Bustan Therapy, Los Angeles, CA (2026)

01/04/2026

1. Attachment Styles Vary.
Your attachment style (secure, anxious, avoidant) is a blueprint for all relationships, but different relationship types (partner vs. friend) activate it differently due to varying levels of perceived intimacy, commitment, and potential loss. It can be more secure in friendships (a safe base) but less so in romance where deeper fears of abandonment or engulfment surface.

2. Fewer Expectations & Less Pressure.
Society pushes romantic partnership as the ultimate goal, but friendships don’t come with the intense cultural scripts (marriage, kids, forever) that romantic relationships often carry, allowing for more freedom and less performance anxiety.

3. Unconditional Acceptance.
Friends often see and accept your “worst self” without judgment, a level of vulnerability harder to maintain in early romantic stages. Anxieties about belonging or worthiness, often rooted in childhood, get re-activated more intensely by the intimacy and potential vulnerability in romance compared to platonic bonds.

4. Different Needs Met.
Friendships fulfill needs for companionship, trust, and emotional support, but romantic relationships (and biology) involve unique drives for s*xual intimacy, attachment, and partnering that friendships don’t satisfy.

5. Lower Stakes & Drama.
Platonic relationships are generally less possessive and create less emotional turmoil or jealousy than romantic ones, providing stability.

6. Focus on Shared Joy.
Friendships often center on enjoying activities and mutual support, whereas romance introduces complexities of romance, s*x, and future planning.

Why Friendships Thrive Where Romance Fails:
1. Authenticity: You don’t have to perform for a friend in the way you might for a partner, fostering deeper trust and connection.
2. Less Stress: Friends provide vital stress relief and mental health support, often more reliably than a romantic relationship can.
3. No “One Person” Pressure: Friendships distribute emotional support across a network, reducing the burden on one person to be everything, which often strains romantic bonds.

01/03/2026

Money can trigger some of our deepest emotions. Fear. Shame. Guilt. Control. For many people, those reactions don’t come from the numbers themselves — they come from what money has represented in their lives. Financial trauma happens when experiences with money — or the lack of it — create lasting fear or insecurity. It often stems from chronic instability, sudden financial loss, growing up in scarcity, or witnessing financial conflict at home. It’s not about being “bad with money.” It’s about your nervous system learning that money equals danger, unpredictability, or shame. Like other forms of trauma, it lives in the body. It can trigger stress responses, like fight, flight, freeze, or fawning when faced with money-related decisions. Your nervous system remembers even when your brain doesn’t. Financial trauma can subtly shape how you think, feel, and act around money.
Here are some common signs:
‍
1. Avoidance (Freeze Response).
You ignore your bank account, skip checking bills, or procrastinate budgeting. You’re not lazy, you’re protecting yourself from anxiety.

2. Hoarding/ Scarcity Mindset.
You hoard every dollar and feel unsafe spending even on things you can afford. This often stems from instability or sudden loss in the past.

3. Overspending to self-soothe.
Using purchases to self-soothe, create a dopamine hit, or feel powerful and in control when life feels chaotic. You shop to feel control, comfort, or escape. It’s not about greed, it’s about regulation.

4. Workaholism/ Overworking.
Working excessively to achieve a false sense of security or because you learned to carry heavy adult burdens as a child. You refuse help, even when you need it. You’d rather struggle alone than feel “dependent.” This often comes from growing up where asking for support felt unsafe or shameful.

5.People-Pleasing / Under-Earning at work.
Prioritizing others’ financial needs (undercharging, lending money) to avoid conflict, abandonment, or disapproval. You struggle to ask for raises, discounts, or fair pay. You’ve tied your worth to being grateful rather than assertive.

01/02/2026

Why mandatory forgiveness is harmful:
1. Re-victimizes survivors.
It can reinforce the idea that the survivor is to blame or responsible for the perpetrator’s actions, adding shame to existing trauma.
2. Shifts focus to the abuser.
Treatment should center on the survivor’s needs, not on the perpetrator or the act of forgiving them, which can distract from processing the trauma.
3. Creates false equivalence.
It can suggest the survivor’s failure to forgive is as “wrong” as the abuse itself, invalidating their experience.
4. Threatens safety.
Forcing forgiveness can pressure survivors into unsafe situations, especially if they feel compelled to reconcile with an abuser, putting them at risk for more harm.
5. Inhibits natural recovery.
It can prevent survivors from feeling and expressing necessary emotions like anger, grief, and rage, which are crucial for processing trauma.
6. Removes agency.
Genuine forgiveness must be a free, internal choice, not an external demand, which removes the survivor’s power and control.

What comes first (and is more essential):
1. Processing trauma: Working through the deep anger, grief, and pain is crucial, often through methods like breath work or journaling.
2. Mourning: Allowing oneself to mourn the loss and impact of the trauma is more essential than forgiving the act.
3. Self-compassion & boundaries: Healing involves learning to love and accept oneself, celebrating growth, and setting firm boundaries, often requiring cutting ties with abusers.
4. Validating experiences: Acknowledging the reality and impact of the trauma is essential.

Forgiveness as a later, optional step
1. A natural outcome: Genuine forgiveness, when it happens, often arises spontaneously after the anger and pain have been fully processed, not through forceful decision.
2. Releasing burdens: It’s about releasing the burden of the trauma for oneself, not condoning the act or letting the perpetrator off the hook.
3. Not required for healing: Many survivors achieve full recovery without ever forgiving their abusers, demonstrating it’s not a universal requirement.

01/01/2026

1. Constantly keeping busy.
Yes, the constant need to be busy can absolutely be a trauma response, serving as a distraction from unresolved pain, anxiety, or fear, often linked to the brain’s “flight” response to perceived danger or instability, leading to overworking, over-scheduling, and avoiding stillness to prevent emotional overwhelm. This “toxic productivity” or “busy-ness addiction” helps some people feel in control or valuable but ultimately leads to burnout and hinders true healing, requiring self-reflection and professional help to address the underlying trauma.

2. Hyper-independence.
Most of us can relate to the struggle of asking for help. Hyper-independence takes that fear of relying on others to the next level. Someone who is hyper-independent will rarely or never ask for help. Hyper-independence and resistance to relying on others often arise after we’ve experienced situations where we needed help from others, and they weren’t there for us. Our brains now expect people to not be there to support us, so we shut down the chance for support before someone else can.

3. Over-explaining.
Over-explaining is frequently a “fawn” response, a lesser-known survival strategy where a person tries to appease others to avoid harm. Trauma can trigger the fight-or-flight response. Those who have been abused or neglected frequently react in this way. They want to appear non-threatening and defuse a possible conflict by going into too much detail.

4. Trouble accepting complements.
Receiving a compliment can be deeply triggering, especially for trauma survivors. It can touch off a great deal of anxiety and fear. Does the compliment come with strings? Does the person giving the compliment want something? Are there hidden motives? Is this just the first step down that awful path toward more mistreatment and abuse? It can be very hard for a person with a history of trauma to internalize a compliment, even from someone they trust, because it comes from another world — a place they don’t understand – where someone sees something wonderful about them.

12/31/2025

1. Alone Time.
Alone time removes external distractions and quiets the noise of social pressures, allowing for deep self-reflection and the ability to hear your inner voice, leading to stronger self-trust and original insights. It creates space for your mind to wander, process experiences, and connect with your authentic self, revealing patterns and desires otherwise hidden by busyness.

2. Body Scans.
Building your baseline awareness of your body will create a stronger connection to experience the subtle sensations that arise when your intuition is communicating with you. By observing sensations without judgment, you tune into your subconscious, uncovering hidden beliefs and gaining clearer signals from your inner knowing.

3. Journal.
Channeling the subconscious mind without judgment or criticism. Let yourself journal any stream of thought as a way to relate inner dialogue and reveal whats hidden.

4. Breath Awareness.
Periodically checking in with the breath can slow down the mental activity to create more presence for the innate wisdom to speak through.

5. Grounding Practice.
If the mind and energy are all over the place it’s hard to know what is true. Finding stillness in your body and connection to your surroundings brings you back to a center point.

6. Reflection.
Reflection creates a feedback loop where you review past experiences, identify patterns in your gut feelings, and build self-trust in your inner wisdom, turning vague nudges into reliable guidance by noticing when intuition led to good outcomes versus when ignoring it brought regret. It’s about learning from your inner compass, strengthening its signals through practices like mindfulness, and recognizing your own unique patterns of knowing.

7. Align with your values.
Your mind may steer you away from your integrity, but your intuition never will. Become comfortable with how you feel when you’re betraying your values, and you’ll learn what intuition doesn’t feel like. Learn what it feels like to behave in alignment with your values, and you’ll start to sense your intuition more clearly.

12/30/2025

People pleasing and the fawn trauma response can look the same on the outside, but they don’t always come from the same place. In essence, while a fawner is a people-pleaser, their actions stem from a trauma-induced survival instinct (to survive), whereas a typical people-pleaser’s actions come from a desire for social acceptance (to be liked).

* People-Pleasing (General):
-Definition: A tendency to prioritize others’ needs, opinions, and wants over your own to gain approval and avoid conflict.
-Motivation: Often stems from socialization, a desire to be liked, or fear of disappointment.
-Examples: Saying yes to extra work to be seen as helpful, agreeing with friends to fit in.
 Fawning (Trauma Response):
-Definition: A subconscious survival mechanism (the fourth “F”: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn) where you merge with or appease others to prevent harm or abandonment, common in abusive or neglectful childhoods.
-Motivation: A deep-seated belief that your safety or connection depends on keeping others happy; “If they don’t like me, something bad might happen”.
-Characteristics:
* Extreme difficulty saying “no”.
* Losing your sense of self, needs, and boundaries.
* Over-apologizing, being hyper-attuned to others.
* Feeling guilt, shame, resentment, or numbness.
* Being drawn to emotionally unavailable or critical people.

Healing from people-pleasing and fawning involves reconnecting with yourself—your body, your boundaries, your values.
Here are a few ways to begin:
1. Build Awareness: Start by noticing when you’re saying “yes” out of fear rather than desire. Are you checking in with yourself before responding to a request, or automatically defaulting to appeasement?

2. Practice Boundaries: Begin with small, low-stakes boundaries and build confidence over time.

3. Tune Into Your Body:Trauma responses often live in the body. Learning to recognize how your body feels when you’re anxious, disconnected, or in “fawn mode” can help you interrupt the pattern. Practices like grounding, breath work, and somatic therapy can support this process.

12/29/2025

Anxious and avoidant attachment styles share a core similarity in their nervous systems: both involve nervous system dysregulation and an underlying perception of the social environment as unsafe, leading to a lingering sense of threat and fear. Anxious types pursue connection (fearing abandonment), while avoidant types withdraw (fearing engulfment), both trying to manage an unsafe intimacy. They’re equally valid forms of insecurity, not one being better, and both struggle to find secure connection until they recognize their patterns and work inward.

Shared Nervous System Characteristics:
1. Insecure Survival Strategies: Both styles are rooted in the nervous system developing survival strategies in response to inconsistent or emotionally unavailable early caregivers. The anxious individual’s system goes into hyperarousal (fight/flight), while the avoidant individual’s system goes into hypoarousal (freeze/shutdown/disconnection).

2. Chronic Stress Reactivity: Individuals with both styles show physiological signs of heightened stress reactivity, including potential changes in adrenocortical activity (e.g., cortisol levels) and heart rate in response to stress cues, consistent with impaired emotion regulation.

3. Fundamental Mistrust: At the core, both styles exhibit a fundamental lack of trust in the safety and reliability of intimate relationships, leading to a constant, often subconscious, scanning for potential threats (abandonment for the anxious; engulfment for the avoidant).

4. Difficulty with Emotional Regulation: Both experience difficulties managing their emotions and struggle to bounce back from difficult relational situations. Anxious individuals rely heavily on partners for co-regulation, while avoidant individuals dismiss their own distress, but neither is proficient in healthy self-regulation.

5. Low Self-Worth: Both styles are associated with core feelings of low self-worth and inadequacy, which drives their respective nervous system defense mechanisms (pursuit of validation for the anxious, self-reliance and emotional distance for the avoidant).

12/28/2025

Complex trauma is not the same as one traumatic event. For example, someone might be in a car accident, might go through medical surgery, and this on its own is or can be a traumatic event.
It’s a standalone incident that can affect us deeply and impact the state of our nervous system, health, and mental health.
However, this is not what complex trauma is. Complex trauma is a chronic experience of trauma, and it is not so much the event, but it’s a wider sense of living in chronic stress and a consistent lack of safety.

Below are a few reasons why CPTSD makes it harder to feel safe and function in the world long-term.

1. Altered Nervous System: Constant threat during development overstimulates the amygdala (fear center) and impairs the hippocampus (memory), leaving the brain in chronic “red alert” and struggling to integrate memories as past events.

2. Distorted Self-Image: Trauma experienced within relationships, especially in childhood, creates deep-seated shame, guilt, and feelings of worthlessness, viewing oneself as fundamentally flawed.

3. Identity Confusion: It’s harder to form a stable sense of self when your caregivers or environment were the source of trauma, leading to feelings of being different or empty.

4. Emotional Dysregulation: The nervous system of someone who experiences PTSD versus someone who experiences complex PTSD usually will look and feel different. Someone who experiences PTSD, their nervous system will experience high levels of activation and emotional dysregulation. However, if before the incident that created and led to PTSD, there was emotional regulation pre-existing, then the individual will have more capacity to navigate those PTSD symptoms and start experiencing healing. Usually, with the right approach, the recovery process is shorter. When it comes to complex PTSD though, it’s different. Because again, complex PTSD is a result of chronic exposure to traumatic and overwhelming experiences.

5. Relationship Difficulties: Deep trust issues, fear of intimacy, repeating unhealthy relationship patterns, or complete isolation.

12/27/2025

1. Shame.
Catching shame early is crucial because while healthy shame guides behavior and connection, chronic or toxic shame can deeply damage self-esteem, relationships, and mental health, leading to isolation, depression, anger, and self-condemnation, whereas early recognition allows you to differentiate healthy guilt (repair) from destructive shame (hide) and address it before it rewires your brain negatively, fostering self-compassion and growth instead.

2. Negativity Bias.
The negativity bias, an evolutionary survival mechanism, has several negative effects in modern life, primarily impacting mental health, decision-making, and personal relationships. It creates a vicious cycle where negative thoughts worsen feelings, reducing motivation, distorting reality, and making it harder to find joy or solve problems, ultimately hindering personal growth and well-being. By intervening early, you prevent it from becoming a deeply ingrained habit, protecting your mental health and opening doors for better judgment, resilience, and overall well-being as you grow.

3. Victim Mindset.
Catching a victim mentality early prevents deep-rooted negative patterns, like learned helplessness and chronic stress, from sabotaging your mental health, relationships, and empowerment, allowing for quicker healing from trauma and a shift towards taking control and thriving, rather than remaining stuck in blame and powerlessness. Early intervention stops it from becoming a self-destructive, lifelong habit that erodes self-esteem and blocks personal growth.

4. Negative Comparisons.
Catching negative comparisons early is crucial because they erode self-esteem, fuel anxiety and depression, create a cycle of self-criticism, and lead to a debilitating need for external validation, ultimately hindering personal growth by replacing self-acceptance with comparison-driven inadequacy. Early intervention allows you to shift from judging yourself against others (dirty fuel) to using self-compassion and appreciating your own journey (clean fuel) for sustainable motivation and better mental well-being.

12/26/2025

1. Celebrate Small Wins.
Sometimes it helps to simply take a deep breath, slow down, and ask yourself what it is that you appreciate about yourself. These things do not have to be big, but they should reflect what it is that you like about yourself in that moment. Thinking of a few things that you appreciate about yourself will help you to build your self-esteem, and it can help you turn a negative mood into a positive one.

2. Speak kindly to yourself.
Learning how to handle and replace the voice of your inner critic is a good place to start with raising your self-esteem. Identify and challenge negative thoughts. The easier it is to identify an issue, the easier it is to change it.

3. Take Action Everyday.
Do something every day, starting with something small, that directly deals with your low self-esteem. For instance, if you can’t talk with people because you feel insecure and inferior, just start off by saying ‘Hi’. As you get more comfortable with this, then start to make small talk. You will begin to feel more confident and more confident until one day, you will find that you have overcome low self-esteem in that area.

4. Tend to your physiology.
The way we hold our bodies is all the evidence we need to understand how we feel. Self- worth lives in the body. It lives in your chest, shoulders, neck, belly and low back. It resides in our breathing. Start breathing more deeply. Low self-worth is shallow, often held breath. Choose to do something different with your body by taking on a challenge. Start yoga, or if you are already a practitioner, approach it differently. Learn to swim, do trapeze - go outside of your comfort zone.

5. Contribute.
There is absolutely nothing that gets us out of our own heads, stories, worries, and concerns than giving outside of ourselves. To add value to another person’s life will raise your self-worth faster than anything else. Giving back is what each one of us was born to do. The scale of that does NOT matter in the slightest. If you want to increase your confidence and self worth, find someone or something to add value to.

12/25/2025

Have you ever noticed how just being with a calm, grounded person can make you feel more at ease? That’s co-regulation in action.
Co-regulation is the way our nervous systems communicate with each other — often without words — to create safety, comfort, and connection.  It’s a key part of emotional regulation, attachment, and trauma healing.

Why it’s essential for trauma survivors:
1. Calms the Nervous System: Trauma often leaves the nervous system stuck in high alert (fight/flight/freeze). Co-regulation provides external cues of safety (calm voice, presence) to help discharge survival energy and bring the system back to balance.
2. Builds Internal Safety: By repeatedly experiencing a regulated presence, survivors learn that safety is possible and begin to internalize those calming skills, moving from needing others to self-regulate to being able to do it themselves.
3. Restores Brain Function: It helps activate the prefrontal cortex (reasoning) and calm the hyperactive limbic system (emotions), allowing for clearer thinking and less reactivity.
4. Addresses Developmental Gaps: Trauma, especially developmental trauma, often hinders the natural development of self-regulation skills. Co-regulation provides what was missing, offering a corrective emotional experience.
5. Prevents Retraumatization: In therapy or relationships, a regulated co-regulator helps process intense emotions and memories without overwhelming the survivor, preventing them from getting stuck or re-traumatized.
6. Fosters Trust & Connection: Trauma often shatters trust. Consistent co-regulation in relationships helps rebuild secure attachment and teaches survivors that others can be a source of comfort, not danger.

How to Practice Co-Regulation
Co-regulation can happen in various relationships, including with a friend, partner, or family member. A trauma-informed therapist is particularly skilled at using co-regulation techniques as a foundational part of treatment, such as deep breathing exercises, grounding techniques, and somatic awareness, to help clients manage distress and build resilience.

12/24/2025

Healing from trauma doesn’t always look like a big, dramatic transformation.
Sometimes, it’s subtle, quiet moments that don’t seem like much until you realize they would’ve felt impossible before. When you’ve spent a long time in survival mode, peace can feel unfamiliar and even uncomfortable. But healing doesn’t mean everything’s perfect. It doesn’t mean you’re “fixed.” It means you’re beginning to feel safe in your body and your life again.
If you’ve been wondering whether you’re making progress, here are a few signs you might be healing from trauma.

1. You Pause Before Reacting.
Maybe you used to spiral into anxiety or shut down at the first sign of conflict. But now you take a breath before reacting. That pause? That’s healing. That’s your nervous system learning safety again.

2. You Recognize Your Needs.
Where survival meant pushing through, thriving begins when you notice your needs and try to honor them — whether that’s resting, setting boundaries, or seeking connection.

3. You Say “No” Without Guilt.
Guilt may still show up, but now you can name it. And you choose your peace anyway. That’s a powerful shift — a sign of growing self-worth and emotional resilience.

4. You Find Joy in the Present Moment.
Laughter with a friend. Peace on a walk. A moment of quiet without dread. These experiences might seem simple — but for survivors of trauma, they’re not small at all. They’re signs that the past doesn’t have the same grip it used to.

5. You Ask for Help When You Need It
You no longer believe you have to carry everything alone. That belief — and the act of reaching out — is one of the bravest steps toward thriving.

6. You Allow Yourself to Rest Without Shame.
Where survival once meant constant vigilance, thriving includes stillness, softness, and permission to just be. You are learning that rest is not weakness — it’s healing.

7. You See Yourself with Compassion.
You start to soften your inner voice. You talk to yourself the way you would a friend. You no longer see your trauma responses as “failures” but as signs of strength and adaptation. That’s growth.

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