Tag: mindfulness
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Fawn Response and Anxiety: Healing Strategies That Work
Struggling with anxiety and people-pleasing? Learn how the fawn trauma response and anxiety-related compulsions can overlap, and how therapy (EMDR, ERP & mindfulness) can help. You’re at a work meeting. The project lead asks if anyone can stay late to finish a task. Your heart drops — you already promised yourself tonight would be a…
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Healing After a Breakup with an Avoidant Partner: Reclaiming Yourself
Breaking up with an avoidant partner can leave you feeling confused, rejected, and emotionally raw. Often, avoidant partners create distance by shying (and in some cases, pushing!) away from emotional intimacy, leaving you wondering what went wrong and questioning your worth and lovability. While it might hurt now, healing from an avoidant partner is not…
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Thanking Your Mind: An ACT Technique for Coping with Unhelpful Thoughts
As a clinical psychologist who practices CBT, I’m focused on helping therapy clients explore the relationship between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I’ve written about some of these ideas and techniques in articles about automatic thoughts, distorted thinking, and how to use mindfulness and thought records to recognize and challenge unhelpful thoughts. In addition to…
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Distress Tolerance Skills for Healthier Relationships
If you identify as a person with an insecure (i.e. anxious, avoidant, or fearful) attachment style and have decided to begin your healing journey, you’re going to encounter some challenging emotions. Change is never easy, even when it’s positive, and it’s normal to feel overwhelmed, defeated, or just plan uncomfortable as you heal your attachment…
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The people-pleaser’s guide to speaking up.
A lot of the clients I work with have been taught not to “rock the boat” in relationships, meaning they’ve received and currently implement some version(s) of the following instructions: Don’t rock the boat by setting boundaries, because people will think your’e selfish. Don’t rock the boat by asking for what you want, you’ll only…
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How to set & hold a boundary.
One of the most frequent issues that come up in my work with therapy clients is boundaries: How to recognize when boundaries are needed, how to set them, maintain them, not feel guilty for having them, and the list goes on! Boundaries are the limits and rules you set for yourself within relationships. In order…
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4 tools for healing avoidant attachment
Imagine no longer panicking when people want to get closer or know you more intimately. If you have an avoidant attachment style, you are likely no stranger to the pain of feeling unfulfilled, isolated, and that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to please the people you care about. An insecure…
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4 tools for healing anxious attachment
Imagine no longer chasing (or even wanting to chase) relationships with people who cannot love you in the ways you need. If you have an anxious attachment style, you are likely no stranger to the pain of unfulfilling, disappointing, drama-filled relationships. An insecure attachment style can predispose us to unhealthy relationship dynamics, but the good…
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The Exploding Doormat: Coping With Anger from People-Pleasing
“Exploding doormat” is a term I originally learned from someone who was working the twelve steps in Al-Anon. It refers to an individual (i.e. “doormat”) who has habitually bent over backwards, placed their needs last, given into people-pleasing tendencies for far too long…and “exploded” (i.e. become openly enraged and/or acted out) as a result. Exploding…
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Get a life! 19 things to do instead of staring at a screen
THE QUARANTINE EDITION! As a mental health clinician, I am a huge proponent of living a screen-limited life. Too much screen time has been linked to anxiety and depression in teens, and I can’t throw a rock without hitting someone who readily admits that they are addicted to their phones. Screens are not inherently bad,…