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Sometimes we hear different timelines that people were in therapy, oftentimes insurance or workplaces encourage only 8 sessions, while others in your life may say it’s been years. I’ve had many clients over the years even tell me they never want to end!

In the context of a client, I want to offer empathy for the experience around feeling saddened by the idea of one day no longer seeing your therapist every week or whatever frequency you may be at. From the therapist side, I want my clients to know that I will often also be sad or even miss getting to hear about life updates!

So how do you know when you’re ready? Well, there are a few reasons you might choose to end therapy on your own terms (AKA not due to insurance issues, moving out of state, etc.). I’m going to go over each of these reasons,…

Have you ever considered why there seems to be such a high rate of trauma or PTSD tied to those who also are diagnosed with OCD? Well I have!

I found a very helpful article on this discussion and wanted to share key points for those of you who are interested in the information surrounding this concept.

The article shared is a review article, this review summarizes the findings from many other studies completed, thus the information will have many different perspectives dependent on the studies reviewed and their individual premises. Please keep that in mind as you read and feel free to ask questions!

I first wanted to start off with the concept that OCD comes from multiple different 'origins'. The most commonly referred to origin is considered to be genetic. As a trauma and OCD therapist however, I actually have encountered very few "OCD only" clients. This is…

Everyone deserves to live a values-based life. I created these values cards to be able to more clearly identify them within your own!

Here are the steps to use them if you choose to print them out yourself:

1. Use the four cards labeled "Most Important" "Important" "Somewhat Important" and "Least Important" to create four columns.

2. One at a time and without skipping ahead, go through each of the cards, reading the value and definition and place the card under the matching category of how important it is to you. As you place the cards, put them on top of one another, so that you cannot see the previous card. NOTES: Do not base this on prevalence (i.e. how often do I do/care about this?), but rather importance. If it helps, ask the question "if this were missing from my life, is it important enough that I would seek it out again?" If…

Why Cry?

Within somatic therapy, we have to understand that the body is fairly consistently producing hormones, whether those be calming (leptin or serotonin), loving (oxytocin), stressful (cortisol), fight or flight (adrenaline), or many others (Addi, Hormone harmony: The inside story of balance, 2024).

When we cry, our body is releasing excess hormones. Crying helps our bodies shift from a state of fight or flight to our regulated window of tolerance. This quickly can help relieve your body from high distress states into a self-soothing state.

Crying is caused by several factors, such as removing irritants from your eyes (reflex tears), lubricating (basal tears), or ‘psychic’ tears, which are the emotional responses for crying. When crying from high emotional states, our bodies release a neurotransmitter called leucine enkephalin (“The Microscopic Structures of Dried Human Tears.” Smithsonian, Nov. 19, 2013) that is a natural painkiller!

I’m crying, but not sad, why…

Here are some great resources for somatic techniques to use!

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/office-of-well-being/connection-support/somatic-self-care#shorts

https://resiliencecounselinghtx.com/somatic-therapy-exercises/

https://www.healthline.com/health/breathing-exercise

Welcome to my additional therapy resource page! This is where I occasionally post about helpful resources or thoughts I've had come up in sessions that are beneficial to expand on. Feel free to ask questions in the comments!