Bustan Therapy, Los Angeles, CA (2025)

11/24/2025

Expectations:
* A perfect, picture-like family gathering.
* Effortless joy and gratitude throughout the entire holiday.
* A harmonious experience with no tension or stress.
* A feeling of perfection that matches social media and advertising.

Reality:
* Stress and burnout: The pressure to host, cook, and manage expectations can be overwhelming.
* Emotional dissonance: The conflict between feeling internal emotions and the external pressure to be happy can cause irritability and exhaustion.
* Family dynamics: Unresolved conflicts or complicated relationships can resurface, leading to tension and emotional distress.
* Social comparison: Seeing idealized versions of holidays on social media can lead to feelings of inadequacy.
* Grief and loss: For those who are grieving or experiencing difficult life changes, the holidays can bring up sadness and a sense of loss.

Coping strategies:
* Set realistic expectations: Accept that no holiday is perfect. Focus on what is genuinely meaningful instead of what you think it “should” be.
* Prioritize self-care: Make time for activities that help you relax and recharge. This includes getting enough sleep, eating balanced meals, and limiting alcohol or caffeine.
* Establish boundaries: It’s okay to say “no” to certain invitations or requests to avoid overcommitment and resentment.
* Manage family dynamics: Focus on your own feelings and actions and model graciousness. You don’t have to control others’ behavior.
* Connect in meaningful ways: Focus on quality over quantity. Consider smaller gatherings, one-on-one time, or virtual check-ins if that feels more manageable.
* Honor your feelings: Allow yourself to feel a mix of emotions. Acknowledge grief and sadness as valid feelings, rather than fighting them.

11/23/2025

Dissociation involves a disconnection from reality. It affects thoughts, memories, emotions or identity. Think of it as a mental escape hatch. The mind uses it to shield itself from overwhelming distress. During dissociation, experiences may feel dreamlike. Individuals can lose touch with their immediate surroundings. Dissociation isn’t always bad. It can occur as a normal response to stress.

How dissociation provides protection
1. Mental escape.
Dissociation allows a child to psychologically detach from a traumatic experience, providing a sense of escape when physical escape is not possible.

2. Emotional numbing.
It minimizes emotional pain by creating a disconnect from feelings that are too overwhelming to bear.

3. Compartmentalization.
The mind may compartmentalize traumatic experiences, separating them from other aspects of the self so the child can continue to function day-to-day without constant reminders of the distress.

4. Survival response.
Dissociation can be a survival response when the fight-or-flight response is not a viable option, as the individual disconnects from the experience to survive it.

Potential long-term consequences:
1. Habitual response: Over time, dissociation can become a rigid, automatic response to any stress, even when the threat is over.

2. Interference with healing: While a necessary survival tactic, this long-term use of dissociation can prevent a person from processing and working through traumatic memories, blocking the path to healing.

3. Integration issues: It can disrupt the integration of consciousness, memory, identity, and emotion.

4. Complications: Dissociation can lead to complications, including other mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

11/22/2025

Memory loss is a common but often overlooked consequence of childhood trauma. Trauma can significantly impact cognitive functions, particularly short-term and long-term memory, making it difficult for individuals to recall past experiences or retain new information. This connection between trauma and memory loss can affect daily life, relationships, and overall well-being. Understanding how trauma influences memory is crucial in recognizing symptoms and seeking appropriate support.
Below are several ways how trauma can disrupt normal memory functions.

1. Hypervigilance.
The amygdala, the brain’s emotional center, becomes hyperactive during trauma, which leads to the most frightening or central parts of the experience being remembered in vivid detail, while less important details like location or time are forgotten.  
2. Fragmented recall.
The hippocampus, crucial for creating contextual memories, can be impaired by stress, making it difficult to form a cohesive story of the event. This can result in fragmented memories or even complete amnesia for certain parts of the experience.  
3. Impaired working memory.
Trauma can affect working memory, making it hard to hold and manipulate information, which impairs concentration and the ability to process new information.  
4. Difficulty with declarative memory.
The ability to recall facts and events (declarative memory) and general knowledge (semantic memory) can be negatively affected, leading to forgetfulness about details like names, dates, or other learned information.  
5. Dissociation.
Trauma can lead to dissociation, a feeling of detachment from reality or one’s own body, which can disrupt memory function and cause gaps in memory or a feeling of being separated from past events.

11/21/2025

Shame is a full-body response that involves both processing the emotional and cognitive aspects while also addressing the physical “storage” of the emotion through somatic practices. This can include mindful movement, breath work, and other techniques that help restore a felt sense of safety in the body and release the “freeze” or “fight/flight” response shame can trigger.

Below are a few reasons why the body must be used in healing shame:
1. Shame is a full-body state.
When you feel shame, your body reacts with physical symptoms like chest tightness, a hunched posture, a racing heart, or a constricted throat.

2. Stress responses are stored in the body.
Repeated shame can lead to a default state of being guarded and tense, causing stress hormones to remain elevated, which can negatively impact the immune and digestive systems over time.

3. It allows for regulation.
Somatic techniques focus on regulating the nervous system by using body awareness, grounding, and gentle movement to help you release the physical and emotional effects of shame.

4. Physical awareness helps break the cycle.
By noticing and identifying the physical sensations of shame, you can begin to separate the emotion from the physical experience. This awareness can help you respond differently to triggers and interrupt the cycle of shame-based thoughts.

5. It integrates healing.
Engaging the body in the healing process helps integrate new beliefs and understandings. As the body releases tension and stress, you can experience a sense of lightness and emotional freedom.

6. It provides a path to a deeper sense of worth.
Through body-oriented practices, you can restore a sense of dignity, build self-compassion, and loosen inhibitions that were once protective but are no longer serving you.

11/20/2025

1. Accepting hot & cold behavior.
Hot and cold behavior is unstable, unhealthy, and often a sign of emotional unavailability. This inconsistent dynamic creates anxiety and emotional damage for the partner receiving it, unlike a healthy relationship which is built on consistency, emotional availability, and a mutual, stable feeling of warmth and care.

2. Inconsistent communication.
Inconsistent communication signals a lack of effort, leading to a breakdown in trust, emotional distance, and unresolved conflicts. It prevents a relationship from progressing, as one partner is left feeling insecure and uncertain about the other’s feelings and commitment.

3. Actions and words don’t align.
Misalignment between words and behaviors is a major red flag in a relationship and considered the bare minimum because consistency and integrity are the non-negotiable foundation for building essential trust and emotional safety. When words and actions don’t align, it erodes the reliability and predictability that allow a relationship to feel secure and healthy.

4. Settling for surface-level communication.
Surface-level communication fails to build emotional intimacy, trust, and understanding, which are the foundations of a healthy relationship. A lack of deeper conversation leaves partners with shallow connections, prevents effective conflict resolution, and can lead to resentment and emotional disconnection.

5. Your emotions are dismissed and ignored.
Dismissing and ignoring emotions in a relationship is known as emotional invalidation, which can cause a partner to feel unheard, unimportant, and lead to resentment and withdrawal. This behavior can damage self-worth, lead to conflict, and is often unintentional, stemming from a partner’s own discomfort or lack of empathy.

11/19/2025

1. Building new habits.
Coping skills are most effective when they are a consistent habit, not a last-minute decision. Your mind and body need practice to make these skills a natural response, much like how you’d treat a physical cold with rest and fluids.

2. Brain and body preparedness.
When you are calm, you can practice techniques like deep breathing or meditation without the added pressure of being in a crisis. This trains your brain to access these skills automatically during stressful times.

3. Avoiding maladaptive behaviors.
Using coping skills only in a crisis is like trying to do a complex workout for the first time while your house is on fire. Without prior practice, your mind may resort to ineffective or harmful behaviors when it doesn’t know what else to do.

4. Maintaining self-care.
Even a few minutes a day can be a form of self-care that helps build resilience. It’s a way to regularly check in with yourself and your emotions before they escalate to a crisis point.

How to start practicing in calm moments:
1. Breathe: Take just a few minutes to practice deep breathing. Inhale slowly through your nose, allowing your belly to expand, hold for a moment, and then exhale slowly through your mouth.
2. Meditate: Start with a morning meditation to start your day with a clear mind, or practice a breathing technique before bed.
3. Move: Take short walks during a lunch break to focus on your surroundings, or go for a leisurely walk to clear your head.
4. Journal: Spend time writing down your thoughts and feelings to process them in a healthy way.
5. Engage in relaxing activities: Listen to music, spend time outdoors, or do any other activity that you find genuinely relaxing.
6. Connect: Make time to talk with friends, family, or a mental health professional.

11/18/2025

1. Emotion Swapping.
Emotion swapping is where you swap your anger for a different, safer emotion. You might turn your anger into sadness, upsetness, and annoyance, for example.

2. Sarcasm.
Do you say the opposite of what you think and feel with a sarcastic, biting tone? Maybe even an eye roll?
Sarcasm is a passive-aggressive way of expressing anger, disappointment, or frustration, and it can happen quickly.
If this is you, it’s worth thinking about why responding sarcastically feels safer than being direct.

3. Conflict Avoidance.
Being uncomfortable with confrontation may indicate a fear of either your own or other people’s anger.
It’s a protective gesture, but it’s not effective in the long run. You’ll likely end up resentful, which you’ll still have to navigate. And if you’re conflict-avoidant, you probably won’t want to.

4. Shutting Down.
Shutting down can look like withdrawing in anger, saying “I’m fine” when you’re upset, stonewalling, or the transmutation of anger into depression or numbness. Shutting down is often an unconscious safety mechanism. When our anger is too threatening to feel, we distance ourselves from it or feel nothing at all.

5. Shame and Guilt.
Anger might make you feel like you’re ‘bad,’ especially if your family of origin or culture thought anger was inappropriate. These beliefs shame us into stuffing our anger. Getting into a healthy relationship with our anger doesn’t look like shoving it down or having guilt and shame around it. There’s nothing shameful about being angry.
It’s one of the most essential human emotions.

6. Holding Grudges.
When we don’t process our anger healthily, we might hold tight to grudges because it’s safer than saying, “I’m really angry about this,” or, “I don’t like how you treated me.”

11/17/2025

The brain’s primary function is survival, not happiness. The nervous system prioritizes safety by favoring familiarity, even if that familiarity is with unhealthy patterns, because it perceives the unknown as a potential threat. Therefore, behaviors that might lead to happiness, but involve risk or change, can be resisted by the nervous system as a protective mechanism. It’s not because we’re weak. It’s because our nervous system was wired for survival, not joy.

How this affects your life:
1. Resistance to change.
Your nervous system may keep you in comfortable, yet unfulfilling, circumstances because they are predictable, even if they cause you pain. This is why you might resist change, even when you know it’s good for you. Your nervous system is acting on its survival instinct, which prefers the “devil it knows”.

2. Repeating relationship patterns.
You might repeatedly find yourself in relationships that are chaotic or emotionally distant because these dynamics feel familiar to your body, which it incorrectly equates with safety.

3. People-pleasing.
The urge to say “yes” when you mean “no” can be a survival strategy, an attempt to avoid conflict by appeasing others.

4. Fear of stillness.
You may avoid rest or quiet because stillness can be unconsciously linked to a past threat, a survival response to danger.

5. Negative self-talk.
A critical or anxious internal voice can be a protector, a strategy to keep you safe by focusing on what could go wrong.

6. Career choices.
Your profession might be a subconscious decision driven by past survival needs. For example, someone who had to be “invisible” may take a behind-the-scenes role, or someone who felt they needed to entertain to be loved might enter a performance-related field.

11/16/2025

For many of us discipline has a negative connotation and our inner child could, well, rebel against the whole idea of it. But in truth, teaching ourselves discipline in adulthood is one of the best gifts we can give ourselves. This is not about punishment, but about “loving discipline”—a compassionate framework that teaches self-care, accountability, and responsible decision-making. Below are a few key benefits of incorporating loving discipline to your inner child work.

1. Provides structure and stability.
Discipline creates a framework of routines and boundaries that makes the inner child feel safe and secure. A predictable environment allows the inner child to relax and be more creative.

2. Teaches self-control and responsibility.
Through self-discipline, you learn to set healthy limits for yourself and take responsibility for your actions, which helps move past emotional reactivity and unhealthy coping habits.

3. Builds self-respect.
Discipline is framed as self-respect in action—doing what you say you will do, especially when it’s difficult, builds a sense of competence and reliability.

4. Fills unmet needs.
Instead of being emotionally out of control, the adult self can step in and provide the structure the child needs. This can help regulate difficult emotions and create a sense of emotional safety.

How to implement loving discipline:
Start small: Set small, achievable promises for yourself to build a track record of success.
Be consistent: Gently and consistently follow through on these promises to build trust with your inner child.
Explain the “why”: This helps create a compassionate and understanding inner dialogue.
Be patient: Reparenting is a process. If you falter, approach it with compassion and patience, just as a loving parent would.

11/15/2025

Why It Is Considered Underused:
Many people struggle to practice self-compassion due to common misbeliefs:
*Myth: Self-compassion is self-pity or weakness. Research actually shows the opposite: self-compassionate people tend to be more resilient and less likely to ruminate on misfortune.

*Myth: It leads to laziness or lack of motivation. In reality, self-compassion is linked to increased motivation and personal accountability because it creates a safe environment to acknowledge mistakes without debilitating self-judgment.

*Myth: It is selfish. Taking care of oneself is essential for sustainability; self-compassionate individuals are often more capable of caring for others without experiencing burnout.

Benefits of Self-Compassion:
*Emotion Regulation - Self-compassion increases heart rate variability (HRV) by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which counteracts the “fight or flight” response and helps the body relax and recover from stress. This is linked to lower cortisol and higher oxytocin (bonding hormone) levels.

*Counters emotional avoidance-Self-compassion decreases avoidance of difficult emotions by reframing them as non-threatening and manageable instead of something to fear or escape. By treating yourself with kindness, you reduce the self-criticism that triggers a threat response, and instead foster a sense of safety and calm that allows you to mindfully accept, rather than reject, your feelings.

*Reduces Shame- Shame is associated with just about every psychological distressing condition that exists. Shame makes you feel like a flawed, isolated exception to the rule. Self-compassion counters this by reminding you that suffering, imperfection, and making mistakes are shared human experiences, creating a sense of connection.

11/14/2025

1. Learn to be aware of your emotions.
If you’ve spent your adult life disconnected from your feelings, the first step is to learn to notice and become aware of feelings – good and uncomfortable feelings. When you feel a change in body sensation – e.g. flood of warmth or racing heart – slow down, perhaps place your hand on your chest, notice the next in breath and become aware of the emotional experience. No need to alter your reaction, simply notice the change.

2. Use Descriptive Emotional Language.
Develop your emotional literacy – find words to describe how you feel – if you didn’t grow up in a home where people talked about their feelings you may need to expand your vocabulary. For example you might say you are feeling happy – but perhaps a more accurate word is that you are feeling hopeful, creative, or satisfied. These words can start a more meaningful conversation in which you explain how you’re feeling more accurately, and provide the listener with more information.

3. Identify your needs, and take steps to meet them.
Many adults who experienced emotional neglect as children don’t know what they need and don’t feel they deserve to get their needs met. Developing your emotional vocabulary can help you explore your needs. When you begin to understand what you need you may also start noticing what helps.

4. Acknowledge That Beliefs Are Not Always Facts.
If you believe you don’t deserve to have your needs met, see it as just that – a belief, not a fact. It can be helpful to begin to deconstruct old beliefs you’ve held for a long time that may no longer hold true.

5. Take Care, Be Gentle, Nurture Self Compassion.
Be gentle and kind to yourself, take it slowly. Try treating yourself with the same care and gentleness you would give a small child.

11/13/2025

Over-explaining is often less about communication and more about seeking safety. It’s a coping mechanism rooted in the need to be understood, accepted, and approved of. When someone feels that their worth or belonging depends on how well they can justify themselves, they begin to over-explain — layering reasons, apologies, and clarifications until they feel temporarily secure. Psychologically, this behavior reflects an attempt to control uncertainty and minimize the risk of rejection. Below are six trauma-related reasons for over-explaining.

1. Fawn response.
Over-explaining is often a manifestation of the “fawn” response, a trauma response in which a person tries to people-please to avoid conflict.

2. Childhood experiences.
Growing up in an environment where one had to constantly justify their choices, was harshly judged, or faced unpredictable outbursts can create a lasting habit of over-explaining as a safety measure.

3. Fear of rejection.
Trauma can lead to a profound fear of rejection or abandonment. Over-explaining is used to “prove” one’s worth or defend their behavior to prevent being misunderstood, excluded, or unloved.

4. Anxiety and control.
It can be a subconscious effort to control anxiety by over-justifying a decision or response to a person, aiming to prevent them from getting upset.

5. Difficulty with boundaries.
When setting boundaries, over-explaining can be a reaction rooted in past trauma where individuals feel immense guilt for saying “no,” fearing they will be perceived as unkind or mean.

6. Heightened stress response.
Trauma can cause a heightened stress response, making it difficult to regulate concentration and information processing. This can lead to a need to over-explain to try and de-escalate negative feelings or situations.

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