Ashley S. Holcomb, PsyD, Psychologist

10/27/2025

Finding it hard to wind down after work? Do you end up doom-scrolling, binge eating, or staying up too late rather than really relaxing?

Many people struggle to tap into healthy coping strategies at the end of a long day. In this post, I share three, cost-free coping strategies that you can do at home tonight.

Finding it hard to wind down after work? Do you end up doom-scrolling, binge eating, or staying up too late rather than really relaxing? Many people struggle to tap into healthy coping strategies at the end of a long day. In this post, I share three, cost-free coping strategies that you can do at h

10/21/2025

Are you and your spouse drifting apart because of too much conflict? You’re not alone. Many survivors of trauma struggle with conflict resolution. In this post, we’ll explore conflict resolution and I’ll provide practical ideas on how to solve problems together without ruining your relationship.

Are you and your spouse drifting apart because of too much conflict? You’re not alone. Many survivors of trauma struggle with conflict resolution. In this post, we’ll explore conflict resolution and I’ll provide practical ideas on how to solve problems together without ruining your relationshi...

08/10/2023

Got to meet up with today for a great chat this morning! Eunice owns a group practice in Fresno and helps teens address the “elephant in the room” so they can have a better tomorrow. She has some great content as well so check out her page!

06/01/2023

“Conflict is a way for us to express our needs to our partner,” I say to clients. Many of them reply, “Can’t I just…not have needs?”

For many of us, relational conflict can feel intimidating or downright scary. If you have experienced complex trauma, your fear of conflict may be rooted in real experiences of unsafe conflict. A parent or former partner may have become belligerent at the smallest voicing of a need. It may have been safer to “just not have needs” than to risk a bad reaction. That can make it difficult to voice those needs now, even in a completely different situation.

Put simply, no, you can’t not have needs. Everyone has needs, and you have a right to have needs, wants, feelings, ideas, and dreams of your own. Pushing down those needs can actually lead to an eruption of uncontrolled emotion, causing conflict to become an intense and heated argument.

When you learn to honor your needs, you can find a way to voice them that is calm and clear. When you learn to voice your needs, you give your partner an opportunity to succeed in meeting or validating those needs. You also give your partner permission to voice their own needs in a calm and clear way. When your partner has the opportunity to meet your needs (and you meet theirs), you create an emotionally safe space of trust with your partner where you both feel seen, loved, and cared for.

Navigating relational conflict after experiencing trauma can be difficult, but you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to begin your trauma healing journey today.

01/31/2023

Many of us learned that certain emotions, usually the negative ones, are “bad.” We may have learned this very directly, being told to “check our attitude” or that “big boys don’t cry.” Or we may have learned it indirectly, having our most intense emotions ignored or gaslit. Most people carry these lessons into adulthood and have a strong sense that negative emotions are “bad” or even “destructive.”
 
But emotions are just bodily signals that tell you what you like and do not like. It’s like the feeling of hunger or thirst. They are natural signs of what you want or need.
 
It is what we DO with emotions that matters. Our behaviors can be good or bad, moral or immoral, productive or destructive. You can have a negative feeling and still make a good (or even productive choice).
 
Let’s consider anger. Anger is typically seen as out-of-control, destructive, and bad. But anger is the normal reaction to something happening to us that is unjust or unfair. Maybe you find out that your boss is engaging in wage theft and you (reasonably) become angry. I think we can agree that attacking your boss would be immoral and also not productive. That will not get you out of this situation, nor will it get you your money back. However, pushing down your anger will not solve this problem either. Anger, used healthily, can help you be motivated to quit this job, find a new job, and hire a lawyer to get your wages back.
 
Emotions are neither good nor bad. They just are. Behaviors can be good or bad. Learning how to be in touch with your emotions can help you use those emotions in a productive and healthy way.
 

01/24/2023

“I’m afraid to feel my emotions because I don’t want to be seen as weak.”
 
Sound familiar? I hear this mentality a lot. But I truly believe that the reality is the exact opposite.
 
Knowing your emotions doesn’t make you weak. Emotions are extremely powerful tools because they tell us what we care about. So, in reality, knowing your emotions makes you much stronger because you know what you want and why you want it.
 
Additionally, vulnerability also opens you up to other people. While that may seem scary at first, it often makes other people more comfortable with you. And that increases the chances they will want to be close to you.
 
That being said, the reality of the world we live in is that some people will take advantage of others and their vulnerability. But how a person responds is a big clue about if they are a trustworthy person or not. Being vulnerable gives you a chance to see who your real friends are.
 
I suggest creating an inner circle of people that you trust (2-3 people) that know you and that you feel safe with.  You can be vulnerable with them and (most importantly) vulnerable with yourself. This gives you a place to have your needs met and keep yourself safe from untrustworthy people at the same time.
 
Getting comfortable with your emotions is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone. Therapy can help. Reach out to begin your healing journey today.
 

01/12/2023

Did you know? In one of the largest studies ever conducted on childhood trauma (the ACE study), researchers found that individuals who experienced childhood trauma often had difficulty with their weight, as well as other health problems like cancer and heart disease. They also saw that individuals who experienced childhood trauma were more likely to have a difficult time forming healthy habits. Why is this?
 
Because trauma in childhood impacts a child’s development. People who experienced childhood trauma often have a harder time in areas like conflict resolution, problem solving, managing emotions, and connecting to other people. Unhealthy habits may be an easy solution to feel better in the moment, but that don’t help that person solve the problem in the long term.
 
Maybe for you, what you experienced was more intense than what you could handle at such a young age and you learned that food was something that could quickly help you cope. Dieting may feel like giving up the one thing in your life that makes you feel good. Maybe the adults in your life didn’t show you healthy ways to solve emotional and relational problems and you didn’t learn key problem-solving skills, like perseverance, positive thinking, or active coping. Dieting may feel like an impossible challenge where you struggle to keep up these changes.
 
If you experienced trauma and you struggle in your relationship with your body, you’re not alone. You may find that talking to a therapist can help you understand how trauma impacted your feelings about your body, learn new coping skills, and master other problem-solving skills to make your personal goals feel more achievable. Even more so, therapy can help you feel more at home in your body, whatever size it is. Don’t wait another day to begin your healing journey. Reach out today.
 

11/14/2022

When we talk about trauma, we often talk about PTSD. But a diagnosis of PTSD doesn’t fit a lot of trauma survivors. It often best reflects the experience of people who go through trauma for the first time as adults. In particular, it fits the experience of people who go through a single, traumatizing event (e.g., a car accident, an assault, a violent community event, etc.). But it often doesn’t fit individuals who experienced complex trauma or developmental trauma.
 
Maybe you’ve been to therapy before and had someone tell you that you don’t have PTSD. Maybe your trauma history has never even come up. The therapist tells you are experiencing depression, anxiety, or ADHD and they leave out that the root cause of your pain is your trauma.
 
*Note: Depression, Anxiety, and ADHD are all very real diagnoses that often exist in individuals who are not trauma survivors. They also can exist in individuals who are trauma survivors. I’m not suggesting that the diagnoses are incorrect or false – rather that trauma survivors are not always shown how their trauma is connected to these diagnoses.
 
Healing from trauma is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to a trauma-informed therapist today. If you live in California and you’d like to do therapy with me, click the link in my bio.
 

11/01/2022

If you’ve been through trauma, you may feel really confused about your feelings. You may feel like they aren’t trustworthy or like they are scary. There’s a number of reasons that trauma could cause you to feel this way. Maybe you saw how big emotions can lead to scary behavior in others and became afraid of your own big emotions. Maybe you didn’t get guidance about how to talk about or express feelings healthily and now it feels easier to not try talking about them at all. In some cases, trauma survivors are so used to disconnecting from their feelings that they don’t even realize they are having a feeling at all.
 
For many trauma survivors, the person causing the trauma never faced consequences. Other people in the house acted as though the behavior was normal or excusable. So while you felt intense emotions around this person, everyone else’s behavior made it seem like you were “crazy”, “oversensitive”, or “dramatic.” If these things were said directly to you, this may have been a form of gaslighting. You may have then internalized this message, believing that your emotions are not trustworthy.
 
But your emotions were actually spot on. You knew something wasn’t right then and you’re working to break the cycle of trauma in your family now. You don’t have to do it alone. Therapy can help you get back in touch with your feelings in a healthy, safe way. Consider reaching out to a trauma-informed therapist today. If you’re in California and interested in doing therapy with me, click the link in my bio.
 

10/26/2022

In part 1, we explored emotion myths that trauma survivors often believe. In reality, emotions are very powerful tools! They tell us if we do or do not like something. This information is extremely helpful, especially for trauma survivors. Learning how to spot red flags in a romantic relationship, learning how to trust your gut as a parent, learning how to know who YOU are and what YOU want – you need emotions to do all of these things.
 
I want you to take some time today to ask yourself how you are feeling. How are you REALLY feeling? Is that feeling trying to tell you something?

In part 3, we’ll talk about why it’s often hard for trauma survivors to trust their feelings. Stay tuned!

Don’t wait another day to get started with your healing journey. Click the link in my bio to get connected with me to begin trauma therapy.

10/19/2022

If you’re a trauma survivor, it’s likely you weren’t given a lot of guidance on what to do with intense emotions. Instead, you may have learned some myths about emotions that aren’t true. On one side of the spectrum, we have myths about emotions being stupid, weak, or uncontrollable. On the other, we have myths about emotions being so important that it is inauthentic to change them or to manage our behavior in any way.

Both sides of this spectrum are getting little slices of the truth while missing the bigger picture. Tune in for part 2 to get a bigger framework for the purpose of emotions.

Healing from trauma can feel lonely and exhausting. You don’t have to do it alone. Therapy can help. If you’re in California, click the link in my bio if you’re interested in reaching out to do therapy.
 

10/17/2022

Trauma tends to get passed down from generation to generation. There’s multiple reasons this can occur, but a lot of it comes down to “hurt people hurt people.” Trauma can have a huge impact on a person’s emotional, relational, and physical health. A traumatized child may have big emotional wounds that are never addressed nor supported. On top of that, they may not learn healthy ways to solve problems. Even if they are told to solve problems calmly and with words, they are observing something very different. Children tend to copy what they see, not what they hear.
 
Fast forward to their own families. They have tons of unaddressed pain combined with few skills or support for how to solve problems in a healthy way. It’s a recipe for the cycle to continue. They act out what they’ve seen and the next generation keeps the cycle going.
 
It doesn’t have to be this way. You can decide to be a cycle-breaker in your family. Breaking the cycle may do more than help you heal – it may set your family free. Don’t wait another day to start your healing journey. Therapy can help. Reach out to a therapist today.