Courage to Hope Counseling, LLC

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Courage to Hope Counseling, LLC

Courage to Hope Counseling, LLC is a Minnesota based telehealth therapy service specializing in working with survivors of Complex PTSD.

Online Scheduling available at: https://couragetohopecounseling.clientsecure.me/

11/05/2024

Happy election day all! AKA hard to remain in your window of tolerance day!
Sympathetic activation is the body's response to stressful situations that prepare it for fight or flight. Everyone's specific sensations are a bit different because each nervous system is unique to the person. You may notice increased muscle tension, heart rate, and more rapid or shallow breathing than normal. Get curious about how your body responds and do what you can to meet it where it's at today. Add extra movement and self care. Getting to know your patterns of activation can help make you the expert of your body. Meeting your body's requests just 10% more can make for some dramatic changes in ability to regulate. Best of luck to all!

05/08/2024

People who have experienced long term feelings of danger in their bodies often unintentionally train their body to scan for danger more often than the average person. This is often called hypervilgilence. That feeling of being perpetually "on edge" that does not seem to decrease. Studies have shown that kiddos who have experienced trauma literally have developed a larger amygdala (that's the "smoke-detector" of the brain).

Unfortunately, without intervention, hypervigilence can be a self-reinforcing cycle. Hypervigilence leads to an increased chemical response in your body. (Fancy words for my brain nerds here are "overactivation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). What that means for the rest of us is that your body chemistry and brain actually change to adapt and make this the new normal.

Ever feel the "I should be doing something" urges when trying to relax? Could be a bit of hypervigilence.

This usually leads your body to more activation and decreases the size of that window of tolerance. This state makes you more likely to engage in avoidance behaviors that decrease your window of tolerance and increases your sensitivity to situations as a threat that may not actually contain one.

But there are solutions! Like learning how to increase a felt sense of safety in your nervous system! One of the other cool things about the brain is it's plasticity. It can learn new ways of coping, adapting and regulating. With practice anyone can learn to be in a relaxed muscle body with the ability to respond to situations as they come in a regulated nervous system. Feel free to follow for tips and ideas to practice!

04/15/2024

Let's talk about the fawn/appease response. (A.k.a. that thing that you do because you need to go along to get along and you're too exhausted to do anything else. ) This response helps us survive in so many situations and keeps us connected to caregivers and communities. It also happens when our nervous system is dysregulated and outside our "window of tolerance" alternately called the "window of presence." This window is the sweet spot for your nervous system, where you're not panicked or dissociated (A.k.a. when you are showing up for your own life).

When you are consistently overwhelmed, the pleasing and appeasing response can become a default mode. It is usually very well received and reinforced by others and usually helps manage our own short term distress. The issue is that over time consistently denying one's own wants and needs leads to burnout, bitterness, and sometimes even loss of identity which is common in those with complex trauma. You may no longer even be able to identify your wants and needs if you've only ever attempted to mold yourself into what others need. This actually increases distress thereby making it harder to regulate, becoming a vicious cycle.

When you begin to work on regulating your nervous system it starts to interrupt this cycle. If you slow down enough to consider what's going on in your body for a few seconds you're already beginning to be curious about what it needs. Even if it's just a glass of water or to close you're eyes for a moment it's something. And when you do more regulating and if your body no longer feels as overwhelmed, you get closer to being within that window. And when you're in your window you have more time and space to consider things such as what you actually want and what you don't want. Which is why sometimes it's only when you're in your window of tolerance that you can accurately determine what you won't tolerate.

04/05/2024

I CAN'T LEAVE MY DESK AND IT'S SO PRETTY OUTSIDE! Time for some regulating 😅

04/01/2024

Sometimes feelings are things we're taught to fight, run away from or try to stop from happening. Really they're just a body's way of trying to get our attention. They are simply trying to point something out that is important and trying to help, despite how uncomfortable they might make us or how inconvenient the timing might be. The trick becomes letting your feelings tell you what they're trying to tell you as best you can. Give them the space to do so when you're able. Feelings want to be felt and they just get louder when they can't convey the information they have to share. It can be an extremely hard ask when you've been training yourself to change, stop, avoid, or even actively shame certain feelings. But it is possible, and the more you stop fighting them the less it begins to feel like your body is in a state of constant war.

03/20/2024

There is a frequent and extremely tempting misconception that learning nervous system regulation techniques will be able to help stop you from feeling what you're feeling. This is not actually what all these bilateral regulation, breathing techniques, and other fun emotion regulation skills and tidbits I share on this page are for. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

The goal isn't actually to stop the feeling. The goal is actually to make feeling the feeling more manageable if you are in intense activation or allow your body to feel safe enough to begin feeling again if you are experiencing shut down.

We are not trying to stop the waves, in fact we are thankful for them because they mean we are still alive, still here to experience them. Dissociation is helpful for a time, but not forever. But instead of looking at our emotional ocean with overwhelm (which is a completely understandable reaction particularly when trauma is involved) we want to find a good wetsuit and practice in shallow waters first to slowly become even more courageous to eventually approach those huge swells and be able to surf all the way back to shore on our feet.

Take your time, practice, be patient with yourself. You can do this. Work with your body instead of against it. And hopefully instead of bracing yourself for a barrage of feelings eventually you just observe and say, "Surf's up"

Give me a follow is you'd like more emotional surfing tips and tricks 🏄‍♀️

03/13/2024

WE WOULD BE THE CHAMPION MY FRIENDS!

Our lovely body ya'll, just trying so darn hard to keep us safe. That perpetual feeling of anxiety or unease has trained our brains to become over achievers who try to preemptively prepare for every scenario. And if we're always prepared for the worst we'll feel better, right? RIGHT?!

Kinda.

While it's important to think and prepare for the future only thinking of the worst case scenario can be a never ending game. And since currently it is not an Olympic sport, might I recommend branching out into other hobbies? Trying to move into that settled space in your body and trusting that no matter what comes, you will deal with it. You always have. Just for a brain exercise, see what happens when you try to imagine all the scenarios where something goes right or something goes well. Let's get curious! And let me know how it goes and feels in the comments!

03/10/2024

Not a type of person? ME NIETHER come with me.

Address

310 4th Avenue Southeast
Minneapolis, MN
55414

Website

https://couragetohopecounseling.clientsecure.me/

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