Jennifer English Counselling

11/17/2025

11/15/2025

"Protection is incredibly important for the healthy development of self. We need to witness adults who set clear boundaries, who assert themselves when needed, and who don't please or appease to avoid the wrath of another person.

"If you weren't protected as a child, it's not because of something you did. Or who you were. It's a response- a response to the failure of an adult to understand what your needs were.

"A response to existing in a world where domestic emotional abuse and neglect is so normalized, many people don't even know it's happening. And on a deeper level, don't understand the lifelong impact on a persons psyche and physical health." - .holistic.psychologist

11/15/2025

We go through tough changes as we work on ourselves or in therapy. However, our new way of being in the world, big or small, can make us question if the change is good.⁠
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If you're a bit raw, doing things outside your comfort zone, and unable to be in situations you used to be "ok" with, you're doing it right.⁠
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Progress breaks our old tolerance for discomfort, abuse, and bullsh*t.⁠
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*You might be unable to gossip with your mother about a sibling anymore.⁠

*You might not be able to tolerate one-sided intimacy like before.⁠

*You might not be able to people please with your boss like you used to.⁠

*You might be unable to jump into another's mess at your own expense like you used to.⁠

*You might be unable to keep it going with self-consumed people like you used to.⁠
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But, the hard part is the new territory. We often wonder if we are growing too cold, selfish, or protective.⁠
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Nope. You're just getting healthier, and it's foreign and won't feel graceful for a while yet.

11/14/2025

11/14/2025

There’s a difference between acknowledging what hurt you and rehearsing it until it becomes who you are.

At first, reliving the story feels protective. Your mind thinks, If I can just understand it enough, I’ll finally feel safe. But the brain learns safety through experience, not rumination.

Each time you revisit the wound without resolution, your nervous system fires the same survival pathways - tightening the loop between what happened then and what you feel now.

Sometimes we replay the story because we still feel unseen. When justice never came, when no one protected you or believed you, retelling it can become the only way your pain feels real.

In that sense, holding on isn’t weakness - it’s belonging. It’s your system trying to say, This mattered. I mattered.

But over time, that survival loop can start to shape how you see yourself - organizing your life around the very wound that deserved care, not identity. You start anticipating rejection, mistaking vigilance for strength, confusing protection for personality.

The way out isn’t erasing the story - it’s helping your body learn that being seen now is possible. Every moment of calm, connection, or self-compassion teaches your system a new truth:

The danger is over.
You made it through.
You’re safe to be witnessed in the present, not just remembered in the past.

11/13/2025

My mentor said the quote in my childhood trauma group in the late 90s.

Amanda Curtin LICSW is a gifted trauma clinician, but another gift is her simplicity and impact in communicating what happened to us.

Over and over in the toxic family system, kids lose. In the day to day life, there are:

*blame, shame
*chaos
*horrific and unfair situations
*loss of innocence
*betrayal and lack of protection
*trying to be seen, and it never works

And the worst is the contempt for your reactions. We have rage, lots of it, and it's mixed with grief and heartbreak. Unfortunately, this spills into our present lives in our triggers, or we cap it, resulting in stuck emotions.

The release work we do in RRP (Relationship Recovery Program) developed by Amanda involves letting clients tell the truth and reclaim feelings in empty chair work, rage work, grief work, and conflict/intimacy work.

The work is special in that the clinician's agenda is to cultivate and guide in the release, not just wait for it to happen on its own. Or waiting for the client to experience shifts just from talking.

Rage is there for a good reason, and unfortunately, we'll stew or react from it until we get an opportunity to release it with healthy people.