I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year. I dream of fun family gatherings, the magic of Christmas morning, twinkly lights, creating fond memories, feelings of love and appreciation... All of that seems entirely possible as fall winds down and Thanksgiving approaches. Feeling used Then I put a lot of effort into a full-out [...]
As we plunge into the holiday season, I thought it would be a good time to take inventory of our go-to behaviors for relieving stress. Internal resources According to Julie M. Simon, LMFT and author of When Food Is Comfort, if we grew up with encouraging nurturing caregivers, we acquire capabilities such as personal competencies and [...]
Recently on The Highly Sensitive Person Podcast, Dr. Amy Banks, former psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School, stated that we receive a hit of dopamine when we feel we have power over someone. “Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine also helps regulate movement and emotional response, and it enables us [...]
Some of us have been primed for high reactivity. Our early caregivers or past relationships did not provide consistent comforting and nurturing, so our nervous systems developed a sensitivity to possible abandonment. We tend to react strongly if we feel at all threatened. Sometimes these strong reactions lead to self-fulfilling prophesies. The more we react, the [...]
...the theory explains how safety is not the removal of threat and that feeling safe is dependent on unique cues in the environment and our relationships that have an active inhibition on defense circuits and promote health and feelings of love and trust. — Dr. Stephen Porges speaking of the polyvagal theory I take the above quote to [...]
It was a cold Sunday morning. I wanted to stay home, snuggle with my man, drink tea, read and eventually get ready for the Vikings football party we were hosting later that day. But I told my friend Nicole, I would be there to cheer her on during the Twin Cities marathon. I committed to being [...]
