Alyssa Finkelstein, MS - Mental Health Counseling

11/10/2025

11/01/2025

10/26/2025

10/17/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BEUpe14tq/?mibextid=wwXIfr

10/17/2025

Child Abuse Leaves Lasting Biological Scars on the Brain and DNA

Childhood abuse and neglect can leave a measurable imprint on DNA, affecting how the brain develops.

Using genome-wide analysis, researchers uncovered specific methylation sites, including FOXP1, which was strongly linked to structural brain changes.

These alterations occurred in regions responsible for emotion, memory, and social processing.

The findings offer new biological evidence of trauma’s enduring effects and could lead to early screening and intervention strategies.

10/16/2025

For the first time, scientists have pinpointed the specific brain network that decides whether a person keeps pushing forward or gives up under pressure. Using advanced neural imaging, researchers discovered that perseverance and surrender aren’t just emotional reactions, they’re guided by distinct communication pathways deep inside the brain.

The key region involved is the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC), which acts like a control center for motivation and endurance. When this area stays active, people tend to persist through difficulty, pain, or failure. When it weakens, the brain shifts toward surrender, signaling fatigue or hopelessness.

Researchers also observed that people with stronger connections between the aMCC and reward-related regions, like the prefrontal cortex, were far more resilient in stressful situations. This network helps the brain interpret effort as progress, not punishment, essentially turning struggle into motivation.

These findings could reshape how we understand mental toughness, burnout, and even depression. Training the brain to strengthen these neural circuits, through mindfulness, goal-setting, or consistent challenge, may help build greater persistence over time.

Science has now confirmed what grit truly looks like in the brain: a pattern of firing neurons that refuses to quit.

03/12/2025

Public Service Announcement from your friendly neighborhood counselor:
TLDR: We have a choice to make about how we consume information, but this is worth reading….
I have several friends who have taken a break from social media in order to protect their mental health. With everything going on in the world right now, I completely understand, and everyone absolutely needs to do what’s best for their own mental health, but please remember this: we can all change the channel. My newsfeed on social media has no politics, no news, and almost no people. Because I have curated my page to be more about mindful distraction than mindless distraction. Here’s the important difference. We choose what we consume. We all have a choice. For some, that means leaving social media altogether. For others like me, it means deliberately unfollowing all of the stressful things (and sometimes also the people who constantly post about them), and following pages of zoos, wildlife organizations, occasional smatterings of gymnastics and figure skating, and features of the natural landscapes on this magnificent planet that we are so privileged to be able to call home (in my case mostly pictures of The Northern Lights and remote places with profound images of mountains and rivers from Iceland especially but really from all over the globe). What we consume has an impact on what we think about. And what we think about has an impact on how we think/become. On who we are. Please don’t forget that you can always change the channel, and that even on social media, we all have the power to choose what we are paying attention to. ❤️

02/18/2025

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02/15/2025