Enso Counseling & Wellness, LLC

04/08/2026

The definition of trauma bonding is often confused or debated. This graphic describes the cycle that may be learned in childhood and reemerge in relationships formed in adulthood.

As always please be collegial and supportive in your responses, thank you 🙏

04/08/2026

04/07/2026

04/07/2026

Lauren Betts on the day she sought out help for her depression: “I don’t think I even realized I was sinking. The whole time I thought I was treading water, I was actually slipping away. Picture yourself underwater, facing up toward the sky and just…. fading. Fading, until you can no longer see the surface. Fading, until you finally reach the darkest part of the ocean. That was me.

It happened so randomly. About two years ago, after months of feeling kind of numb, I woke up one morning feeling everything. Every anxious thought I’d ever had about myself hit me all at once. My anxiety was at an all-time high. My mind said, I don’t want to do this anymore.

‘This,’ meaning life.

I had probably been depressed for six months. It all started at the end of my freshman year at Stanford. Then when I transferred to UCLA, there was hype around my name, and I just never dealt with my emotions. Gradually, it became really bad, until I started drowning.

That morning, I knew the headspace that I was in was too dangerous to ignore. I’d never felt so scared in my entire life. I don’t want to do this anymore…. That horrible thought kept popping up in my mind. I couldn’t go back to my day-to-day and just pretend like nothing happened. I felt like there was no other option but to go to a hospital. I was just like, There’s no other way out. Either I’m going there, or I’m doomed. I was desperate. I called my trainer at the time, and they came and picked me up.

That afternoon, I checked myself into the UCLA hospital. I remember there weren’t even enough rooms because there were so many people in the psych ward who also desperately needed help. So, I was put in the hallway, with people screaming and shouting all night. I didn’t get any sleep. I just laid on that gurney wondering how my teammates were doing. The whole experience was really hard. I was a hot mess. Doctors checked in on me throughout the day. People came to visit, and I begged them to take me home. I was not happy. The food is terrible. You don’t have your phone, you don’t have anything — you’re just laying there, alone with your thoughts. If you’re in a bad headspace and you really need professional help, please go and take care of yourself because it is the BEST option over doing something else. But I never want to go back.

More than anything, though, I just never want to feel that low again. I want to be HERE, experiencing life, in all its beauty and all its messiness, for a really really long time. But I know now how thin that line is between having your whole future ahead of you, and not.

All it takes is one really bad morning.”

📸: Kyusung Gong

Read the full story: playerstribu.ne/Betts

04/07/2026

04/06/2026

“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.” ― Mary Oliver

04/02/2026

04/01/2026

Wishing you a seder full of laughter, delicious food, and cherished time with the people you love.
From our family to yours — happy Passover!

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04/01/2026

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling in Chiles v. Salazar that I find deeply troubling and ethically indefensible. The Court overturned a Colorado law that prohibited licensed mental health professionals from subjecting minors to so-called "conversion therapy" — discredited, harmful practices that attempt to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

As a licensed professional counselor and the founder of Enso Counseling & Wellness, I am both heartbroken and outraged.

At Enso, our work is rooted in a foundational belief: every person who walks through our door deserves to be seen, affirmed, and supported exactly as they are. We practice from a trauma-informed, LGBTQ+ affirming, feminist-informed framework because the evidence is clear — people heal when they feel safe, when they are not asked to be anything other than themselves, and when the therapeutic relationship is built on unconditional respect.

Conversion therapy is not therapy. It is harm wearing a clinical mask. Every major medical and mental health organization in the United States — including the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Counseling Association — has condemned it as ineffective, unscientific, and dangerous. Research consistently shows that LGBTQ+ young people subjected to these practices are more than twice as likely to attempt su***de. The consequences include depression, anxiety, shame, trauma, and severed family and community bonds.

To treat the infliction of this kind of suffering on a child as constitutionally protected speech is a moral failure. It prioritizes the ideology of the practitioner over the safety and dignity of the client — which is the precise opposite of what ethical mental health care demands.

I refuse to be silent about this.

To every LGBTQ+ young person in our community: you are not broken. You do not need to be fixed. You are worthy of care that honors who you are, not who someone else wants you to become. Enso Counseling & Wellness will always be that space for you.

I will continue to advocate — loudly and without apology — for the safety, dignity, and mental health of every LGBTQ+ person. That commitment does not waver, regardless of what any court decides.

03/31/2026

Join The Alliance from Lycoming College and the YWCA for a Take Back the Night Poetry night this Wednesday. Thanks to their generosity, the first 50 guests for this event will receive a complimentary beverage and pastry.

03/31/2026

03/31/2026