Tag Archives: anxiety

Handouts for Recovery from Anxiety, Pain or Symptoms

I’m sharing some handouts that I created for my Substack newsletter, Body Wise Parent. I hope you find them helpful!

Neuroplastic Pain & Symptoms Overview

A general overview of neuroplastic pain & symptoms, for those suffering from chronic pain or persistent physical symptoms and clinicians new to this field.

Neuroplastic_SymptomsDownload

Pain Reprocessing Therapy Overview

An overview of Pain Reprocessing Therapy, the most effective evidence-based treatment for chronic pain and persistent physical symptoms.

prt_principles_handoutDownload

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Somatic Tracking for Chronic Pain/Symptoms

A mindfulness exercise associated with Pain Reprocessing Therapy, for people overcoming chronic pain or symptoms.

Somatic-TrackingDownload

Inner Child/Inner Parent Dialogue Exercise

For people who are learning to improve emotional self-care and overcoming the impact of childhood emotional neglect.

Inner-Child-DialogueDownload

Overcoming Compulsive Caretaking Handout

For people who feel over-responsible for others and are learning not to abandon themselves.

Compulsive-CaregivingDownload

Emotional Awareness & Expression Handout for Anxiety and Pain or Symptoms

For people learning to acknowledge, allow and express emotions as a way of calming their nervous system and diminishing chronic pain or other symptoms.

EAET-PrinciplesDownload

The Good Enough Parent

For those of you learning to overcoming perfectionism in your parenting, so you can be a “good enough parent,” and give your children the benefits of experiencing frustration, advocating for themselves, and can develop a greater sense of their own capabilities.

Good-Enough-ParentDownload

Breaking Free from Perpetual Problem-Solving

For those of you learning to overcoming the habit of “problem-solving mode,” to learn to tolerate uncomfortable physical sensations and difficult emotions and teach your brain that you are safe, to calm your nervous system and overcome anxiety, chronic pain and neuroplastic symptoms.

Overcoming-Problem-SolvingDownload

Safety Reappraisal for Chronic Pain/Symptoms

For people overcoming chronic pain or symptoms by establishing a greater sense of safety in the body.

Safety-ReappraisalDownload

HEARTS Framework for Secure Attachment

This handout is for people who want to feel more secure in their relationship with their partner and within themselves. You can use the HEARTS framework to improve the security of your marriage or partner relationship, as well as to build security within yourself.

hearts_framework_handoutDownload
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Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys

On resentment that fuels chronic pain and symptoms, and the embodied process of unlearning the habit of anticipating the needs of others

I didn’t grow up in an abusive family. Neither of my parents were addicts or had a personality disorder. No one went to prison. I think a lot of people assume that if they had a “good enough” childhood, they don’t carry significant wounds, or cannot call any of their childhood experiences trauma.

But when I went to therapy during college, after years of living with mild depression and low self-esteem, I realized that I had internalized a bunch of really burdensome beliefs from the childhood I did have.

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A Master’s in Economics and a PhD in People-Pleasing

On hiding who you are, chronic pain and symptoms, and what it takes to heal both

Today, my middle child turns 27. Their birth was a watershed time in my life. Before, I thought I was a relatively happily married mom, a government analyst who worked in San Francisco and lived in the suburbs, with a predictable path set forth for me.

Seventeen months after that birth, I was still recovering after a severe episode of postpartum anxiety, depression, and chronic dizziness and nausea. I was starting a business. I was very much aware that my marriage might not last. And I felt alive in a new way. More than ever before, I was excited about my future and focused on what I wanted for myself, not just what others expected of me.

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The Weight I Carried Before I Knew I Could Put It Down

There was a period in my life when getting out of bed in the morning felt like trying to lift a car off my chest. I would wake up with a wave of dread, and the weight of depression was crushing.

Dread felt like a burning cold wind on my chest and at the back of my throat, and despair felt like intense psychic pain, worse than I can put into words. Anxiety made me feel as if something truly awful was about to happen. And depression caused me to move through my days in a fog, a mother on autopilot, present enough to pack the lunch and remember the pediatrician appointment, but mostly just waiting for the day to end.

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Your Nervous System Doesn’t Need You to Be Calm

That’s a good thing, because stress is a big part of a life with purpose and meaning

I remember a time in my life when stress was overwhelming and I was drowning. My severe anxiety, depression and physical symptoms landed me in a psychiatric hospital when I was postpartum with my second child. I had never experienced stress like that before, or since.

In the hospital, we had group sessions where we did relaxation exercises. Trying to relax was the absolute worst thing for my anxiety. I thought I was going to crawl out of my skin. Trying to calm my nervous system actually made me even more anxious.

The crazy thing was, seven months later I started a business.

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The Problem With Problem-Solving

On anxiety, self-compassion, and why your brain keeps looking for problems to solve

The mind, when it’s anxious, will find a problem to solve. It doesn’t matter if the problem is real or imagined, or already over. It just needs something to work on. I was reminded of this the other night, lying awake and anxious after working on my last post too close to bedtime.

There were thoughts about whether I was sharing too much of my personal story in my posts, whether they were overlapping too much in terms of the themes I discussed, and also how people might respond to what I shared about how my first marriage ended. I wondered whether anyone really wanted to hear any of it. I was comparing myself to other writers on Substack who I felt were much more capable writers than I am, and wondering why I had committed to writing a Substack newsletter.

I realized that I was trying to “problem solve” the uncomfortable sensations I was feeling, so I focused my attention just on the bodily sensations and let the thoughts go for now.

Keep Reading…

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The Drama of the Upside-Down Plate: What I Learned About Emotions as a Child

For many years, I thought I was just “too emotional.” I hadn’t learned to allow and to express my feelings. They felt too big because they were stuck inside, and because of what I had been taught was normal.

My feelings often felt too intense, too easily triggered. Everyone else seemed to have it together while I was a mess inside. It never occurred to me that other people might be having the same feelings—they just weren’t showing them. I was comparing my insides to other people’s outsides.

It also didn’t occur to me that burying my emotions might make me sick.

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How I Learned Not To Abandon Myself

(and What a Mispronounced Name Taught Me)

My body had been speaking what I refused to acknowledge: I was abandoning myself to take care of everyone else, and my nervous system wasn’t having it anymore.

While postpartum with my second child, I was hospitalized for severe depression and anxiety after suffering months of chronic dizziness and nausea. I was released from the hospital after twelve days of inpatient treatment. During those days, I kept solid food down for the first time in months, started to have an appetite, and was just beginning to be able to sleep through the night. I was seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

When I got home and was back in the stressful environment I had left, I immediately felt like no recovery had occurred at all. My husband expected me to be back to 100% right away, and every stressful moment, even the sound of my son’s voice (needing something from me!), caused a wave of dread, dizziness and nausea to come right back. Clearly, I hadn’t fully recovered yet. So I got put in a full-day intensive outpatient program for six weeks, so I could ease back into “life on the outside.”

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When My Body Expressed What I Couldn’t Say

How stress manifested as severe physical symptoms

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