“Biblical counseling” is not therapy (and it’s dangerous to pretend they are the same)
Biblical counseling is not therapy, and it’s harmful to pretend they are the same.
Suicide Warning Signs, Myths, and Prevention
If you need immediate assistance or are in a life-threatening situation, don’t wait to ask for help. Call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
Slow Flow vs. Restorative Yoga: Which One Is Right For me?
Slow Flow Yoga; Restorative Yoga; Trauma-Informed Yoga - which is which and which one is right for me?
Polyvagal Theory & Adverse Religious Experiences
Let's talk about Polyvagal Theory and it's relationship to adverse religious experiences. Polyvagal Theory provides a map of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), defining how this system shapes experiences of safety and impacts our ability for connection. The stories you tell about yourself about who you are and how the world works begin in the ANS.
Adverse Religious Experiences (AREs) are any experience of a religious belief, practice, or structure that undermines an individual's sense of safety or autonomy and/or negatively impacts their physical, social, emotional, relational, sexual, or psychological well-being. These experiences have the potential of resulting in religious trauma.
Polyvagal Theory 101
Polyvagal Theory (originally outlined by Dr. Stephen Porges and studied by Deb Dana) provides a map of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), defining how this system shapes experiences of safety and impacts our ability for connection. The stories you tell about yourself about who you are and how the world works begin in the ANS.
Feeling the Pain of the Earth
I don’t know about you, but I have been feeling overwhelmed by the climate crisis recently.
Solo Travel: A Coming Home to Myself
Traveling solo is not better or worse than traveling with a partner or a friend.
Do Less
My word of the year for 2023 is “whole,” and my theme for this year is “do less.” The need to do less - and thereby be more - has been gnawing at me for some time. As someone in a helping profession, I derive a significant amount of meaning from showing up for people, doing for people. However, doing without being is often ineffective and leads to burnout. I’ve been there: my nervous system has been dysregulated, my body has carried the burden of my doing, and my relationships have suffered due to a constant need to hustle.
Symptoms of Religious Trauma
Religious trauma is distinct from other trauma experiences typically due to the concept of god or the divine being a part of the adverse experiences. Just as experiences of trauma are unique from individual to individual, experiences of religious trauma - while sharing certain themes - are unique from individual to individual.
Religious Trauma & Adverse Religious Experiences
The most helpful way for me to conceptualize religious trauma is by considering the concept of adverse religious experiences (AREs), which, according to the Religious Trauma Institute, are any experiences of a religious belief, practice, or structure that undermines an individual’s sense of safety or autonomy and/or negatively impacts their physical, social, emotional, relational, or psychological well-being.
Spiritual Self-Care
The final domain of self-care we will be considering on this journey is that of spiritual self-care. Spiritual self-care doesn’t necessarily have to relate to religion, though it can and does for many people; it is related to how you connect to and nourish your spirit (or soul, or other concept along those lines that resonates for you) and how you find meaning and purpose in life. Spirituality is also related to our vision and connection to things outside of ourselves.
Social Self-Care
Social self-care is essentially as simple as it sounds: it is about caring for your unique social needs. This begins by having a good understanding of what your social needs are (knowing that we are dynamic beings and our needs are allowed to change on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly - you get the idea - basis).
Professional Self-Care
Did you know that its estimated that the average adult American will spend one-third of their life at work? That’s over 90,000 if you’re working a typical 40-hour work week. Thus, it’s just as important that we prioritize self-care at work as we do in every other facet of our lives.
Physical Self-Care
When we think of physical self-care or care of our bodies, we are primed by diet culture to believe that taking care of our bodies requires vigorous exercise, dieting (or at the very least, health-conscious eating), and punishing our bodies into submission. While diet and exercise can be components of physical self-care, the purpose of caring for our bodies is not to follow arbitrary rules assigned by someone who doesn’t live in our unique body…
Intellectual Self-Care
Intellectual self-care includes nourishing and challenging your mind and intellect. As a society, we spend a tremendous amount of time in our intellect and thinking spaces, in our mind, so as you tend to this aspect of self-care, please be mindful that you are also balancing this with the other domains of self-care.
Financial Self-Care
Financial wellness includes taking steps to live within your financial means and planning for future financial health.
Environmental Self-Care
Environmental self-care can include contributing - time, energy, or other resources - to environmental causes you care about, such as cleaning your local beach, picking up trash while you’re on a walk, or working to limit the amount of single-use plastics you use in your home. Environmental self-care also includes creating physical spaces where you feel safe and nourished.
Emotional Self-Care
Emotional self-care is about becoming more in tune with our emotions. It's about checking in with yourself, becoming more mindful of your triggers and thinking patterns, and finding ways to work through them, rather than bottling them up inside.
The Domains of Self-Care
Self-care is a topic I’m pretty passionate about…but I wasn’t always. As a child and teenager, I internalized the mindset that self-care is selfish and a waste of time. However, I now believe that this was due to understanding the concept of self-care in a very limiting way - bubble baths, long days at the spa, expensive clothes, grandiose vacations. As someone who developed a chronic illness in my early adulthood, my body forced me to reimagine and reevaluate my underlying beliefs about and ideas of self-care.