Erica Johnson, Marriage & Family Therapist

09/24/2023

Hi there , Just a friendly reminder that this page will close in a few short days on October 1st. I would absolutely love if you continued to follow me and my private practice at Affinity Counseling of Colorado.

09/11/2023

I’m excited to announce that as my practice is growing, I will be closing this page soon. You can find all future insights and updates by following Affinity Counseling of Colorado. More exciting news to come!

02/25/2023

Start healing soon!

02/24/2023

For the past year, I’ve been putting my heart and soul into building my private practice behind the scenes and now I’m almost ready to share it with the world...

I’ll be launching my new website by the end of the week so stay tuned! I’m the meantime, I’d love if you’d follow my FB page and Insta

The journey from trauma to truth starts with affinity

06/28/2022

Grief and injustice have a fire, capable to destroy or to fuel. The key is to get the fire to move.

TW: Language includes a visualization of fire and could be triggering to some. Injustice of any kind is exhausting for the body and mind, and it affects all ...

04/24/2021

(Instagram)

04/22/2021

Posted • When the very fabric of our society is built on and fueled by white-body supremacy and unresolved trauma, it’s important to remember...⠀
⠀
Accountability alone doesn't resolve trauma.⠀
⠀
We can’t think ourselves out of trauma, and we can't convict, vote, legislate, or govern ourselves to healing.⠀
⠀
I’m all for celebrating accountability that creates more favorable conditions for healing. However, when it comes to resolving trauma, Stephen Porges reminds us that...⠀
⠀
“The removal of threat is not the same thing as the experience of safety.”⠀
⠀
This distinction is important when it comes to understanding trauma. It’s not enough to remove a threat. Even if we could remove all the threats — your body needs to feel safe again (or for the first time).⠀
⠀
The experience of safety is not achieved by logic, reason, or thinking more accurate thoughts. You can’t conjure up the felt sense of safety with a compelling narrative alone. Safety is not earned by thinking positive thoughts or just “getting over it.”⠀
⠀
That’s not how trauma works.⠀
⠀
To assume the removal of a threat equals the experience of safety, is to mistake an important first step for the destination.⠀
⠀
“In today’s America, we tend to think of healing as something binary: either we’re broken or we’re healed from that brokenness. But that’s not how healing operates, and it’s almost never how human growth works. More often, healing and growth take place on a continuum, with innumerable points between utter brokenness and total health.”
⠀
Here’s to the removal of threats AND the experience of safety. Here’s to doing the important embodied work of resolving our collective trauma.⠀
⠀
-Brian

04/22/2021

Posted • When the very fabric of our society is built on and fueled by white-body supremacy and unresolved trauma, it’s important to remember...⠀
⠀
Accountability alone doesn't resolve trauma.⠀
⠀
We can’t think ourselves out of trauma, and we can't convict, vote, legislate, or govern ourselves to healing.⠀
⠀
I’m all for celebrating accountability that creates more favorable conditions for healing. However, when it comes to resolving trauma, Stephen Porges reminds us that...⠀
⠀
“The removal of threat is not the same thing as the experience of safety.”⠀
⠀
This distinction is important when it comes to understanding trauma. It’s not enough to remove a threat. Even if we could remove all the threats — your body needs to feel safe again (or for the first time).⠀
⠀
The experience of safety is not achieved by logic, reason, or thinking more accurate thoughts. You can’t conjure up the felt sense of safety with a compelling narrative alone. Safety is not earned by thinking positive thoughts or just “getting over it.”⠀
⠀
That’s not how trauma works.⠀
⠀
To assume the removal of a threat equals the experience of safety, is to mistake an important first step for the destination.⠀
⠀
“In today’s America, we tend to think of healing as something binary: either we’re broken or we’re healed from that brokenness. But that’s not how healing operates, and it’s almost never how human growth works. More often, healing and growth take place on a continuum, with innumerable points between utter brokenness and total health.”
⠀
Here’s to the removal of threats AND the experience of safety. Here’s to doing the important embodied work of resolving our collective trauma.⠀
⠀
-Brian

03/04/2021

Modeling emotional regulation for your kids when you did not have a good model as a child is especially hard work. Modeling your relationship with this struggle is a powerful way to navigate those tough moments. All parents will lose their cool. Focus your attention on the start up and repair parts of these moments to maintain the security of your relationship with your child. For more resources on how to navigate the tough moments, check out Dan Siegel’s books, especially ”The Whole Brain Child” for kids and ”Brainstorm” for teens.

11/04/2020

Take 10 minutes to refocus on what you can control today. For now, just breathe.

Politics are known to be a significant source of stress. To help you be kind to your mind, we’ve put together a selection of exercises designed to help.

10/03/2020

Mental health is political.
Community care is self care.

We cannot ”mindset” our way out of systemic oppression. While our internal mindset is absolutely crucial to resilience building, we cannot ”think” our way out of this without any support or changes within our socio-political system.

This narrative around complete individual coping, or “pushing through” or self-mastery over systemic oppression is common. It is also invalidating, minimizing, gaslighting, and restricting our understanding around the full impact of economic, social, and political factors on our mental health.

Until we change the system in which we live, we can’t just “think” our way out of the emotional pain that it causes.

Complete holistic healing comes from creating and maintaining safety, not only in your mind, body, and heart BUT ALSO in your community through awareness, activism, and allyship.

We were never meant to do this alone.

09/13/2020

Feeling down, sluggish, unmotivated, stressed, lonely, anxious, and/or depressed? These uncertain times can leave the best of us feeling helpless and out of control, which undoubtedly contributes to these potential neurochemical imbalances. BUT there are some simple “Brain Hacks” that can help alleviate these symptoms naturally by releasing our four “Happy Chemicals”:

: The “Reward” Chemical
FUNCTION: Motivation. Alerts your attention to things that meet your needs, forms habits (good and bad)
BRAIN HACKS: Embrace a New Goal - Acts of kindness, Volunteering, Breaking down big goals into small achievable tasks, Checking off to-do lists, Celebrating small accomplishments, Loving-kindness meditation, Sleep, Holding a strong posture, Creating/consuming art.
***
: The “Love” Hormone
FUNCTION: Trust, Belonging, Empathy & Bonding. Reduces symptoms of addiction, anxiety, and cardiovascular stress. Strengthens the immune system, increases relationship satisfaction and physical wound healing time.
BRAIN HACKS: Build Trust - Kissing, Cuddling, S*x, Hugging, Weighted blankets, Contact with animals, Breastfeeding, Realistic expectations in relationships, Massage, Sharing a meal, Being trustworthy, Socializing, Opening up emotionally, Giving someone full attention, Giving gifts.
***
: The “Mood Stabilizer”
FUNCTION: Confidence & Safety. A natural anti-depressant that decreases symptoms of loneliness and depression, aids in digestion, bone growth, and organ development.
BRAIN HACKS: Believe in Yourself - Sunlight, Tryptophan-heavy & Pre-biotic foods, Dark Chocolate, Gratitude, Looking at old happy photos, Nature (greenery/water), Holding a strong posture, Pride, Self-acknowledgement/affirmations, Acceptance, Reflect on past achievements.
***
: The “Pain Killer”
FUNCTION: Euphoria & Determination. Reduces symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, and increases pain tolerance, giving you a “natural high”.
BRAIN HACKS: Move & Laugh - Exercising, Stretching, Meditation, Laughing, Crying, S*x, Engaging in music (singing, dancing, tapping along), Ice cold showers, Massage, Aromatherapy (vanilla & lavender), Dark Chocolate, Spicy foods

09/01/2020

As a social bonding species, attachment - a felt sense of a safe secure connection - is a primary survival need, especially when threatened. The human brain construes social resources as bioenergetic resources, much like oxygen and glucose - not just as infants or children, but throughout the lifespan. It is more important than s*x, more powerful than aggression. It shapes our neural architecture, our responses to stress, our everyday emotional lives, and our worldview. It is the most intrinsic essential survival strategy for human beings.

Emotional isolation is inherently traumatic. If we experience separation distress when we're small, vulnerable, and without resources, we find certain ways to get us through the night. That might be to get quiet, detach, avoid, and withdraw OR to rev up, protest, cling, and get aggressive (fight or flight). These behaviors are not dysfunctional. They are normative sophisticated adaptive strategies to get basic survival needs met within varying formative social-emotional environments.

This separation distress is an inevitable part of life. There is no perfect parent. But if safety and security are not restored after separation distress, people become traumatized. Abandonment and rejection without repair can ultimately define the self. These survival strategies tend to become rigid automatic habits, calcified in our nervous system. Sort of like muscle memory. We get stuck there. So, what protects us in our early lives often becomes a prison in our adult lives.

BUT healing and repair is always possible at any stage of life! Distress can become manageable when at least one safe person is standing beside you - whether that be a partner, a mentor, or a therapist. This is not a touchy-feely Hallmark card. This is biological fact. Vulnerability met with safe connection calms our nervous systems, facilitating a physical and emotional balance within ourselves, where we can truly feel and experience a sense of who we were born to be.

~ Passage describing constructed and synthesized from the words of developer of

08/20/2020

I’ve been noticing this happening a lot this year: When I ask, “How are you doing in all of this?” most people feel the obligation to emphasize how many people have it worse right now before glazing over their own struggles. This is called comparative suffering.

Without thinking, we begin to rank our suffering and use it to deny ourselves permission to feel.

But the thing about comparative suffering is that it doesn’t make our suffering any lighter. In fact, I think it makes our suffering feel HEAVIER because we can’t put a voice to our hidden struggles, which leaves us feeling not just exhausted or overwhelmed or worried—but alone too.

Brené Brown says this about comparative suffering:

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past decade, it’s that fear and scarcity immediately trigger comparison, and even pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked. My husband died and that grief is worse than your grief over an empty nest. I’m not allowed to feel disappointed about being passed over for promotion when my friend just found out that his wife has cancer…The refugee in Syria doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who’s going through a divorce.”

Empathy is not a finite resource.

Love doesn’t need to be rationed.

Pain is pain, no matter how it stacks up against another’s.

And everyone deserves to feel their feelings.

Let’s keep our struggles in perspective while still allowing ourselves and others express them.

08/14/2020

What causes depression and anxiety:
Trauma. Abuse. Neglect. Bullying. Brain chemistry. Grief & Loss. Overworking. Excess Stress. Lack of fulfillment. Lifestyle factors. Genetic factors. Perfectionism. Lack of social support.

What ALSO causes depression and anxiety:
The patriarchy. Racism. Capitalism. Lack of living wage. Societal pressures. Body shaming. Lack of mental health support. Gun violence. Discrimination. Climate change. Gender stereotypes. A GLOBAL PANDEMIC.

Depression and anxiety are not personal failures. They are often adaptive responses to toxic social, cultural, and political systems.

A holistic, integrative, and sustainable path to healing comes from addressing the wounds within ourselves AND our environment. A good therapist will help you do both.