5 Signs You May Need Counseling

Everyone experiences times of more intense emotions from time to time, such as the top-of-the-world feeling of falling in love or getting a new job, crying at the loss of a pet, or feeling like laying on the horn or uttering some choice words when someone cuts you off in traffic.  After all, we are humans and have feelings. Yet, there are other times when our feelings and our actions may indicate a need for some professional counseling help.  If you or someone you care about notice any of the following, it might be a good time to reach out for help.

Experiencing Habit Changes: 

Sleep Patterns

• You are sleeping more or less than usual.

• You are not able to get out of bed, even when you have things to do.

• You wake up in the middle of the night and have difficulty getting back to sleep.

• You have trouble falling asleep.

• You have recurrent nightmares.

Eating Patterns

• You are eating more or less than usual.  

• You find yourself binge eating food.  

• You feel ashamed of and want to hide your eating patterns.

• You have lost your appetite.

• You eat for comfort.

Experiencing Behavior Changes:

Financial Patterns

You are acting more reckless than usual.

You are racking up debt.

You are spending money on things you can’t afford.

You are gambling away money you need for your bills.  

Substance Use

You are drinking more alcohol than you typically would.

You are unable to relax without some sort of drug or substance.

Your substance use is interfering with your work or relationships.

Experiencing Extremes in Your Actions

You are being reckless.

You are driving carelessly or faster than usual.

You are shouting at your kids or spouse and being more “on edge” than usual.

You are slamming doors, throwing things, threatening others, or storming around.

You are reacting more intensely than situations deserve.

Experiencing Emotional Extremes

You are feeling guilty or shameful.

You are crying more than usual or feeling sad much of the time.

You are anxious, fearful, or experiencing panic sensations. 

You are feeling numb or distant from life.

You feel that no one understands you.

You feel something is “off,” but you don’t know what.

Feeling Detached

You find yourself withdrawing from activities you used to enjoy.

You feel like you are “just going through the motions.” 

You feel like you are not attached to your body, are watching yourself from outside of your body, or notice that you or the things and people around you don’t seem “real.”

Thinking in Extremes

You are having thoughts of ending it all.

You fantasize about hurting yourself.

You are hearing voices or having thoughts that make you want to do something unpleasant or compel you to take actions you don’t want to take, think about things you find to be disturbing, or have intrusive and repetitive thoughts that you don’t want but can’t seem to figure out how to stop.

Reach Out

If you are experiencing any of the above, you may benefit by reaching out to a counselor.  Please contact us by calling: 541-275-0412 if you’d like to talk to someone about the signs and symptoms you’re having and see how we can help you to get back to feeling yourself again.

3 Ways Therapy Can Help You Get Unstuck and Why

You may be wondering how therapy can help you to heal and move into a life that would feel better, easier, and healthier.  While it takes work, therapy really can help you to get unstuck.

It has been studied and found that people often put up with signs and symptoms of mental health issue for approximately 11 years before seeking therapeutic help!  That is A LOT of time that could have been spent getting healing and being healthier.

Here are three ways that therapy can help you to get unstuck:

1) Therapy can help you to get all of the chatter inside your head out into the open in a safe space, and this can help you to process things clearer than you are able to when you are in the problem.

Why?  Therapists offer empathy and active listening, which is something so rare in our society today.  When we are actively attended to and heard, met with compassion and support, amazing things can happen that influence our internal meaning making.

In fact, it has been shown that more than 80% of the healing process is due to this unconditional positive regard and connected human relationship between the client and therapist.  Best of all, the therapist is ethically bound to keep everything in confidence so that what is said in the therapy room stays in the therapy room.

2) A therapist can offer you the tools and skills that they have learned to help you resolve your issues more quickly than you can do on your own.

Why? Your therapist has years of experience dealing with mental and emotional health issues as well as years of training to be able to provide you with solid counsel.  It’s like taking a car to a mechanic who can identify what a “ching, clunk, ching” sound is just by your sound effect description to them.  Therapists know what to listen for to help identify what might be underlying your pain or struggle so that precious time can be saved as they help you to hone in on what they are hearing you need.

3) Therapists can see blind spots that you don’t even know you have, and this can help you to be able to look at things from different vantage points and be able to get movement toward healing and problem solving much faster than if these blocks had not been revealed.

Why?  We each have our own personal worldview that has been cultivated over years of life experiences and influences.  It leads us to make assumptions as to what we are seeing, hearing, and experiencing as our brains try to categorize information it already believes it understands.  An outsider who is trained to listen for ways our thinking may be experiencing distortions can help to bring you a lot of movement that you may not have been able to glean and experience on your own.

You don’t have to go it alone.  Therapy is a powerful tool in your self-care and healthy self-management toolbox, but for it to work, you have to actually do it and use it.  

If we can be of help as you go about seeking to get the therapy you need, please let us know, and we can get you started: 541-275-0412

Trauma Basics Part One

Trauma Basics Part 1: How Trauma is Stored Differently In the Body

Trauma comes from Greek origin and means, “wound.” 

When we experience trauma, we are very literally wounded.  Some traumas will actually involve blood, scrapes, or broken bones, but many traumas do not show outwardly at first glance.  

Trauma can be something sudden and a one-time event, a series of catastrophes, or even a number of daily traumas over a period of time, such as in an emotionally abusive childhood.  

Trauma Memories Are Stored Differently Than Non-Traumatic Memories

Trauma memories are stored differently than non-traumatic ones because trauma is not consolidated as a “snapshot” of events that then get a “time and date stamp in the bottom corner.”  Trauma has the potential to stay in the fragmented parts in which it was encoded due to the body’s sympathetic nervous system, also known as the fight or flight response.  

During fight or flight experiences, the body is concerned only with surviving.  So, when the body detects through its various senses that there is potential or actual threat occurring or about to happen, it bypasses the logic area of the brain and goes straight to the amygdala portion which instinctually hijacks the system to do what it believes is best for survival such as jumping out of the way of an oncoming car or screaming frantically and punching at an intruder.  There is no time to waste in decision making, the situation is quite accurately a live or die situation, even if the threat of not surviving is on an emotional level, such as fear of being abandoned or rejected by a caregiver and not being able to fend for oneself.  

The Amygdala Goes Into Action

When the amygdala goes into action, it can be as if time slows down, blood moves away from the digestive system of the body and into the arms and legs, getting the body ready to move quickly into action.  Sometimes, this is enough.  Sometimes, it isn’t.  Oftentimes, the individual parts of the experience are stored not as a snapshot but as a memory of a scent in one area of the brain, a sensitivity to a loud sound in another part, or a feeling of heat, frozenness, or other sensory data in yet other places.

Non-traumatic memories are stored, dated, and forgotten until a person has a need for the information to be recalled.  Traumatic memories are stuck as if the threat is still occurring.  This lacks the time stamp to indicate that the threat is over, and this can result in triggers that remind the person of threat, even if the trigger is not connected to an actual threat.  For example, if a person is shot at as a soldier, they might feel panic when they hear a car backfire.  The nervous system doesn’t want to take any chances when survival is perceived to be at stake.

The Body Needs To Know The Threat to Survival Is Over

This is why therapy may be necessary to help the nervous system to realize that the threat is over and that survival is already a reality.  It no longer has to be secured at this time, so the nervous system can relax and switch to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is also known as the rest and digest system where typical blood flow and relaxed muscle tone, laughter, connection, humor, and friendships can grow.  No one has time for those things if a bear is about to attack.  But when there is no bear, having the body ready to fight a threat at a split second’s notice is exhausting.

If you need help to process your traumatic body memories, please contact us. We’d be honored to help you heal and not just know but feel that the threat to survival is over, and you survived.

Guest blog written by Michelle Croyle

Working Through Resentment Towards Forgiveness

In the previous post we explored how grace is integral within the healing process.  This week we will explore how we have to work through our resentments to get to a point of forgiveness.  They are both foundational pieces of healing.  To start this process we have to recognize what it is that we are holding on to.  Like we talked about previously, we may have to forgive more than once.  Forgiveness is a choice.  It is not a one and done deal, there is no forgiving and forgetting.  We must choose to not hold our resentments against our partners.  If we focus too much on the details of what happened it makes it difficult to forgive and live in the present moment.  We won’t be able to see how they are changing and how they are showing up.  “If I forgive them it negates the pain I am feeling.”  No!  It is actually an active choice to not let fear hold you in this place of resentment and bitterness.  

We prefer things that are familiar and after we experience a betrayal resentment and pain are extremely familiar.  Grace and forgiveness is not something familiar, in reality it is scary.  Before we can forgive we may have to grieve what occurred.  We often go through the 5 stages of grief; shock and denial, anger and guilt, bargaining, depression and despair, and adjustment and acceptance.  This is not as simple as moving from stage to stage, you may go through each stage multiple times and in no particular order.  Once you have completed this process though you can begin to let go.  This can feel like freedom.  You are you unburdening yourself as you release the feelings and the weight that comes with them.  Your partner can’t heal you or heal the relationship alone, you have a role in the healing process as well and must do your own work.  

It is important to also bring God back into your relationship.  Pray together and look for ways to reconcile the relationship.  The emotional cycle never closes.  Both parties are forever changed and scarred by a betrayal.  The book Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa Terkeurst is a great exploration of this process.  Forgiveness is our way of not letting the past control us.  Be honest with yourself and your partner when you are having feelings of resentment.  It can be helpful to say “I just want to let you know that I am feeling this way; we are okay, I just might need to take some time to myself today to think about how I am feeling.”  

The previous statement is one way to keep daily dialogue open between both partners.  We have discussed daily dialogue many times, but it is because it is that important.  It is a way to stay connected even when you don’t feel capable of having deep conversations.  Plan something fun to do together.  Go on a date!  Don’t talk about the heavy stuff for a little bit.  You don’t even have to talk or if you do it is okay to be “shallow” with your conversation.  By doing this you and your partner can start to rebuild your sense of intimacy and get comfortable just being together again.

How to Move Forward After Betrayal

In our last post we explored what betrayal is, different types and the consequences that come with it.  As promised, this week we explore how to begin the process of moving forward.  There is no right or wrong way to begin moving forward due to the fact that everyone defines what betrayal is differently and experiences it differently.  When someone first becomes aware of betrayal the sense of bewilderment is not uncommon.  This can be overwhelming as they also start to question their reality.  What is true; what has been true; has anything been true; can I trust any of our experiences together?  Once all of these thoughts have thoroughly overwhelmed you and you have had a chance to process your feelings, the next question is often “What now?”

So, where do we go from here?  The first and most important step if you want to repair your relationship through a trauma is to completely stop the betrayal/unfaithfulness for any kind of reconciliation to occur.  As we explored last time betrayal can occur in many different ways and for many different reasons.  One reason being that there is a lack of boundaries, on both ends of the partnership.  There is of course the obvious lack of boundaries on the side where a partner crosses the agreed upon rules of the relationship, but the less obvious lack of boundaries is on the side of the partner who was hurt.  An example of this may be that they were unable to express what their needs were within the relationship, thus not setting boundaries.  This was not said to place blame on one partner over the other!  Next week we will explore personal responsibility in regard to betrayal, but let’s get back on track for now.

If the first step is to end any kind of current betrayal, the second most important is participating in active listening.  The goal of communication is to understand each other.  Where is the other person at right now, where are they coming from, what’s going on currently?  These are just a few sample questions to ask yourself as you are listening to your partner.  One way to remember the goal of active listening is the phrase, learn each other's why.   It is also important to accept that each party will need to process their experiences and feelings and this may come out as venting.  We have to be okay with this without getting wrapped up in our own pain and defensiveness.  This is where a third party can be helpful if the venting becomes destructive and blaming.  A third party can look like participating in therapy or even with a friend, though a friend may not be as objective.  

The difference between defensiveness and assertiveness is the amount of doing things that are easy vs. doing things that are hard.  Defensiveness is the easy route because feeling contempt and anger are close to the surface when we feel betrayed, but it just compounds the issue and can make the other person feel defensive as well.  Assertiveness is hard and can lead to vulnerability.  When we are assertive we own up to our own experiences and are able to express what is going on for you without making it all about the other person (blaming).  By being vulnerable and assertive we can also reach out with understanding.  This is not the same as agreeing.  I doubt many individuals who have felt betrayed agree with their partner’s actions, but they can reach out with understanding as they listen to their partner's experiences as well as their own.  

Here is a quick overview of an outline towards recovery.  The first step is to accept what happened and taking it one day at a time.  When we step out of denial we can begin the long road of recovery.  We must then give both ourselves and our partners grace.  This means that we realize we will both falter in the process of reconciliation and make mistakes.  We have to give ourselves grace to experience all of our feelings and process our experiences.  Next, keep the channels of communication open! Talk to your partner about how you are feeling and allow them to as well.  The communication channel can even look like simple daily dialogue.  Next is to establish boundaries.  Tell your partner what your needs are and explore theirs as well.  Finally, seek out help.  Go see a counselor!  This may look like individual and/or couples counseling.  If you choose this route give it time.  Just physically going into the office does not solve the problem, it takes personal investment and time.  Remember from our previous post that recovery from a betrayal can take an average of five years.   If you and your partner do decide to end your relationship, counseling can still be extremely helpful.  There are still wounds that need to be healed and if you decide to enter into a future relationship, you won’t be carrying as much of the pain and hurt.  

It is not weak to get help.  In fact, it carries an incredible amount of strength due to the very nature of vulnerability that is needed.