Anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder go hand in hand. Living with symptoms like hypervigilance, paranoia, substance abuse problems, and others can create anxiety. In addition, an anxiety disorder is commonly co-occurring with trauma and PTSD, as well PTSD is considered part of the anxiety disorder family. Anxiety is a result of mismanaged fear. Fear isRead More
When a person experiences a trauma, there is an association made and stored in the brain related to the traumatic event. This is often due to the sensory perceptions of the trauma. For example, if a person is involved in a car accident, the person uses multiple sensory inputs including sight, smell, or hearing. TheseRead More
The Guest House founder Judy Crane defines trauma in her book The Trauma Heart: We Are Not Bad People Trying to Be Good, We Are Wounded People Trying To Heal. She explains that trauma is “…any life event or series of life events or ongoing life events that create a negative impact on your lifeRead More
In veterans of war struggling with PTSD, meditation has been found to provide stress relief. Calming the sympathetic nervous system, where the survival instinct to fight, flight, freeze, and other responses live, helps reduce the production of stress hormones. Getting to the beneficial place of a meditation practice can take time in trauma recovery asRead More
Eastern medicine and spirituality holds a philosophy of belief that we store our emotions as energy throughout our body. Every single muscle can act as a container, holding our experiences, memories, and feelings. We each have channels of energy that are meant to be free flowing, keeping us in the present movement of life. WhenRead More
It’s okay, we tell ourselves when we see the look on people’s faces after describing episodes of our childhood. It’s just something that happened to me. Though Carl Jung is right when he says, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become” what we go through as children withRead More
When a Hollywood icon commits a sexual act of misconduct, the buzz term “sex addiction” comes quickly to the surface. Due to the use of sex addiction to explain the sexually lewd and irresponsible behaviors of individuals, many criticize its legitimacy or its causality. Though the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental DisordersRead More
“Marijuana use disorder” or “cannabis use disorder” is the technical term for what might otherwise be called “marijuana addiction”. Listing marijuana as a “substance use disorder” is relatively new for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Marijuana addiction is a controversial topic. Though many professionals clearly agree and the evidence is inarguable thatRead More
Imagine if a car had no gauge for gas. Every day you would be driving wondering when the car was going to stop. You might change the way you drive to work. You wouldn’t be able to budget for gasoline each month because you can’t tell how much gasoline you are using. Driving the carRead More
The need for self-care can happen in a flash. If you find yourself in a sudden need for your favorite comforts, often you can make them happen right where you are. Keep a running album on your phone of pictures that make you happy: Everyone has that one thing that makes them happy. No matterRead More