06/14/2022
Hi, I'm Arianna Mitchell, LPCC
Alignment
On my 22nd birthday I woke up hung over but clear and aligned on an issue I had been delusional about for years. I started to become aware, connected, and responsible for my journey. Any journey is a process. This small but powerful moment of intuition has become the preferred state of my participation in life. Part of this journey would lead me back to my childhood ambition – the field of social work.
Social Work
During my work in public health, people bravely and frequently sought support, connection, and solutions from me. These individuals were in an immediate crisis. They responded to me with the most private details of their lives. I worked with children who were devastated by their chaotic families and environments. These children had been abused at pivotal ages, causing nothing short of biological damage. They were in age ranges from five to eighteen. Being labeled as defiant and antisocial by others further added to their isolation and ridicule. Yet those children, when they opened up, helped me begin to see the fork in the road to generational change, an opportunity to intervene in the direction of their journey into their future.
During this time I learned how to create a safe space, attune to the needs of my clients and cultivate active listening skills. These experiences set the path for trauma work. The intimate lesson I received was that even the most traumatized child is open to connection if only I would truly listen. A child will take daily mundane moments and make them opportunities for mindful connection every single time.
Therapist
As my career progressed, I went to graduate school to earn my master’s degree in counseling and educational psychology. With that step, I also found myself transitioning to working with adults who were presenting with various chronic health conditions. It was clear that nearly every one of them had suffered chronic trauma in childhood. These real life examples supported the theory of generational trauma in the cycles of abuse, mental health, biology and change. I became interested in epigenetics, the study of how behaviors and environments result in genetic change over time. The obvious complex consequences of the dysregulation in caregivers on individual members in families was undeniable.
Abuse and Neglect in The Formative Years
When connections aren’t formed properly because of threats and lack of resources, the physiology of the brain and response systems remains undeveloped in families from one generation to the next. Abuse and neglect in childhood causes barriers to desirable growth.
💙Research shows that victims of childhood sexual abuse respond biologically by producing fear hormones when being soothed by people identified as close! In fact, they show more positive hormonal releases and self-soothing responses when cared for by strangers. You can imagine the issues this causes in adult relationships.
After the birth of my daughter, attachment took on another meaning entirely. I went through turning points in my own relationships that underscored the fact that there was a general lack of support and resources available to all of us. In the spirit of actively participating in life, of taking charge of my own journey, I obtained additional trainings, certifications, and supervision on attachment with an awareness of trauma and emotional regulation.
✌🏽Hope Lives Here
Uniquely, humans are biologically inclined to attach to one another for survival! We literally set one another’s heartbeat. We also have internal self-regulatory mechanisms. We need both capabilities to function effectively. There are many factors that cause people to struggle with both processes, but there is hope.
Email me today arianna@creatingconnectionskentucky.com . Keep an eye out on my website as it will be launching in a few days🥳.
