Ana Champagne, LMFT

03/14/2026

Childhood trauma isn’t defined by isolated events. It’s shaped by the emotional climate, power dynamics, and consistency of care a child grows up inside. What feels “normal” in childhood often becomes the template for what feels familiar in adulthood, even when it’s destabilizing. Understanding the context we adapted to is often the first step in understanding ourselves. From there, patterns can be examined rather than reenacted. 🌳🌅

05/14/2025

It’s not what we say—
It’s what we do that leaves the biggest impression.

👀 Kids notice the little things:
• How you handle hard moments
• How you speak to yourself
• If you put down your phone when they say “look!”

They’re learning how to be human by watching you. 💛

🌷 To Celebrate Mother’s Day, take 50% OFF ALL* our online courses at ICP. Type MOM to get a link to our sale-- sale ends this week!

Course topics Include: Discipline, Anxiety, ADHD, Trauma, Divorce, Highly Sensitive Children, Emotion Regulation, Resilience, Sensory Foundations, Anger, Autism, Play Therapy, OCD, and many more! Over 80 courses to choose from!

🌱 Workbooks
🌱 Certificate of Completion
🌱 Tools and strategies to support children & teens
🌱 Self-Paced Study
🌱 Life-Time Access

03/16/2024

02/13/2024

Youtheceo ❤️

02/03/2024

01/30/2024

Struggling couples are often sure they're doing everything right: date nights, s*x, courtesy. But those can't overcome negative routines they aren't even conscious of: http://tinyurl.com/ypr2tfre

01/26/2024

🤓Em

12/27/2023

Boundaries can't stop other people from treating us badly (and their wounding behaviors are NOT our fault). But...wanna know what boundaries CAN do?

Before we know our boundaries, it's soooo easy for compassionate-hearted people to get lost and confused in toxic relational dynamics.

We'll often try a million different things to try to get them to stop being so hurtful, too....all of which rarely seem to help.

😵‍💫 We'll explain and explain and explain (as if it was a matter of intellectual understanding or mental assent)...

🥺 We'll cry and beg and plead for them to change (as if it was a matter of them caring about how we feel).

🫥 We'll exhaustedly accept their poor treatment as our normal and start walking on eggshells, silencing our voice, and trying not to rock the boat (since it's just easier all the way around to not put up a fight).

Ugh. No matter what we choose, they keep doing what they're doing, the toxic dynamic seems to win, and we can't figure out how to stop participating in it.

Until we discover our innate boundaries, that is.

As we step into the beautiful way of becoming boundaried, things begin to change.

Because becoming boundaried is a way of being that is filled with life and love, brimming with our sparkling innate self-worth.

And from that place, accepting their poor treatment is...not acceptable.

We (safely) don't have to keep participating in the toxic dynamic because...we can't.

Not anymore.

We leave the old playing field altogether, because that's not how we play.

They may respond well to our loving pro-relational boundaried shift and change (it happens more often than you'd think!), or they may choose not to change, but one thing is certain.

The old toxic dynamic is no longer an option for us.

That's a boundary.

12/12/2023

https://www.gottman.com/blog/manage-conflict-repair-and-de-escalate/

12/10/2023

Jackie, 31, attracts men that subconsciously want to be mothered.

She grew up watching her parents in a love-less marriage. They rarely fought and they didn’t disrespect each other. But she never got to see how a relationship is actually nurtured. She never saw two people meeting each other’s needs. From a young age (like most children from love-less marriage) she had fantasy attachments. She would meet someone and fall head over heels. They were perfect— and all she could do was try to be worthy.

“My picker is off,” she tells friends. Most of the men she dates are charming but deceptive. Mysterious but emotionally unavailable. And her impulse is to love them harder. To over-understand where they’re coming from. Even when her last boyfriend was caught in an emotional affair at work, she found herself trying to comfort him. He sobbed and talked about how broken and sorry he was. She wasn’t even aware that even in that moment, it was all about him.

Jackie isn’t yet aware that her fierce loyalty and ability to stick it out with men who don’t give back is a learned behavior. She hasn’t yet connected that watching her mother get breadcrumbs of love from her father shifted her perception of love.

Codependency has her believing she has to give everything to be loved. And that when she doesn’t get that love back, it’s because she doesn’t deserve it.

A story she will one day unlearn

12/07/2023

❤️