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“It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life starts going okay, another falls spectacularly to pieces.” – Bridget Jones’ Diary
Life can sometimes feel overwhelming and challenging. This can happen whether we have many changes occurring at the same time or if there is one major change happening. And despite our best efforts coping with these changes can be difficult. Skills that once helped us are no longer helpful or are less helpful because we haven’t tackled a situation similar to this.
Therapy can help. Change is an inevitable part of life. Therapy gives you a safe space to process those changes and helps you develop additional coping skills to manage your feelings. Change often involves making difficult or complex decisions. Therapy allows you to gain insight into all your options and gain confidence in making the most beneficial decision you can.
Millions of people across the world have experienced sexual violence at some point within their lifetime. Due to increased awareness, survivors are realizing they are not alone and are seeking help and/or speaking out about what happened to them.
What is sexual violence? Sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent from the survivor. Sexual violence can include behaviors such as attempted rape, rape, or fondling or unwanted sexual touching to name a few.
Whether you have experienced one or multiple assaults, experienced sexual violence as an adult or as a child, no matter what your gender, no matter what your sexual orientation, the trauma symptoms from sexual violence can impact every area of your life. Inability to concentrate, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, sleep disturbances, nightmares, feeling tense or jumpy, memory problems, obsessive thinking, and changes in sexual behaviors are just some of the trauma symptoms you may be experiencing if you have been sexually assaulted.
Therapy can assist you in identifying and treating the specific trauma reactions you have been experiencing from your assault(s). You can also gain productive coping skills to help you manage triggers and trauma reactions. You can re-establish healthy sexual experiences and intimacy into your romantic relationships. You can feel a sense of ownership and control over your body again in a healthy way. Whether you were sexually assaulted as an adult or as a child, recently or years ago, assaulted once or numerous times, you can heal. There is hope! I want to help you achieve the healing you have been wanting to have. If you are ready, call me to begin your journey.
When many people think of abusive relationships they typically think of romantic relationships and they assume the survivor is often a heterosexual woman. However, our romantic relationships, family relationships, friendships, employment relationships, etc., can become abusive. Any person can become a survivor of abuse. Abusive relationships affect all ages, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and socioeconomics statuses.
Prior to beginning therapy or even in the beginning of therapy, many people who have been survivors of abuse may have difficulty recognizing that they were or are currently in an abusive relationship. And even after recognizing that we are experiencing or have experienced an abusive relationship, figuring out what we want to do next can feel overwhelming.
Therapy can assist you in recognizing the specific patterns and behaviors that encompassed the abuse you experienced. You can also gain productive coping skills to help you manage triggers and trauma reactions. You can learn to recognize relationship red flags and increase confidence in your relationships. Therapy assists with learning about how to implement and maintain boundaries. Your life can feel like yours again. You can rediscover who you are and develop the healthy, loving relationships you want in your life. And most importantly, you do not have to do it alone.
Deciding to end an abusive relationship is not an easy decision nor is it the only option available to survivors. At Pegasus Counseling Services, we meet you where you are at in your journey and if you are not ready to leave, we will not pressure you to. In some circumstances, leaving an abusive relationship may increase the danger level for the survivor. If you do decide to end your relationship, it can take time, planning, and support from a support network to assist you in leaving in a way that does not compromise safety.
According to the Centre for Clinical Interventions, “Low self-esteem is having a generally negative overall opinion of oneself, judging, or evaluating oneself negatively, and placing a general negative value on oneself as a person."
If you have low self-esteem, you are not alone. Low self-esteem is a challenge for many people. But you don't have to tackle this on your own. Self-esteem can be improved. No one is born with low self-esteem. It is learned over time, meaning it can change.
Therapy can help you to examine the unique aspects to your self-esteem concerns. The low self-esteem you experience can be in one particular area of your life or it can feel like an overall encompassing issue that impacts multiple areas of your daily life. You might not even be aware how many times throughout the day you are having negative thoughts or using negative self-talk. Therapy helps bring that awareness to the surface.
You can gain skills in recognizing the thinking processes that make negative beliefs worse and how to change them. Unrealistic expectations of yourself often play a role in low self-esteem and therapy assists in re-evaluating your expectations.
You can learn new daily behaviors that when incorporated into your life can increase positive self-perception, strengthen your relationships, and allow you to feel as though you are living your true, authentic life. Imagine not only being able to think positively about yourself but being able to treat yourself with dignity and kindness while meeting your overall needs.
Everyone grieves differently. There is no time limit. No one can say how long the grieving process will take. It is unique to each person. Many people can place too much pressure on themselves to heal as quickly as possible. It is common to hear, "I should be over this." or "It's been 3 months already. I should be good". Although an exact time length can't be predicted, the grieving process can be influenced by many factors including the significance of the loss, the coping factors a person does or does not have, and the support system a person does or does not have.
Types of Loss:
Most people are familiar with the "Stages of Grief". These include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. What people are less familiar with is how these stages are actually applied to grief. They are not a set sequence, in fact, they were never intended to be a set sequence. A person experiencing grief will not necessarily go through these stages in any particular order or experience all 5 stages. And that is 100% ok. Technically, you do not have to experience any of these stages to be grieving appropriately. You can still find your healing even if your process looks different than the "The Stages of Grief".
You may feel as though you do not have an outlet to process your feelings; therapy gives you that outlet. Therapy allows you to process your feelings in a safe environment. You can express whatever emotion is currently coming up for you or learn to identify what it is you are feeling. You can also gain coping skills to lessen the intensity of the emotions you are experiencing in order to regain a sense of functionality. Individual therapy also assists at identify obstacles that are impacting your grieving process.
Recovery is possible
Alcohol and drug addiction was once thought of as a severe lack of willpower to stop using substances. Today, we understand that addiction is a disease and it can have severe negative consequences for those who struggle to manage the disease. Substance Use Disorders, once referred to as substance abuse or dependence, affects all ages, races, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statues, etc.
It is possible for you to recover from a substance use disorder and gain confidence in your sobriety. Therapy can help you recognize unhelpful thinking patterns or triggers that impact your substance use disorder. Therapy also teaches productive skills to help manage symptoms and if you are experiencing co-occurring disorders, therapy helps provide you an adequate structure to develop skills needed. Therapy can assist you in learning boundaries and how to develop healthy relationships.
Someone I love has a substance use disorder
You may not feel you know how to help a loved one who is experiencing an addiction. Maybe you have felt like your loved one isn’t listening to you or they don’t care about you. Maybe you have felt that the more you try to help the worse it becomes.
Addiction is not only complex for the person experiencing it but it also greatly impacts those around the person. Healthy family and friends are so beneficial to the person dealing with addiction that it is essential that family and friends seek their own assistance and support.
Therapy helps you help the person you love but also care and love yourself through this process. You will gain the insight and knowledge on the complexities and intricacies of addiction and how your role in the relationship is being impacted. Therapy can teach you useful boundary setting and coping skills.
Consider engaging in therapy even if the person with an addiction is unwilling to receive treatment at this time. Therapy can be an essential part of your self-care routine and may help you feel better equipped to manage some of the stressors and issues that can come up in your relationship with this other person.
One of the most important and useful self-care tools a therapist can do is get their own therapy. Therapists care for people at difficult times and sometimes it can be hard to not absorb that pain. Sometimes what our client discuss can bring up our own painful memories and experiences. In order to take care of your clients the best way you can, means taking care of yourself.
Seeking therapy as a therapist has its own unique challenges like finding a therapist who doesn’t have professional overlap with you. It can be beneficial to consider seeing a therapist who is licensed in your state but doesn’t live there or a therapist who in a very different area of the state you live in. Another challenge that often comes up is finding a therapist who doesn’t treat you like a therapist but just allows you to be a person separate from your job. Your personal therapy shouldn’t be consultation or supervision because your therapy is about you – not your job responsibilities.
We can help! Our therapist Vickie has experience providing therapy to therapists and remaining focused on their individual personal needs. Allow us to help you so you can keep on helping others.
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