotional data is not something distant—it exists within you because it is your humanity that is affected. Experiencing pain or confusion in response to your work is not a weakness; it is a normal reaction to repeated exposure to human suffering. Over time, this accumulation of experiences may require care and attention.
For those unaccustomed to working with emotional discomfort, this advice may seem foreign, unnecessary, or even intimidating. Yet, acknowledging the emotional residue of your work is essential. Some of what you feel may not immediately make sense. That is also normal.
Traditionally, vulnerability to emotion has been met with caution, bias, and even stigma. But emotions need to be processed, not just felt. This requires reflection. One effective approach is externalizing these emotions—writing, painting, or drawing—not to document “what happened” but to explore what happened to you. This separation allows you to engage with your emotions from a different perspective, making them easier to process.
This work can be uncomfortable at first. Confronting emotions may heighten discomfort temporarily, but this deepens your awareness of your experiences and their impact. Your reactions may be stronger than expected because they are shaped by your personal history and past experiences.
Multiple methods of processing are necessary. Physical activity can help release anger, but it may not address the deeper emotional effects of an event. Finding ways to reflect—whether through writing, discussion, creative expression, or seeking professional support—can help you engage with your emotions rather than being controlled by them.
The cultural shift away from rigid emotional suppression toward well-being and positive functioning is one that many organizations now encourage, though few experienced mentors exist to guide this transition. In many ways, you are pioneering this change. For that, you deserve not only gratitude but also meaningful support. Please know that there are people who recognize your sacrifice and are willing to stand by you as you navigate these challenges.
You are not alone.

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11/14/2024

Dear dating community,
Spend time engaged in activities which satisfy or fulfill you. This will offer proximity to people with similar interests. Acknowledge that you are not solely seeking the person in front of you. Perhaps you will gain access to a larger social network which may increase access to potential partners. Spend time with people you want to spend more time with, and this is probably the most important test. If you notice that you chose the same person you may want to date them.
It takes about eight months to know someone. During the first four months of dating, you will experience infatuation. During this time you will often experience a robust self-esteem and this is pleasurable. Wants and needs become clear when you like yourself. This is not in response to the other person, but the opportunity of a shared dream and hope for yourself. You are unlikely to know a person after four months. Infatuation is the experience of liking the self and prepares you for the second four months.
During the second four months your robust self-esteem begins to make demands of the person you are dating. At this time, ‘red flags’ are worked with and potentially through to rule out possible relationship failure. Fears for the future become common. Your fears predict an unsatisfactory future for the relationship and this can be in conflict with a fear of loneliness. Sandwiched between loneliness and self esteem, efforts are made to clear up uncertainty for the future.
During the second four months you both work through fear as you seek reassurance in the other person. As you both take risks being known, sharing sincere tender and insecure feelings, confidence builds and security and strength can be found in the other. Bond develops as the other person begins to accurately understand you and you them. If comfort and safety are present in this risky endeavor bond develops. Many interactions provide opportunities to reassure, clarify, and confront uncertainty. It takes about eight months to know someone.
I encourage you spend time with the person when they are ill, tired, hungry – at their worst. As this will offer you insight into how they deal with life when overwhelmed and at their most self-involved.
If the couple can survive these second four months, then you are now in a relationship. Infatuation is over and you now experience what you like and do not like about the person you are dating. Also, you have identified ‘problems’ and also oriented to them as a couple in a way that promotes bond [communication, understanding, care, listening, boundaries, visibility]. It takes about eight months to know someone.

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07/31/2024

Regret is inevitable. As animals, humans are born with few instincts, meaning that what we know and understand is learned. Humans live a long time—much longer than most organisms—and as a result, we gather information and, in looking back, often see mistakes. With knowledge and life experience, we may identify faulty assumptions in ourselves that led to certain choices, misaligned values that directed those choices or reduced our options, and the development of personas to the degree that we may not recognize the person who made those past choices. All these factors lead to regret.
Regret can be mined and matured into self-awareness. If you can sit with and remain vulnerable to regret and its accompanying feelings—such as sadness due to loss, anger from a lack of control, guilt over wrong choices, shame from unintended consequences, and yearning and longing for experiences or life options surrendered—these emotions can lead to two outcomes. First, by nuancing these emotions, the person who feels them will understand themselves better: what they want and don’t want; what they need and don’t need. Secondly, by feeling the pain of regret, these feelings will inevitably illuminate the possibly opaque governing values or morals that compelled those choices.
In each moment, we choose. In choosing one path, we sacrifice others. The loss of possible futures lends psychological and existential meaning to the path chosen. The possible futures not chosen thrust the choice made into a meaningful light. Important questions arise: “How do I understand myself in this choice, at that time? What do I now know that I didn’t know then?” And perhaps, “With this knowledge, what may I prefer to choose for the time I have left?”
Have regret. This is a part of your story that carries the essential knowledge of self that will support future decisions, aligning them with satisfaction, fulfillment, and deepening meaning. Your pain encompasses both the person you were in the past and the person reflecting on the past. They are unlikely to have the same value depth and knowledge.

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06/07/2024

To be free from the past is not to be without it. Rather this freedom is an acceptance, even embrace of existence known by a fallible and fragile viewer. One who changes as they interact with others and the world traveling through time.

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