Abby Sheneman, PsyD, LCSW

10/20/2025

Because love doesn’t end. Neither does missing you.

https://healgrief.org/grief-thats-often-swept-away/

10/20/2025

💜

10/15/2025

Grief counselors need to remember this

10/07/2025

10/07/2025

Finding resilience

10/07/2025

If the world could learn to accept grief instead of judging it, maybe we'd all learn how to love each other better-especially in the hardest places.

I.R.💜

10/07/2025

Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, but rather a collection of coping mechanisms we developed in childhood to navigate our environments. Over time, these adaptive strategies can turn into limiting patterns that shape how we see ourselves and connect with others.

For example, the more emotional neglect or instability we experienced in childhood, the more likely we are to feel insecure as adults, often depending on external validation to regulate ourselves.

Healing invites us to gently rewire those patterns, recognize the deeply ingrained beliefs formed early in life, and begin loosening their hold on who we are becoming.

10/05/2025

10/05/2025

💜 Hyper vigilance is so hard to manage and work through. Being on constant alert makes everything seem bigger, louder and any sudden movement can makes us flinch and go into a full blown panic attack.
This is a trauma response. Stuck in fight, flight freeze mode is a hyper arousal response driven by our sympathetic nervous system.
We can also get somatic symptoms too, like fast heart rate and breathing, sweating, pins and needles, cramps, nausea, headache etc.
Flashbacks, panic or anxiety attacks are all symptoms of complex post traumatic stress disorder.
With time, patience and practice we can teach ourselves that we are safe in this time and place. We can practice breathing techniques, tapping our legs-hand, slowing our heightened senses down.

It can be done. I never thought I’d be able to ever recover from my intrusive memories - flashbacks that came out of nowhere. I was able to help myself when those dreaded panic attacks were lingering, but with flashbacks they came from nowhere, it was so hard and would wipe me out, I would be stuck in memories for hours. Afterwards I’d be exhausted and completely overwhelmed and I’d shut down to recuperate for days.

Remember to slow everything down, listen to music in the background tell yourself it’s October 2025 and right now you are safe. 💜