If you don’t understand why you habitually get yourself into relationships or situations that turn out badly for you, consider the concept of neurotic repetitive patterns, aka the repetition compulsion. These are complicated psychology terms expressing a simple concept: we repeat behavior because that’s all we know from previous experience.  Here are some examples. Joe grew up in a family where both his parents worked long hours and weren’t able to give him the attention and help he needed, so he often felt neglected and overwhelmed. Now he manages to find jobs where he’s left pretty much ..read more

When you think of trauma, do you think that what happened to your grandmother or mother is only passed down to you emotionally? It turns out that the legacy of trauma is passed down in other ways and involves more than emotional inheritance.  How Parents' Trauma Leaves Biological Traces in Children | Scientific American describes how trauma may be passed down through generations via genetics, that is, on a physiological level. “Epigenetics [the way genes function] potentially explains why effects of trauma may endure long after the immediate threat is gone, and it is also implicated in th ..read more

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), though not included in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5, is a more serious form of PTSD. You can recover from it, but first you need to know you have it.  According to the Hanley Treatment Center, with CPTSD, “you constantly feel on edge; nothing seems to help. The emotional trauma gets physically stuck in your body.” The body (memory) keeps reliving memories that intrude into reality as if they’re happening in the present moment—like a needle stuck on a record (for those who remember records). CPSTD may start in childhood or ..read more

Many people are surprised when they learn they were emotionally abused as children. Maybe they kind of knew it but didn’t want to believe it or maybe they truly had no idea that what was done to them is considered maltreatment. It’s important to recognize if you were emotionally abused growing up because that understanding will help you resolve your current emotional issues, not to mention your eating problems. An article on how adults shouting can be harmful to children’s development really hit home for me. My parents frequently argued and it wasn’t so much their loudness that got to me but t ..read more

Here are situations you might find all too uncomfortably familiar. My long divorced client Philip is frustrated that he can’t catapult himself back into the past and change it. Filled with regret about things he did and didn’t do in his marriage, he feels a need to atone for his perceived transgressions. A personable and attractive man, Philip could be dating other women. Instead, he cedes the present to the past, immersed in a shoulda, woulda, coulda reverie he’s likely to regret in the future. Middle-aged Moa has convinced herself she ought to have been able to save her younger brother from ..read more

I blog a lot about abuse: how to recognize it and deal with it. Somehow I haven’t written much about one particular type of abuse and that’s called emotional smothering. It begins when parents stifle your wants by trying to make their desires yours and vice versa. They often don’t do this intentionally but, nevertheless, smothering literally takes your breath away. And along with your breath go your rights and power to make your own decisions and take pride in them or suffer the consequences. Children and adults in this situation may become so used to the blatant and subtle ways parents smothe ..read more

What’s the difference between a scar and a sore? In my mind, a scar is something that once hurt but is no longer painful, while a sore is something that hurts right now. You view a scar as being about something that happened to you and recognize that it isn’t happening now. A sore is different: it’s an active wound that keeps hurting. It’s helpful to think about events in life as scars or sores in order to distinguish what’s active and really needs our attention and what’s a memory to ignore. Here’s an example. My client Lloyd was the oldest of six children and their unofficial caretaker, what ..read more

Every once in a while a client latches onto a phrase I’ve said because it speaks to them. This happened when I suggested that it’s time for my client Jill to “live for what you fought for.” What I meant was that she’d struggled through an abusive childhood only to live like she’s still stuck on the battlefield.  The truth is that many clients feel and act this way. The war is over, but they can’t seem to climb out of the trenches and delight in freedom, clear skies, and the calm of inner peace. Dr. Jon Connelly, founder of Rapid Resolution Therapy, describes it this way: It’s as if you’re ..read more

Here are excerpts from a client’s letter showing her triumph over trauma from a highly abusive father. I hope her growth inspires you to continue on your path to healing. “I finally get it. I get that my father is incapable of loving me, feeling empathy by putting himself in my shoes, caring about my feelings, etc. I see that he is sociopathic and a malignant narcissist and it feels so very painful. I see that I have believed the lie that I am not worthy of being loved as he continues to put others needs over mine. I see that I have believed that I was crazy, wrong, a trouble maker, too sensit ..read more

“Boy,” said a client, “this childhood stuff really can mess you up!” I couldn’t help but chuckle. In fact, we had a long, shared laugh about the validity of this statement. What’s as true is that you might not realize in which ways and to what degree your upbringing is messing with you. The good news is that it’s never too late to learn. To do this, you must first erase blame from your brain. Your parents may have caused your problems, but they too had childhoods and parents, so it’s useless to point fingers at them. Who else is there, you might wonder, to blame, so you fault yourself for not ..read more