Insightful Counseling, LLC

10/29/2025

How to Move Through Big Emotions

Emotions aren’t meant to be suppressed or fixed.
They are messages from your body and mind
asking to be heard, understood, and cared for.

When you feel overwhelmed, slow down and try this:

Pause and acknowledge what you’re feeling.
No judgment, just awareness.

Sense it in your body.
Where do you feel it—your chest, jaw, stomach, or shoulders?

Name it.
Giving it a name helps your brain organize
what’s happening inside.

Remember:
You are safe, and all emotions rise and pass.

Attribute the cause.
What was happening right before this emotion appeared?

Decode its message.
What is it trying to show you?
What need might be unmet?

Act with compassion.
Choose a coping response that honors you.

Let it go when you’re ready,
gently and in your own time.

Healing doesn’t mean you’ll never feel deeply again.
It means learning how to stay with yourself
when emotions come, and trusting
that you can move through them safely.

10/25/2025

Depression isn’t just sadness -- it’s a complex experience that touches the way we think, feel, and move through life.

I often see it in people who have carried too much for too long. The spark that once brought joy starts to dim, motivation fades, and everything feels heavier than it should. These patterns often grow out of old pain brought on by attachment wounds, rejection, trauma, chronic stress or other inputs to our body or mind felt unsafe and that the nervous system has quietly held for years.

Depression doesn’t mean weakness. It means the mind and body are signaling that something inside needs care, understanding, and healing. Sometimes it’s not about “snapping out of it” but about gently learning how to listen to what the sadness is trying to say and meeting that place from today in a new way.

Therapy can help untangle these patterns. Cognitive and mindfulness-based approaches allow us to see our thoughts differently ~ to separate who we are able to be now in this moment - from what we’ve experienced that remains from the past- and to slowly rebuild a sense of safety, hope, and connection.

Healing begins in the quiet moments when we choose to listen instead of hide, to soften instead of fight, and to believe that peace is still possible.
🩵 💙Welcome to the quiet work that changes everything.

10/24/2025

Understanding ADHD Meltdowns: It’s Not “Overreacting” — It’s Overloading.

When someone with ADHD hits a wall, it’s not about being lazy, dramatic, or unmotivated — it’s about neural overload.

The ADHD brain processes the world differently. Each area of this “meltdown wheel” represents a type of overwhelm that can build up until the system simply can’t regulate anymore.

Mental overload: Too many tasks, too much planning, constant switching — the mind can’t rest.

Emotional overload: Rejection sensitivity, frustration, and deep feelings of helplessness can crash the system fast.

Sensory overload: Sounds, lights, textures, and smells bombard the nervous system, leaving the person raw and exhausted.

Social overload: Trying to “fit in,” decode cues, or meet expectations can drain energy faster than most realize.

Physical overload: Lack of rest, food, or exercise leaves the body without fuel for emotional regulation.

Change overload: Even small interruptions, unexpected guests, or sudden plan changes can throw the brain into chaos.

When these layers pile up, the result isn’t defiance — it’s collapse.
With awareness, pacing, and support, we can learn to recognize the signs before meltdown hits, and build compassion instead of shame.

At Insightful Counseling, LLC, we believe understanding your brain is the first step toward working with it — and giving yourself the grace to grow.

10/22/2025

Have you ever looked back and realized how much you used to tolerate just to keep the peace?
The silence. The disrespect. The one-sided effort.
So many of us learned to shrink ourselves, to stay quiet and make others comfortable --- even when it hurt.
But healing means we start showing up for ourselves the way we once did for everyone else.
It means recognizing that losing people who don’t value you isn’t a loss… it’s release.
It’s space for peace, for self-respect, and for relationships that feel mutual, safe, and real.
You’re not “too much” for wanting balance. You’re just done abandoning yourself.
That’s growth. That’s healing. That’s freedom. ~🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵 ~Laurie

10/19/2025

The ways we cope aren’t random they are very often learned patterns that we believed at one point in time kept us safe.
What we often label as “bad habits,” “emotional reactions,” or “personality traits” can actually be adaptive or maladaptive coping mechanisms developed in response to past trauma or stress.
These are not the trauma itself, but the ways our mind and body learned to survive it.
Over time, what once protected us may start to work against us as these "savior techniques" may be showing up in relationships, emotions, or behaviors we don’t always want or even understand.
Healing isn’t about shame or blame. It’s about recognizing these responses, understanding their origin, and gently re-teaching the mind, body and nervous system that we are present, in control and safe now. 💚💙❤️💛🧡💜

,LLC

10/17/2025

10/16/2025

When It Feels Hard to Keep Going Slow Down If You Need But Never Stop!
There are moments when the road feels endless—when everything in you whispers that maybe it’s time to stop trying. But those moments are often the turning point before something shifts.
Rest if you need to. Catch your breath.
Then remember: exhaustion doesn’t mean defeat. Doubt doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Sometimes the most important progress happens quietly, in the space between falling apart and standing back up.
Keep showing up for yourself, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
Because what’s waiting beyond this season might just be everything you were working toward all along.
~Laurie
Insightful Counseling, LLC

10/15/2025

When You Disappear to Feel Safe:
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to abandon yourself when you feel unseen or misunderstood?
Maybe you:
• Numb out with work, binge watching or doom scrolling.
• Stay quiet instead of speaking your truth.
• Shrink so no one leaves.
• Laugh to cover pain that still lingers.
Each of these patterns began as protection. Somewhere along the way, your nervous system learned:
“If I disappear, I’ll be safe.”
But real safety isn’t found in disappearing -- it’s found in compassionate presence.
It’s found in showing up for yourself, and standing in your truth especially when you want to hide. For real safety( the kind you CAN control) isn’t found in disappearing it’s found in your presence.
It’s found in showing up for yourself, especially when you want to hide.
Here are a few ways you can work on Practicing this Today:
• Pause and notice what part of you wants to disappear — name what it’s afraid of.
• Place a hand on your heart and remind that part, “You don’t have to hide anymore.”
• Choose one small act of self-connection — a slow breath, a stretch, a walk, a truth spoken out loud.

Healing begins when you stop abandoning the person who needs you most: You💚💙♥️💜💛🧡. . ~Insightful Counseling, LLC

10/13/2025

When someone is drowning, that’s not the time to teach them how to swim.

Sometimes people don’t need advice.
They don’t need a lesson.
They don’t need you to explain how they ended up in the water.

They need you to reach out your hand.
They need to know someone sees them, that someone cares enough to pull them out first.

You can teach later.
You can talk about how to stay afloat once they’re breathing again.
But in the middle of the storm?
What they need most is compassion, not correction.

Because when a person is fighting just to keep their head above water,
empathy and true understanding with safety and compassion might be the only thing that saves them.

©️Caty Sanders

10/11/2025

Sometimes, healing means facing the parts of ourselves we’ve spent years trying to forget
It means finding and befriending
that child version of ourselves who still wonders if they were ever enough.
Many of us learned early on to shrink…
to apologize for existing…
to believe that love had to be earned by being perfect, quiet, or easy to love. And some learned that even by performing all of those "duties" we still weren't enough.
But the truth is ......
We were never the problem. And every child deserves safety and love.
We were just children trying to feel safe in an unsafe world,
trying to love people who didn’t yet know how to love themselves and thus finding faults in ourselves to try and make sense of something that just didn't make any!
As adults, we get to become the person we needed back then...
the one who stays,
the one who listens,
the one who says, “You are not too much. You were never a burden.” I am here and I will become what you need.
Every scar, every sleepless night, every lesson
has shaped us and now the work is to use those reminders to trust we have become ( or can still become) someone capable of offering love and safety, compassion and forgiveness and strength that doesn’t leave when things get hard.
Keep showing up.
Keep growing.
Keep becoming the version of yourself your younger self needed to see in the mirror.
If you aren't sure of next ( or first) steps for this journey....🕊️ Insightful Counseling, LLC is here Supporting the quiet work that changes everything and we can help create a roadmap for your personal journey to healing.
You deserve this! You have always deserved This!