The Feeling Expert

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Elyce Gordon, MS,LCMHC,NCC
A Psycho-Spiritual Approach To Healing

Mental Health Services: Anxiety • Depression • Trauma
Certified Level 3 Internal Family Services (IFS) Therapist
Certified International Integral Sound Healing Therapist

Information contained on this site is for educational purposes and is not intended as a substitute for treatment or consultation with a mental health professional or consultant.

When you’ve been through trauma, your nervous system learns one thing really well: how to survive.Not how to relax.Not h...
11/14/2025

When you’ve been through trauma, your nervous system learns one thing really well: how to survive.

Not how to relax.
Not how to open up.
Not how to process pain.
Just … “How do I get through this moment?”

So if you’ve ever wondered why you shut down in therapy or you want to heal but freeze when you try or you feel overwhelmed when you start to talk about the past …

What's happening is your system is trying to protecting you.
It’s telling you, “We can’t go there yet. We don’t feel safe enough.”

Your body will not let you process trauma if it believes you’re still in danger.

So, you can want to heal with your mind … but your nervous system is the one that gets the final vote.

Trauma work doesn't just start by going into your old memories.
It’s creating safety in your present-day world today:
• Safety in your relationships
• Safety in your environment
• Safety inside your own body
• Safety with the parts of you that are still scared

When your body senses that safety, it slowly starts to loosen its grip.
• It lets you feel a little more.
• It lets you breathe a little deeper.
• It lets those protective parts relax enough for healing to actually happen.

What Safety Can Look Like in Real Life
It’s when you:
• Feel your feet on the ground
• Can slow your breathing even a little
• Know who you can call if you need support
• Look around the room and remember you're here, not back then

Don’t push yourself to feel more than your system can handle. Those little moments of safety can add up. Let. them happen. That’s where the healing begins.

Your parts are your protectors. They learned early on how to keep you safe: by people-pleasing, staying quiet, shutting ...
11/13/2025

Your parts are your protectors.

They learned early on how to keep you safe: by people-pleasing, staying quiet, shutting down, getting quiet, or trying to take control of what felt unpredictable.
Those strategies worked when you were younger. They helped you survive what your body or heart couldn’t process at the time.

But as an adult, you don’t have to keep living by those same rules.
You can befriend your protective parts instead of fighting them.
You can listen, reassure them, and remind them that you’re safe now.

Healing happens when compassion takes the lead, and when you stop trying to get rid of your parts and start building trust with them.

Awareness is the beginning of freedom.

The holidays are coming … and so is the stress that often tags along. Before your To-Do list takes over, give yourself a...
11/12/2025

The holidays are coming … and so is the stress that often tags along. Before your To-Do list takes over, give yourself an hour of pure serenity.

Join Elyce for a group Sound Healing Bath: a restorative, in-person experience designed to quiet your mind, soothe your nervous system, and bring your energy back Saturday, November 29, 2025 at 10:30 am

What You’ll Experience

Blissful Relaxation: Gentle sound waves wrap you in peace and stillness.

Stress Relief: Let the weight of the season melt away as vibration clears emotional tension.

Mindful Healing: Feel balanced, centered, and ready to move through the holidays with grace.

Deep Connection: When you slow down, you reconnect with yourself, your body, and your calm.

https://thefeelingexpert.com/sound-healing-bath-for-relaxation/

This style shows up when you want closeness but also fear it deeply.It’s the tug-of-war between “come closer” and “pleas...
11/11/2025

This style shows up when you want closeness but also fear it deeply.
It’s the tug-of-war between “come closer” and “please don’t hurt me.”

Fearful-avoidant attachment develops when connection felt both comforting and unsafe in your past, maybe love came with rejection, chaos, or inconsistency.
Your nervous system learned: “I need people… but people also hurt me.”
So now, as an adult, you may long for closeness but feel panic when it actually arrives.
Your body trying to protect you from emotional danger it once experienced.

At the surface level, fearful-avoidant people often experience intense emotional reactions in relationships. You might feel anxious one moment and shut down the next. Your body’s threat system activates easily. It could be a text not answered, a tone that feels off, a small argument and then suddenly your emotions spike.
Your system is remembering what emotional danger once felt like.

Here are 10 common subsets that may show up under fearful-avoidant attachment:
• Distrust: You assume others will hurt or disappoint you, so you stay guarded.
• Withdrawal: When you feel too close or exposed, you shut down to feel safe.
• Testing: You might create conflict or distance to see if someone will still stay.
• Emotional Overwhelm: Big feelings rise quickly — fear, anger, sadness — and feel hard to regulate.
• Low Self-Worth: Deep down, you feel unworthy of stable love, so you brace for rejection.
• Hypervigilance: You scan for changes in tone, attention, or energy — always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
• Conflicted Boundaries: You crave closeness but fear losing yourself, so you swing between clingy and distant.
• Fear of Dependence: You judge yourself for needing people, equating vulnerability with weakness.
• Self-Blame: You internalize conflict as being your fault, trying to “fix” yourself to stay loved.
• Emotional Numbing: When it’s all too much, you shut down completely — a survival freeze response.


Most of our repetitive patterns aren’t choices made in the present. They’re emotional habits formed in the past, learned...
11/10/2025

Most of our repetitive patterns aren’t choices made in the present. They’re emotional habits formed in the past, learned roles our nervous system took on to keep us safe, loved, and connected when we didn’t have other tools.

These roles often served us once, but over time, they harden into identities that can keep us feeling trapped, unseen, or disconnected from who we truly are.

These old patterns persist until the nervous system experiences safety in a different form.

Healing requires more than awareness. It involves embodied practice: grounding, breathwork, or therapeutic experiences that teach your system that calm, boundaries, and rest are not threats.

Healing begins when you learn to let care flow both ways: to give without disappearing.

The first step to releasing subconscious beliefs is awareness.Notice when your body contracts or your chest closes in a ...
11/09/2025

The first step to releasing subconscious beliefs is awareness.

Notice when your body contracts or your chest closes in a conversation.
Maybe you feel yourself shrink or go numb. That’s your body saying, “I’ve been here before.” So, before you try to “fix” it, just get curious about what is happening.

Ask yourself: What might this part of me believe about safety, love, or worthiness?
The goal here is to just listen.

Once you recognize what belief is living in your body, meet it with compassion. If your body believes “I’m not enough,” don’t argue with it or deny it. Instead, say:

“Of course you feel that way. You had to believe that to survive back then.”

This step helps your nervous system feel safe enough to unlearn. You’re telling your body: You’re not in that old story anymore. When you approach your subconscious beliefs with softness instead of force, you create space for release.

Over time, your nervous system begins to trust that the old belief is no longer true.
The body starts to soften. The brain starts to rewire.

For many avoidantly attached individuals, vulnerability can feel like a threat. They may have learned early on that bein...
11/08/2025

For many avoidantly attached individuals, vulnerability can feel like a threat. They may have learned early on that being open led to rejection or disappointment.

Over time, they developed a belief that their true self isn’t lovable or worthy, so when someone gets close, they feel exposed. Shame tells them, ‘Don’t get too close, or they’ll see you’re not enough.

Let’s break down this cycle step by step:

Wanting Closeness – Deep down, they do want connection and closeness. There’s a desire to feel safe and connected, just like anyone else.

Shame and Fear Creep In – As they begin to let someone in, feelings of shame may arise. They might worry they’ll be judged or feel inadequate. Thoughts like, ‘What if they see who I really am and don’t like it?’ or ‘What if I lose myself in this relationship?’ can start to play in their mind.

Pulling Away – The shame and fear can become so intense that they feel the urge to protect themselves by pulling back. They may become distant, emotionally withdraw, or shut down to avoid feeling exposed.

Return to Self-Reliance – Finally, they retreat into self-reliance, convincing themselves they don’t need closeness. It feels safer, but it can also leave them feeling unfulfilled and alone.

Understanding this cycle is the first step toward change. If you have an avoidant attachment style, recognizing when shame and fear creep in can help you interrupt the cycle. When you notice these feelings, remind yourself that wanting closeness doesn’t make you weak or unworthy—it makes you human.

Your current sensitivity to dismissal is often rooted in earlier experiences, particularly from childhood. If caregivers...
11/07/2025

Your current sensitivity to dismissal is often rooted in earlier experiences, particularly from childhood. If caregivers regularly invalidated your feelings ("you're too sensitive," "that's nothing to cry about"), ignored your needs, or treated your thoughts as inconsequential, your brain created neural pathways that remain hypervigilant to signs of dismissal.

These early experiences form what psychologists call an "implicit memory" where your body remembers the feeling even when your conscious mind doesn't recall the specific events.

Then, when someone dismisses you today, your brain rapidly scans its old archives and finds pattern matches with past wounds. Suddenly, a colleague interrupting you in a meeting doesn't just feel like a rude moment, it activates the the old pain of every time you've been silenced.

Additionally, dismissal triggers your stress response system, flooding your body with cortisol. This can lead to that familiar feeling of your chest tightening, your throat closing, or your mind going blank—all physiological responses to perceived threat.

This is why your emotional response to current dismissal may feel disproportionate to the situation.

The sub-feelings listed below represent the various layers and textures of this complex emotional experience: each one a potential doorway to understanding what dismissal really means to you and where that sensitivity originated.

Here’s what’s really happening when you’re anxious: Your body senses threat, maybe from stress, uncertainty, or an old e...
11/06/2025

Here’s what’s really happening when you’re anxious: Your body senses threat, maybe from stress, uncertainty, or an old emotional pattern that got triggered.
That signal travels straight to the amygdala, the part of your brain responsible for keeping you safe.

The amygdala doesn’t analyze. It reacts. It sends out a wave of stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, preparing you to do something about the threat.

Your heart races. Your muscles tense. Your breathing gets shallow.

Except… there isn’t always a real danger. Sometimes it’s just a thought.
• A fear of failing.
• A memory of rejection.
• A story you’ve told yourself a hundred times.

But your body doesn’t know the difference between a lion and a looming deadline.
So you end up living like you’re under threat even when you’re just trying to get through your inbox.

That’s why anxiety feels so physical. Because it is.

And that’s exactly where CBT comes in to help you retrain that system so your body stops reacting to every “what if” as a full-blown emergency.

CBT helps you slow the chaos down. It takes what feels huge, emotional, and overwhelming — and breaks it into something you can actually work with:
Your thoughts → Your feelings → Your behaviors.

That’s how CBT builds what psychologists call cognitive flexibility: the ability to shift perspectives, stay grounded, and bounce back faster. Eventually, your system starts doing it automatically.

You can’t rewrite what you don’t see.The first step in CBT, and in emotional healing, is awareness. Start by noticing yo...
11/05/2025

You can’t rewrite what you don’t see.
The first step in CBT, and in emotional healing, is awareness. Start by noticing your thoughts, especially in moments of stress, disappointment, or conflict.

Ask yourself:
“What story is my mind telling right now?”
“What am I assuming about myself or this situation?”
“Does this thought feel like truth — or fear?”

You’ll start to spot recurring themes:
“I’m not safe.”
“I’m a failure.”
“No one cares.”
“I have to do everything alone.”

These are echoes of older experiences where you didn’t feel safe, capable, or supported. When you notice them, don’t judge. Just name them.

CBT teaches us that thoughts are not facts. They’re interpretations filtered through emotion, memory, and perception.

When you question your automatic thoughts, you give your nervous system room to calm down and see more possibilities.

Every time you pause, question, and reframe, you’re interrupting an old neural script and choosing a new one.

Somatic healing is the process of helping your body finish what it couldn’t finish before.Through awareness, movement, b...
11/04/2025

Somatic healing is the process of helping your body finish what it couldn’t finish before.

Through awareness, movement, breath, and gentle presence, you create the conditions for your nervous system to finally release what’s been trapped.

Somatic work isn’t about re-living the trauma, it’s about releasing the energy that trauma left behind.

It teaches your body that it’s safe now and that the danger has passed.
So that it no longer needs to stay braced for impact.

When you bring attention to your body, our breath, your heartbeat, your sensations, you’re engaging your vagus nerve. This nerve runs from your brainstem down through your organs and is a key pathway for calming the nervous system. It helps your body shift from fight or flight into rest and restore.

If possible, work with a trauma-informed therapist or somatic practitioner who can guide you through the process with care.

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1612 NW 2nd Avenue
Boca Raton, FL
33483

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Monday 7:30am - 6:30pm
Tuesday 7:30am - 6:30pm
Wednesday 7:30am - 7pm
Thursday 7:30am - 4pm

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+18442264325

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