Coping with PTSD Symptoms: Tired of Feeling Emotionally Flat or Exhausted?

Spring is here, and many people experience an increased sense of rejuvenation and hope.

For others, the season is a reminder of what is missing in their lives. Despite the lengthening days and the flowering trees, there remains a sense of emptiness.

Perhaps, despite your best intentions, you can’t muster the energy for the creative projects or invigorating activities that used to bring you joy.

If this how it is for you, you are not alone.

Suffering emotional exhaustion, and living with a lack of joy are common consequences of trauma, and some of the most frequent symptoms of PTSD.

It doesn’t seem fair that in addition to having experienced hardship, a person living through trauma should also experience a diminished zest for life. Nonetheless, that is often how it is.

There are two big reasons why trauma seems to affects people in this way:

1.     Many try to cope with the feelings of hopelessness, grief, terror and shame by stuffing them down or locking them away.

Unfortunately,  we can’t choose which emotions to suppress. Along with keeping all those difficult emotions at bay, we also shut away joy, creativity, connectedness and courage

 2.  For some, the very nature of the trauma taught them that hope, joy and creativity are  dangerous.

Perhaps you were harmed worse when you showed initiative, seemed more alive, were compassionate to someone else, or fought back.

If one or both of these reasons seem to fit, you may feel at a loss for what to do.

Reclaiming your emotional life:

The key is in taking small steps to restore your emotional life. 

Accept where you are:

A good way to begin is by acknowledging your ambivalence. On the one hand, you want to be able to feel positive emotions, but on the other hand, you may be scared of your difficult feelings. Take some time to write about that dilemma. Simply putting words to this conflict may change things. 

See if you can access a sense of compassion and appreciation toward the fear-- after all it is trying to protect you from further hurt. 

Notice the beauty of nature:

If we were hurt by people, nature is often a source of solace and calm. Take some time, every day even if it is just for a minute, to notice the beauty around you. The sunset, the emerging flowers, the quality of the light. Let that awareness settle into you, soothe you.

Allow yourself to be moved, even a little bit, by this beauty. It can’t hurt you.

Engage in small creative or nourishing activities:

Do a small part of an activity that you used to enjoy.

For instance, if you would like to paint, but feel blocked, perhaps spend some time mixing paints or putting some colours on paper. If you liked to cook, maybe prepare a simple salad. If you liked to hike, maybe go for a short walk in the park. Notice, as you are doing it, that this is now. You are ok. Breathe. 

Don’t place expectations on yourself to do more, just be with what is.

When to seek help

For some, engaging in these kinds of gentle activities jump starts their emotional life, and they feel increasingly alive and engaged.

For others, the suggestions may seem like mumbo-jumbo,  or trying them out feels overwhelming, or makes no difference.

If this is your situation, it does not mean that you are flawed in any way. It simply means that you have some very good reasons for needing to keep emotions in check.  This can be the time to seek help-- to experience what trauma treatment can do for you.

Together with a good PTSD therapist, you can gently unpack those reasons, and start to feel safe with all of your emotions, no matter how challenging this may feel now.

I invite you to check out the informative blogs and videos, interesting self tests, and other tools on my website (www.oceansidetherapy.ca). When you are ready, please contact me. I look forward to hearing from you! 

The Hidden Cause of PTSD: Shame That Keeps You Feeling Stuck, Alone and Hopeless

Shame is the feeling that you are fundamentally flawed in some way. That you are worthless, not deserving of love, kindness, and care.

Have you ever felt that way?

Most of us get hijacked by “shame attacks” from time to time. 

 Sometimes the trigger is clear is to us, whereas at other times we are completely blindsided by burning embarrassment, or intense feelings of  being bad.

If you have experienced trauma in your life, odds are that the feeling of shame is familiar to you.  It is often the hidden cause of the most persistent symptoms of PTSD and complex trauma. 

Maybe you are plagued by regret. You've made some mistakes, and instead of thinking "ok, I'll make amends" or "I'll do better from now on" you become mired in in shame, feeling that you are "always bad",  "so stupid" or other derogatory ideas about yourself. 

Perhaps shame will overtake you when you are the centre of attention such as talking in front of a crowd of people, or standing up for something you believe in.  

 Or, it may happen when someone close to you looks at you with a certain intensity. Often, as you are feeling close to someone, these feelings of not deserving love or care can get very strong.

Frequently,  you may get flooded with feelings of shame if someone in authority, such as your boss, or someone you really respect, treats you with indifference, disregard or contempt.

Surprisingly,  reaching for your cherished goals or  most valued dreams tend to really make shame rear its head.

Here's the surprising idea--- no matter how horrible shame feels, it is not your enemy. However strange it may sound, your feelings of shame are most likely trying to protect you.

My feelings of worthlessness are protecting me?

Let me explain. 

Likely, you learned to feel shame as a very young child.  Those feelings were born in circumstances where you weren’t treated as you should.  But, you couldn’t afford to recognize that the people around you were unsafe, or didn’t protect you. 

So, instead, you shouldered the blame for your maltreatment.  This probably was not a  conscious thought, but rather a deeply ingrained feeling about being bad and not deserving kindness.

That was very useful at the time. It kept you feeling safer, and more connected in situations that otherwise would have been intolerable.  If you feel that “bad things happened to me because I’m bad” then that keeps a glimmer of hope alive. There remained the possibility that you could change—become “good”.

Frozen in time

Unfortunately, those feelings of shame are now frozen in time.  They have not adjusted for the facts that you are now grown up, you have many more resources available to you, and you have many more ways of protecting yourself.

So, they are still protecting you, continually scanning for situations where you may risk hurt, dismissal, or disregard. 

That’s why, when you get close to friend or a lover, shame comes in. “Better feel you don’t deserve to be loved” it says, “ because he might hurt you! Better not get close! “

Or, when your boss treats you poorly, shame tells you “ Feel worthless now. It is safer than standing up for yourself, or not accepting his judgements about  your work”.

Especially,  shames threatens to engulf you when you start to do what is really good for you, what would really help you.  “Don’t dare to think that you deserve good things”, it says. “You wanted to be seen and valued when you were little, and look how hurt you got. Don’t go there again”.

Ok. So how do I deal with this?

The key in reducing the amount of time shame has a hold on you is in recognizing those two things:

1)   shame came into your life to protect you

2)   it is now frozen in time, acting as if your circumstances haven’t changed.

To both reduce the shame, and “unthaw it”, allow yourself to recognize what it was like for you as a child.

Possible strategies include: 

·   Look at small children, see their innocence and vulnerability. Recognize that you were that innocent and vulnerable too. Allow that recognition to enter into your being, and feel whatever feelings that come along with that (rage, sadness, hurt, despair, etc)

·   Write a letter to your hurt little child, telling her/him how much you love him/her, and how you are her for him/her now. Let the hurt child answer back. Start a dialogue.

·   In your imagination, meet your child in the time/place where he/she is frozen and offer unconditional love. 

·   Get a sense of where this hurt little child part lives in your body, and place a hand on that location, offering support and care. 

When to get help?

If your shame is not too strong,  you may be able to use those strategies on your own.  If you do, you’’ll probably find them very helpful.

However, if your shame is very strong, because the maltreatment you experienced was intense or prolonged, you will likely need some help. 

This is not because you are flawed. Rather it is because you lived through hard times of such magnitude that shame had to be real strong to protect you as best it could.

I am a bit of a shame expert, and have helped many people recover from crippling shame. They have regained their joy for life. So, when you are ready, please contact me at 250 515 2123 or use the pop-up box for a free consultation. I would be delighted to help you regain the good life you deserve!

Click here for more information on PTSD Therapy.

I Have PTSD. What Does that Mean? ... And What Can I Do To Recover?

In some ways it can feel like a relief to have a name for what is going on for you.

But, in other ways, being given the PTSD label may make you feel like this is something permanent. 

Perhaps you worry that you can’t recover.  

I’m here to tell you that there’s lots of hope. 

You may feel you are going nuts, but actually your brain doing its best to cope with the overwhelming experiences that happened to you.

Good PTSD treatment can help your brain do that better, so that your life can go back to normal.

A good first step on your healing journey is to understand why you have the symptoms you have.

PTSD Symptoms Explained:

1. Re-experiencing the traumatic event through flashbacks or nightmares:

This is the way your brain has for dealing with problems: it keeps bringing them up so you can think about them, re-examine them and solve them.

That’s why you mind might be racing at night, and why it may be hard to get to sleep or stay asleep.

The problem is that that traumatic memories are too overwhelming—flashbacks and nightmares don’t help you heal.

2. Re-experiencing the trauma when triggered,  feeling hyper-vigilant,  and getting startled easily:

Because what happened to you was so overwhelming, your brain wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So, it places these trauma memories in a “red alert” file, keeping them permanently alive. 

This means that your brain is all the time scanning for situations that are a little bit similar to the trauma. That can put you on hyper-alert, make you startle easily, and and may lead you to getting triggered by small things.

3. Trying to avoid reminders of the trauma:

Getting triggered and having flashbacks can be very distressing, so it makes sense that your system (body, mind, senses, and emotions) want to try to avoid any reminders of the trauma.

The trouble is that this may make your life feel constrained and stunted.

4. Feeling disconnected, listless, disinterested and numb:

Trying to keep the trauma memories bottled up takes a lot of energy.

This is the energy that you normally would have available for the people you love and the activities you care about, but now that energy is used up.

5. Feeling like you don’t have a future: It is common for people who have experienced trauma to feel like they won’t live long, won’t get married, have children, have a career.

This is your mind’s way of trying to protect you—if you don’t expect much, you won’t get as hurt again.

6. Difficulty concentrating:

Because a big part of your mind is focused on the trauma, and making sure it doesn’t happen again, it may be really hard to focus on anything else.

7. Feeling irritable or angry outbursts: 

In order to survive the trauma, your brain released neuro-chemicals into your system to allow you fight, flee or freeze. 

When these neuro-chemicals keep circulating in your body, you feel irritable or angry.

How PTSD Treatment Helps:

The key to effective PTSD therapy is to calm down your stress response system, so your brain and body stops acting as if the traumatic events are about happen again.  

When your stress response is no longer on hyper-alert, your entire system relaxes.

The stress neuro-chemicals stop pumping through your body. Your flashbacks and nightmares stop, your irritability and anger diminish, your interest and zest for life returns, and you can envision a positive future again.

The most effective way to achieve this is to move the trauma memories from the “red alert file” to “just some bad things that happened in the past”. Good PTSD therapy can help you to do this.

That may sound scary, because the last thing you probably want to do is to re-live those memories. 

Please know that there is a huge difference between the reliving your trauma in your flashbacks and nightmares, and the re-processing that occurs in skilled trauma therapy.

Experienced trauma therapists know how to pace therapy just right so you truly are not overwhelmed, but rather can approach those hurtful moments from a place of strength, courage and safety. 

I invite you to look at the trauma and PTSD resources on my website.  When you are ready, call me or use the pop-up box to schedule a free consult.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Should I Have Contact With Family Members Who Were Abusive?

I am writing this a few days before Christmas. This is the time we are supposed to spend time with loved ones. Typically that means our family and our friends.

But what do you do about contact with family if your parents or other family members maltreated you?

For many people this is a complex issue. Often, you’ll have lots of mixed feelings about it. 

One the one hand, you may have lots of reasons why you want to spend time with your family.

You may crave that close family feeling--- especially if you didn’t have it growing up.

You have probably also been told you need to forgive to move on. To you, that may mean spending time with those who maltreated you.

You may care deeply about the person who maltreated you, or the person who didn’t protect you. You may want to show them the kindness you didn’t receive.

There are probably also other family members who you want to spend time with, and you may feel that you have to “take the bad with the good”.

On the other hand, there may be other reasons why you want to stay away.

It is easy to fall into a family pattern of silence and denial. You may be invited to pretend the abuse didn’t happen, or wasn’t “very serious”.  That kind of minimizing can be very hurtful to you.

You may also feel very hurt and angry, and have a hard time tolerating being around denial, and perhaps even ongoing abusive behaviours.

It is also likely that spending any prolonged time in an unhealthy family system triggers you back into earlier behaviours. You may start to act in ways you don’t like and say things you’ll regret.

Many  adult survivors of childhood abuse talk about how long it takes to recover from family visits.

So, how do you balance all these conflicting feelings and thoughts? How do you decide what kind of family interaction is best for you?

Deciding How Much Contact to Have

Ultimately, no one can decide how much contact you should have. That choice is yours to make.  Here are some questions that can help you sort it out.

First, is it safe?

Is your family free of abuse now?  If you bring your children to see their extended family, are you sure they are safe?  Do you get belittled, put down, or demeaned when you are with family? Do others get treated poorly?

Do you start to engage in harmful behaviours, such as alcohol or substance misuse?

If it doesn’t seem safe---for you or others--- then it is almost always best to not go.  The harm to you will likely overshadow any benefit.

Second, do you feel good after the visit?

Do you feel refreshed and relaxed, reflecting back on the enjoyable time you had? Or, do you feel tense and irritable? Or maybe you feel tired, spaced out, depressed or anxious?

If the visit is causes you distress, it may be a good idea to at least minimize the time you spend with your family.  Instead of going for a three-day visit, maybe a short lunch or dinner will suffice.

Third, how is your family climate?

Have the people who maltreated you taken full and genuine responsibility for their behaviour? Have they made amends? Have they begun their own healing journey? Are you able to have honest discussions about your feelings and experiences now?

If you are fortunate enough to have this kind of family, visits are likely to be positive, supportive, and helpful. All of us make mistakes. The main things are to take responsibility and do the hard work to change.

If your family is no longer overtly abusive, but there are all kinds of under-currents about blame and denial, you may want to consider avoiding or minimizing contact.

Honour Yourself

Please know that is totally ok to choose to not spend time with your family. It is also ok to limit the time to what works for you.  When you were little, you didn’t have choice in what happened to you. Now, you can reclaim that control.

Also, planning time for self-care afterwards is important. This may include therapy, time with supportive friends, time in nature, or something else that reinforces who you are today.

If you are struggling with making good decisions about your family relationships, I’m here to help. Please call me or use the pop-up box to book a free consult.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Gratitude: The Great Antidote to Stress

Does it feel you are continually rushing from one thing to the next?

Yet, despite your hurry and busyness, does your stress just seem to increase?

Maybe it even feels like you can never get on top of all there is to do, no matter how hard you try.

I’m sure you’ve heard stress gurus talking about needing to slow down,  and maybe even re-think your priorities.  

But, you wonder how to do that with the mountain of tasks before you, and so many people depending on you.  It seems you don’t have time for stress management.

You’ve probably also been told that you need to focus only on those things that are important, and that you can control.

The big trouble with prolonged stress is that it becomes increasingly difficult to sort out what things you can control, what is important, and what you could actually let go of.

That’s because of the neuro-chemicals released into your system when you are super-stressed.

The Fight-Flight-Freeze Response

When you experience stress, the body releases a cascade of neuro-chemicals into your system. The purpose of those chemicals is to help you respond faster, think clearer, and be physically stronger.

That works really well when the stress is short term, and especially if you are dealing with a short-term physical threat, like escaping a saber-tooth tiger.

The trouble is that today pretty much all the stress we experience is long-term and almost entirely emotional or psychological.

You are probably stressed because there are too many things to do, and lots of complex relationships and situations to manage.  You are not stressed because you are in actual physical danger.

So, with this kind of chronic stress, the neuro-chemicals backfire. You end up feeling tired, sluggish and muddle-headed.

Somehow, you need to find the off switch—a way to remind your body to stop making more stress chemicals.

The Power of Gratitude

Think about it--- most times when you are stressed there is a “not enough” tape playing in the your head. 

That tape insists you are not good enough, you are not doing enough, there isn’t enough time, you don’t have enough money, you are not good looking enough, and so on.

Gratitude is the gentle of opposite of “not enough”.  And, interestingly, even just a small amount of gratitude might be enough to give your system the break it needs.

A little bit of gratitude may give you that breather that allows you to regain a bit of serenity, a bit of calm, a bit of relief.

Practicing Gratitude

Your gratitude practice can be super simple. All it involves is stopping, for a few seconds, to acknowledge the things you are grateful for.

Some people use a gratitude diary. Others say what they are grateful for out loud. Some tell another person or a spiritual being, while others simply think about the things they are grateful for.  How you express your gratitude matters less than the act of doing it.

You can be grateful for the gentle rain, the pretty trees, the sunshine, your child’s smile, your comfortable home.  Let yourself, for that short time period, feel the peace that comes with truly appreciating something.

If you can take these “gratitude breaks” a few times a day, within a few days you will probably find yourself feeling less rushed, and more “enough”.

When To Seek Help

For some, engaging in this kind of gratitude practice is easy and intuitive.  Because they are able to do it, their stress levels go down, and they feel more at ease.

For others, this does not make a lot of sense. You may feel so stressed that gratitude feels like a meaningless phrase. There may be so many hard experiences and bad moments fuelling the “not enough” tape that you don’t know how to turn it down enough to get a breather.

If this is what is happening for you, it may be a time to get some help.  Even though it may not feel possible right now, stress therapy can help you find lasting contentment and relief.

Feel free to look at all the great stress reduction resources on my website.  When you  are ready, call me or use the pop-up box to schedule a free consult.

I look forward to hearing from you!

I've made mistakes with my kids. How do I repair our relationship?

Maybe you’ve yelled at your children when you should have been calm.

Perhaps you brushed them aside when you should have paid attention to them. 

You might have been so busy, or so caught up in your own stuff, that you missed important parts of your child’s life.

Don’t worry; all of us make mistakes as parents.

This does not need to harm your relationship with your kids. In fact, your relationship with your children is becomes better when you repair your mistakes well.

Relationship repair 101

There are four parts to good relationship repair:

1.     Take full responsibility for your mistake

2.     Acknowledge how you hurt your child.

3.     Say what you will do differently from now on.

4.     Do what you said you’d do.

Let’s go over each one:

Take full responsibility for your mistake:

This means that you hold yourself responsible for your behaviour, for your error.

For instance, imagine that you yelled at your child.  When you take full responsibility for your mistake you say something like “I am so sorry I yelled at you then. It is not ok to yell like that, and I shouldn’t have done it”. 

You don’t get to take back some of your responsibility by having an angry or dismissive tone of voice. Wait to apologize until you are calm and actually feel contrite. 

Also, you don’t get to diminish your responsibility by adding a “but” like “but, you were really annoying” or “I’ve been really stressed lately”.

Any qualifiers like that (no matter how truthful they feel to you) take away from a lot from your apology.  Don’t do it.

Acknowledge how you hurt your child:

In this part of the relationship repair, it is your job to imagine how what you did affected your child, and let her know that you understand how she’s been hurt.

So, in the example of you having yelled at your child, you might say something like: “I imagine it was really scary for you when I got mad like that.  Maybe you felt unsafe and maybe even wondered if you are bad kid?”

Often parents skip this part of the relationship repair because they feel it is hard to share this kind of vulnerability with their kids.  Or, perhaps you are not sure you understand how your child felt in the moment you made your mistake.

The key is to show that you honestly want to understand what is going on for your child, and then listen to their response.

Say what you will do differently from now on:

Next, you need to tell your kid what you will change, so you don’t make that mistake again. 

Do not promise the moon, but instead be honest and realistic.

So, don’t say something like “ I promise I’ll never yell at you again”.  Your child will not believe that, and you likely won’t be able to live up to it. These kinds of empty promises will hurt your relationship. 

Instead say what is true for you.

It may be something like “I can have pretty short fuse at times. I am working on that, and figuring out ways to calm myself down faster.  In the future, when I notice myself getting too agitated, I’ll take a time out. I’ll take some deep breaths, and think about something positive. I may not get it perfect at first, but I'm working on it”

You can invite your child to join you in that calming activity, but make it clear that she is not responsible for your emotional state.

Do what you say:

Empty promises are very harmful to your relationship.  Do not say you will do something that you can’t deliver on, and make sure that you do what you said.

When to get help:

There may be times when you are not able to do this kind of relationship repair.

Maybe you are not able to apologize, because you feel too angry or hurt. That is a time you may need some help in sorting out what is going on for you.

Perhaps you can’t figure out what your child might be feeling. Some people have a hard time entering into the emotional world of others, and this could be a good time to get some help to build skills in this area.

You may have done something serious, and feel really ashamed about it. Perhaps this shame is keeping you from taking responsibility, and you’d prefer to just avoid the whole thing. 

This is exactly the time that relationship repair is essential. Therapy can be incredibly successful in helping you overcome your shame so you can do what you need to do.

Another time to get some help is if you are not able to follow through on what you said you’d do.  Therapy can be very helpful in resolving your barriers to being consistent.

Please take your time to look at the resources on my website, and when you are ready, I invite you to contact me, so we can figure out how I can best help you. I look forward to hearing from you!

Living with Intense Loneliness: Elizabeth's Story

Do you assume that people won’t like you? Then, thinking that you are not good enough, do you isolate yourself, and end up feeling lonely?

Maybe you’ve tried to combat this pattern by forcing yourself into social situations? And, then, when you are in these social situations, do you feel awkward or phony?

Or perhaps, because you feel so badly about yourself, you are surrounded by people who are “takers”?  

These situations can leave you feeling very alone. Unseen, unappreciated, and unvalued.

This is a tough place to be.

Research tells us that all of us have a strong need to be valued, seen and appreciated. When you don’t receive this, the most vital part of you curls up and goes into hiding.

Let me tell you about Elizabeth*, and what she did to turn her life around.

Elizabeth’s Story

Elizabeth had felt that she wasn’t pretty enough, smart enough or worthy of attention most of her life. 

She had been told, over and over again by her parents, that the “good life “ was “not for people like her”. The best she could expect was to get by, and she’d be “lucky to  find anyone who’d marry her”.

It wasn’t that her parents wished her ill, but they were  brash and extrovert by nature. Consequently, they were baffled by Elizabeth’s sensitivity and introvert tendencies.

They thought that someone with her traits would be crushed by the “real world” and sought to protect her by telling her to reduce her expectation and her reach.

And it worked. Elizabeth made her life small.

She had a job she didn’t really like, doing something she didn’t care about, had friends that she---when she was honest with herself—found intensely boring.  

She had a brash, extrovert boyfriend who really didn’t pay attention to her needs, wants or interests.  Often, Elizabeth felt like his unpaid maid rather than a life partner.

Her loneliness was intense,  especially in the small hours of the night.

Sometimes,  positive change takes the guise of disaster. So it was for Elizabeth.

In the course of few hours two devastating things happened to her. She lost her job, and coming home early, she found her boyfriend in bed with another woman.

She felt like a complete failure.  All she wanted to do was to crawl into bed, hide under the covers, and stay there forever. 

But, rather than completely giving into her feelings of worthlessness, she reached out for help.

The Journey to Feeling Connected

Elizabeth came into therapy expecting that I would give her some kind of pep-talk, try to reason her out of her low self-esteem, and then get frustrated when she failed to “recover”.

Instead, we spent time in discovery, finding out about all the different aspects of Elizabeth.  Her interests, her thoughts, her wishes, and her dreams. At first it was hard for her to articulate these things, because she was not used to being heard.

Over time, she discovered that the low self-esteem was just a part of her.

She also had many other parts, such as creativity, joy, anger, determination, a great sense of humour, and a zest for life.

Most surprisingly, she connected to an inner well-spring of confidence and calm, which became her source of courage and energy as she moved forward.

She discovered an interest and aptitude for writing, and eventually found work as a blogger. She loved it!

Even more, she re-awakened her love of animals, volunteered at the local animal shelter, and adopted two small dogs who had experienced much abuse.  Learning how to get them to trust again made her feel of real worth, and she made friends with similar interests and values. 

They were not boring at all.

There were lots of difficult steps, such as grieving the limited relationship with her parents and reducing her contact with them.

Within 8 months, Elizabeth didn’t feel alone anymore. She was connected to friends who cared about her and animals who loved her. Her life felt full of meaning and worth. 

When to get help

Often the first step to changing ingrained patterns is to take one small step into something unfamiliar, something that you actually want.

For some, that is not too difficult, whereas for others, that’s when the low self-esteem messages become very loud.  If that is what happens to you, this may be a good time to get some help.

Otherwise, it is possible that your attempts to make changes will be sabotaged by your low self-esteem. 

Therapy can help stop that self-sabotage, and create lasting improvements, like it did for Elizabeth.

When you are ready, I invite you to call me at 250 515 2123 or contact me through the pop-up box on my website.  I look forward to hearing from yo

* Elizabeth is a pseudonym, and the details have been modified for privacy.

PTSD Treatment and Trauma Therapy: How Long Does It Take to Heal?

You are probably not surprised to learn the short answer is “depends”.Still, it makes sense that you’d like to have some kind of ballpark answer. As well, once you know something about what the duration depends on, you’ll have a clearer idea of where you fit in.It may also help you to know that most people who enter PTSD treatment do some work, and then go off to experience life with their new sense of relief and confidence.Some time later, they may re-enter trauma therapy because new issues have come up, or they want to deepen the gains they made earlier.

When Therapy Can Be Quick:

Trauma therapy can be very quick if you experienced a single incident trauma, such as a car-accident.  For many clients, the impact of these kinds of experiences can resolve in just a few sessions.Things that complicate the recovery from single incident trauma are lack of supportive people your life or the one-time trauma is connected to other traumas, or if you are a person who reacts strongly to distressing events.Therapy can also be fast if the trauma you experienced was more than a one-time incident, but relatively minor, and you received effective support immediately after the trauma.  Relatively minor traumas can include bullying, divorce, and non-contact sexual abuse by a stranger.A third way that trauma therapy can be speedy is if the goal you want to reach is limited. For instance, if your only goal through trauma therapy is to sleep better, it is possible to achieve that in a short period of time.  Again, this depends on what the trouble with sleep is connected to.  If you have trouble sleeping today because your safety depended on staying awake, then until you feel safe today, that trouble will likely remain. If you have trouble sleeping because your mind is racing, that may be faster to curtail.Recovery can also be speeded up if you have a strong support system today, such as trusted, caring friends or a supportive life-partner.  If you have a healthy, positive spirituality, that can also be a powerful aid in your healing journey. As well, if you are able to engage in good self-care, such as eating well, sleeping enough, and spending lots of time in nature, these will help speed up the benefits of therapy.

When Therapy Can Take Longer:

Trauma therapy often takes longer if you experienced multiple instances of maltreatment. This includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and chronic physical or emotional neglect.If you were very vulnerable when the maltreatment happened, the harm will likely have gone deeper. Consequently, the younger you were, the greater the likelihood that therapy will take longer.Also, if the person who hurt you was someone you were supposed to be able to trust, the harm is intensified. This includes a parent, step-parent, caregiver, a teacher, or other adult in a position of trust.  These kinds of “betrayal traumas” typically take time to recover from.Similarly, healing can take longer if someone was supposed to protect you and failed to do so.  Or, when you disclosed the abuse, the response was poor.  If you were blamed or not believed, recovery may take time.

How Long is “Longer”?

In many Aboriginal cultures, there is a custom of cutting off one’s hair when faced with a major loss such as the death of a spouse.  Part of the purpose of this ritual is to help mark the time needed to recover.  Once the hair has grown back out, the person is more likely able to move on.  That length of time is about two years.There is a similar time-line for deep recovery from significant trauma. These days trauma specialists know how to help people heal as quickly as possible. As a result, people can complete the bulk of their healing journey in a shorter time period.Although healing is a life-long journey for many, most don’t work with a therapist for extended periods.  After a while, you re-gain enough of your own healing resources to go it alone, with the natural supports available to you.My goal is to help you recover as quickly as is feasible, and to get you to a place where you no longer need a therapist to support you as fast as possible.Please explore the other great materials on my website. When you are ready, I invite you to call me at 250-515-2123 or use the pop-up box to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. It would be my great pleasure to support you on your healing journey!

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Shame and Your Inner Critic: Making Friends with Your Internal Bullies

Do you have a voice inside telling you that you are you not good enough, not smart enough, not capable enough, not pretty enough or not valuable enough?That is your inner critic.We all have a voice like that. For some, that voice is an occasional quiet whisper, whereas for others it is a constant roar, ceaselessly berating them.The natural instinct is to do whatever you can to shut that voice up, or at least to turn down the volume. This has a lot to do with why so many people eat too much, shop too much, drink too much, work too much, or engage in a multitude of other excesses.The unfortunate thing is that, in the long run, pushing something away doesn’t work. The more we deny something, the stronger it tends to get.This is the principle in operation when you start to desperately crave chocolate cake after forbidding yourself to eat it. However hard and counter-intuitive it may seem, it is more effective in the long run to get comfortable with feeling the urge, without needing to eat the chocolate cake.So it is with our inner critic. We need to get to know it, find out why it does what it does, and maybe even make friends with it.

The Two Volumes of the Inner Critic

The interesting thing about the inner critic is that it tends to have two volumes. If you start to listen to it, you may notice that it nags at you when you need to get day-to-day tasks done.These are the commands that tell you, “You are a lazy slob. The least you can do is clean the house”. For some, these critical thoughts are rare, while for others they are nearly continual, using shame and fear to drive you to be productive.If you pay close attention, you may also notice that the inner critic tends to get the loudest when you start to move toward the things that you really want.When you meet a person who you are genuinely drawn to, the voice suddenly starts to shout at you about how uninteresting and ugly you are. When you finally go for your dream job, the voice starts to roar that you are incapable, useless, and most definitely not good enough.Why is this so? Is it because we have these destructive parts of ourselves that want to harm us? Maybe we are all just so messed up that we actually wish ourselves ill?Perhaps there is a much more positive explanation.Research now tells us—and I’ve confirmed this time and again in my own life as well as my practice—these seemingly destructive parts of ourselves all have a positive purpose, a positive intention. No matter how strange it sounds, your inner critic is trying to help you.

It Is Trying to Help me?!?

If you are like most people, your inner critic was born when you were much younger, when you lived in a different environment and had far fewer resources available to you.Probably, that was a time when you were not really seen and not valued for who you were. Like most of us, there were not many people, if anyone, to delight in you or to genuinely share in your sorrows and joys. The discouragement of being invisible in those kinds of ways would have been overwhelming to you.So the inner critic took over.It worked to keep you small, limited and inauthentic, so your real self could not be hurt anymore. It drove you to achieve the necessary day-to-day tasks so you could still function, despite needing to remain small and limited.

Developing Self-Compassion

Tranquil woman in sunlight

If you are able to feel the truth of this positive intention of your inner critic, you will discover genuine self-compassion. You will come to appreciate the effort this part of you has sustained in an attempt to keep you as safe as possible.If you are able to stay in that compassionate, appreciative space for longer durations, you will find that your inner critic will become less and less active. Eventually, it may even transform into something overtly friendly and openly supportive.If you would like to have some help with learning how to make peace with your inner critic, I invite you to call me at 250–515–2123 or use the pop-up box to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. I look forward to hearing from you!

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Letting Go of Unrealistic Expectations: Jonathan’s Story

Jonathan* was an executive in a fast paced business, he had two pre-teen children, a wife struggling with depression, and elderly parents depending on him.Despite the heavy load of daily expectations, he felt he should also be accomplished in sports, keep abreast of world news and politics, and be a great cook.He prided himself in being better than the rest, the one who would always come out on top.He didn’t notice the large amounts of caffeine he was consuming to keep himself going, the alcohol and medication he needed to fall asleep at night, the increasing irritability and the frequent bouts of road rage.It wasn’t until his wife left him that his world started to crumble.All of a sudden, he started to question why he was working so hard. He assumed that he’d be married for life—divorce was a major sign of failure for him.Until that moment, he had not thought how harried his life was nor how much stress was affecting him.No matter how difficult, these kinds of surprising twists can serve as jolts to shift us into healthier ways of living.So it was for Jonathan, although not right away.At first, he increased the hours he was working, went through a string of young girlfriends, and even bought himself a low-slung sports car.  That too is normal.Instead of doing the necessary work to achieve substantive changes, many try to escape their lives by engaging in powerful distractions.Ultimately, after a few years of living an increasingly shallow life, Jonathan had enough. He wanted to stop being so driven. He wanted meaningful relationships, and to feel closer to his children.He decided to try therapy.

Examining the Rules of His Life

The first steps for Jonathan were to start asking different kinds of questions.What would be the unwelcome things that would happen if he stopped working so hard to be on top?  What would be difficult or frightening about having more meaningful relationships with a partner and his children?These were new and unfamiliar questions for him.These questions lead to early learning about what meant to be a man, and how it is not okay to be genuine.His answers were all about vulnerability--- the fear of being seen as a failure, as weak. Risking getting hurt.And, to his surprise, alongside this new vulnerability he also discovered the strength to tolerate these new emotions and the courage to reach for a richer life.

Discovering a New Freedom

Smiling man

Through this journey, Jonathan learned that he could count on himself.  Not the counterfeit, stiff upper lip, soldier through kind of “counting on himself” that he was used to.Instead he learned that he count on himself to respond to life with increasing and genuine confidence, calm, and curiosity. He could feel all manner of emotions without crumbling, and he learned that facing his fears honestly built compassion and a sense of connection to others.Although some people didn’t like the way he was changing he noticed others were drawn to his increasing vitality.Of course this didn’t mean that life was now smooth sailing for him. It did mean, however, that he had gained awareness and skills to face problems and challenges with authenticity and clarity.He no longer needed to rely on over-achievement and status to feel self-worth.If you can identify with parts of Jonathan’s story, please know that different choices are possible for you, too.Take your time to read the other blogs on my website, watch the webinars, and complete the quizzes. When you are ready, I invite you to call me at 250 515 2123 or use the pop-up box to schedule a free 15 minute consultation. I look forward to hearing from you!* a composite of several clients.

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Why Does Stress Make You Overeat?

• Do you crave chocolate at the end of a long day?

• Does an argument with your spouse make you reach for the potato chips?

• If you have made a major mistake, do you stuff yourself with sweet things?

• If you’ve experienced a loss, like the end of a relationship, do you search the fridge for “comfort food”?

Eating in response to emotional stressors is called, not surprisingly, stress eating.If you reach for food at moments of difficulty, you are not alone. You are also not some kind of out-of-control glutton.Instead, you are responding to a biological cue.  Your body is telling you it is running out of stress chemicals, and needs to be replenished.Let me explain.

Stress Eating is Your Body’s Attempt to Reduce the Impact of Stress

When you are under stress, your body releases chemicals into your system to be able to cope with the stress better.These chemicals are the ones that put you into “fight-flight-or freeze” mode, so you are better able to respond to the problem at hand.The trouble is, that if you experience chronic stress like many do today, eventually your body runs out of the stress chemicals.  This is a pretty desperate state for your body, as those stress chemicals are essential for survival.So, your body sends you continual signals trying to get you to replenish the stress-chemical tank.  It has probably sent thoughts to “slow down”,  “get some sleep”,  “eat healthy” and “calm down”. But, you’ve been so busy with the stress you’ve ignored most of those signals, so your body moves on to Plan B.It now sends you cravings for foods and substances that are a little similar to the stress chemicals.Foods high energy such as potato chips and greasy foods, foods high in sugar such as sweets, cakes, cookies, white bread and pasta as well as chocolate, caffeine, and alcohol become the things you crave.Your body is trying to replenish its stress chemical tank. Unfortunately, because those foods aren’t actually stress chemicals, and the tank can’t be filled that way, the cravings don’t stop, and you only achieve temporary relief from the stress, at best.In addition, because those foods are low in nutrients and high in calories, eating this way increases your stress by reducing the amount of nutrition available to your system and making you over-weight.The stress-eating pattern quickly becomes self-defeating.

How to Break the Stress-Overeating Cycle:

As you start to explore ways of responding to your stress better, there is much you can do to reduce the impact of stress.However, the most important thing is to make sure you don’t get stressed out about reducing stress.As you try out the strategies and ideas listed below, you are likely to forget and to fail.  That’s ok -- two steps forward and one step back is a sure-fire way to eventually make progress. Small gains are good.There are several steps you can take to help curb the stress-overeating cycle:1.     Identify the foods you tend to crave when you are stressed. Think back on what you tend to want to eat in moments of stress.It is important to think about this before the over-eating happens, because in the moment when you are feeling overloaded, you tend to go on “automatic pilot” and not be very conscious about what you are doing or eating.2.     Identify what actually helps reduce your stress. What are some things you do that make you feel calmer, more relaxed, and bring greater balance into your life?Often, these are things such as going for a walk in nature, spending time with supportive friends or a beloved pet, reading a good book, meditating, yoga or gardening.  It can be small things such as taking the time to light a candle, taking some deep breaths, or petting a cat.Make a list of these, so you can remember in moments of stress.3.     Learn to recognize food craving as a cue.  Over time, instead of actually eating the food you crave, you can learn to recognize this as a signal that you are overwhelmed and overloaded.Your emotional cup is empty, so you need to slow down and replenish.4.     Replace the overeating with the stress reduction activity. Little by little, stop overeating, and instead do one of the stress reduction things on your list.If you start doing this occasionally, over time you will likely use helpful stress reduction strategies more and more.

When To Get Help

Some people are able to benefit sufficiently from explanations and information to reduce their stress eating.This may be because they have lots of natural supports, or because their stressors aren’t that significant, or because they received the information just at the right time to have the change happen.Others need more than information.Perhaps you are not able to identify any workable stress reduction strategies in your life. Maybe your current stress is merely the top of the iceberg, and you’ve experienced much stress throughout your life. You may have noticed you are not able to stick with any stress reduction plan, despite your good intentions.Any of those issues are indications that you may need help to deal with your stress and patterns of stress eating.Please make use of the other great materials on my website. When you are ready, I invite you to call me at 250-515-2123 or use the pop-up box to schedule a free 15-minute consult. I look forward to hearing from you!

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Self-Compassion: Honouring Your Will to Survive

When something goes wrong, do you tend to blame yourself? Are you generous about the quirks and mishaps of your friends, but much harder on yourself?Do you take care of the needs of others while you drive yourself to the ground?People who struggle with self-compassion tend to answer yes to these kinds of questions.If you have experienced trauma, and especially if you were maltreated as a child, odds are high that you are very self-critical. Even if you intellectually know you were not to blame for the trauma, your emotional self tends to believe otherwise.It can feel very frustrating to continually bump up against this seemingly self-destructive tendency.

A New Perspective

The amazing thing is that what is actually driving your self-criticism is something life affirming and even heroic.  Let me explain.As humans, we all need to belong. Next to the need for food and shelter, that is one of our greatest needs.  That’s why children who are not touched or paid attention to enough stop growing, and some even die.Because the need to belong is so strong, we will do most anything to feel connected to others. The younger we are, the stronger this biological need.  If we are abused or not protected by trusted adults, we will blame ourselves rather than risk loosing our connection.Here’s an example to clarify what I mean:Since little Mary’s father came back from Afghanistan, he has been struggling with depression and alcoholism. When he drinks, he can become very abusive.  Today is a bad day for him and he’s been drinking since he woke up, but Mary doesn’t know that.She comes home from pre-school and eagerly wants to re-connect with her pre-war dad, the dad of her dreams. She runs up to him, hoping to get picked up and told what a beautiful princess she is. Instead, he recoils from her embrace, and yells, “Get away from me, you disgusting brat!”Mary loves her father, and she needs to believe that he is capable, trustworthy, and safe.  Because, if he is not those things, then who will care for her?So, she decides, immediately and unconsciously, that she is to blame.   A deeply hidden part of her now holds the belief that she is flawed, disgusting and therefore deserving of rejection.By believing this, she is achieving two essential goals:  by making her dad right she can maintain her connection to him, and by making his rejection her fault she creates hope that she can change enough to become lovable and worthy of care.Think about the sheer, desperate heroism of this little girl. Faced with an impossible situation and an untenable choice, she does the best she can.She picks up the crippling burdens of self-criticism and self-hatred to preserve her relationship with the father she loves with all her heart. How can you not have compassion for her?Here’s the key point---your self-criticism served the same purpose.At some point in your life, you were forced to make the same “no-choice” choice as little Mary.  You had to decide to be harsh toward yourself to preserve connection, hope and the possibility of safety.Is it not time to start appreciating what you had to do to make the best of a very bad situation?

How Do I Learn to be Kinder to Myself?

The key to self-compassion is to allow yourself to feel empathy for your most wounded parts, and the last-ditch defenses you had to devise to make your life as liveable as possible.These strategies can help increase your self-compassion:1)   Write yourself a letter.  Imagine what the kindest, wisest person you know would say to the small, hurt child you once were. Write that down. Read it to yourself as often as you can.2)   Comfort yourself. Place a hand over your heart, and allow yourself to feel the sadness of the difficult choices you had to make, and the comfort of the physical warmth of your touch. This is an especially useful practice during moments of self-criticism.3)   Develop a meditation practice. Through meditation, you can learn to experience peace and relaxation, allowing the self-critical thoughts to fade away.As you become increasingly comfortable with self-compassion, your self-critical thoughts will become less frequent, less harsh, and quieter.When you are able to express kindness toward yourself, the part of you that was forced to choose self-disregard will gradually awaken to the idea that those choices are no longer necessary.

 Is It Time To Get Help?

For some people, developing self-compassion is fairly easy. They can readily feel compassion for little Mary in the example above, and can translate that compassion into care for themselves.Some people have a harder time with this.  If you find that you can have compassion for other children, but not yourself when you were a child, this would be a time to get some help.It doesn’t mean you are actually flawed, only that you had many experiences reinforcing the need for self-criticism.  Together we can gently un-pack this need, until you too are able to honour the harrowing survival decisions you were forced to make.I invite you to read the other blogs on my website, complete the quizzes and look at the webinars.When you are ready, call me at 250-515-2123 or use the pop up box to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. It would be a great pleasure to support you on your healing journey!

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How Do I Know If I'm A "Good Enough" Parent?

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="no" equal_height_columns="no" menu_anchor="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_position="center center" background_repeat="no-repeat" fade="no" background_parallax="none" parallax_speed="0.3" video_mp4="" video_webm="" video_ogv="" video_url="" video_aspect_ratio="16:9" video_loop="yes" video_mute="yes" overlay_color="" video_preview_image="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding_top="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" padding_right=""][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" layout="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_position="all" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" center_content="no" last="no" min_height="" hover_type="none" link=""][fusion_text] You have probably been told that the goal is not to be a perfect parent but rather that you need to make sure you are “good enough.”But, what does “good enough” mean? How do you know if your parenting measures up?This is especially confusing if you are an adult survivor of abuse. You grew up in an environment that was unsafe and unkind, and as a result it can be hard to know what is healthy.There are many building blocks to being a good enough parent. The first building blocks—those that ensure the physical survival of your child—are adequate food, shelter, and clothing. If you were physically neglected as a child but have managed to provide better for your own children, you are a good enough parent in this area.The second building blocks—those that ensure the safety of your child—are means to secure freedom from abuse. That includes freedom from physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and witnessing you being abused. If you were maltreated as a child but have managed to keep your child safe, you are a good enough parent in this area.The third building blocks—those that ensure the emotional wellbeing of your child—are focused on meeting your child’s emotional needs for connection, independence, and comfort. This includes being able read your child’s cues accurately, being able to provide effective comfort, and being able to share in your child’s delight and joy. This is the area where many parents who were maltreated as children struggle.

How Do I Know if I’m Meeting the Emotional Needs of My Children Well Enough?

Finding the answer to this can be a bit tricky because when it comes to meeting emotional needs we tend to have blind spots. We may think that we are doing something well enough, but in actuality, we have slipped into automatic behaviours learned in our childhood.Let me give you an example to show you how this can happen:Lisa (not her real name) came to see me because her daughter Anna (not her real name) had become increasingly defiant and aggressive—not complying with simple requests and hitting both Lisa and other children.Lisa had experienced a huge amount of maltreatment as a child, including physical abuse, lack of food, and an almost complete lack of emotional nurturing. She was especially punished if she showed joy or delight in her own accomplishments. She had worked hard to make sure she wasn’t repeating the same patterns with her daughter, and to a large extent, she had been successful.In our work together I discovered that whenever little Anna ran to Lisa with a drawing or wanted to show her the amazing block tower she had built, Lisa turned away. She showed disinterest and her face shut down. Anna, being a feisty child, was learning that feeling connected with her mom while doing good things didn’t work, so she was exploring whether misbehaviour would meet some of her emotional needs.The thing is, Lisa was completely unaware of turning away at these key moments. Instead of being present with her daughter’s delight, she was responding to her inner warning system telling her the danger in showing joy about accomplishments. So, to keep her daughter safe, this inner warning system was teaching Anna to shut down the joy. When Lisa behaved like this, she was on “automatic pilot” and not really able to reflect on her behaviour until that was brought to her attention.We all slip into these kinds of automatic behaviours. Simply because you do, too, does not mean you are failing at being “good enough” as a parent. We only need to meet the emotional needs of our children well enough about a third of the time.

Learning to Recognize When You Get Triggered

Discovering if and when you get triggered around your children may take some time. Please be kind with yourself in this process of exploring what is going on for you. Nothing has ever been made better through shame or blame.Here are some indicators that you may struggle with meeting the emotional needs of your children:

• When your child shows certain emotions, you get uncomfortable. That discomfort may show itself as anxiety, anger or dissociation. For Lisa, those trigger emotions were delight and joy. Other common emotions that cue discomfort in parents include anger, sadness, fear, and curiosity. You may have to really slow down and reflect on how you are feeling to notice this is going on.

• Your child has started to misbehave around you, becoming increasingly defiant, oppositional, controlling or angry.

• Your child has started to shut down around you, becoming increasingly quiet, anxious, withdrawn, secretive or caretaking of your needs.

• Your child has started to become increasingly agitated, inattentive, or impulsive (this is     age-dependent).

When to Get Help

Some parents are able to reflect on their responses to their children’s emotions and behaviours with ease. They are able to stop their automatic behaviours readily and are able to switch to being present with their children. Often, this is because these parents did not experience severe maltreatment as a child, or because they’ve done much work to resolve their trauma.For others, recognizing and responding to triggers is more of a challenge. This may be because you experienced a lot of maltreatment, or because you have recently started your healing journey. If that is the case for you, it may be that you need help to become the parent you’d like to be.Please take your time to look at the free webinars and other blog posts on my website. When you are ready, I invite you to call me at 250–515–2123 or use the pop-up box to schedule a free 15-minute consult. I look forward to hearing from you!

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