Alison Murphey, M.S. Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

03/28/2025

So happy to have shared my knowledge and insight on this topic. Understanding the concept of friendship love bombing is always helpful in setting boundaries early on in all our relationships.

Moving too fast isn’t just a romantic red flag.

03/12/2024

It’s been a while since I shared, but this message is so important. Our journey through each emotion is not linear and they often blend together. Change, even healthy change encompasses so many emotions.

11/22/2023

As the holiday season approaches you may notice mixed emotions about this time of year. While some people find the holidays a time of peace, many people become increasingly stressed, anxious or even depressed.

Time with family may be fun, for a short while or absolutely challenging at all times. For those who do not have family to celebrate with, this season may be incredibly difficult to cope with and manage. However you spend your holidays here are a few easy to use tools to help manage that holiday stress.

Set Boundaries: Whether directly with others or for yourself, set limits and boundaries for your time, space, energy and engagement with others.

Change The Scenery: If you start to feel any stress change up what you are doing. Simply enough just move your body somewhere else.

Get Fresh Air: Take a break or walk outdoors.

Take Breaks and Breathers:Take time away from the social environment and give yourself a break.

Ground Yourself: Remember to stay in the moment and present at all times. Try and challenge thoughts that bring your focus to the past or future.

11/16/2023

Are you feeling more anxious and stressed these days? Do normal triggers seem to be causing increased anxiety and worry? Are the holiday's starting to cause extra stress that you don't know how to cope with?

If you said yes to any of those, then working to de-escalate yourself and build some healthy coping tools would greatly benefit you.
Building healthy self care tools to create balance in your life is a healthy start to meeting your needs. The following tools are a great way to start prioritizing your mental well being:

Deep Breathing

Stretching/ Caring For Your Body

Grounding Yourself

Exercise and Sun

Limiting or Decreasing Electronics/Screens

If you need assistance in managing the stress of life outside of self care, please feel free to reach out to explore how therapy can help you get on the road to peace and well being.

10/24/2023

Are you questioning the idea of starting therapy? Do you have concerns that it won't work...or that it is just is not for you? Maybe you question or worry about how talking about the past can help you navigate today...

Let me help you understand the benefits of therapy. As uncomfortable as it may feel to process and talk about the past, it is the only way to resolve the memories, anxiety and trauma from the past. By processing/reprocessing and exploring the past you can build a healthy future.
Working with a therapist will also help you improve your whole sense of self. You can build healthy confidence and self esteem as you work through the issues that are holding you back from being truly happy. As you grow so will all your relationships.

My aim is to help you find the strength within you, foster resilience, and empower you to reclaim the life you deserve.

09/15/2023

Burn out is a very real trigger and stressor that we all face within different areas of our lives (ie. occupational, family, social, etc.) We most often hear about job based burn out, but the reality is that it can affect you anywhere. Whether you are managing a difficult workplace setting, interpersonal and social conflict, family stress or just too many projects and tasks...you can face some degree of emotional/physical burnout. With burn out you may feel emotionally or even physically drained. Very often you may feel like you have a short fuse and little frustrations can trigger an angered/escalated response. You may also start to feel physically ill...maybe you have more headaches than usual, your body hurts in new places or old pains have become so much worse. You may notice that you struggle to control and manage your anxiety and start to feel a level of hypervigilance. Managing the burnout often involves building healthy boundaries around the different stressors and increasing your healthy coping tools. If you are experiencing burnout in your life please reach out so we can explore healthy ways to help you reclaim control of yourself and your emotions.

08/28/2023

Negative self talk is highly rooted in negative cognitions and automatic negative thoughts about yourself. By learning to challenge the negative thoughts and increase positive self talk you can work to change how you see yourself, think about yourself and engage in the world around you. Recognizing the automatic negative thoughts that invade your self talk can help bring awareness to challenge them with healthy truth and facts about yourself. Just because you have repeated a negative thought about yourself for so long does not make it true...it just makes you think it holds truth. Try praising yourself for big and small parts of your day and work to shift how you see yourself.

Therapy can help you learn how to process the sources of negative self talk and break down the long-held beliefs and patterns you hold about yourself. Please reach out if you would like additional information.

07/19/2023

In unhealthy family environments we often see an individual who is treated like a scapegoat for all of the family's problems. The scapegoat is the go to individual, where all blame, and guilt is placed. As the abuse pattern goes on the scapegoated individual can lose their sense of identity and struggles to make decisions for themselves. The individual scapegoat will often take on a victimized persona...until they begin to work on themselves, set boundaries and increase necessary assertiveness with the abusers in their life. As the individual grows and cares for themselves they will shift from victim to SURVIVOR.

While the scapegoated individual improves in all aspects of their life, the family or those who have mistreated them often escalate and attempt to bring the individual back down, so they can further the patterns of abuse and mistreatment. The abusers are most powerful when the survivor lives in a state of guilt, pessimism, discouragement and self doubt.

Although challenging and difficult the survivor of the abuse can reinforce and double down on boundaries and healthy communication patterns to further protect themselves. It is important that the boundaries set, be reinforced and maintained.

07/10/2023

Trauma affects the brain and body in many different ways. It can affect physical health, emotional well being, depression, anxiety, anger and so much more. Trauma can trigger body pain, headaches and other physical health issues. Trauma can also impact emotional well being, sleep cycles, nightmares and ability to communicate and express yourself and your emotions. Often survivors of trauma demonstrate an increased startle response and hypervigilance that can lead to feeling unsafe and out of control. The impact of trauma and attached emotional strife can cause escalated anger and difficulty controlling anger as well.

Whether you have a more recent trauma or a past trauma that remains unresolved it is important to find the right help and tools so you can live life on your terms and feel your best. Therapy and counseling with a professional is always a great start to your emotional well being.

Don't let the past define your future.

07/08/2023

Setting boundaries and asserting yourself are a huge aspect of self care and creating healthy relationships. It is incredibly important to learn what your needs are and set the boundaries to best support yourself within all the relationships and domains of your life.

By learning the smaller steps to set authentic boundaries you will be able to improve communication with those around you...in every aspect and domain of your life.

Healthy boundaries and improved communications will help you in your home life, social life, work life and in all other areas of your day-to-day life. Whether engaging with your boss, partner, friends or children it is important to maintain your needs and advocate for what you deserve.

The steps shared will not only help set initial boundaries, but maintain the more integral and long-term boundaries.

06/30/2023

Narcissistic abuse is often hard to recognize when you are in the thick of it. Like most forms of abuse Narcissistic abuse begins with a high amount of love bombing and ends in physical, verbal and emotional abuse.

The long-term impact of narcissistic abuse is often learned challenges with how you see yourself, engage in the world around you and cope with different relationships. Your inner most cognitions about yourself are challenged when you are abused by anyone...however a narcissist will thrive on making you question yourself and minimize yourself. A narcissist is a power hungry individual who actually feels completely powerless and useless in their own life and seeks to take your power as a means of control and dominance.

There are different characteristics to recognizing a narcissistic abuser, and by recognizing the red flags early on you can safely set boundaries and assert yourself.

06/27/2023

Wonderful support to help you take care of yourself and reclaim the joy in your life.