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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 6pm Wednesday 9am - 6pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 2am

Dr. Joelle Giacomo, DSW, LCSW

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United States
Harrisburg, PA
Dr. Joelle Giacomo, DSW, LCSW

Doctor of social work and clinical psychotherapist licensed in NJ & PA providing telehealth therapy.

10/04/2023

Helpful skill for dealing with overwhelming emotions or triggers 🫶🏼

If you don’t have time to do a 20 minute intense exercise try and get your heart rate up quickly by doing a few minutes of HIT movement (jumping squats, push ups or jumping jacks). As long as you get your heart rate elevated and get a bit warm you are doing it right!

09/06/2023

Listening to 8D edits of your favorite songs help soothe the brain and release anxiety due to the imitation of bilateral stimulation the music makes entering one earbud and then to the next. Try it out 🫶🏼

07/27/2023

Small and short visual representation of PTSD vs C-PTSD.

"Both PTSD and C-PTSD are caused by experiencing traumatic events. The defining characteristic of a traumatic event is its capacity to cause fear, helplessness, or horror as a response to the threat of injury or death, and therefore can affect anyone.

PTSD usually results from a single-incident trauma for example, a traumatic childbirth, a burglary, an assault, a fire.

C-PTSD, on the other hand, often develops over sustained, repeated or multiple forms of traumatic events such as victims of bullying, emergency service workers, ‘chronic s*xual, psychological, and physical abuse or neglect, or chronic intimate partner violence, victims of kidnapping and hostage situations, victims of slavery and human trafficking, prisoners of war, and prisoners kept in solitary confinement for a long period of time.’"

PTSD and C-PTSD: The similarities and the differences. PTSD UK |. (n.d.). https://www.ptsduk.org/ptsd-and-c-ptsd-the-similarities-and-the-differences/

12/31/2022

Happy New Years Eve. 🪩💃🏽
I am happy you are here. ♥️🧠
Have a safe & joyous evening and a happy & healthy new year. 🥳🎉

If you are feeling alone, hopeless and/or helpless please reach out:

Text HOME to 741741 or call 988 (USA)

International hotlines are listed on this website or call your local emergency services:

https://blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/

12/28/2021

THIS SOUNDS LIKE:

- “I took care of you for all those years!”

- “You were such a difficult child, the least you could do is x.”

- “I am your only parent, you need to do x”

- “You need to stay close to me, so you can take care of me.”

- “You’re ungrateful!”

- “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

In dysfunctional family systems, there is always an element of control. Usually, a parent directly (or indirectly) sets up this control dynamic by telling the child all things they’ve done for them. Typically, the parent has a core need from their child (to feel loved, to feel needed, to feel important) + they get this need met by unconsciously trying to manipulate the child into the behavior they want. This is extremely common in homes with generational trauma where no one taught the parent how to get their needs met in healthy ways.

At the root of this is an insecure parent afraid they’ll be abandoned by their child. So independence is seen as a threat to the parent + is overall discouraged.

Of course, independence is an incredibly important part of our development as humans. Spending time away from the family, developing outside interests, following our passions, finding our space in the world helps to develop emotionally. It also helps us to know our our boundaries + limits + be comfortable in setting them

04/28/2021

Reframing irrational thinking doesn’t have to be complicated.

Reframing is the act of looking at your perceptions/thoughts in a more objective manner and changing the language that is attached to a situation.

After identifying a thought that causes a distressful emotional reaction try and look at it objectively and restate it like shown in the picture.

Keep trying to do this and over time your neural receptors will begin to strengthen these connections of identification and objectivity.

*creator of photo unknown*

🤟🏼

04/27/2021

Self sabotaging and why we do it!?

It can be many things but the main ones are listers here:

•self-worth & dissonance: we don’t feel like we deserve good things or that we should accomplish goals. Our dissonance makes it more difficult because intuitively we know we are deserving but our worth tells us something else. This can be mentally exhausting and it may be easier to give in and give up.

•familiarity: when things feel familiar (behaviors, people, places) it’s easier to keep doing them. Any change is difficult and needs perseverance to make it sustainable which can seem overwhelming.

•control: the sense of control we feel when deciding on accomplishing something or not. It feels better to control your “failures”.

•imposter syndrome: if you attain more (promotions, education) and you make a mistake you have higher to fall. This scares many so why not take a back seat at work or school so mistakes may be less noticed.

•boredom: sometimes boredom may play a role in behaviors like drug use/alcohol use, skipping an assignment, skipping an important meeting, etc. this then leads to justifications of the behaviors or blaming the behavior on the boredom.

Victim mindset: it’s easier to play the victim in our stories than take any responsibility for behaviors or lack there of.

To help change self sabotage we must first acknowledge and identify it. Once done we can start observing how self sabotage effects us and where we see it most. Once we get that down we can work on behavior changes!

04/22/2021

Why do we shut down?

When our nervous system feels unsafe, unheard, invalidated, and unbalanced our emotional mind (Limbic and Reptilian/temporal & occipital) takes power over our logical/rational mind (neocortex/frontal & parietal).

Once the reptilian brain takes over we are biologically pushed to seek safety whichever way we can. That’s where are responses come in (fight /flight /freeze/ fawn).

The minute our mind begins interrupting the situation with we are feeling unsafe or unheard our conditioning and biology make it difficult to communicate.

It takes practice to form self awareness around how you communicate and feel within certain situations. Once you do you can begin to plan and implement new behaviors.

For example, if you start recognizing that every time your partner brings up something serious or difficult to talk about you immediately want to run or shut down the conversation.

Once you acknowledge this response we can start doing and behaving different. So if your partner says “I have something serious I need to discuss with you” you can identify that your thoughts are making up stories and you can verbalize this to your partner: “we can have a conversation but I wanted you to know my anxious brain is telling me a lot of horrible stories right now and I might need to ask for a breathing break during the conversation to re-ground myself”.

During the conversation if you notice yourself physically becoming anxious or having trouble verbalizing you may want to say “thank you for saying all of that but I may need 10
minutes before we can move forward”. Then you may excuse yourself and practice some deep belly breathing, havening, 54321 technique or taking a moment to place your bare feet on the ground outside. Then once you feel ready, return and continue the conversation!

Be patient with yourself 🤟🏼

04/21/2021

*projection: our tendency to displace our feelings onto others.*

People tend to project as a means to cope with unwanted feelings or emotions. A lot of the time what is being projected is often being left unsaid.

For example: when I was in a past relationship I would get insecure when my eyes wondered or I was being spoken to in a flirty way by the opposite s*x. This made me feel confused and scared and guilty. I would then turn all that I was feeling onto my partner and accuse him of liking every other girls Instagram pictures and not mine! How dare he! But really it all stemmed from me feeling confusion and guilt around myself and ultimately our relationship which I then projected onto him unknowingly or unconsciously.

Recognizing these patterns are hard to do and usually come after something like this has taken place. If you feel a lot of emotions about something first try to analyze why it could be. Ask yourself “why am I feeling so _____ and why do I want to reach out to ____ ? Is me reaching out to _____ triggered by what’s going on inside of me? Do I truly feel like ______ is wronging me in anyway?”

Sometimes the act of analyzing your emotions and asking questions to self about why you feel the way you do brings some clarity to the forefront. If it doesn’t, try to use some grounding activities before engaging with another person. 🤟🏼

04/20/2021

I wanted to share some information and data from an report published by and written by for 4/20:

-“Despite the growing number of states that are enacting legalization laws, people of color are still much more likely to be arrested for ma*****na than white people are—even though consumption rates are virtually identical across races”

-“ACLU reveals that while overall arrests are way down in states that have ended prohibition, racial disparities in remaining enforcement persist in those places. Meanwhile, some still-criminalized states are arresting black people for cannabis at almost ten times the rate that whites are busted”.

-“Cannabis arrests accounted for 43 percent of all drug arrests in 2018, the most recent year the report covers, and an overwhelming majority of those arrests—89.6 percent—were for possession alone”.

-“Even while overall ma*****na arrests are down in legalized and decriminalized states, black people are still much more likely to be busted for cannabis than white people are. “In every state that has legalized or decriminalized ma*****na possession, Black people are still more likely to be arrested for possession than white people,” ACLU found”.

Federal legalization is apart of social justice. ✊🏼

#420

Address

Harrisburg, PA

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 6pm
Wednesday	9am - 6pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 2am

Telephone

+14126630062

Website

https://www.integritypsych.com/joelle-giacomo

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