Philip Dimka - Psychologist, Jos (2025)

27/10/2025

He returned from war, but the war never left him.
Each night, his body remembered — heart pounding, sweat dripping, muscles tensed — long after his mind had tried to forget. He could not explain why sudden noises made him dive for cover, or why gentle touches made him flinch. His family saw anger; what they did not see was terror.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score begins with people like him — not only soldiers, but children, victims of abuse, survivors of accidents and neglect — all bearing invisible wounds. His decades of clinical and neuroscientific research reveal a simple, haunting truth: trauma is not only stored in the mind, but in the body itself. Healing, therefore, must engage both.

Here are five profound lessons from this life-changing work.

1. Trauma Is a Memory the Body Can’t Forget
Trauma is not an event — it is the imprint left by an event on the mind, brain, and body.
Dr. van der Kolk discovered that traumatic experiences rewire the brain’s alarm system, keeping the survivor in a state of constant readiness. The amygdala becomes overactive, the prefrontal cortex underfunctions, and the body remains locked in survival mode.
This means trauma is not remembered as a story but re-experienced as a sensation — tightness in the chest, tension in the muscles, a sudden wave of panic without clear reason. From a clinical lens, this explains why insight alone does not heal trauma. The body must learn that the danger has passed.
The body, in essence, becomes the text through which trauma writes its story — and healing requires learning to read it again.

2. Safety Is the Beginning of Every Recovery
Before trauma survivors can process memories or emotions, they must first feel safe.
Van der Kolk emphasizes that healing begins not with retelling the trauma but with re-establishing the sense of safety — physical, emotional, relational. Without this, therapy risks re-traumatization.
In neuropsychological terms, safety allows the brain to shift from survival to regulation. Once the nervous system calms, the higher brain functions responsible for reflection, connection, and learning can come online.
Therapeutically, this aligns with polyvagal theory: safety cues — calm tone, predictable environments, empathic presence — help regulate the vagus nerve, reducing hyperarousal. In trauma healing, safety is not a step. It is the soil.

3. The Mind and Body Must Heal Together
One of van der Kolk’s groundbreaking insights is that trauma cannot be healed through talk therapy alone. Because trauma lives in the body, recovery must include somatic approaches — movement, breath, rhythm, touch.
Modalities such as yoga, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), and neurofeedback allow the body to release trapped stress energy and reconnect to the present.
This resonates deeply with trauma-informed play therapy and expressive interventions you use at Balm, Philip — healing through embodied experience rather than analysis.
When survivors learn to inhabit their bodies again — to notice sensations without fear — they reclaim their aliveness. The body ceases to be an enemy and becomes an ally in recovery.

4. Connection Heals What Isolation Wounds
Trauma isolates. It teaches the nervous system that others are dangerous and that vulnerability equals threat. Van der Kolk found that trauma recovery requires relationship. The human brain is wired for attunement — we regulate, grow, and heal through connection.
Group therapy, community, and supportive relationships reintroduce the possibility of trust. Through compassionate mirroring, survivors experience what van der Kolk calls “relational repair” — the re-learning that safety and belonging are possible.
This principle aligns with attachment theory and the therapeutic alliance — the relationship itself becomes the medicine. Healing, in the end, is not about erasing pain but rejoining the human circle of connection and meaning.

5. Healing Is Not About Forgetting — It’s About Integration
Van der Kolk insists that recovery is not the erasure of memory but the integration of experience. The goal is to move from fragmentation — where the past hijacks the present — to coherence, where the past is acknowledged but no longer rules.
In therapy, integration happens when body, emotion, and narrative begin to align. The person can finally say, “Yes, this happened to me. But it’s not happening now.”
This shift from survival to awareness restores dignity and agency. The trauma no longer defines identity; it becomes part of a larger, redemptive story.
Integration, then, is the art of re-owning your life — of transforming pain into power, and chaos into meaning.

The Body Keeps the Score is a landmark of modern psychology because it dignifies both the science and the soul of healing. It shows that trauma is neither weakness nor pathology but the mind’s attempt to protect itself from the unbearable.
Dr. van der Kolk teaches us that the body remembers until it feels safe enough to release, that the brain can rewire even decades later, and that love — expressed through presence, rhythm, and attunement — is the most advanced therapy ever devised.

To heal, we must come home — not only to our stories, but to our bodies.
For only when the body feels the truth of safety can the mind finally rest.

Book: https://amzn.to/4qLd5ht

27/10/2025

There’s a child standing at the door of her own home — uncertain whether to step inside. She can already sense the atmosphere: tight voices, unpredictable anger, love that flickers and vanishes like unstable light. Years later, she grows into an adult who still waits at that invisible door — cautious in relationships, anxious in peace, always scanning for danger.
This is the story of countless people — children who learned survival instead of safety. Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry’s What Happened to You? offers them something revolutionary: the right question. Instead of “What’s wrong with you?” the authors ask, “What happened to you?” That shift — from judgment to curiosity — is the doorway to healing.

Here are five transformative lessons from their powerful dialogue between neuroscience, compassion, and lived experience.

1. The Question Changes Everything
When we ask “What’s wrong with you?” we imply defect — as if the person’s behavior emerges from moral failure. But when we ask “What happened to you?” we turn toward story, toward context, toward humanity.
Dr. Perry explains that trauma reorganizes the brain — particularly the stress-response system. Behaviors like withdrawal, hypervigilance, or aggression are not signs of brokenness; they are adaptations. The child who learned to read danger in every sound is the adult who now startles at kindness.
This question reframes our entire clinical and relational stance. It replaces blame with understanding, and understanding with empathy — the first step toward integration.

2. The Body Remembers What the Mind Forgets
Trauma is not only psychological; it is physiological. The body keeps the score long after the conscious mind has moved on.
Dr. Perry describes how early stress floods a child’s developing brain with cortisol and adrenaline, wiring the nervous system for hyperarousal. This leads to what he calls a “sensitized stress-response” — a brain tuned for survival, not learning.
Therapeutically, this means talk alone is not enough. Healing must involve regulating the body first: breathing, rhythm, movement, play, safety. Only a calm body can host a reflective mind.
Oprah’s personal reflections remind us that many survivors live with this invisible residue — always ready to run, even when no one is chasing them. The task of therapy is to teach the body what safety feels like again.

3. Regulation Precedes Reason
One of Dr. Perry’s central teachings is deceptively simple: we must regulate before we can relate, and relate before we can reason.
A dysregulated brain cannot think its way out of chaos. When a child (or adult) is overwhelmed, logic sounds like noise — what they need first is calm, rhythm, and connection.
In trauma-informed care, this insight is gold. It teaches us that empathy is not indulgence — it’s neurology. Only when the stress-response settles can the prefrontal cortex (responsible for reflection and decision-making) come online.
In practical terms: comfort first, correction later. Safety is the doorway through which every lesson, insight, and change must pass.

4. Relationships Are the Medicine
If trauma occurs in relationships, healing must also occur through them.
Dr. Perry’s research shows that positive, attuned relationships literally reshape the brain. Repetition of safe, nurturing interactions rebuilds neural pathways — a process he calls “relational health.”
This aligns beautifully with attachment theory: secure relationships regulate the nervous system. Oprah’s own life illustrates this truth — mentors, friends, and therapists who offered her what she calls “corrective emotional experiences.”
We often underestimate how profoundly healing it is simply to be seen — to have someone look at us without fear or pity and say, “I’m here, and you make sense.”

5. Resilience Is Born from Connection, Not Independence
Culturally, we equate resilience with toughness — the ability to endure alone. But Dr. Perry and Oprah reframe resilience as the capacity to lean. True strength grows not from isolation, but from trusted interdependence.
From a psychological perspective, this is crucial. Children who survive trauma and later thrive are those who found even one stable, caring adult who remained consistent. It’s not the absence of adversity that predicts healing — it’s the presence of connection.
Resilience, then, is not armor; it’s attachment. It’s the quiet confidence that pain can be held and survived because it does not have to be borne alone.

What Happened to You? is more than a book — it’s a lens that transforms how we see humanity. It reminds us that behavior is a biography, that every defensive reaction is a story unfinished. It teaches that healing begins not with judgment, but with safety; not with correction, but with compassion.
In the end, Oprah and Dr. Perry’s message is deeply hopeful: what trauma wires, love can rewire. What fear distorts, connection can realign. And what pain silences, understanding can finally give voice.

Book: https://amzn.to/47ngUAm

27/10/2025

It begins innocently — just five minutes on your phone after a long day. One video, one headline, one message — and suddenly, an hour has vanished. You look up, restless and empty, caught between guilt and craving. You tell yourself it’s harmless — yet something deeper feels eroded, as though a quiet part of you is being trained to need constant stimulation to exist.

This is the world Dr. Anna Lembke calls Dopamine Nation — a time in which pleasure is cheap, pain is feared, and balance is rare. As a psychiatrist, she has seen how even ordinary people — not just addicts — become trapped in cycles of chasing dopamine while avoiding discomfort. Her message is both sobering and liberating: what we call “pleasure” often imprisons us, and what we call “pain” often frees us.

Here are five lessons that can recalibrate how we live, work, and feel in an age of excess.

1. Every Pleasure Has a Cost — the Brain Always Seeks Balance
Dr. Lembke begins with a foundational truth: the brain is constantly trying to maintain homeostasis — a balance between pleasure and pain. Every pleasurable experience tips the balance toward pleasure; the brain compensates by tilting toward pain afterward. This is why the high of indulgence often leads to an emotional crash.
Understanding this balance changes everything. It reminds us that chasing endless pleasure — whether through food, social media, po*******hy, shopping, or even productivity — is not neutral. It taxes the nervous system. In clinical psychology, this principle mirrors the hedonic treadmill — our tendency to return to a baseline of dissatisfaction despite repeated gratification.
The wise response isn’t abstinence from joy, but mindful consumption — taking pleasure in moderation, and accepting discomfort as part of the rhythm of life.

2. Pain Can Be the Path to Healing
In an age obsessed with comfort, Dr. Lembke’s insight is radical: intentional discomfort heals the mind. Activities like fasting, cold exposure, exercise, or delayed gratification trigger the body’s natural dopamine production in sustainable ways.
When clients face emotional pain — grief, loneliness, boredom — the instinct is often to escape. But tolerating discomfort with awareness builds what psychologists call distress tolerance — the nervous system’s resilience to stay grounded in difficult states.
Paradoxically, the more we face pain willingly, the less control it has over us. Suffering becomes not a sign of failure but a teacher — sharpening self-control, maturity, and meaning.

3. Abstinence Creates Clarity — Silence Reveals the Noise
Dr. Lembke often prescribes a “dopamine fast” — a temporary abstinence from the addictive behavior. At first, withdrawal feels unbearable. But as the days pass, the mind’s fog begins to lift. Clients rediscover stillness, boredom, and genuine pleasure.
This principle mirrors therapeutic exposure: reducing compulsive behaviors allows underlying emotions to surface. When we stop anesthetizing ourselves, what we feel first is pain — but what follows is truth.
Our constant stimulation hides our inner life. Abstinence, even in small doses, reintroduces us to ourselves. We begin to realize that the silence we once feared contains the answers we’ve been avoiding.

4. Connection Is the Antidote to Addiction
In her practice, Dr. Lembke found that addiction thrives in isolation. Every form of compulsive behavior — from substances to screens — promises control without vulnerability. But the opposite of addiction is not simply sobriety; it is connection.
Humans are wired for relational regulation. We heal not merely through self-discipline but through being seen, known, and accepted. This echoes attachment theory: secure bonds calm the nervous system and give the brain the safety it needs to endure discomfort.
A recovering mind needs community — people who mirror your strength when you forget it. Healing begins when we risk being honest about our struggles and discover we are not alone.

5. True Pleasure Is Found on the Other Side of Discipline
In the end, Dopamine Nation is not an argument against pleasure — it’s a redefinition of it.
Dr. Lembke shows that deep, sustainable joy arises not from constant indulgence but from earned satisfaction — the kind that follows restraint, effort, and purpose.
The brain’s dopamine system thrives on earned reward: the pleasure that comes after striving, not before it. This aligns with what Viktor Frankl called the “existential vacuum” — the emptiness born when comfort replaces meaning.
Discipline, then, is not repression; it is liberation. It teaches the soul to delay gratification long enough to taste the richness of life again.

Dopamine Nation is both diagnosis and invitation. It reveals that our culture’s greatest addiction is not to any substance but to escape — from stillness, from pain, from ourselves. Dr. Lembke calls us to reclaim agency over our pleasures, to endure discomfort as medicine, and to rediscover that freedom is not the absence of constraint but the ability to choose wisely what we love.
In an age that rewards excess, balance becomes an act of quiet rebellion — and perhaps, the most profound form of joy.

Book: https://amzn.to/4htPJsk

27/10/2025

There is nothing missing in me🙏😊🌱🌴

26/10/2025

Imagine walking into a room you’ve lived in for years, a room that once felt safe and bright. Over time, you began storing things you didn’t know what to do with: unspoken fears, unresolved guilt, half-forgotten memories, and the noise of other people’s opinions. One day, the room becomes unbearable, cluttered, airless, overwhelming. You don’t even know where to start cleaning.
That room is the mind for many of us. Dr. Caroline Leaf’s Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess offers a scientifically grounded path back to clarity. She argues that our thoughts are not passive intruders, they are living networks we can intentionally rewire. What she gives us is not self-help fluff, but neuropsychological hygiene, a way of reclaiming authorship over our own minds.
Here are five life-altering lessons.

1. Your Mind Is Not Your Brain — and That’s Liberating
Dr. Leaf begins with a powerful distinction: your mind and your brain are not the same thing. The brain is the physical organ; the mind is the process that directs it. This means your thoughts are not static structures but dynamic instructions shaping your neural architecture.
Psychologically, this is profound. It shifts us from helplessness to responsibility. We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can learn to regulate what happens within us. Every intentional thought is a neurochemical message saying, “This is what we want to strengthen.”
In therapy, this aligns with metacognitive awareness — the capacity to step back and notice your thoughts instead of becoming them. The mind, then, becomes not a battlefield but a workshop.

2. Toxic Thoughts Are Learned, and Therefore Can Be Unlearned
Toxic thinking patterns, catastrophizing, rumination, self-blame, are not signs of moral weakness. They are learned mental habits. And what is learned can be unlearned.
Dr. Leaf’s research shows that it takes roughly 63 days to rewire a thought pattern, not the often-quoted 21. The implication is hopeful but sobering: real transformation requires patience.
From a clinical lens, this speaks to the principle of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change through consistent mental effort. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting; it means rewiring the emotional charge that memories carry so that they no longer dictate behavior.
As she puts it: “You can’t clean up your mental mess in a day, but you can begin today.”

3. Awareness Is the First Act of Healing
You cannot change what you cannot name.
Dr. Leaf’s first step in the Neurocycle method is awareness, deliberately observing your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations without judgment. This echoes mindfulness-based therapies and trauma work, where naming internal experiences disrupts the automaticity of reactivity.
When clients learn to recognize their triggers and the stories attached to them, they regain agency. Awareness, then, is not passive noticing; it is gentle confrontation. It says, “I see the storm, and I choose to stay.”

4. Mind Management Is Daily Maintenance, Not Crisis Control
Many people turn to mental work only when they are breaking down. Dr. Leaf insists that mind management must become daily hygiene, just like brushing your teeth.
Psychologically, this is self-regulation in practice, regularly monitoring your thought life to prevent buildup. Her five-step cycle (Gather, Reflect, Write, Recheck, and Active Reach) works not as an emergency intervention but as a lifestyle rhythm.
Think of it as sweeping your mental room before it fills with dust. This discipline trains your nervous system toward stability. Over time, the mind begins to anticipate peace instead of chaos.

5. Self-Compassion Is the Soil of Cognitive Renewal
Perhaps the most healing part of Dr. Leaf’s work is her insistence that you cannot “clean up your mental mess” with self-hatred. You cannot shame your way into growth.
Neuroscience affirms that self-compassion calms the amygdala and opens the prefrontal cortex, the seat of reflection and decision-making. In other words, kindness toward yourself literally makes you smarter, calmer, and more resilient.
Therapeutically, this is the heart of emotional integration: when you treat your inner chaos as a wounded child rather than a criminal, healing begins. Every act of self-compassion is a neurological re-parenting of your own mind.

Dr. Caroline Leaf’s message is both scientific and spiritual: you are not the victim of your thoughts; you are their curator. The mind can be trained, healed, and renewed — not through denial or willpower alone, but through intentional awareness, reflection, and compassion.

Your mind is a living garden. What you tend will grow. What you neglect will overrun you. And what you learn to prune, with love, will one day bloom into peace.

Book: https://amzn.to/47ojoyh

26/10/2025

There’s a moment that comes quietly in many lives — often at the height of external success. You look around and realize you have checked most of the boxes society handed you: the degrees, the home, the respect, the responsibilities. Yet beneath the surface hums a persistent unease, a question you can’t quite silence: Is this it? That moment — that aching pause between what you have and what you thought it would mean — is where Valerie Tiberius begins her inquiry. Her book isn’t about ambition or moral ideals; it’s about the architecture of a good life that actually feels worth living.

From a psychologist’s eye and a philosopher’s heart, here are five enduring lessons.

1. The Good Life Is Not a Destination, but a Relationship
Tiberius reminds us that fulfillment is not a trophy to be won, but a relationship — between who we are, what we value, and how we live.
Many of us inherit values we never questioned — the pursuit of achievement, recognition, or stability — and chase them until we discover they don’t satisfy us. The good life begins when we turn inward, not in narcissism, but in curiosity: Are my daily choices coherent with what I actually care about?
Psychologically, this parallels Carl Rogers’ idea of congruence — the alignment between self-concept and lived experience. Discontent is often a symptom of internal dissonance. A meaningful life, then, is not a grand vision, but a steady dialogue between your ideals and your lived truth.

2. Emotional Wisdom Matters More Than Rational Clarity
Philosophy often glorifies reason. But Tiberius offers a gentle correction — emotions, when well-understood, are not obstacles to wisdom but pathways toward it.
Our feelings illuminate what we find significant; they are not irrational noise but data about our deepest commitments. Ignoring them is like navigating with a map while refusing to look at the terrain.
From a therapeutic lens, emotional wisdom is the capacity to notice what stirs within us without being ruled by it. It is emotional intelligence matured into insight — the understanding that our joys and discomforts both reveal what we hold sacred.

3. Your Values Should Serve Your Wellbeing, Not the Other Way Around
We are often taught to “live up to our values,” but Tiberius reframes this beautifully: our values should also live up to us.
That is, values must be responsive — capable of evolving as our lives change. Rigid moral frameworks, when detached from wellbeing, can lead to guilt, burnout, and alienation.
Psychologically, this lesson speaks to adaptive flexibility — the ability to revise beliefs and priorities when they no longer sustain growth. A healthy life doesn’t demand consistency at all costs; it demands authenticity, which sometimes requires revision.

4. Relationships Are the Mirror of What Matters Most
Tiberius emphasizes that the good life cannot be pursued in isolation. Our sense of meaning matures through the people we love, help, forgive, and accompany.
From a psychological standpoint, attachment theory echoes this truth: connection grounds identity. People who flourish are rarely those with perfect self-sufficiency but those who experience secure dependence — a stable network of care where giving and receiving are reciprocal.
To live well, therefore, is not just to choose wisely but to belong wisely — to align yourself with those who reflect your better self back to you.

5. A Life Worth Living Is One You Can Reflect On With Kindness
The book closes not with a formula, but an invitation: learn to look at your life gently.
Tiberius suggests that moral and existential flourishing includes self-compassion — the courage to accept one’s missteps as part of an honest pursuit.
From a therapist’s vantage, this is radical: growth doesn’t thrive on self-criticism but on compassionate accountability. A meaningful life, then, isn’t free of regret; it’s one where regret matures into wisdom rather than shame.

Valerie Tiberius offers no shortcuts, only clarity: the good life is not found but practiced. It grows through reflection, emotional honesty, evolving values, meaningful relationships, and self-kindness.

In an age obsessed with achievement, this book reclaims the soul of philosophy — not as abstract thought, but as the art of living wisely and well.

Book: https://amzn.to/4o87zn4

26/10/2025

"To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear -Stephen Levine. 💖

Healing is often perceived as a gentle and nurturing process but it can be violent in nature, as it requires us to confront the raw, uncomfortable truths about ourselves.

It means waking up one day to the realization that much of who we are has been shaped by trauma. The calm we thought we had cultivated might actually be a façade, a suppression of our true feelings and needs.

The independence we prided ourselves on could be rooted in a fear of relying on others, a defense mechanism rather than a strength, creating an armoured self."

However, healing is worth every step of the journey!

26/10/2025

Peace rests on me🙏🏾🙌🏾🌱🪴

25/10/2025

I am what's rising within✊🏾🙏🏾🌱🪴

24/10/2025

🔥 Consistency is the quiet magic behind transformation. Keep watering your growth, even if progress feels invisible. It’s adding up in ways you can’t see yet.

24/10/2025

I speak to myself with loving gentleness😊🌱🪴

23/10/2025

Question of the day!

How often do you take a moment to check in with your emotions and acknowledge what you're feeling, without judgment?

Philip Dimka - Psychologist

27/10/2025

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