ASK Counseling and Consulting

10/12/2024

⭐️new blog post⭐️
Trigger warning: lots of stories of spiritual/ religious abuse. Also, if you are a Christian, this may be a hard read. I know fully how challenging some of this article will be, as it was for me as I wrote it this past year. My desire is that it would educate and warn those potentially in an unhealthy church environment, and give those that escaped those environments some context to process the things they’ve seen and experienced. Plus, I know a lot of my followers have experienced heart ache in the past year from a variety of “scandal” exposed within some of the places we were all at. I hope this article can help in some way to make sense of what has happened this past year, and hopefully prevent people from going under structures like that again. Also the picture is just what AI gave me with the prompt set free, if anyone asks 😆

Why is abuse so prevalent in churches today? What are the things we can be aware of to reduce the risk of being in an abusive church community?

10/07/2021

⭐️New Blog Post!⭐️

In light of recent events that have people talking, and in honor of domestic violence awareness month, I decided to write a blog on the topic of enablers of abuse. Enablers are not talked about nearly as much as the abusers themselves, yet those enabling abusers cause a tremendous amount of trauma a...

06/24/2021

Now offering Therapy Intensives that are custom to your needs, budget, and schedule.

This option is great for people who:
Can't regularly attend therapy due to their unique schedules.
Travel a lot.
Don't live within driving distance of the Merritt Island office.
Indiana residents who are just looking for a good excuse to come visit the beach and work on their mental health at the same time!

If interested, please email joanna@askccllc.com or call at 321-414-2686. A free phone consultation will be done to see if this option is appropriate for you and your unique needs.

10/09/2020

New blog today for domestic violence awareness month

Welcome to ASK Counseling and Consulting, LLC

02/29/2020

Science continues to connect trauma and stress with our physical health.

Research finds U.S. Army personnel at risk of developing autoimmune conditions.

02/23/2020

I've been working on a website, and blog was an option on there, so I am going to start writing some things! Here is the first thing I wrote that has been on my mind for awhile now. Hope you find it helpful!

01/26/2020

https://www.facebook.com/192805300766983/posts/2619596738087815?substory_index=0&sfns=mo

​“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; ​safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives." Bessel van der Kolk

12/12/2019

Words of wisdom and encouragement for you all today 😊

https://www.facebook.com/1485844181697765/posts/2494743210807852?sfns=mo

12/09/2019

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”
-Brianna Wiest
https://ko-fi.com/donate_nepenthe



[Illustration: Yaoyao Ma Van As Art ]

11/22/2019

We are now taking Cigna insurance for Indiana tele-therapy clients, and in a couple of weeks will also be taking Cigna for Florida in office and tele-therapy clients