by Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
In part one, I wrote about why the guilt and grief that show up when you change your relationship with your family aren't fully yours to begin with, they're often inherited, carried feelings that started with a parent and got handed down. If you haven't read that piece yet, start there.
Here's where it gets more complicated: Once you start questioning a pattern in your family, it's easy to start wondering whether you're questioning your whole culture instead.
By Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
If you've been in therapy, or just read a lot about it online, and then started trying to make some changes with your family — saying no to things, questioning expectations, even putting yourself first — you know it's not just a clean sweep and you feel better immediately. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't feel like that.
Guilt and grief show up the second you do something for yourself. That swooping, heavy feeling right when you finally make some space, right when you finally say no to something you used to automatically say yes to.
It makes sense, you did a mean thing, and now you feel bad. Except, no, it doesn't.
You probably expect your therapist to tell you not to feel bad, that you're not actually doing a mean thing. But especially for certain cultures, that doesn't really apply. Saying "don't feel bad" isn't really therapeutic.
What I actually want to tell you is: that guilt is not yours. It's your parent's.
And hopefully after you read this, that heavy, too-fast guilt is going to make a lot more sense, along with what to actually do about it.
by Brianna Patti, LMFT.
If you were born between 1981 and 1996 and haven't decided whether or not you want kids, you're in good company.
by Wanda Diep, LCSW.
I've been reflecting on uncertainty and acceptance quite a bit lately. In both my personal and professional life, I hear people talk about uncertainty related to finances, job security, relationships, the climate, politics, etc. (I can definitely go on), and how this uncertainty has been fuel for anxiety, rumination, catastrophizing thoughts, frustration outward or anger inward. People search for solutions to alleviate the distress, and as a fellow human being, I've definitely leaned into a solution-oriented mindset to find relief. But what happens when there doesn't seem to be a concrete solution? What is to be done when it's hard to find certainty or have control or influence over a situation? This is when acceptance can be a tool to try.
by Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
There's a specific kind of couple I see a lot, and you might be one of them. You've been together a long time. There are shared finances, sometimes tied up in property or a business you built together, and a shared history at this point that would be genuinely painful to untangle.
From the outside, and often from the inside too, it looks like it's working. But somewhere along the way, one or each of you stopped being emotionally reachable. Not hostile, just quietly unavailable in a way neither of you ever fully said out loud.
If that's you, especially if your relationship was never going to fit the default script to begin with, (maybe you're queer or trans, maybe one or both of you is somewhere in transition, whether that's a career, a diagnosis, a move, a loss, or some other life milestone that's changed who you are mid-relationship, maybe you're navigating two different cultures' worth of rules about how a relationship is supposed to work, or maybe, like a lot of people, it's honestly some combination of all of the above), here's what I think is actually going on.
by Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
In part one, I wrote about why the guilt and grief that show up when you change your relationship with your family aren't fully yours to begin with, they're often inherited, carried feelings that started with a parent and got handed down. If you haven't read that piece yet, start there.
Here's where it gets more complicated: Once you start questioning a pattern in your family, it's easy to start wondering whether you're questioning your whole culture instead.
By Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
If you've been in therapy, or just read a lot about it online, and then started trying to make some changes with your family — saying no to things, questioning expectations, even putting yourself first — you know it's not just a clean sweep and you feel better immediately. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't feel like that.
Guilt and grief show up the second you do something for yourself. That swooping, heavy feeling right when you finally make some space, right when you finally say no to something you used to automatically say yes to.
It makes sense, you did a mean thing, and now you feel bad. Except, no, it doesn't.
You probably expect your therapist to tell you not to feel bad, that you're not actually doing a mean thing. But especially for certain cultures, that doesn't really apply. Saying "don't feel bad" isn't really therapeutic.
What I actually want to tell you is: that guilt is not yours. It's your parent's.
And hopefully after you read this, that heavy, too-fast guilt is going to make a lot more sense, along with what to actually do about it.
by Andrew Kravig, LMFT.
I find myself in quite a quandary these days, working as a psychotherapist during the age of the Tr*mp regime. I spend my days thinking about how to hold people together, the nature of healing, what it means to live authentically, and how to find an individual’s sense of meaning and direction. All of this while I (and the entire world along with me) am constantly on the verge of falling apart. Lives are being shattered, homes are being destroyed, the very notion of my existence is being censored. War, famine, greed. Straight-up fucking genocide…
No matter how hard parents work to offer the “perfect” childhood, traumatic events are all-too-skilled at finding their way into our life experience, like speed bumps in our path. And maybe they aren’t just bumps… maybe they feel like giant, icy mountains that we will never be able to scale or summit.
Trauma from our childhood can linger and have damaging effects on our adult lives, whether that effect is great or small. Addressing and healing from that trauma is often an essential step towards living a full, functional life as an adult.
Your clique. The squad. Your ride or die. Your person. The inner circle of your life. Whether this group consists of family, friends, or some combination of the two, everyone has somebody that they trust closely. When someone within your circle breaks your trust or acts out in a way that hurts you, it can result in betrayal trauma. The level of this trauma depends on how significant the circumstances are. It is also influenced by how necessary a role a person plays in your life.
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