Do you get overwhelmed by your emotions and have a hard time calming yourself? Do you feel numb and dissociated? Do you have trauma responses that lead you to get stuck in your memories of the past? If so, here are ten ideas for ways to ground yourself. Sing one of your favorite songs. Pick…
Category Archives: Depression and Anxiety
Developing A Supportive Community
Therapists like me provide a lot of support to clients. But, in my opinion, support from a therapist is not enough to create the kind of meaningful, peaceful, connected, vibrant life that most of us want. Even support from a therapy group is not enough. We need more. We need community. A supportive community is…
Stress Management
Many people come to therapy wanting to deal with stress better. There are many articles out there about stress management — but not a lot which have a picture of two guys with bowling balls. Therefore, I felt it was necessary to share my perspective on the topic. There are two categories of stress: Externally…
How to Ground Yourself
For trauma survivors and anyone else who is troubled by anxiety or panic, grounding skills are important. In the midst of feeling panicked or having a flashback or other trauma response, being able to ground yourself and reduce your anxiety can help you feel more in control and less crazy. Grounding is not complicated. Here…
Coping With Anxiety
When we are anxious, often our instincts tell us to do whatever we need to do to escape the anxiety. Anxiety is so uncomfortable that people will go to great lengths to stop feeling it. Sometimes this kind of avoidance of anxious feelings is necessary — during some phases of trauma work, when feeling anxious…
Support For People Who Are Depressed
Everyone (including me) always tells depressed people to “get support.” The reality is that when people are depressed, talking to other people about it is sometimes the last thing they want to do. So when someone says, “Get some support!” the depressed person might be thinking, “Support, right. Like that will help. What I need…
The Woman, The Bear And The River
There once was a woman who lived in the forest near a large river. She loved to walk in the forest and along the riverbank. Sometimes she enjoyed taking a swim in the cool, clear water. One day, the woman was walking by the river when she heard a loud growl. She turned around and…
What Brings You Joy?
I think a lot of us go through our daily lives just trying to keep up and not feel bad. We spend so much energy trying to ward off the negative feelings, the sense of failure, the anxiety, and the pain. It’s understandable that we want to avoid pain, even if it isn’t possible. Instead…
Coping With Depression
Depression feels awful. It’s hard for people who have never been clinically depressed to understand how bad it really feels. There are several different kinds of depression. In this post, I’m going to talk about Major Depressive Disorder. If you have Major Depressive Disorder, you probably know you are depressed. Depression is disabling for you…
