Informative Resources
Exploring Family Dynamics
Trauma: Tools for Recovery
May 2, 2023
Psychological trauma is a form of memory evolved to protect us from future bad events. Our body remembers the events and triggers associated with fear provoking stimuli and uses them as red flags for future risks. This fear response is stored in our unconscious mind, so you can't think your way out of this kind of response. By the time your conscious mind has caught up with the trigger the body has already reacted with the flight. flight or freeze response. A clinical psychologist is highly skilled in developing an individual plan of working through the trigger memories and deactivating the link between trigger and body response. The most important of these tools in recovery from trauma is Knowledge.
Anxiety 101
May 2, 2023
The family we grew up can have a profound effect on the person we become. There are no perfect parents and children are generally resilient enough to adapt to their imperfect environment. They adapt there demands, expectations and needs to get the best they can from their parents. Psychologist call some of the needs, attachment needs and including the needs for security and safety, unconditional love and nurturance, and limits and boundaries. When a parents is unable to supply one of these sufficiently, the child will adapt. Since we spend thousands of hours with our parents, these adaptations consolidate in memory to form templates for how relationships work - templates that are often impervious to change. We then attempt to make our adult relationships fit these early life templates, which usually don't, and the mismatch between these unconscious expectations and adult reality leads to psychological symptoms of anxiety and depression. Psychodynamic psychotherapy reveals these templates and how they a re-enacted in relationships causing psychological distress and disorders. Psychological disorders aren't random events and don't come from nowhere. They are understandable and meaningful, and resolution begins with understanding.
May 2023
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