Journey

My therapist at Annie's House, K, had an office with an L-shaped desk that he sometimes sat behind with two fairly comfortable blue chairs facing him. Off to the right side was a white couch with four throw pillows, two white and two bright turquoise. Next to the couch there was a blue chenille blanket and a portable side table that K used for some of his sessions. His office was in the front corner of the house, and if I sat in either of the blue chairs I could look out the window behind K and catch a glimpse of the mountains through some evergreen and birch trees. During family therapy sessions I would sit in the far chair by the wall with K next to me, on the right, as we sat in front of his laptop. During small group processing I would sit on the couch, with one pillow between myself and whoever else chose to sit there and another pillow in my lap. Most of the time, though, I chose to sit in the chair nearest to the door. That was the EMDR chair.  EMDR stands for Eye Movement D...

In 2002, one of my Professors held class at his ranch in New York. My classmates and I had the opportunity to ride his horses, eat homemade food, and relax in his home with his family. For several hours, two different horses had several of my classmates riding on them, but they did not seem tired (In Western movies, horses can literally run all day and night, right?). Then again, what did I actually know about horses. It was my turn for a nice ride in the fields. My Professor's daughter (we'll just call her Kathy) gave me a lesson on how to hold the reigns, stop, slow down, move the horse in a specific direction, and move the horse along/increase speed. She and I started on our ride; my horse and I on the left, she and her horse on the right. Suddenly my horse sped up to a trot. Kathy sped up to a trot and gave me some instructions. My horse did not care what I tried - pull back on the reigns, gently at first, then with more pressure; attempt to turn the horse to the left...

I gave a glimpse of my life back in December when I wrote a recap on my intention toward courage for 2020. I transparently shared that I had self-harmed 43 out of 275 days. I am confident I have probably been close to self-harming close to 275 out of 275 days in the past, but I have come a long way since those days. But why so high now?  Maybe we can blame COVID-19. The state of Pennsylvania shut down almost completely on March 16, 2020 (I went grocery shopping the next day - it was empty of people and products). My admission date to First Hospital was March 31, 2020. I was discharged April 22, 2020 with a plan to connect with people and begin and maintain coping strategies that proved to be next to impossible when the state shut down. Granted, some of those things were still prohibited, but mental health was more important to me. On December 12, 2020, Pennsylvania was shut down a second time. I went to Steps Recovery Center (Annie's House) in Draper, UT on December 28, 2020 and wa...

In case you did not get the memo, I have been away for "a minute," as the folks in Utah say quite frequently. I "dipped out" of Pennsylvania on December 28th to head to Annie's House in Draper, UT. It is one of the locations for Steps Recovery Center, owned by a very kind man named Ty (and co-owner Paul) with a rad Marketing Director, Kevin (I am sure I will talk about Ty and Kevin in a later post - those guys came in once or twice a week - and patiently smiled every time I said, "free weights?"). If you go to their website, you will see that it is advertised as a Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Center. It is that too. It actually helps almost anyone with almost all symptoms/self-destructive habits by treating mental health and trauma.  I mention the above to give a reason why my 2021 intention is coming a few months after January 1st but also why I have already been quite successful at working on it. So, to get this out of the way, "engage" ...

I have watched and laughed at this video many times since first discovering it some time ago. I immediately thought of it when trying to think of a way to express how my 2020 intention has gone. Courage was my intention for 2020, but falling flat on my face while I fearfully tried to avoid the mess sums up the year for me.  While doing my personal "year in review" reflections, I had some intense feelings: Pain (general emotional pain - specifics are below), shame, and powerlessness. I have several self-destructive behaviors, but the one indicative of the most pain, shame, and powerlessness in my life is self-harm. On April 1, 2019 I began logging the number of times I engaged in self-destructive behaviors. In the 275 days that I logged for the year, I used self-harm as a negative coping strategy 19 times. That was 7% of the days logged; incredible progress when I think back over the years. In 2020, during the same time period, I used self-harm as a negative coping strategy 43...

Opportunities for personal development, especially in the area of relationships AND challenging all-or-nothing thinking, are not always pleasant. As a matter of fact, they invoke many uncomfortable thoughts and feelings for me. Recently, though, I was able to face that discomfort head-on. I wanted to talk about it because it was a telephone pole not directly related to trauma therapy but imperative to brave through so that my therapy has an effective working relationship. That working relationship is necessary for healing.  A few days ago I had a rather unpleasant experience sitting on the couch in my therapist's office. The discussion itself was thought-provoking as we were discussing boundaries. I recognize that some of my boundaries are effortlessly fixed while others do not exist at all. Boundaries are frightening to me because feeling out of control causes a considerable amount of distress, and a broken boundary causes me to feel out of control.  While discussing setting ...

It was a dark and stormy night... Actually, I was sitting on the couch next to my husband staring at a therapist on the computer screen... The other day I was listening to a training video designed for therapists who work with individuals with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. There were several speakers including Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (a researcher and expert on trauma and its effects on the limbic system and body), Dr. Pat Ogden (a pioneer in somatic psychology for those with PTSD), Peter Levine (trauma Psychologist and developer of somatic experiencing), Dr. Ruth Lanius (director of the PTSD research center in Ontario, Canada), Dr. Dan Siegel (expert on interpersonal relationships and their effects on the brain, UCLA co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center), and Dr. Stephen Porges (Behavioral Neuroscientist and author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation ). I was particularly interested in th...