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March 20 - April 4, 2025
It tells a new, exciting story, where physical and psychological symptoms are messages, not lifelong diagnoses that can only be managed.
to healing. To truly actualize change, you have to engage in the work of making new choices every day. In order to achieve mental wellness, you must begin by being an active daily participant in your own healing.
Emotional addiction is particularly powerful when we habitually seek or avoid certain emotional states as a way to cope with trauma. Studying addiction showed me the inextricable link between our bodies and minds, as well as the central role of the nervous system in mental wellness, a topic that we will discuss in detail later in this book.
we can be active participants in our own well-being.
(fMRI) brain scans confirm this,23 showing tangible evidence that consistent consciousness practices actually thicken the prefrontal lobes,
when you can practice being focused on and truly present in whatever you’re doing. This could be while you are doing the dishes, folding laundry, or taking a bath. It could mean stopping on your walk to look up at the clouds or taking a moment to really smell the aromas of your work space throughout the day. Make a conscious choice to witness the entirety of your experience in that moment. Say to yourself, “I am in this present moment.” Your mind may respond with a steady stream of mental resistance because it’s being jolted out of its conditioning and it’s being watched. All sorts of thoughts
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Ground yourself in the moment. Our senses allow us to leave the monkey mind and find a deeper connection to the present moment. Let’s say you’ve chosen to do this exercise while doing dishes. Feel the soap on your hands. See how the soap bubbles over
After practicing this for one to two minutes, acknowledge that you gave yourself this time. This will allow your mind and body to understand how it feels and give you a moment to thank yourself for the time you took to do the work. Repeat this exercise at least once a day. As you get more comfortable, you’ll begin to notice more moments when you can repeat the practice.
Today I am practicing being conscious to myself and my daily patterns. I am grateful for an opportunity to create change in my life. Today, I am conscious and aware whenever I choose. Change in this area allows me to feel more aware of myself and my patterns. Today, I am practicing when I bring my attention back to the present moment.
If parent-figures have not healed or even recognized their unresolved traumas, they cannot consciously navigate their own path in life, let alone act as trustworthy guides for someone else. It’s very common for parent-figures to
it can be obvious: the parent-figure who comments on a child’s weight or obsesses about the child looking “presentable” at all times; the parent-figure who is overly concerned with minor details, such as how a child wears her hair. Children learn quickly that some parts
Trauma is part of life. It is unavoidable. Your very first experience on this earth—birth—was a trauma, possibly for both you and your mother. Just because we’ve experienced trauma does not necessarily mean that we are destined for a life of suffering and illness. We don’t have to repeat the patterns that shaped our early lives. When we do the work, we can change. We can move forward. We can heal.
To gain awareness of your personal childhood wounds or suppressed emotions, take some time to reflect and write using the prompts that follow. You need to respond only to the experiences that resonate with you. Many people with unresolved trauma, including myself, don’t have many memories, making some of these questions difficult to answer. Explore whatever does come to mind.
Remember a time in childhood where you wanted to be acknowledged by your parent-figure(s) and they seemed distracted, busy, or otherwise made you feel unacknowledged.
Do you remember a time in childhood when you got messages about who you were (or weren’t)? Did you have parent-figure(s) who said, “You’re so sensitive like your mother” or “You need to get straight A’s to make the family proud”?
HAVING A PARENT WHO DOES NOT MODEL BOUNDARIES Spend some time thinking back to your experiences with personal limits and their violations in childhood, as well as about the different sorts of limits (or lack thereof) modeled by your parent-figure(s) overall. To help you reflect, feel free to use these journal prompts: IN YOUR CHILDHOOD . . . Did you feel free to say “no”? Or did your parent-figure(s) tell you to behave a certain way?
HAVING A PARENT WHO IS OVERLY FOCUSED ON APPEARANCE In childhood, many of us received direct and indirect messages about our appearance. A parent-figure(s) may have even commented directly on certain aspects of your appearance with statements such as “You should wear your hair down,” “Your thighs are getting bigger,” “Do you really think it’s a good idea to have seconds?” or “You’d look a lot better if you didn’t wear clothes like that.”
When your parent-figure(s) had strong feelings, how did they communicate with you or those around you? For example, did they resort to name-calling, blaming, shaming, or the silent treatment?
Eating and entertainment
When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress,
“As long as the trauma is not resolved,” wrote Dr. Bessel van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, “the stress hormones that the body secretes to protect itself keep circulating.”38,39,40,41 The body must also devote excessive energy to “suppressing the inner chaos” of trauma, or the activated fight-or-flight response, which further pushes us into a state of dysregulation. It’s a vicious cycle, a physiological loop repeated over and over again.
stomach. If you are a BIPOC in America, simply walking down the street or watching the news of daily violence against people who look like you can activate your trauma response.
fainting episodes a few years after my move to Philadelphia, I understood that I was stressed out though still felt confused about why I was passing out. There was no stress that I could identify that seemed threatening enough to warrant such a strong response in my body. Why was my body in a state of heightened activation without there being any immediate threat?
seemingly out of nowhere, I began to faint. Polyvagal theory helped me understand just how it is that trauma lives in the
Lack of emotional resilience Inability to form meaningful connections Issues with concentration Difficulty performing higher-functioning cognitive tasks, such as planning for the future Trouble delaying gratification
Our body learns to engage in patterns like these to feel like our familiar self.
gut issues that are key physical symptoms expressed by every single one of my clients.
Ideally, when you face a stressful situation head-on, your nervous system becomes activated and then returns to a baseline state of balance, which allows your body to “rest and digest.” If your nervous system cannot regulate itself, however, you cannot recover from stress and you may have the following symptoms:
your body each day (you can use the Consciousness Building exercise to help you do this). Witness and note when you are experiencing any of the above symptoms of nervous system activation.
Be conscious about your consumption of information. When you consume information, your nervous system consumes it, too. Be mindful of how you feel in your body as you consume various kinds of information. Do you feel replenished and restored or depleted and fearful? Disconnecting from media that activates anxious feelings can be helpful. Find nature
Today I am practicing restoring balance to my nervous system. I am grateful for an opportunity to create calm in my life. Today, I am bringing one moment of much-needed calm to my body. Change in this area allows me to feel more peace. Today, I am practicing when I find safety in the present moment/do one visualization meditation/am conscious about my information consumption/spend one minute witnessing nature.
Very few of us meet the nutritional demands of our body. Instead, we tend to eat based on how we feel—sad, bored, happy, lonely, excited—or, on the flip side, we make food choices out of necessity, habit, or obligation. All of this input around food disconnects us from the actual needs of our body.
In fact, 90 percent of the neurotransmitter serotonin, commonly referred to as “the happy hormone” (though it is also involved in sleep, memory, and learning), is made in our gut.
cultivated my ability to consistently use deep belly breathing throughout the day, instead of my regular shallow chest breaths.
They are connected to their imaginations at the deepest levels and often have trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. Though toddlers do develop critical thinking skills around this time, they are still absorbed in an egocentric state, a stage of development when they cannot see any perspective but their own.
to pay attention to and notice the themes and narratives that run through your mind all day. Notice and write down any and all themes that arise. To help you reflect, feel free to use the following journal prompts, adding any other areas or themes that you notice. While witnessing my thoughts throughout the day, I am noticing themes: About myself: About others or my relationships: About my past: About my present: About my future:
This will be your new daily affirmation or mantra. Now you will want to practice this new thought. A lot. Some of you may want to write this new affirmation or mantra somewhere, anywhere, or everywhere. Each time it catches your eye, recite this new thought to yourself. Others may resonate more with a particular time of the day when they will practice this new thought, such as during a morning or evening routine. Don’t worry if you find it difficult to accept this new thought as true. In fact, don’t even think for one second that you will think this new thought is true. You won’t, not for a
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He would cruise online platforms that catered to unique sexual fantasies, picking up women with whom he’d have meaningless and sometimes physically aggressive consensual sex. Immediately after the release, he would be filled with an overwhelming self-loathing.
Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child,
can become emotionally reactive—arguing our points, criticizing others, and throwing tantrums or detaching (usually
Go to bed a half hour earlier. Turn off your phone two hours before bed. Stop drinking caffeine after 1:00 p.m. Try one or all of these things, and see how much better you feel in your body and mind.
Keeping small promises to yourself each day Developing daily rituals and routines
(if needed), journal or list what you can give to (or create for) yourself right now in this
Visiting our families provides us with a view into our own habits and patterns as well as our deeper inner wounds, at the same time activating many of those wounds.
To do so, I encourage you to build a new daily habit of connecting with your own unique body. To help you with this process, use the following meditation script. (Those of you who would prefer an audio version can head to my website, https://yourholisticpsychologist.com.)
