The Counselling & Psychology Clinic

02/19/2025

Do you ever wonder why you're compelled to yell? Guess what, it's not exactly because your kids aren't listening (even though it may feel that way).

While it's common to raise your voice and intensity if you don't feel your message is being received and understood, the root of yelling is often embedded in our own unmet needs and attachment wounds.

Understanding the root cause can help reduce shame and actually focus on getting your own needs met.

*Fun fact: You're also more likely to yell if your parents yelled a lot. (My mom was definitely a yeller!)

02/19/2025

One of the most common themes I hear from parents is the fear of intense emotional expression, like crying or tantrums.

I TOTALLY get it! It's triggering and confusing and overwhelming. And it seems like it's easier and more beneficial to keep kids happy and calm.

But it's a disservice to them and yourself as a parent. They don't learn distress tolerance, they don't practice how to manage feelings and build EQ, they don't gain the trust of you as a source of support, and they don't succeed in getting their needs met. You martyr yourself for your child's emotional needs and end up walking on eggshells to subjagate your own. Additionally, you don't learn to help your child master regulation and see their capacity for challenge. Perhaps most importantly, you don't get to practice your own skills and are increasingly forced into positions where you are caught off-guard by your child's emotions and are unable to soothe them (or yourself). It's a vicious cycle that hurts you both in the short- and long-term.

And it's definitely not the only option available. Instead of fearing and dreading emotional work, you can expect and accept it--knowing you and your child can get through it together. Those releases are healthy and necessary, clearing the way for healing and development. But the only way it works is if you trust the process.

10/19/2024

For co-regulation, the key is, while you’re doing any of the activities listed, to breathe slowly and deeply, rhythmically. Gently calm your nervous system and then mind. Share your experience with your child as you’re having it and check in with them to see how they’re doing. Connect. 💖

03/28/2024

A beneath the surface self-care iceberg. Icebergs explore what is beneath a specific topic or situation.

For instance, people often think self-care is bubble baths, spa days, and candles.

In reality (the parts between the surface), self-care includes the above, but it can also include:
-Healthy boundaries
-Trauma healing and recovery
-Difficult conversations
-Naming and expressing emotions
-Conscious & aware communication
-Nourishing body, mind, and spirit healthy habits
-Understanding toxic and unhealthy attachments.
-Taking ownership
-Making amends

03/24/2024

03/08/2024

09/23/2023

Via Breakthecycle_coaching ❤️

08/21/2023

I teach people healthy coping skills for when they feel triggered.

I also teach them how to lay healthy boundaries with the people they love.

Sometimes they get confused and begin to avoid the triggers under the guise of boundaries.

They may build the boundaries too rigidly so they don't have to even use their coping skills.
You guys.....the coping skills are there to help you move through the pain, the pattern and the story. Ultimately helping you heal and move forward.

Boundaries are a tool to help people learn to love you well and for you to learn to love them well.

They are there to help keep the relationship.

Boundaries are not for avoiding our triggers so we can say we have "done the work" but really.....we are busy avoiding the work.

Going to therapy is one part of the work....the rest of it comes when you're triggered and you are able to notice.....then you are able to identify the emotion in your body, you begin to hear the story you are creating in your head and notice the behavior that wants to come from it.

The work is awareness.
The work is self compassion.
The work is releasing shame and blame.
The work is releasing the flight, fight or freeze energy and instincts.
The work is pausing.....calming your body....and letting Self lead.

Choosing different behavior.
The work is responding differently to the very real triggers that exist in our environment and in the people we love.

Boundaries are not walls we are building to keep people out....they are tools to teach the people we love how to love us in a way that makes us feel safe.

When delivered with kindness, they can be the building blocks to a whole new relationship.

When received with curiosity and compassion, they can open up a new way of being in relationship with the ones you love.

Don't build your walls so high that you avoid all triggers ..... the triggers lead you to the pain and the pain has a purpose.

Sit with it. Feel it. Love it.


PS. There is a difference between difficult and unsafe. This post is referring to the difficult people in our lives that we love but are easier to avoid. This post is not referring to abusive situations involving people who are not interested in loving you well.

07/30/2023

I was watching a tiktok of a baby that was only a couple of weeks old. Her mother was holding her and all the sudden she started crying.

Immediately her mother said “no don’t cry” then her dad said “Aw no it’s ok.” When she kept crying her mom said “you’re too pretty to cry.”

This is almost all of our habit responses to tears. We don’t even notice it. “Stop crying” has been programmed into all of us at young ages.

We’re uncomfortable when people cry. It brings up feelings of helplessness, a desire to fix, and a belief that we must have “bad” feelings stop.

Crying is a regulator of the body. It releases sympathetic energy. It brings the body back to homeostasis. After a good cry, we always feel calmer and more at ease after. The body has gone through its natural resolution of an emotion.

But so many of us don’t let this happen. We block or repress tears. We apologize for our physiological reactions. We struggle with the vulnerability of someone crying in front of us.

Are you comfortable crying in front of people?

07/30/2023

Believe yourself. Honor your story when others don't.

Treat yourself kindly and protect yourself against further harm.

07/30/2023

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

CREDIT The Therapist Parent

07/30/2023

For the longest time, I felt crazy.

I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t just enjoy the moment. Being spontaneous just wasn’t something I did.

It wasn’t until my partner brought this up that I became fully conscious to it. She told me I always just seemed checked out. And numb.

I came to understand I had chronic dissociation. A protective response. Decades of sympathetic activation took a toll on my body. I was in shut down.

One Christmas, I went home and realized this same pattern was in my family. There was little joy, little celebration. Just what can only be described as a somewhat dark cloud. The dysregulation was a pattern. Playing and relaxing was foreign for all of us.

I spent months helping my body to regulate through proper sleep, nutrition, and movement. I was dissociating less and less. One day my partner looked at me and said “Aw Nicole, you’re hopeful!” I was relaxed, I was at ease and smiling.

My body was in ventral vagal.

Today I hold workshops in .circle on play. Every time people talk about how hard it for them. How they feel like they just can’t do it. Just knowing I’m not alone felt really healing.

I also notice today the teaching of rest is becoming mainstream. And I think that’s amazing— it’s clear we need rest and grounding. And, I also know some people are so stuck in sympathetic activation they can’t. Their nervous system is in danger mode. That tired but wired feeling stops them from slowing down.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with being serious. Naturally, some of us are more serious than others. The issue is when you feel like you’re outside of yourself watching other people enjoy life. When seriousness and crisis are the only emotional system you can access. When life seems like a daily fight because to your body: it is.

Support in the comments

07/24/2023

You’re likely to feel discouraged when you first attempt to move differently in a stuck relationship. Getting derailed is just part of the process and the challenge is to get back on track again…and again.

For hand-holding and good advice, read (or re-read) the last chapter in The Dance of Anger (“Tasks for the Daring and Courageous”).

Remember that change and personal growth are self-loving tasks that don’t flourish in an atmosphere of terminal seriousness, self excoriation or self-blame.

Changing an old pattern is possible but it is never easy. Sometimes a very small change makes a very big difference.

07/21/2023

Creating habits and going outside of your comfort zone is important. And there’s also a point where self discipline can be self abuse. When we’re punishing, restricting ourselves, only showing ourselves love or approval when we “accomplish” something… what does this sound like? Sounds very similar to repeating dysfunctional childhood patterns. Doesn’t it?

I notice many people are drawn to pushing themselves constantly. And I do the same to myself. I push myself to expand, do things I’m uncomfortable with, and to show up even when it’s tough. The issue becomes what do you do to yourself when you don’t show up? How do you treat yourself when you don’t accomplish anything? Are you a friend to you or a critical/harsh parent?

The punish-reward system runs deep in our psyche because we’ve been raised within it.

Life is seasonal. Seasons to push and accomplish. And seasons to rest and enjoy.

What do you think about this?

07/21/2023

06/17/2023

You can be grateful and really quite tired at the very same time.

True story!

Eight years in and I’m still sleep deprived, to be honest. But this was actually inspired by hopping into the shower post swim teacher shift and feeling absolutely spent. So grateful for the role I get to play in their little lives. We have fun. (Even when the words “hang on, sweet girl. Only one kid in the pool, please” starts becoming every second thing I say.)

Time for me to rest. And to remember that I don’t actually have to be grateful. You don’t have to find the good in everything. Things can just be. But when I am filled with gratitude, that’s pretty cool too.

06/17/2023

Parents are humans, and humans have flaws. Some parents don’t try but even those that do tend to let us down and hurt us. Let’s allow ourselves to hold the full complexity of the situation.

05/09/2023

Most people do these 3 things when they cry:

1. Apologize “I’m so sorry”
2. Block the natural release (suppression)
3. Self shame “I hate that I cry so easily”

This is to be expect in a culture that doesn’t understand the nervous system and how it works. And, that shames people for natural human reactions.

When we experience fight or flight, our body goes into sympathetic energy.

We can go into fight or flight from:
- hearing about layoffs at work
- getting into conflict with a co-worker
- a partner raises their voice at us
- our mother in law brings up a subject we don’t want to talk about

Fight or flight is when our body senses external danger and: mobilizes or immobilizes to escape that danger.

Sympathetic energy will: dilate our pupils, increase heart rate, raise blood pressure, and increase sweating. All of this happens (usually beyond our awareness.)

Sometimes all of that sympathetic energy triggers a tear response. You’ll know it’s happening when you get a flash of anger and tears flood your eyes...

This is an attempt to discharge that energy— the body attempting to self regulate.

Let the tears flow.

Your body is working *for* you.

Notice how calm and regulated you feel after