Brittany O'Brien, MA, LPC

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Brittany O'Brien, MA, LPC

My name is Brittany O'Brien, MA.

I am a licensed professional counselor (LPC) serving Hampton Roads and, virtually, the state of Virginia specializing in mood disorders, eating disorders, perinatal & postpartum mood/anxiety disorders, and couples work.

02/12/2022

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13/11/2022

Knowledge of self is essential. Endless self analysis is not.

Knowing ourselves well enough to know when to move beyond our internal headspace is therapeutic.

This is a significant internal boundary that has the power to build a strong sense of self-trust and safety within.

And these are building blocks to emotional well-being.

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09/11/2022

So often in a therapy context people come seeking interventions, skills, tools, answers for their feelings… but are resistant to making changes to environmental or situational factors that continue to feed and give life to the emotional distress that they want resolved.

All of the self help, the tools, the skills, the empathy, hours of therapy and medication management will only go so far if you are unwilling to make changes to the parts of your life that continue to FEED your emotional pain, dysregulation, or distress.

Change is hard. It is scary. Change is willingly moving into uncharted territory and that does not necessarily sit well with the most primitive parts of our brain and nervous system.

But implementing methods of healing while remaining in a situation that inflicts pain is like trying to clean yourself while sitting in a pile of mud.

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02/11/2022

The irony is this …

Feeling guilty for experiencing a stereotypically negative emotion like sadness or anger is a protective mechanism.

We might feel defensive because we perceive the core emotion as socially unacceptable or we might feel personally uncomfortable with those particular feelings.

But this guilt can compound the core emotion or cause dysregulation/internal conflict, ultimately prolonging the process of processing the core feelings.

Give yourself permission to feel what you feel. It is significantly less painful to accept what you are emotionally experiencing in a given moment than to meet it with resistance.

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01/11/2022

Feeling touched out? 👆🏽✨

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01/11/2022

Anger is not inherently bad. How we respond to anger is what distinguishes destructive rage from productive anger.

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01/11/2022

There is room for you.

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29/10/2022

Visualization can be a powerful tool to decrease apprehension or resistance when confronting hard emotions.

Feelings like anger and sadness can feel intimidating for many. This intimidation of fear is what we call a meta-emotion or a feeling about a feeling.

This fear most often leads to a form of rejection or suppression of the core emotion at hand. And when this occurs, we are unable to process or transform this energy through the body and it often manifests or is expressed in unconscious ways.

This goal of this visualization is to learn to approach hard emotions in a way that decreases this discomfort. Think of it as befriending your feeling.

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28/10/2022

For when you feel S T U C K …

Practice witnessing meta-emotions. Sometimes we can become so preoccupied by the feeling we have about our feelings, that we don’t actually feel the initial feeling 🙃

Phew.

Sometimes meta-emotions are a reflection of bias, judgment, or discomfort with the core emotion at hand. So before immersing yourself in whatever you are feeling, enhance your sense of safety.

You can do this by listening to calming music, grounding to the here & now with a hand to the heart and feet firmly on the ground, tuning into your breath, or reminding yourself verbally - “I am safe.”

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28/10/2022

The preoccupation with chasing love or chasing unavailable love is so often a symptom of an anxious attachment style and a strained relationship with the self.

Processing harmful relationship patterns requires us to examine the relationship we have to the self in order to identify the function of unconsciously seeking out such relationship patterns. It does serve a purpose.

When we do this we can tend to whatever hurts are acting as a driving force, in a way that enables us to lead our emotions rather than allowing our emotions to lead us.

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28/10/2022

Turning TOWARDS harder parts of ourself with compassion removes the element of judgment, condemnation, and criticism.

This allows us to step into these difficulties in a way that feels ✨safe.✨ And in this safety, we can actually practice more accountability and responsibility, than without a compassionate approach.

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Address

Opening Hours

Monday	09:00 - 17:30
Wednesday	09:00 - 17:30
Friday	12:00 - 05:00

Telephone

+17575241821

Website

http://obrienpsyc.com/

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02/12/2022

13/11/2022

09/11/2022

02/11/2022

01/11/2022

01/11/2022

01/11/2022

29/10/2022

28/10/2022

28/10/2022

28/10/2022

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