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 [...]
"If we just try hard enough we can avoid all these situations that make us feel so vulnerable." — Caroline McGraw How many of us can relate to the above statement? I know I can. For the longest time, I thought if I do everything just right, no one will call me out or criticize me. [...]
When we have a secure attachment style we have a basic trust in others and we are able to set good boundaries for ourselves. We believe our partners are there for us and we do not have a problem being there for them. Avoidant attachment Some of us grew up with shaky attachments to our parents [...]
