Looking Forward Counseling

09/03/2025

🌸✨ 10 Somatic Practices for Everyday Wellness ✨🌸

Luna is a great reminder for us all--taking care of your body and mind doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are 10 simple practices you can sprinkle throughout your day to help your nervous system reset, restore, and glow:

🌬️ 3 Deep Breaths – Inhale through your nose, exhale slowly like you’re blowing out a candle.

🚶‍♀️ Mini Walk Break – Even 5 minutes outside can reset your body and mood.

👐 Butterfly Hug – Cross arms over your chest and tap shoulders gently, alternating sides.

🧘 Grounding Check-In – Place both feet on the floor, notice the weight of your body supported.

🎶 Shake It Out – Play one fun song and let your body move freely.

💧 Sip with Intention – Drink water slowly, notice the sensation of it nourishing you.

🌿 Nature Pause – Step outside, feel the air, notice one tree, cloud, or bird.

✍️ Hand-to-Heart Journaling – Place a hand on your chest, take a breath, write one kind sentence to yourself.

🕯️ Soft Gaze Reset – Instead of staring at screens, rest your eyes on something gentle in the distance.

🤗 Stretch + Yawn – Give yourself permission to release tension with a big stretch (bonus points if you smile!).

💛 Remember: Your body is wise. These micro-practices add up, creating steady wellness in everyday life.

🌿 Which one will you try today?

Finding the right therapist can be a difficult process that requires bravery, patience and vulnerability. I honor the chance to get to help therapeutically, and I welcome any questions and can accommodate focuses or approaches preferred along the way. I have over seven years experience working with....

09/02/2025

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1). Telling a traumatized person to forgive who hurt them is often putting them through mental warfare and delaying their healing.
2). Episode #2 of A Little Less Lonely out tomorrow.
3). Four week course on inner child work @ link in my bio. 🫶🫶
4). I’m so glad you’re here! ✨✨

08/29/2025

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08/19/2025

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Read more: yungpueblo.substack.com

08/14/2025

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A love letter.

08/06/2025

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New book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0593582276/

08/04/2025

Morgan Harper Nichols 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜

07/30/2025

✨ Celebrating
6 years
Of
Looking Forward Counseling✨

So grateful to walk alongside so many extraordinary humans
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07/29/2025

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07/19/2025

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04/16/2025

Performative versus relational healing is not healing. Idealizing growth and only recognizing those parts and devaluing past selves or the impact on others is not healing. Obsession with self improvement as identity regulation is not healing. Toxic traits that have been normalized deserve your awareness and enduring accountability for its emotional impact. Check in with your gut. Check in with your wisdom. Check in with your worth. It is spiritual bypassing cloaked as heroism. Reclaim your voice. Own your story. Trust your gut when there are unreliable narrators manipulating the truth. You are living proof. You deserve to heal. Generational cycles do not get broken easily--honor the growing pains. You now and forever will always deserve more 💚

04/12/2025

This spring, I've been diving into offering more insight about the dark triad of personalities -- to educate and support healing, identify toxic qualities and patterns and help empaths heal, reclaim reasonable and healthy standards and accountability and sometimes, in doing so, heal generational patterns. 💛

Here's a personality disorder that often gets overlooked or misdiagnosed: covert borderline personality disorder.

🌀 Covert BPD: The Silent Storm 🌀

Unlike its more outwardly expressive form, covert BPD can live in the shadows—masked by high-functioning behavior, caretaking, or emotional withdrawal.

It might sound like:

✨ “I’m fine” when everything feels broken inside
✨ A quiet longing to be seen—but hiding to stay safe
✨ Internal chaos, paired with outward control
✨ Fear of abandonment… cloaked in independence
✨ A deep ache for love… punished by self-doubt and guilt

🕊 “Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing, a memory to someone, a home to a life.”
— Nayyirah Waheed

🌿 You are not too much. You are not invisible. You are worthy of steady, nourishing love. If you have experience abuse from someone with covert BPD, remember it is normal to have needs and expect healthy accountability, emotional attunement and maturity based in mutual respect, honesty and safety.

What Is Covert Borderline Personality Disorder?

BPD is a personality disorder marked by intense emotional dysregulation, identity instability, fear of abandonment, and volatile relationships. Covert BPD—sometimes called "quiet" BPD—is less explosive and more inward or passive-aggressive.
Instead of outward rage or dramatic clinging, covert BPD often involves:
• Emotional withdrawal instead of explosions
• Blame shifting and victimhood identity
• Idealizing/devaluing others in cycles
• Guilt-tripping, passive punishment, stonewalling
• Chronic shame masked as self-righteousness or spiritual superiority
• Deep identity confusion, masked by idolization or fantasy
It often looks like calm on the outside, but inside, there’s a storm of repressed anger, self-loathing, and fear of being abandoned or exposed.
• Emotional volatility masked by avoidance
• Passive-aggressive forms of manipulation
• Fear of abandonment hidden behind control
• A fragile ego and unstable identity
• A pattern of idealization/devaluation
• Distorted perceptions of victimhood
• Inability to tolerate intimacy without power dynamics
• Fantasy addiction
• Reality avoidance
• Idealization of authority figures
• Impulse-driven identity reinvention
• Emotional highs followed by collapse
• Sexual-High Risk Behaviors

🧠 And Psychologically—What It Reflects:
Covert BPD + narcissistic traits often include:
• Projection of inner shame onto intimate partners
• Vilification of emotional needs as “clingy,” “crazy,” or “toxic”
• Shifting the emotional tone to regain power (e.g. “you’re just jealous” when you name a boundary)
• Avoiding internal work by framing the partner as the unstable one
This shows intense emotional and identity dysregulation that is characteristic of covert BPD and often overlaps with:
• Fantasy addiction
• Reality avoidance
• Idealization of authority figures
• Impulse-driven identity reinvention
• Emotional highs followed by collapse

A video that explores more that reflects on the difference between this and covert narcissism from Dr. Daniel Fox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8q7vPWsDJU