Phobias

If you've ever been in a "talk therapy" (not behaviorally-focused), you've likely been in a form of psychodynamic therapy. Psychodynamic therapy is like peeling back the layers of an onion. It helps you explore the depths of your mind to understand why you think, feel, and behave the way you do. This approach involves uncovering the unconscious patterns and life experiences that shape your present life and mental health.

At its core, psychodynamic therapy understands that the unconscious mind plays a significant role in everyday life. People are complex, and the solutions aren't only about what’s seen on the surface—it’s more about learning and resolving deeper patterns of past relationships, childhood experiences, and hidden desires. A psychodynamic therapist will help you connect the dots between your past and present, giving insights into why you might struggle with specific issues. It also goes beyond only awareness and insight. A significant part of effective psychodynamic therapy also involves working through and processing the emotions that have been carried over time. When you've processed and worked through the carried emotions, they no longer hold power over you and your life.

How Psychodynamic Therapy Works

Beyond building a supportive foundation and a trusting relationship with your therapist, which is important in any therapy, in psychodynamic therapy (which is also known as psychoanalytic therapy) we will explore your deeper thoughts and feelings, which also includes relational and emotional patterns over the course of your life. Experiences such as dreams are also important in understanding your unconscious motivations and stored emotions that are having an affect on your present life as well. The outward and underlying conflicts that are getting in the way of your emotional health or your present life are worked through as we get to more deeply understand where they are stemming from.

Why Psychodynamic Therapy Stands Out From Other Therapies

Focus on the Unconscious

When you engage in psychodynamic therapy, you explore the depths of your unconscious mind. Unlike cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which focuses more on changing thought patterns and behaviors, psychodynamic therapy helps uncover the deeper underlying motivations that often keep people repeating the same unwanted patterns again in the present. As you peel back the onion, you gain more insight and are able to release the stored emotions as you go.

Emphasis on Past Experiences

In a psychodynamic therapy, your childhood experiences and past relationships are fully relevant in shaping your current behavior. How we are as adults stems from a younger age where we learn about the world through experiences, which shapes who we are in the present. It’s not about dwelling on the past, but understanding how your past influences your current relationship with the world (and other people), which all influences your mental and emotional health.

The Therapeutic Relationship

In psychodynamic therapy, your relationship with your therapist plays an important role. It’s not just about getting advice; it’s about creating a safe space to express yourself freely. This relationship often mirrors patterns in your other relationships, giving you valuable insights into your interpersonal dynamics. You are also able to work through negative patterns from your life that may start to show up in your therapy. It is actually quite common for patterns from your life to come into your therapy. People often think it means their therapy or therapist is bad when they see or feel something negative in their therapy. However, this is often a good thing as it means the issues that are plaguing you are showing up in a place where you and your therapist can give attention to it together.

What Psychodynamic Therapy Helps With

If you’re struggling with persistent emotional challenges, relationship issues, or simply seeking deeper self-understanding, psychodynamic therapy is a good option. It’s particularly helpful if you:

Find yourself repeating unhealthy patterns

Struggle with emotional regulation

Struggle with unresolved childhood or past experiences

Want to explore the roots of your thoughts and behaviors

Find yourself often ruminating or fantasizing about present issues or other points in your life

Psychodynamic therapy can be a helpful approach for people who are struggling with a variety of mental health issues, including:

Depression

Anxiety

Panic Attacks

Relationship issues

Trauma

Phobias

Other issues that have persistently been unresolved

The Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic "Talk Therapy" vs. CBT Debate

There has been a debate about whether psychodynamic therapy or cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is "better". I have worked with both, and I can say that while CBT has its helpful points, CBT often is at its most helpful when it's used as a supplement to psychodynamic therapy. I've found over time that psychodynamic therapy works much better for longer-term success because of its depth, and going at your pace. CBT generally seems to have short-term success (as CBT is a shorter term therapy that doesn't get to the deeper core of issues). CBT usually works well to provide coping skills for symptom management for certain issues while doing the deeper psychodynamic work.

Something that people often don't realize is that psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy also addresses your behaviors. The difference is that CBT believes that changing behaviors resolves mental and emotional struggles (sort-of a 'fake it till you make it' approach), whereas psychodynamic therapy understands that it's not nearly this simple (it's often very hard to create longer-term changes when you're struggling emotionally on a deeper level).

The way I've always described the difference between CBT and psychodynamic therapy is that CBT is the bandaid over the wound, and psychodynamic therapy cleans out and heals the wound. When the wound isn't healed, however, eventually the bandaid isn't enough.

Finding Help

I always recommend to be sure your therapist has been trained post-graduate in a certified psychoanalytic institute if you're looking for psychodynamic therapy, or "talk therapy". There are many therapists who abuse the term "talk therapy" and don't have the appropriate training or experience to truly provide an effective depth therapy. It's okay to ask a therapist when searching what their background or training is in.

#Psychotherapy #MentalHealth #Anxiety #Depression #Trauma #Phobia #Relationships

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), also known as complex trauma, generally stems from enduring repeated traumatic events, frequently within a close relationship, over an extended period.

Unlike single-incident PTSD, complex trauma can lead to a range of psychological and emotional challenges manifesting additional symptoms, including impaired emotional regulation, altered consciousness states, distorted self-perception, and relationship difficulties.

These challenges can significantly impact your daily functioning, relationship dynamics, and overall wellbeing.

Causes of Complex Trauma

Causes may include physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, consistent neglect (especially in childhood), bullying, exposure to domestic violence, or living through intensely threatening circumstances (such as war, for example). However, complex trauma can also develop in adulthood due to ongoing mistreatment, such as domestic violence.

Childhood Abuse or Neglect: Physical, emotional, sexual abuse, neglect, or bullying can have a profound impact on a child’s development.

Witnessing Violence: Exposure to violence, such as domestic violence of parents in your childhood, or community violence, such as repeated fights at school growing up, or worse, can be traumatic.

Prolonged Exposure to Traumatic Events: People who are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events, such as war or natural disasters, may also develop complex trauma.

How to Recognize Complex Trauma

Psychological and Emotional Symptoms

Complex trauma often manifests through intense emotional experiences, including deeper shame, guilt, or feelings of alienation. You may experience altered states of consciousness, such as memory gaps in adulthood when trying to recall parts of childhood, or a sense of detachment from your emotions or physical self. To cope, you might avoid certain places, people, or experiences in general that trigger discomfort.

Complex trauma can also affect your psychological wellbeing. You may experience a persistent sense of worthlessness and shame, significantly affecting your self-perception and self-esteem. Emotional regulation can become really challenging with C-PTSD, leading to outbursts of anger or prolonged periods of sadness. It can also lead to phobias and fears that seem to be irrational, or anxiety that danger is lurking in places (or people) even when they aren't displaying actual signs of danger. These issues can significantly disrupt social interactions and daily functioning, limiting your life, making healing a complex (but essential) journey.

Physiological Symptoms

Complex trauma can also manifest physically. You may experience hyperarousal, feeling constantly on edge with heightened startle responses. Physical symptoms often include panic attacks, light-headedness, brain fog, fatigue, nausea, recurrent headaches and migraines, persistent muscular tension, gastrointestinal distress on a consistent basis, and more. These stress-related reactions can significantly impact your daily functioning and overall health.

Healing

Complex PTSD needs a mind-body therapy approach rooted in trauma healing. While this should involve some coping techniques, a trauma approach generally requires getting to know and work through what you are carrying on a deeper level in order to reduce and be able to shed the power these traumas have asserted over your emotional, psychological, and physiological wellbeing.

Other Coping Strategies

Self-Care

Self-care plays an important role in managing complex trauma symptoms and enhancing overall wellbeing. This includes anything from diet, to regular physical activity, such as walking, running, yoga, or swimming, for example. Physical activity generally helps to reduce stress, release tension, and help with mood regulation. Self-care also includes finding things that nurture you in other emotional ways, as well -- for some this can be reading, writing, art and other creative outlets, seeing friends, and anything else that's helpful for you.

Trauma Therapy

Remember, self-care is an essential part of healing, but it doesn't replace the deeper healing work that needs to be done. Often people try to use coping techniques to replace the deeper healing, and what eventually tends to happen is the deeper traumas that go unaddressed start to grow and take over, and can make it so the coping tools are no longer as effective. It's important in therapy to figure out the coping techniques that work for you, so you also have them available to you alongside the deeper explorative work.

#complextrauma #Trauma #Anxiety #MentalHealth #Depression #Migraine

When I work with people on overcoming their fear of flying, there is almost a collective wish that it would always be a quick concrete solution. Of course, that's normal. Who doesn't want to be in-and-out for any issue that can involve debilitating anxiety and significantly limits your life? However, in reality, when it comes to flying anxiety, there are almost always varying elements and layers to the issue. And, for each person, what fuels the fear and anxiety around flying tends to be different from the person next to you. (You can each be afraid of turbulence, but for each person, where this stems from, what it means, and what it needs is often different).

Trust Issues Look For Catastrophe

Trust issues can have a heavy hand in fear of flying. When you have a hard time trusting, there is often the worry of what will happen if you were to allow yourself to be vulnerable. For example, you may not easily trust in relationships out of worry you will be hurt, left, taken advantage of, cheated on, etc. You may not trust the people fixing your car, providing you dental work, or anyone outside of yourself, even. Or, one of the most crippling forms of trust anxiety with flying -- the idea that humans are imperfect and limited as a species, and therefore something must be likely to go wrong. It may be almost automatic for some to see exactly how they are going to suffer, lose, or worse when allowing themselves to trust, or rely on others, or be vulnerable. This is a significant issue with fear of flying.

Trust Issues Often Start At Home

It's important to keep in mind that there are generally reasons for fear around trust. Most people who struggle with trust have either had distrust modeled for them from a young age, or they have been hurt before, or a combination of both. When it comes to fear of flying, trust issues often embedded from childhood can have a way of catching up and wreaking havoc. (Depending on the circumstances, they can also develop later on in ways that can impact fear of flying, as well). This can be especially difficult if you grew up in a home that didn't tend to feel safe on a regular basis -- where there was chaos, abuse, emotional shaming, or a sense of having to walk on eggshells for an emotionally volatile parent or sibling, or otherwise.

Either way, trust issues are complex. Because there likely have been times where trusting didn't work out, as a child or later on. You or someone else may have experienced deep pain from one experience or a collection of them. Some may even experience ongoing pain. Trust issues aren't all fantasy or paranoia. It becomes difficult though when you emotionally feel that the chances of catastrophe weigh equally (or greater) to the chance of being safe in certain situations. It is very possible that one's trust meter can be negatively skewed due to these past experiences -- and unnecessarily increasing your flying anxiety (or relationship anxiety, or otherwise), as a result.

The Plane Becomes The Momentary Home, Internally

When it has been baked in through critical stages of your life that the people you are relying on don't always feel capable of keeping you safe, it can be very hard to go into a vulnerable environment and be able to feel safe. Especially if you are in a position of being completely out of control of the situation, which is often how flying is experienced. When you don't know who's flying the plane, or if you can trust who's building and maintaining the plane, or if they really have your best interest in mind, fear becomes the next response, especially if you can't do anything but sit in your seat and wait. It can feel like you're just waiting for the shoe to drop and everything to fall apart.

This is why trust issues can often lead to panic in flying. If something doesn't go as smoothly as hoped -- turbulence, a flight delay, seat change, an uncooperative passenger, etc. -- it can start to feel like things are getting ready to break down. You start to see all of your worst fears and catastrophes playing out in your mind, and they feel very real.

You Can Let Go Of Trust Issues, While Staying Safe

Trust is only one of a number of possibilities that can make flying difficult for people. When wanting to overcome your fear of flying, it's important that you take the time to learn and come through what's feeding your own fear. No one can convince you that flying is safe when you're scared. Fear doesn't hear reason.

This is why I work from a deeper, more comprehensive and personalized approach to flying anxiety, that centers on you. It is also the reason that when I work with people, people often leave not only feeling better about flying, but also feeling less anxious, more grounded, and more trusting throughout their lives in general, even outside of flying. It is possible to move forward from this fear and open the world for yourself. Reach out if you'd like to discuss your situation or learn about how I can help you through this issue.

#fearofflying #flyinganxiety #phobias #Phobia #Trust #Anxiety #PanicAttacks

I’ve been dealing with anxiety and panic attacks since I was 15. What started as anxiety in high school grew into irrational phobias during my later teenage years and adulthood.

Over the years, I’ve explored a range of treatments, including many SSRI and benzodiazepine medications. While these medications offered temporary relief, I eventually chose to move away from them. I’m now medication-free and rely on alternative strategies like meditation, mindfulness, and self-discipline to manage my anxiety and panic attacks.

Through this ongoing journey, I’ve come to see anxiety as a lifelong challenge that I manage rather than cure. Although it has brought many difficulties into my life, it has also led to personal growth and increased self-awareness. While I wouldn’t call anxiety a gift, I’ve learned to appreciate the lessons it has taught me.

I’m here to connect with others who understand this ongoing struggle. I’m eager to learn from your experiences and strategies for managing anxiety and panic attacks, and I also hope to offer support and share what I’ve learned along the way.

Looking forward to connecting with you all and learning together.

Best,

We are the night shift.

We are the program

that ran this world before you came.

You are the inexperienced,

Who will write your own programs,

create your own destiny.

We will wait until you ask the right questions,

make the same mistakes we did.

We will explain, while you complain.

We will nurse you through your

blunders, your errors, your nighttime terrors.

We are calm and find your hysterics

our only amusement

(Oh how it reminds us of our history,

our own folly and stupidity

Before the relentless march of truth

over our egos, our dreams.

You will rail against us and call this world,

this life a prison and us as your warders,

not realising that we are just mirrors

held up against your own fears.

We are shepherds, all else is your imagination,

Trying to dump your phobias on our doorstep.

When realisation dawns, you will see the truth

and cry over your past mistakes

but we will be long gone by then.

The door to understanding will have closed

and we will have slipped out into the night,

taking our regrets with us,

for those we have hurt in our attacks

based upon own failures of understanding...

Good morning fellow Mightyers. How are you all doing?

I've had several downs lately and a hit after another. First, a doctor's visit who was rude to my mom and me. He would put his hand out to our faces to make us stop talking as we tried to explain to him our answers to the stupid paper form I filled out. He just wanted a yes or no response from us by the look of things. Then I had two problems today over a online game which I know it seems silly but that is how tired I am of problems and negativity and rude people. And to make matters even harder, today is Ash Wednesday and we are suppose to be kind to others. Well, year round actually, but to me, it is impossible now. I keep getting hurt by others, physically, mentally and emotionally.

how do you deal with problems that affect you physically, emotionally, and mentally?

#Depression #chronicnerves #SocialAnxiety #Diabetes #phobias