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Aristotle

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chele_yntema

Complex trauma & dissociation specialist | Trauma-focused, somatic, relational psychotherapy | Brisbane southside

This one feel especially beautiful tonight… Repos

This one feel especially beautiful tonight…

Repost from @awakenwithally
•
Stepping out of the familiar inner “room” you’ve lived in for so long is not avoiding or transcending your pain.

It’s creating the conditions for healing to finally happen.

It’s stepping back from the familiar coping mechanisms your system learned to survive with.

It’s beginning to question whether the way you’ve seen yourself, your body, and your experience all these years is the only perspective available.

It’s meeting emotions without immediately collapsing into the mental story, urgency, fear, or interpretation around them.

It’s creating more inner space around your experience.

Because healing needs space. Space to see, feel and respond differently. And space for something new to emerge beyond survival.

And this becomes very difficult when you are completely inside the experience all the time.

Inside the familiar survival room, everything comes AT you. The emotions, thoughts, fear, urgency, overwhelm. Everything feels immediate, personal, consuming, and difficult to hold.

But outside the familiar room, even slightly, there is a bit more space to be with your experience instead of drowning inside it. More perspective, capacity, choice or Less pressure to heal.

And this space is one of the true foundations of healing.

At first this feels unfamiliar because survival became familiar. But healing often begins by slowly building capacity for unfamiliarity. For openness and not fully knowing.

Love,
Ally.

#trauma #therapy #cptsd #curiosity #space

😂🥰 Repost from @bradandthegoat • who needs a bit o

😂🥰
Repost from @bradandthegoat
•
who needs a bit of goat wisdom today?

#goat
#wisdom
#relatable
#funny

Repost from @the.trauma.educator • When something

Repost from @the.trauma.educator
•
When something inside us isn’t met with curiosity and care in childhood, we don’t grow up naturally attuned to it.

Instead, we grow up ignoring it at best, and at worst, we shame it, hate it or even become disgusted by it.

When a child’s emotional world is no one’s interest…

when their caregivers don’t ask, don’t notice, don’t wonder…

when their feelings aren’t met with presence…

the child slowly learns that their inner world is something to avoid, to silence, or to annihilate.

What isn’t welcomed externally becomes something the body stops welcoming internally.

This is one of the many ways complex trauma shapes the nervous system, not through one overwhelming moment, but through the repeated absence of attuned curiosity.

In my RETURN Framework, which maps the six core markers of somatic healing after complex trauma, I show how trauma healing unfolds not as one overnight transformation but through a series of subtle, important shifts in our physiology.

One of these markers is Nuanced Self-Attunement, the capacity to notice and explore our body sensations and emotional states with curiosity, instead of fear and judgment.

It’s the slow relearning that our inner world is not inconvenient, embarrassing, or too much, but something worthy of care and attention.

When we begin to develop this capacity, over time, something changes. The nervous system becomes less reactive and more receptive.

We stop abandoning our felt experience. Parts of us we once ignored, shamed, or felt disgust toward begin to soften.

And we slowly rebuild an inner relationship rooted in inclusion rather than avoidance.

Effie 🦋

#trauma #attunement #cptsd #therapy #selfworth

Repost from @patrickteahanofficial • When we get s

Repost from @patrickteahanofficial
•
When we get stuck not trusting our built-in compass, our inner child runs us on self-doubt and codependency. ⁠
⠀⁠
Examples:⠀⁠
⠀⁠
NOT trusting red flags 🚩 in dating because we don’t want to be mean or alone or judgy; ⠀⁠
⠀⁠
“I’m probably wrong or mean about them being so late all the time.”⁠
⠀⁠
NOT setting boundaries or addressing conflict because;⠀⁠
⠀⁠
“what if I’m wrong…and I’m just being a pain, and it probably isn’t as big of a deal as I’m making it out to be…”⁠
⠀⁠
NOT getting out of situations that no longer serve us; ⠀⁠
⠀⁠
“They’re probably right... I can’t do better than this.”⁠
⠀⁠
We can overcome self-doubt by spending time looking at our childhoods and find concrete specific examples when the adults were abusive about reality and rewrite them.⠀⁠
⠀⁠
1) “It’s your fault I’m feeling this way.” - WEAPONIZED SHAME AND BLAME⁠
⠀⁠
2) “We’re a normal, loving family.” …WHEN IT’S TOXIC AND DYSFUNCTIONAL⁠
⠀⁠
3) “Your mother loves you...you’re just so difficult.” - TURN THE VICTIM INTO THE ABUSER⁠
⠀⁠
As kids, we have to surrender to our parent’s lack of reality because they have all the power.⠀⁠
⠀⁠
Let’s correct those three.⠀⁠
⠀⁠
1) “It’s your fault I’m feeling this way.”⠀⁠
⠀⁠
I’m shaming you about my own shitty feelings to gain power and sympathy.⁠
⠀⁠
2) “We’re a normal, loving family.”⠀⁠
⠀⁠
I’m denying and minimizing dysfunction and not using my power to fix things for the kids.⁠
⠀⁠
3) “Your mother loves you...you’re just so difficult.”⠀⁠
⠀⁠
I’m making you into the problem, not protecting you, and not addressing how abusive your mother is because I’m a coward.⁠
⠀⁠
It is very powerful to start calling things for what they are in our present lives, but we can’t do that until we start calling out the abuse for what it was in our childhood. ⠀⁠
⠀⁠
Imagine trusting yourself and your amazing built-in intuition. ⁠
⠀⁠
We all have a compass -sometimes we just need help locating and trusting it.

#trauma #therapy #lost #disorientation #trust

Repost from @hannahfrasermoore • Success feels exp

Repost from @hannahfrasermoore
•
Success feels exposing when your aliveness once altered the emotional atmosphere around you.

When your ambition made somebody else uncomfortable. When your excitement, joy and spiritedness brushed against another person’s compromise, envy, or unlived life.

When this happens, the psyche adapts. You begin editing yourself in advance, holding back just as things begin to move. Making yourself smaller before the world gets the chance to react.

“WE ARE CALLED TO LET GO OF WHO WE THOUGHT WE WERE AND TO ASK INSTEAD WHAT WANTS TO ENTER THE WORLD THROUGH US.
THE TASK IS NOT TO LIVE UP TO EXPECTATIONS, BUT TO LIVE OUT OF OUR OWN DEPTHS.”
JAMES HOLLIS

#quotes #self #strength #courage #trauma

Repost from @theeqschool • The repetitive thoughts

Repost from @theeqschool
•
The repetitive thoughts that keep finding their way back to the forefront, even when you push them aside.
The nagging anxiety or ache of sadness in your tummy that you try to forget or distract yourself from —
they’re trying to tell you something.

And trying to “control” them by forcing them away, thinking positive thoughts, or distracting yourself will only work temporarily — they’ll be back or continue to change form until they get your attention.

Most of us have not learned how to be in relationship with our own activation and the signals that are letting us know we’ve got something inside that needs our attention.

But when you learn how to notice a repetitive or self-defeating thought, observe your own state, and get gently curious about what it might be telling you — you start the process of self-attunement, meeting yourself with compassionate curiosity.

And from here we can slow down and learn ways to help our mind & body process feelings of activation together instead of avoiding them, becoming them, or battling against them until we’re exhausted.

#thoughts #overthinking #emotions #trauma

Repost from @neuro.liminal • my understanding of t

Repost from @neuro.liminal
•
my understanding of the overlap between neurodivergence + trauma overlap - ADHD, autism + CPTSD and how nervous system differences can shape overwhelm, burnout and emotional…
#burnout #trauma #neurodivergence c

Repost from @komal_reads • After “The Train Was No

Repost from @komal_reads
•
After “The Train Was Not Late,” so many of you said you needed more little reminders like this.

So here’s another one.

For the days your life looks messy from the outside…and you feel you don’t fit anywhere..

#belonging #puzzle #reminder #self

Beautifully encapsulated by @haileypaigemagee Th

Beautifully encapsulated by @haileypaigemagee

This is a shoutout to everyone who has spent years denying their sensitivity, trying to be someone they’re not.

To everyone who was told to “just buck up,” “just be the biggest person,” “don’t let it get to you,” who was told “why is that bothering you so much?” or “just let it go.”

Many of us have been invalidated or criticized by others for our emotions ⁠— hearing “You’re too sensitive!” over and over.

So we learn to discount our own needs. When others tell us we’re “too sensitive,” we believe them ⁠— instead of taking seriously our needs for respect, quiet time, space, or softness.

It’s time to change the story. Life gets easier when we let ourselves be who we are⁠—sensitivity and all.

Some of the ways we can honor our softness and sensitivity with boundaries might include:
👉 Honoring our need for solitude and quiet ⁠— even if it’s more than others need
👉 Carving out time away from the stimulation of technology and social media
👉 Limiting how available we are to others via text, phone, or social media
👉 Prioritizing connections that energize us instead of connections that drain us

#boundaries #hsp #trust #trauma #therapy

Repost from @frank_andersonmd • Trauma is a distor

Repost from @frank_andersonmd
•
Trauma is a distortion of responsibility.

What I mean by that is this: when someone causes harm and does not take responsibility for it, that responsibility does not just disappear. Very often, the person who was hurt ends up carrying it.

Not consciously - nobody sits down and decides “this must be my fault.” But the mind needs things to make sense.

So if the person who hurt you denied it, minimized it, flipped it on you, or just never said a word about it - your brain starts filling in the blanks.

Maybe it was me. Maybe I should have stopped it. Maybe I should have known better. Maybe I was too much. Maybe I caused this somehow.

That’s the distortion - the responsibility landed on the wrong person.

And then it just becomes how you operate.

You over-apologize. You shrink yourself. You stay in things too long because part of you thinks you deserve it. You manage everyone’s emotions. You feel guilty for having needs. You assume you’re the problem in every conflict.

Because at some point your nervous system decided: if something goes wrong, that’s mine to fix.

Healing is learning to sort through it. What’s actually mine here? What’s theirs? What did I pick up because nobody else was going to? What am I still carrying out of habit?

Because you can’t put something down if you still believe it’s yours. And a lot of healing starts there - finally seeing that the weight was never yours to carry.

And then learning, slowly, to actually let your body believe it too.

#guilt #accountability #responsibility #impact #trauma

This matters “empathy is stepping into their shoes

This matters “empathy is stepping into their shoes. Boundaries is remembering that your feet still matter.”

Repost from @vexking
•
Some of the kindest, most empathetic people I know struggle with this. They feel other people’s pain so deeply that they begin to bypass their own.

What looks like care and compassion can sometimes be driven by a wound or a belief about what it means to be a “good person.” And when empathy doesn’t come from wholeness, it eventually becomes a practice in self-abandonment, draining us of our goodness. You start to feel the tension between what you know is true deep within and the reasons you keep giving to stay.

Not everyone who can’t meet your needs is a bad person. Sometimes they’re hurting, growing, or in a transition. Their inability to show up isn’t always a lack of love, but a reflection of their limits. That’s human.

But empathy doesn’t mean tolerating mistreatment. You can understand someone’s past and present struggles, and still recognize that their behavior is harming you. You can love someone and still admit that the way they show up leaves you feeling confused, dismissed, or emotionally unsafe.

This is where many people get stuck, thinking that walking away means being cold or unforgiving. Maturity means knowing the difference between support and sacrifice, and patience and enabling.

You can say, “I see why you are the way you are,” and still say, “I won’t keep hurting just to stay close to you.”

Real consideration includes yourself. It means creating enough distance to heal, even when you still care. It means letting go of someone’s potential when their reality is costing you your self-worth and mental health.

Yes, relationships require sacrifice, and growth asks us to be selfless at times. But not at the cost of yourself. Anything sustained through depletion will eventually break. Real connection and support come from wholeness.

#empath #mentalhealth #trauma #compassion #wellbeing

Repost from @awakenwithally • The journey of heali

Repost from @awakenwithally
•
The journey of healing and self-reconnection made me more intentional and gave me a depth and connection to life that I wouldn’t trade.

And still, I deeply wish I hadn’t had to spend so many years rebuilding safety, self-connection, and love from scratch.

Safety is something the brain and body learn much more naturally in childhood.

As adults, we try to rebuild it through layers of conditioning, fear, protection, responsibilities, and years of accumulated survival.

That makes the process slower, more confusing, and often deeply unfamiliar.

Adult life should not have to be spent rebuilding the foundations that were missing growing up. It’s unnatural.

Adulthood should be a space for creating, loving, exploring, contributing, and becoming more of who we already are.

And yet, here we are and many of us doing the foundational work our childhoods did not allow.

And even though this path can feel slow and tender, it is also deeply liberating.

Because every moment of safety, connection, and self-trust you build now becomes part of the inner ground you finally get to stand on.

With love,
Ally.

#connection #trust #self #slow #hope

Repost from rebelthriver • Rock bottom is not wher

Repost from rebelthriver
•
Rock bottom is not where your story ends, it’s where your illusions do. Maybe the floor isn’t there to swallow you, but to steady you.

I know what it is to hit the ground and think, this cannot be my story unfolding.

But sometimes the ground is the only thing that doesn’t move while everything else is breaking apart.

There is something holy about the moment you realize you are still here.

Still breathing.
Broken open.
But here.

And from here, everything changes.
꩜ Ella

#burnout #overwhelmed #therapy #here

Repost from @frank_andersonmd • When you have unre

Repost from @frank_andersonmd
•
When you have unresolved trauma, it can change how you interpret what’s right in front of you.

A delayed text stops being just a delayed text. It suddenly feels like abandonment. If your partner gets quiet, it may not feel like they just need a minute. It can feel like a threat.

Even a basic request can feel heavy when your body has learned that saying “no” comes with a consequence.

And obviously, not every intense reaction means you’re traumatized. Sometimes you’re exhausted, stressed, overwhelmed, or responding to something that really is hard. That’s part of being human.

But when trauma is in the mix, your brain and body can start reading today’s events with yesterday’s map.

Your body braces before you have all the facts. Your mind fills in the blanks quickly. A neutral situation can suddenly feel urgent, personal, or unsafe because your system learned to prepare for what might happen next.

A big part of healing is learning to pause in those moments and ask:

What is actually happening right now? And what is my nervous system expecting to happen next?

That takes practice and support. But over time, your body can start to learn that the present is not always a replay of the past.

#trauma #cptsd #therapy #body #abandoned

Repost from @hollyhatamillustration • We spend so

Repost from @hollyhatamillustration
•
We spend so much time making sure everyone else’s cup is full that we don’t even notice when ours has run dry.

We’ve become masters of the “auto-pilot” life. Smiling, nodding, and showing up, while the person inside is miles away, curled up in the dark, just trying to remember what it felt like to be whole.

Emptiness often feels like mourning of the person you had to abandon just to survive. You’ve spent your whole life being a sanctuary for others. It is time to finally move back into yourself.

Don’t let the world take everything until there is nothing left of the ‘you’ that actually matters. Go back and get yourself. You’ve been left behind for far too long.

#overwhelm #empty #please #trauma

Repost from @awakenwithally • The high intensity i

Repost from @awakenwithally
•
The high intensity in your chest doesn’t ask for more regulation of your nervous system. It is asking for your body to finally be met differently within the experience it is having.

Not just “How to regulate this?” But, “This is here and I want to acknowldge it for 2 seconds without thinking what do I need to do about it.”

The inability to fully soften and relax inside your body is not “nervous system dysregulation.” It is the absence of enough experiences of permission, pleasure and being emotionally met in the present moment.

The feeling that your body is not a safe place to rest into, the constant bracing, the inability to fully let go, is not only about needing more regulation. It’s about your body still associating yoru rpesence with pressure, demand, shame or correction.

Trauma stops “living” in the nervous system when you begin meeting your body differently in the present moment.

Your body has waited a very long time to feel seen, heard, welcomed, acknowledged.
Be the first one to offer this to your body.

And watch how your nervous system responds to THAT.

Love,
Ally.

#connection #body #trauma #pressure

Repost from @hollyhatamillustration • We like to t

Repost from @hollyhatamillustration
•
We like to think of anger as this big, bad monster. We judge ourselves for it. We try to suppress it. We apologize for it.

But if you look closer, anger is rarely the first emotion to visit. It’s just the one that makes the most noise.

Anger is often Sadness’s bodyguard. Underneath Anger’s loud voice is a very quiet Sadness. Sadness can be fragile and vulnerable. It finds it hard to defend itself. So that’s when Anger jumps in.

Anger is often trying to keep you safe by being a shield. But if you only ever listen to Anger, you never actually heal the wound it’s protecting.

Be kind to your anger. It’s trying to keep your heart from breaking twice. But also, if you want Anger to stop screaming, you have to start listening to your Sadness.

#anger #sadness #scream #trauma #therapy

Repost from @awakenwithally • One of the hardest t

Repost from @awakenwithally
•
One of the hardest things to learn in this life is how to be with yourself without constantly trying to change yourself.

Including through healing.

Because what’s happening when you pause and invite permission?

You begin touching a deeper truth your whole system may have avoided for years: “I don’t know how to be with myself without doing something about myself.”

So you think the missing piece is more trauma healing or regulation.

But underneath all of that, there is often a much deeper gap: your system never learned to associate your presence with permission, patience, or safety.

Only with pressure, correction, urgency, and demand.

This is what keeps your body, mind and nervous system in a constant state of bracing and protection, no matter how many regulatory tools you practice.

Maybe temporary is ok, but things start to pile up, and at some point, you need more tools. More healing.

Now, it’s time for your presence to start being associated with permission. 0.1% at a time.

Love,
Ally.

#connection #self #pressure #trauma #therapy

Repost from @the.trauma.educator • This is why a l

Repost from @the.trauma.educator
•
This is why a loving relationship can bring up panic.

A new opportunity can bring up dread.

Being seen can bring up shame.

Rest can bring up guilt.

Being supported can bring up suspicion.

And finally receiving what you needed can bring up grief for all the years you had to live without it.

It’s not self-sabotage. It’s your nervous system asking for support with digesting slowly not only the discomfort but also the goodness.

And that’s okay. It makes sense.

Effie 🦋

Repost from @kayatoastforthesoul.sg • I wrote this

Repost from @kayatoastforthesoul.sg
•
I wrote this tonight thinking about how healing has changed for me over the years.

For the longest time, I thought healing meant becoming someone completely different.

Someone untouched by sadness.
Untouched by fear, grief, anger, shame.

Someone who had finally “moved on.”

I thought healing meant leaving old versions of myself behind.
Outgrowing them.
Becoming better than them somehow.

—

But these days, I think differently.

I think most of my life has actually been spent walking beside older versions of myself.

The younger me who lost his mom at an early age and lost all hope in life.

The younger version of me that learned to carry everything alone.

The angry youth that blamed himself but turned it outward and hated everyone and hated the world.

The same youth who so desperately wanted to be belong.

And to be loved.

Even the adult versions of me that survived those, but never knew how to rest.

Because whatever we did never felt like enough.

It’s easy to view these past versions of me with shame.

But strangely…

I don’t look at them with shame at all.

Not do I see them as some sort of proof that I’m broken.

If anything, I think I finally understand them now.

Because the truth is, those versions of me were trying their best with what they knew at the time.

They weren’t weak.
They did their best.
They kept surviving.

And maybe healing was never about abandoning those parts of ourselves.

Maybe it’s about finally turning toward them.
Listening to them.
Thanking them for getting us here.

And then gently saying:

“You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.”

So these days, healing feels less like becoming someone new.

And more like learning how to walk forward
with every version of myself beside me.

Forward, step by step, all of us together.

Take care,
Hernping

💙

P. S. Sometimes I even draw strength from these parts me knowing what they’ve gone through. And I hear these parts of me whispering...

“Keep going”.

And so I keep going :)

#trauma #journey #therapy #alone #together

Repost from @thefeelingexpert • The People-Pleaser

Repost from @thefeelingexpert
•
The People-Pleaser Who Can’t Find Herself. Why You Don’t Know What You Actually Want. Well, your inner child learned that having needs was dangerous, so you became whoever people needed you to be

Someone asks you a simple question: “Where do you want to go for dinner?”
And your brain short-circuits. You genuinely don’t know. So you say, “I’m fine with whatever,” and you mean it. But later, sitting at a restaurant you didn’t choose, eating food you don’t love, you feel this weird emptiness you can’t explain.

There’s a part of you that never learned she was allowed to want things.

Maybe you were the kid who learned that having your own preferences caused problems and your needs became an inconvenience or created conflict. So you realized that keeping the peace was better than speaking up. And by just being easy or going with the flow felt safer.

So you learned it was better to be adaptable. Flexible. Low-maintenance. You were the one who never complained. But then you lost track of what you actually wanted because it was safer not to know and to push your feeling down. They didn’t matter.

Here’s how that shows up now:
You can’t answer simple preference questions. You mirror other people’s energy and opinions without realizing you’re doing it. You feel like a different person depending on who you’re with. You resent people for not meeting needs you never expressed. You’re exhausted from managing everyone’s emotions except your own.

Your inner child is still waiting for someone to say: “What do you want? Your preferences matter too.”

You spent your childhood becoming whoever you needed to be to survive. You get to spend your adulthood figuring out who you actually are. Because you do matter.

Start small. Start with dinner. Start with asking yourself what you want and believing the answer matters.

#invisable #trauma #need #confused #therapy

Repost from @maidenstudio • We think we are busy b

Repost from @maidenstudio
•
We think we are busy but most of us are just over-stimulated.

I feel if you’ve spent time with your own thoughts it’s not wasted time, if it helps you remember who you are.

#time #thinking #space #self #balance

If there is one thing that becomes evident over ti

If there is one thing that becomes evident over time it is that celebratory days can hold so many different things at once.

Mother’s Day especially is one of these for many of us.

On one hand there is a sociocultural pull toward joy and gratitude for all that we have - as mothers ourselves, as daughters, and even so far now as granddaughters, as daughters in law, perhaps even as sisters and as aunts… and perhaps even there are levels of wholesome truth in that for some - and that in itself truly matters.

At the same time, we simply cannot negate that this overzealous commercialisation that saturates our local world around these “special-days” so often misses the many layers of motherhood. Layers that go far beyond gracefully held appreciation. And certainly deserve far more recognition.

Some of these layers can be so hard to name. They are layers of loss that hold no clear shape; losses held not in what was, rather in what was not, or in what could never have been. They may even be hidden layers of betrayal and abandonment, of isolation when what was needed most of all was connection and protection.

And these are the ambiguous layers so easily bypassed by pressured gratuity on days like today.

So with this in mind, today let us offer ourselves our most authentic experience. If that means today holds joy, playfulness, and hope - be with that. So too, if that means today touches a heavy heart, or brushes against a more sombre or desolate place inside of you - be with that. Both are welcome, neither are obligated.

Wherever today finds you, may there be space for all of it.

With all my compassion and care - Chele

#mothersday #grief #trauma #therapy #mother

Repost from @amythelifecoach • Trusting yourself d

Repost from @amythelifecoach
•
Trusting yourself doesn’t mean you’ll never change your mind or see things differently.

It means you believe the truth of what you felt and experienced in the moment - even if later, you decide that your understanding has shifted.

It’s knowing your perspective is valid, even when someone else’s is different. And it’s being able to hear their view without abandoning your own in the process.

This is one of the most overlooked parts of self-trust:
You can reconsider, adjust, or even realize you were wrong - and still know you’re safe with yourself.

Because self-trust isn’t about perfection.

It’s about staying with yourself through honesty, change, and growth.

#self #trust #change #trauma #therapy

Repost from @the_mini_adhd_coach • The honest Moth

Repost from @the_mini_adhd_coach
•
The honest Mother’s Day cards we keep to ourselves 💔

#mothersday #pain #hurt #betrayal #trauma

Repost from @ryankuja • There are so many ways to

Repost from @ryankuja
•
There are so many ways to think about what healing actually means, what it feels like within, and how we open ourselves to it.
.
.
.
.
.
#therapy #trauma #cptsd #open

Repost from @amythelifecoach • Quite often clients

Repost from @amythelifecoach
•
Quite often clients will be sharing a situation they’re in within this type of relationship and wondering:

“How do I repair this?”
“What step did I miss?”
“What did I do wrong?”
“How do I explain myself better this time?”

But underneath that, their honest feelings are usually more like:

“Why does this feel so unfair?”

“Why am I trying AGAIN?”

“Why am I still wondering what I’VE done wrong when honestly…I don’t think I’m the actual problem here anymore.”

“Their immaturity is the problem.”
“Their refusal to take accountability for their part is the problem.”
“The 10th round of the silent treatment is the problem.”
“The fact that I’m still chasing after someone and excusing it because I’ve known them since I was 15 and they’ve been my lifelong best friend is the problem.”

And quite often these clients end up landing on the question:

“Why does this feel different this time?”
“Why does it suddenly feel more serious?”
“Why does it feel like the end?”

And sometimes I’ll ask…
“Do you think it feels different because you’ve actually outgrown the dynamic?”

“Your tolerance for it isn’t the same anymore?”

“You’re noticing the relationships around you now are healthier, more supportive, more emotionally mature…”

Relationships where when there is an issue people communicate, people repair, people respect you and people don’t continually demand you fix yourself just to accommodate their unwillingness to evolve

And once you experience relationships like that…it becomes a lot harder to keep normalizing relationships that require self-abandonment to maintain them.

This is also why boundaries become SO important.

Because a lot of people realize they’ve spent years tolerating dynamics that only worked because they stayed quiet, over-accommodated, over-explained, or continually adjusted themselves to keep the relationship intact.

#boundaries #relationships #change #dynamic

Repost from @theempoweredtherapist • Y’all, there

Repost from @theempoweredtherapist
•
Y’all, there can be so much pressure to be on the other side of things. To have clarity, to have increased knowing, to have language for everything you have been through and to make sense of experiences that often feel like they make no sense at all.

I hate to break it to you, but healing can’t be rushed. Don’t get me wrong, we can be intentional and we can be motivated to attend to ourselves and make changes that are supportive of our right-now-selves, but we can’t rush our own process. Remember, healing has to be slow in all of the ways that trauma is fast.

There isn’t anything wrong with being in your process, and it doesn’t mean you’re behind if you’re still learning about yourself. In fact, I hope you’ll take the time to be curious and slow. I hope you’ll allow yourself the space you were denied when you were enduring something you should have never had to go through.

I hope your healing is all about honoring and moving from your inner knowing, and I hope you’ll recognize that by doing this, you are already healing.

To those of you trying to permit yourself to be where you are without rushing to become someone else, I see you.

#self #time #trust #trauma #therapy

Repost from @thefeelingexpert • There’s a particul

Repost from @thefeelingexpert
•
There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes from trying to tell someone what’s happening to you and watching them look right through you.

Not the movie version where you’re screaming and they’re ignoring you on purpose. It’s that quieter version. Where you say the words. Where you try to explain. And they nod. They might even respond. But somehow the message never really landed. You can feel yourself disappearing while you’re standing right there.

“I tried to tell you what was happening and you didn’t listen.”

Maybe you were eight years old, trying to explain why you didn’t want to go to that person’s house anymore. And the adult in your life said you were being overly dramatic. Or that you needed to be polite. Or that you were making things up for attention.

Maybe you were fourteen, struggling with something you couldn’t quite name yet, and when you finally worked up the courage to say something was wrong, they told you everyone feels that way sometimes. That you’d be fine. That you were being too sensitive.

“I needed your protection and you failed me.”

The thing about being a kid is you can’t protect yourself. You need the adults around you to notice. To ask questions. To believe you the first time. To make it stop.

When they don’t, you learn something devastating: your perception of danger can’t be trusted. Your internal alarm system gets labeled as “overreacting.” You start editing yourself before you even speak because what’s the point of saying something if no one’s really listening?

You’ve spent years wondering if maybe they were right. If maybe you were being too much, too sensitive, too dramatic.

But your younger self was telling the truth. You weren’t making it up. You weren’t overreacting. You needed someone to listen and they didn’t, and that failure was never yours to carry.

The work now is learning to listen to yourself the way they should have listened to you then.

You deserved to be heard. You still do.

#trauma #betrayal #therapy #protection

Repost from @aileyjolie • We are told to self-regu

Repost from @aileyjolie
•
We are told to self-regulate.

To self-soothe.
To breathe deeper.
To do the work. Alone.

We’re handed nervous system charts and coping strategies. Told to meditate. Ground. Stretch. Journal. Reparent. As if the body is a machine that just needs better settings. As if trauma is a personal glitch to be optimized away. But here’s the truth:

Your nervous system is not broken. It’s just carrying too much, by itself.

We forget: Regulation is not supposed to be a solo task.

It’s not meant to happen in isolation, in silence, behind closed doors. It’s meant to happen in connection.

In the presence of another steady breath. In the rhythm of someone who stays. In the safety of being seen, not managed, not improved, just met.

Because no amount of breathwork will erase the ache of being unsupported. No amount of mindfulness will undo the damage of never being held. No tool will replace what we were wired for: each other.

Self-regulation is a skill. But co-regulation is a need.

Not a luxury. Not a bonus. A biological necessity.

So if you’re tired, if you’re still dysregulated after all the tools, maybe it’s not that you’re doing it wrong.

Maybe it’s that you were never meant to do it alone.

#alone #tired #confused #trauma #therapy

Repost from @kayatoastforthesoul.sg • A client and

Repost from @kayatoastforthesoul.sg
•
A client and I explored an interesting question in counselling today:

“Are we just made out of our past selves?”

And honestly, I think many of us live as though we are.

The same body.
The same hands.
The same thoughts and insecurities.
The same memories replaying themselves internally.

Sometimes it can feel like we simply wake up as yesterday’s self again.

The same person wearing the same clothes.
Going through the same routines.
Carrying the same emotional reactions and stories about ourselves.

“I’ve always been this way.”
“This is just who I am.”
“I always react like this.”

And

“I’m the same old failure”.

—

So I asked him gently:

“If the version of you from five years ago still exists… where does he exist right now?”

He thought for a moment before replying:

“In my brain.”

And so we slowed down further.

Right now, you can notice your thoughts.
Your emotions.
Your memories.
You can notice old narratives saying:

“I am not enough.”
“I am broken.”
“I am unlovable.”

But then I asked him:

“Who is noticing all of this?”

Who is noticing the thoughts?
Who is noticing the memories?
Who is noticing the same hands from yesterday?

And...

WHO is noticing your brain conjuring up all of this?

And slowly, something shifted.

—

Because if your past self can be observed, then perhaps you are not only your past self continuing endlessly forward.

There is also a “YOU” here right now.

The consciousness that looks out behind your two eyes.

The one looking out at the world in this present moment.

The you that is noticing the thoughts, emotions, and old stories as they arise.

And perhaps healing begins there.

Not by erasing the past.

But by realizing you are more than the old narratives moving through your mind.

:)

You’ve got this,
Hernping

🙏🙏

P.s. For DK #trauma #self #past #present

Repost from @healing.the.mosaic • Have you ever fe

Repost from @healing.the.mosaic
•
Have you ever felt like people only see the version of you that survives? 🤍

A lot of CPTSD symptoms are invisible to other people. Someone might look “fine”, capable, independent, calm, or high functioning on the outside while privately struggling with hypervigilance, shame, dissociation, emotional flashbacks, panic, or feeling completely disconnected from themselves.

That’s one of the hardest parts sometimes. Carrying so much internally while people only see the surface.

Not everybody with CPTSD will relate to every example in this post, but many survivors know what it’s like to feel misunderstood because trauma responses can show up in so many different ways.

One thing that has helped us is being around other survivors who genuinely understand what living with trauma can feel like.

if you’d like to see more posts about trauma, dissociation, CPTSD, and healing from lived experience, @healing.the.mosaic shares brilliant context.

#CPTSD #trauma #Dissociation #therapy #hope

Repost from @theeqschool • This isn’t the only pos

Repost from @theeqschool
•
This isn’t the only possible adaptation to a world that doesn’t seem to make any sense, but it’s a common one.

If you couldn’t trust your own feelings;
if you didn’t have adults who listened, mirrored, or took accountability of their behavior, if you often witnessed “I’m fine” when things, in fact, were not fine, you might have learned to spend a lot of time trying to make sense of what was happening — in an attempt to keep yourself safe by trying to decipher the “rules.”

But in these environments, the rules often changed.

So you had to stay braced, attuned, observant, because if you could understand the pattern, you could sometimes prevent fallout.

Not always, but sometimes.

Which is a lot of responsibility for a child.

Kids who grow up with stability, validation, support, and adults who know how to hold themselves
learn that they can trust reality.

They learn that they don’t have to analyze or understand someone’s motives in order to be safe.

They don’t believe it’s their responsibility to keep things stable or to make anyone happy.

They don’t need to overanalyze and get a deeper read on every person they meet or environment they step into.
They got to be kids.

#trauma #cptsd #overthinking #feelings #therapy

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Chele Yntema is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Trauma Specialist.

In the spirit of reconciliation I acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. I pay my respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. I am committed to inclusion across race, culture, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, religion, and ability. I recognise that people from diverse communities face systemic barriers and seek to challenge the current system and strive for change that makes mental health and wellbeing accessible to and inclusive for all.

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