Reintegration After Isolation

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With the onset of the COVID pandemic, there was a multitude of social outlets many of us like to engage in that were put on hold. Concerts, going to restaurants, and even more mundane social contexts such as working in a setting with co-workers that we sometimes take for granted were all interrupted last March. A common sentiment heard during this period of time was “I can’t wait to socialize again” regardless of what one’s preferred means of socialization was. Fast forward to the summer of 2021, and social events are starting to happen again. Concerts are suddenly able to be planned, restaurants are starting to bustle with patrons more than in the past year, and some workplaces are transitioning back to work in-person. Yet despite these exciting realities of socialization becoming available again, there’s one sentence that I’ve heard frequently over the past few weeks from clients and friends alike: “I think I’m excited to socialize, but for some rea ...

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Posted in:

  • Anxiety
  • COVID-19

Tags:

  • Social Atrophy
  • relationships
  • social distancing

Baby Steps

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There have been a few times in my life when I found myself standing at the edge of a cliff.  


One of my favorite times was when I visited the Grand Canyon while I was in college. It was breathtaking, but I'll admit that I was thankful for the railing. 

When I visited the Grand Canyon, I was able to hike down to the bottom. I didn't scale down a cliff, but instead took a meandering, all-day hike to a place called Phantom Ranch. 

Our lives can often mirror this same journey. 

There is rarely a time when we make one big decision to get us where we end up going. Instead, we often take baby steps down a path that can leave us wondering how we ended up there. Just as often, we look for the one “big decision” to change our life for the better. 

Unfortunately, we often don’t pay attention to the little things along the way that lead us down the path.  We can become so preoccu ...

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Posted in:

  • Change

Tags:

  • intention
  • time

Time After Time

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This one’s for the lonely,

The one’s who seek and find,

Only to be let down,

Time after Time…

 

A friend of mine (let’s call him Brian for the duration of this post) recently shared with me a phenomenon, that he found not only in his personal journey toward self-actualization through his childhood trauma, but specifically in the context of his own therapy. He was actually made aware of this cognitive pattern in which he would consistently caveat his trauma disclosure with a vindication or defense of the perpetrator of his abuse. In his context, this was often his parents, and a stranger who had sexually assaulted him when he was five to six. 

This one’s for the torn down,

The experts at the fall,

Come on friends get up now,

You’re not alone at all

 

For context, Brian’s father was severely abusiv ...

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Posted in:

  • Story
  • Trauma

Tags:

  • William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn
  • abuse

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