Rowan-Bailey Counseling, LLC

11/06/2025

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) is caused by prolonged or repeated exposure to extremely threatening events. These events can include:

🩵 Childhood Abuse
🩵 Dometic Violence
🩵 Intimate Parter Violence
🩵 War
🩵 Torture
🩵 S*x Trafficking
🩵 Slavery
🩵 Genocide
🩵 Kidnapping
🩵 Imprisonment
🩵 Medical Abuse

Traumatic stress can change your brain's chemistry and structure. Studies suggest that trauma is associated with permanent changes in key areas of your brain, including your:

🧠 Amygdala: the part of your brain that processes fear and other emotions.
🧠 Hippocampus: the part of your brain that's largely responsible for learning and memory.
🧠 Prefrontal cortex: The part of your brain that's involved in executive functions, such as planning, decision-making, personality expression, and controlling social behavior.

If you have experienced any of these events and are experiencing any of the listed symptoms, you may have CPTSD. A trauma-informed therapist can help you process what you've been through and teach you tools to manage these symptoms.

Healing is possible and you are not alone. 🫶🏻

11/06/2025

DBTSkills. Emotions/Emotion Regulation.
Emotions are crucial in navigating everyday life. Many of life's problems can be solved or eased by better emotional awareness/regulation.

"I need a drink after that"
"The day I've had.."
"She made me so angry"
"He had such road rage .."
"It's like treading on eggshells coming home from
school/college/work''...

Emotional awareness is key to emotion regulation.

Then not needing to change the way we feel with anger outbursts, unhealthy lifestyle choices :drink, drugs, feeding our feelings, overeating, spending, shopping, gambling, other forms of self harm.

Most of us have a more than reasonable grasp on emotional literacy.

We know that we need the so called ' negative emotions' as much as the feel good 'positive emotions'.

If we've never experienced sadness then we wouldn't know joy.
[ ie :the movie Inside Out and its sequel].
Yet still we go about our day, or many of us do - blaming external issues for rising levels of stress, overwhelm, reactivity.

[Image credit : Brene Brown who adapted the seminal work of Wilcox, Plutchik & Zinker]

09/23/2025

Celebrating the love you left behind, Felicia. ❤️ It takes both sunshine and rain to make a rainbow.🌈

06/18/2025

Resilience is a natural capacity we all have. The challenge is finding ways to nurture and boost it so it can be there to support us when we need it most. These science-based strategies can help.

06/18/2025

06/18/2025

PTSD is not just a soldier's burden. It is something that impacts a wide range of individuals, triggered by varied and unexpected life experiences.

PTSD expert Steven Sugden, MD, MPH, MSS, talks to the Scope podcast to discuss how to identify the signs, the importance of destigmatizing the disorder, and some effective treatment pathways. Listen here 🎧 🔈 📻 https://bit.ly/3Z1ThdS

03/08/2025

Saying something could save someone 📱💬

Studies show there are almost always warning signs before a student's behavior escalates to a school attack or act of violence. Warning signs may include:

⚠️ Thoughts of harm
⚠️ Bullying
⚠️ Suddenly withdrawing
⚠️ Obsession with violent online content
⚠️ Direct threats
⚠️ Excessive irritability
⚠️ Access to guns or weapons
⚠️ Chronic loneliness or social isolation
⚠️ Recruiting for an attack
⚠️ Cruelty to animals

Know these warning signs and take action by submitting a confidential tip to SafeUT. Our counselors are available 24/7 to review and respond to tips and partner with schools and law enforcement as needed to keep Utah schools safe.

02/14/2025

We spend so much time trying to look like we have it all together when, in reality, hiding our brokenness keeps us from healing.
Jesus didn’t come for people who have their act together. He came for those who are hurting, stuck, and searching for hope.

If you’re carrying wounds that feel too heavy to share, we want to give you a place to start. Join Dr. Cloud for his Restoring Your Brokenness workshop, where we’ll explore how healing happens when we stop burying our pain.

🔗 Comment “Restore” or go to Boundaries.me/restore to save your spot now!

01/04/2025

Here's what we need to know about Dopamine. It is a naturally occurring neurotransmitter in our brain so we can't fast from it, but we do need to pay attention to how much we are getting and how quickly. This is because Dopamine exists in relationship to pain/strain. Too much Dopamine to chase a pleasurable feeling forces our body to balance that load thus the fall/drop in mood (or worse) we feel after. Then it can become a teeter totter of up and down chasing the next Dopamine hit to feel better.

What we need to do is live life in moderation, avoid getting too high or too low. Get Dopamine through strenuous activity life working out as mentioned below. The exertion will be balanced by our body with free released Dopamine.

Consider "the why" when we turn to easy/quick Dopamine like those listed below. What's happening in our life that we are seeking pleasure inducing Dopamine, and can we choose an activity that provides slow Dopamine instead?

Be careful of quick fixes.