Breyta Psychological Services, P.A.

03/25/2026

Dr. Foa was a luminary in our field. Her innovation, vision, and tireless work are part of why there are effective evidence -based PTSD treatments today. Her contribution to psychology, and trauma treatment specifically, cannot be quantified as it's greater than we can imagine and words do not do her work justice. With deep gratitude, we say goodbye to Dr. Foa but know that her brilliance will live on in the work we do every day. 🩵

We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Edna Foa, a true giant in the field of traumatic stress.

Dr. Foa’s groundbreaking work transformed the understanding and treatment of trauma-related disorders, leaving an enduring impact on clinicians, researchers, and countless individuals worldwide. ISTSS was honored to count her as a longtime member, former Board member, and wise leader and mentor. Dr. Foa played a vital role in shaping the mission and work of ISTSS. Her extraordinary contributions were recognized with the ISTSS Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

Her legacy will continue to guide and inspire generations to come. We extend our heartfelt condolences to her family, colleagues, and all who were touched by her work.

03/18/2026

We often think of luck as something external—something that happens to us.
In Roman mythology, Fortuna controlled the wheel of fortune—unpredictable, shifting, outside of human control.

But the Stoics offered a different perspective:
You cannot control what happens.
But you can shape how you interpret, respond to, and act in the face of it.

Modern psychology now supports this idea.

What we call “luck” is often the result of:
+ our cognitive patterns (how we interpret events)
+ our physiology (how our nervous system responds)
+ and our behavior over time

Together, these form a system.

And over time, that system shapes what we notice, what we pursue, and what becomes possible.

At Breyta, we assume something simple:
Change is constant. Uncertainty is inevitable.

But your relationship to your past, present, and future - that is something you can understand, and learn to shift.

You can’t control the ocean, but you can learn how to surf.
If this resonates, the full blog goes deeper into the psychology and biology behind this—and how to begin changing these patterns.

If you’re ready to better understand your own patterns, the WAVE Insight Experience™ is designed to help you map how your mind works, and where change becomes possible.

12/31/2025

If you’ve been waiting to feel ready, you’re not doing anything wrong.

Most of us were taught to wait for certainty; for confidence, clarity, or calm before we begin.

But readiness isn’t something you suddenly feel.

It’s something you choose.

It’s the gentle decision to take one step forward even while uncertainty is still present.

It’s trusting that strength is built through action, not before it.

You don’t need to be fearless.
You don’t need everything figured out.
You don’t need to silence doubt to move anyway.

You’re allowed to begin imperfectly.
You’re allowed to learn as you go.
And you’re allowed to choose yourself—even if it feels unfamiliar.

Readiness lives in that moment when you say, "I’m willing to try."

And that willingness is more than enough.

12/31/2025

This time of year, so many people are searching for answers like:
“How do I make lasting change?”
“Why don’t New Year’s resolutions work?”
“How do I stop starting over every January?”

If that sounds familiar, it’s not because you lack motivation or discipline.

It’s because most change advice is built on rigidity—rules, perfection, and all-or-nothing thinking—rather than how humans actually change.

We just published a new blog on how to make lasting change, grounded in values-based psychology and decades of research on behavior change. It’s about moving toward what matters instead of trying to force yourself into someone new.
There is no single road to be “on” or “off.”
There is only direction.

Every bit counts. Perspective counts. Rerouting counts.

Even doing it scared or unsure still counts.

At Breyta, we specialize in change - it's right there in our name; an Icelandic word meaning “to change”.

This is how we think about meaningful, lasting change: not through pressure or perfection, but through clarity, compassion, and commitment to what matters.

Read the full blog: How to Make Lasting Change in the New Year
(Link in bio)

Save this if you want to come back to it later, or share it with someone who’s tired of starting over. 🩵

12/16/2025

Codependency is often misunderstood as something that only exists in relationships involving addiction or substance use. In reality, it’s a learned relational pattern that often begins much earlier.

Many people develop codependent patterns in childhood, especially in families where emotions were unpredictable, overwhelming, or unmanaged. In those environments, children often learn—implicitly—that staying connected means staying attuned to other people’s needs.

They learn to:

* manage emotions around them

* keep the peace

* take responsibility for how others feel

* minimize their own needs

These strategies make sense when stability depends on them.

As adults, this can show up as:

* feeling responsible for others’ emotions

* overfunctioning in relationships

* difficulty setting or maintaining boundaries

* guilt when prioritizing yourself

* equating love with effort or self-sacrifice

Substance use may become part of some of these relationships—not because codependency causes addiction, but because unresolved relational patterns make distress and instability harder to tolerate.

Understanding codependency this way is often deeply relieving. It shifts the story from “What’s wrong with me?” to “This is how I learned to stay connected.”

With awareness, these patterns can change. And addressing them can lead to relationships that feel more mutual, grounded, and freeing.

11/17/2025

11/11/2025

Today, we honor those who have served — and those who have carried the weight of that service beside them.

At Breyta Psychological Services, we understand that “thank you for your service” can never capture the full truth of what it means to serve.

Service is both a gift and a burden.

It can bring pride, purpose, and lifelong bonds — and it can also leave quiet echoes of pain, loss, and disconnection that few see.

When one person serves, the whole family serves. Deployments, relocations, and the invisible stress of readiness shape relationships and redefine what home means. Yet within that same experience lies extraordinary resilience, a deep sense of duty, teamwork, and commitment to something larger than oneself.

We see those qualities every day in the veterans we work with. They show us that courage doesn’t end with service. It continues in the work of healing, in showing up for family, in learning to live fully in the aftermath of all that was asked.

To all veterans and their loved ones:
We honor not only your service, but your humanity.

Your continued presence, your willingness to heal, rebuild, and keep serving in new ways, is a quiet act of heroism that sustains our communities.

From all of us at Breyta Psychological Services, thank you for all you’ve given, and all you continue to give.

11/06/2025

The world is loud right now. Anxiety has become background noise, burnout feels normal, and so many of us are trying to “just push through.”

You don’t need to.
Your nervous system deserves support — not pressure.

Community Calm: An Emotion Skills Lab is a gentle, evidence-based space created by trauma-informed psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Hoose to help you regulate emotion, soften stress, and build resilience that lasts.

Calm isn’t something you find.
It’s something you learn to create — inside yourself.

📍 Hosted by Breyta Psychological Services at Lake Lynn Community Center in Raleigh
🌿 Reserve your spot — link in bio to join
$20 per person
7-9pm

Multiple dates leading up to the holidays:
Nov 19th, Dec 3rd, or Dec 17th

For a limited time, there is a two-for-one special on Eventbrite. Bring a friend!

11/06/2025

The phoenix isn’t defined by the fire — it’s defined by its unending capacity to rise from it.

Trauma changes us, but not always in ways we can see right away. Healing isn’t about pretending the fire never happened; it’s about learning the language of our own rebirth.

Science calls it neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to rewire after loss, trauma, or stress.

Our hearts call it hope — the quiet decision to keep showing up, even when everything feels scorched.

Both are true. Both are powerful.

Healing isn’t about going back to who you were before.

It’s about becoming the person who can rise from what happened.

In psychology, this process has a name: post-traumatic growth (PTG) — the mind’s remarkable ability to rebuild meaning, compassion, and wisdom from pain.

PTG doesn’t mean the trauma was “worth it."

It means that even after everything has burned, there’s something in us that still knows how to rebuild.

Therapy helps you reconnect with that capacity — to see the embers of strength that remain, to make sense of the wreckage, and to trust that rising is possible again.

Healing isn’t about minimizing the fire.
It’s about remembering what within you survives it.

🔥🕊️

At Breyta Psychological Services, we help you understand your mind, rebuild with purpose, and connect you with your capacity to rise stronger.

10/31/2025

While there’s no scientific evidence of ghosts, there is a reason we feel haunted.

In folklore, spirits linger when something unresolved remains — a story unfinished, a grief unspoken.

In psychology, trauma behaves much the same way. What we cannot fully process hovers, echoing as sensations, emotions, or flashes of memory.

As humans, our gift of language drives us to make meaning of our pain — but meaning alone can’t quiet the body.

There’s a dialectic between our explicit and implicit memory; the story we tell and the echo in the bone. We feel the connection between the narrative that explains and the fear-based memory that endures.

Healing begins when we listen to both.

In this way, we haunt ourselves — until we learn to integrate what the mind remembers and what the body still holds.

Read The Ghosts We Make: How Trauma Haunts the Mind on the Breyta blog.



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Would you like me to build a carousel version of this next — one that visually alternates between “story” and “body” (e.g., Slide 1: We haunt ourselves. → Slide 2: The story we tell. → Slide 3: The echo in the bone.)? It would make that dialectic visually embodied for Halloween Eve.

10/31/2025

Trauma doesn’t just live in memory—it reshapes how the brain processes time and safety. When someone has experienced trauma, the brain’s alarm system (the amygdala) becomes overactive, while the part responsible for context and logic (the prefrontal cortex) can go offline under stress. This means the body may react to a reminder of danger as if it’s happening right now. That’s why trauma survivors often say, “It feels like I’m back there.” Healing involves teaching the brain and body that the past is over and safety exists in the present moment.

10/27/2025

🟣 October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Every October, we honor the strength and courage of survivors — and recommit to breaking the silence that allows violence to persist.

In our latest Breyta Blog, Clinical Director Dr. Anusha Zechella reflects on why awareness still matters, how community stress can heighten risk, and what trauma-informed therapy can do to support healing and safety.

💜 Read the full blog: https://www.breytapsych.com/domestic-violence-awareness-month/

📞 Need support? If you or someone you know is in danger, call 911 or contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788 for 24/7 confidential help.