News media outlets have barely covered it. When a celebrity dies of overdose, the benzodiazepines in their system are hardly given any attention. Chris Cornell’s death including benzodiazepines caused controversy as to whether or not benzos. Old lead to suicide. Tom Petty had a number of benzos in his system. Budding rapper Little Peep wasRead More
Life after treatment can get busy. Recovery takes us to places we want to go in our lives. Our minds change. Our bodies change. Our relationship to ourselves and the world around us change. After treatment for trauma, addictions, and other mental health issues, we find a new freedom, given to us by the manyRead More
Eating disorders are highly gendered, stigmatized, and stereotyped. Specifically, eating disorders are characterized to be a primarily female problem. As it might be more casually stated, “Eating disorders are for girls.” However, this isn’t true. Stereotyping and stigmatizing any mental health disorder, like an eating disorder, is dangerous to the many different people who experienceRead More
Trauma is complex, affecting the brain, the memory, the body, and the spirit in different ways. While some people may feel the effects of their trauma right away, some people may not recognize symptoms of trauma for many years. Likely, millions of adults around the world are living with unresolved, untreated trauma from an eventRead More
Journaling is a recommended therapy for those in recovery from mental health issues like depression, anxiety, bipolar, PTSD, or trauma. Writing out the oftentimes troubling and disturbing thoughts going on in one’s head can help release the power those thoughts hold. Research has proven that journaling is incredibly therapeutic and aids tremendously in the recoveryRead More
Trauma lives in the nervous system and deeply stores itself into every area of the brain it can reach, especially the hippocampus which processes memory storage. If you were once terribly frightened by a dog in your childhood, you will experience elements of fear every time you are near a dog as an adult, untilRead More
Trauma is like a tidal wave on the brain. A massive surge of input and information swell up and come crashing down on the brain all at once, flooding and saturating the brain. Different areas of the brain are affected by either going to hyper action or being slowed down. For example, the amygdala becomesRead More
Is There Such A Thing As Spiritual Abuse? When people come to the rooms of twelve step meetings like Alcoholics Anonymous or another group, they are often intimidated by the use of the term “God”. Twelve step programs are not religious or attached to any particular kind of doctrine. Instead, they are spiritual in nature.Read More
Too many people have been bullied. Something humiliating happened to them once, or perhaps repeatedly, that created a lifelong scar. Bullying is a trauma which can cause a variety of complex issues including a disorderly relationship to any kind of real or perceived embarrassment. For some people, the bully lives within their own mind. AfterRead More
Trauma isn’t something that just happens to us but something that happens within us, changing the structure and functioning of our brain. Trauma affects many areas of the brain. Two of the primary areas of the brain affected by trauma, which result in common symptoms of trauma, are the amygdala and the hippocampus. The AmygdalaRead More