Windsong Counseling, LLC

04/19/2022

💛 credit: Matilda

03/14/2022

03/14/2022

Recognize the difference.

ℹ🌿 NICABM [Infographic] -- HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE FREEZE AND SHUT-DOWN TRAUMA RESPONSES |

The freeze and shutdown responses to trauma can resemble each other . . .
. . but they are very different in terms of what’s happening in your client’s brain, body, and nervous system.

And that means they require different grounding strategies as well.

In this infographic, we lay out some key cues to help you distinguish between these two defensive responses.

Read full article;
https://www.nicabm.com/the-difference-between-freeze-and-shutdown-trauma-responses/

03/05/2022

ℹ🌿 THE UNHEARD INVISIBLE CHILD; BEING SEEN AND FINDING MY VOICE |

Eventually, at some point in my childhood, I accepted the fact that I was not heard and not going to be heard. I did not consciously accept it, but it was an effective part of the grooming process and I came to understand that it was “just the way it was”. I think perhaps I believed that when I was “older” or when I was an adult, I would have “my chance” to be a part of the world and finally have a voice.

https://emergingfrombroken.com/the-unheard-invisible-child-being-seen-and-finding-my-voice/

03/02/2022

Excellent tips for getting out of a funk.

02/13/2022

11/08/2021

ℹ️🌿 [INFOGRAPHIC] HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE FREEZE AND SHUTDOWN TRAUMA RESPONSES | BY NICABM

The freeze and shutdown responses to trauma can resemble each other . . .
. . but they are very different in terms of what’s happening in your client’s brain, body, and nervous system.

And that means they require different grounding strategies as well.

In this infographic, we lay out some key cues to help you distinguish between these two defensive responses.

Source: NICABM
https://www.nicabm.com/the-difference-between-freeze-and-shutdown-trauma-responses/

09/18/2021

ℹ🌿 AWARENESS, VALIDATION & BOUNDARIES: HOW TO DEFEAT THE CPTSD FAWN RESPONSE |

Thinking about trauma, reliving it, and avoiding it can be a consuming pastime. To keep ourselves from experiencing such distress, we often go out of our way to escape the internal upheaval, triggers, or perceived danger connected to the past.

Some of us tense for a fight. Others take flight and make a quick getaway. Others shut down completely in freeze mode.

And some people, go another way to feel safer and more in control. We call this trauma response emotional appeasement or “fawning.”

Essentially, fawning is a means of soothing the anxiety and emotional pain with a façade of harmonious passivity and martyrdom to avoid conflict.

https://michaelgquirke.com/awareness-validation-boundaries-how-to-defeat-the-cptsd-fawn-response/

09/10/2021

Common medications can accumulate in gut bacteria, a new study has found, altering bacterial function and potentially reducing the effectiveness of the drug. These interactions—seen for a variety of medications, such as depression, diabetes, and asthma drugs—could help researchers to better unde...

08/22/2021

ℹ️🌿 SHAME AND MENTAL HEALTH |

Growing up with a history of being shamed can leave a legacy - a crippling sense of worthlessness which can come to underlie most of our feelings about ourselves.
https://www.amandarobinspsychotherapy.com.au/articles/2017/9/28/shame-mental-illness

08/14/2021

Repost from
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Have you found relationships to be challenging? ⠀
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Have you found them to be confusing, overwhelming, exhausting, scary, all encompassing, impossible, frustrating, tiring, or do you lose your sense of self or your sense of truth in them? Or do you find that no matter how much your partner verbally shows us that they want to be with you, you can't quite feel it? Or maybe you find that even though you want to let your partner close it feels so overwhelming to actually do it?⠀
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Those are just some of the things that can come up in our relationships. ⠀
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And, I want you to know that it all makes so much sense, even if it doesn't feel like it makes sense. Let me explain a bit...⠀
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Our threat detector is always looking for cues of safety or danger. And it looks to a receptacle of past information to decide what is safe and what is dangerous. When it comes to our romantic partnerships our threat detector and protective parts look to how we were related to in our earliest childhood experiences in order to decide how we need to respond in the here and now to maintain safety. ⠀
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So if the right choice was to: have no boundaries, lose connection with our truth, shut down, pull away, do whatever we need to do to stay connected, look out for how they might leave, etc. That's what we will do now. ⠀
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And when ruptures occur, our self protective parts also look to that receptacle to decide how we need to respond based on how to needed to respond in the past. Often leaving younger parts of us activated in our adult relationships. ⠀
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In order to repair, we have to come out of active self-protection where we are seeing our partner as a danger and back into connection and the here and now. ⠀
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It's also important to understand we can't actually even hear one another fully and take in what the other is saying when we are dysregulated, our systems are simply seeing them as against us. Once back in regulation, we can come back into repair. Healthy relationships aren't void of ruptures, they are able to come back into repair quickly and that's what we're looking for. One step at a time.

⬇️ Registration is open for our 2021 Somatic Experiencing® Virtual Conference! Link for more info: https://traumahealing.org/SEIntConference2021

Three special days with the leaders in Somatic Experiencing!

FEATURING SPECIAL APPEARANCES FROM: , , .editheger, Morissette, , Ruth Lanius, Stephen W. Porges, and many more!
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