When Stress Becomes Your Default
Stress is a normal part of life.
It can be a demanding job, relationship challenges, parenting, major transitions, or uncertainty can all activate your stress response. But what happens when stress starts to feel like your default?
You may not think of yourself as an anxious or stressed person. You might simply feel tired, irritable, overwhelmed, distracted, or like you’re constantly “on edge” You get things done, show up for everyone else, and keep moving but inside, you’re flipping out.
What does chronic stress feel like?
Chronic stress doesn’t always look like a breakdown in the work place or at home. For many successful adults, it looks like:
Constantly thinking about what needs to be done next
Difficulty relaxing, even when you have time to rest
Feeling overwhelmed by small things
Irritability or being more reactive than usual
Trouble sleeping or feeling tired despite getting enough sleep
Overthinking decisions and conversations
Feeling responsible for keeping everything under control
Difficulty being present with the people you love
Sometimes stress is less about what is happening around you and more about what your nervous system has learned to expect.
Why can’t I just relax?
This might be a helpful question to ask yourself! If you’ve been operating in survival mode for a long time, slowing down can actually feel uncomfortable. Your mind may have learned that staying busy, prepared, productive, or in control keeps you safe.
This is one reason simply telling yourself to “stop worrying” or “take a vacation” doesn’t always create lasting relief.
Managing stress isn’t just about doing less. It’s also about understanding what keeps your mind and body feeling like they have to stay on alert.
Therapy for stress and anxiety
Therapy can help you understand the patterns underneath your stress so you can respond to life and ulitmately to yourself differrently.
You can learn to recognize the difference between healthy responsibility and carrying more than belongs to you. You can begin to quiet the constant mental noise, reconnect with your emotions, and create more space for peace, connection, and a life that feels less like something you have to manage.
If stress has become your normal, you don’t have to wait until you’re completely overwhelmed to ask for help. I’m here to help you change your relationship with stress!
Can you heal from church hurt without walking away from your faith?
The short answer is yes!
“Church hurt” is a generic term meaning many different things. It can happen in many ways. Maybe you experienced judgment, rejection, spiritual manipulation, betrayal by a trusted leader, or pressure to hide your emotions. Maybe you were taught that questioning, setting boundaries, or talking about painful experiences meant you were lacking faith in God.
Over time, these experiences can affect more than your relationship with the church. They can impact how you see yourself, other people, and even God.
You can separate God from what happened to you
One of the difficult parts of church hurt is that the people or environment that caused the pain may have been closely connected to your Christian faith. It feels too intertwinded. This can make it difficult to distinguish between what someone taught you about God and who God actually is. Often the default is to deconstruct and “walk away” but it doesn’t have to be like that.
Healing doesn't require you to dismiss what happened or pretend that it didn't hurt. It can involve slowing down and asking: What did I experience? What did I come to believe about myself, God, and relationships because of it? And what do I believe now?
Healing doesn't have to mean abandoning your faith
You may need boundaries. You may need distance from a particular church or community. You may need to grieve what you hoped your church experience would be. You may even have questions about beliefs you once accepted without question.
Those things don't automatically mean you've lost your faith.
Sometimes, healing involves giving yourself permission to have questions, acknowledge anger or grief, and explore your faith without fear or shame.
Christian therapy can provide a safe place to explore
If your experience with church has left you anxious, ashamed, disconnected, or confused about your faith, therapy can provide a space to explore those experiences without being told what you should believe or feel.
Christian therapy can honor your faith while also making room for difficult emotions, questions, relationships, boundaries, and past experiences.
You don't have to choose between taking care of your emotional health and honoring your faith. Healing from church hurt may look less like walking away from God and more like finding a healthier, more authentic way of relating to your faith and yourself.
If you're struggling with church hurt, religious trauma, anxiety, or questions about your faith, therapy can be a place to begin making sense of what you've experienced and discovering what healing might look like for you.
Anxiety isn't always loud
We often think of anxiety as screaming…
But it isn’t always loud.
When most people think of anxiety, they picture someone who is visibly overwhelmed—racing thoughts, panic attacks, or feeling unable to cope. Many people with high-functioning anxiety appear to have everything together. They are successful, dependable, productive, organized, and often the people others rely on. They meet deadlines, care for their families, excel in their careers, and rarely let others see how much they are carrying internally.
Because life on the outside looks "fine," many people don't recognize that anxiety is quietly shaping their everyday lives. Some even believe their anxiety is the reason they succeed. They worry that if they stop pushing themselves, they'll lose their motivation, ambition, or drive. Anxiety begins to feel like the engine behind their accomplishments, even though it leaves them exhausted, disconnected, and unable to truly rest.
The good news is that motivation doesn't have to come from fear.
You don't have to choose between being successful and experiencing peace.
In therapy, one of the goals isn't to eliminate every anxious feeling. Instead, we begin to understand the nervous system and change our relationship with anxiety. When we respond to fear with panic, self-criticism, or the belief that something is wrong with us, anxiety often becomes even louder.
But what happens if we become curious instead? Rather than asking, "How do I make this feeling disappear?" we can ask, "What is my anxiety trying to protect me from?"
For many people, anxiety isn't simply a sign that something is wrong in the present. It's a familiar pattern that developed over time. Perhaps your nervous system learned to stay alert because life once felt unpredictable, emotionally lonely, or unsafe. What once helped you survive may now keep you in a constant state of vigilance, even when you no longer need to be.
Your anxiety isn't necessarily telling you the truth, it may simply be repeating an old story your nervous system learned long ago.
Healing doesn't mean losing your ambition, your work ethic, or your ability to care deeply. It means learning that you can move through life from a place of grounded confidence instead of constant fear.
If you've been wondering why you can appear calm and capable while feeling anxious inside, you're not alone. High-functioning anxiety is real, and it is treatable. Therapy can help you understand the deeper roots of your anxiety, calm your nervous system, and discover that peace and purpose can exist together.
When Survival Becomes Personality: understanding developmental trauma in adults
A quick story…
I had a supervisor tell me early on a story about how she arranged her kitchen when she moved into her first house, the utensils over here, cups go here, plates are up here… and that she had the sudden insight that she arranged it exactly as her mother did growing up. She would use this as an easy analogy for how we can take on the “stuff” of our parents without realizing it.
What is this about?
Many adults come to therapy believing they are simply "too sensitive," "too controlling," "independent to a fault," or "bad at relationships." In reality, these patterns are often connected to developmental trauma, childhood emotional neglect, or early experiences of unpredictability and disconnection.
What may look like perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional withdrawal, or difficulty trusting others often began as creative and necessary ways of adapting to environments that felt emotionally lonely, chaotic, or unsafe. These survival strategies were not signs of weakness—they were ways of protecting yourself and getting through difficult circumstances.
And so then what…?
Therapy for developmental trauma can help you understand the origins of these patterns and distinguish between the strategies you needed to use and the person you want to become.
Having a compassionate and objective third person can be helpful in gently noticing where old coping mechanisms may no longer serve you and exploring new ways of relating to yourself and others. While this process can be uncomfortable at times, many people find that it leads to greater freedom, authenticity, and a deeper sense of connection with themselves and those they love.
On Grief
How to grieve
So much can be said about grief. Its hard to know where to start! In this post I’m going to cover some basic ideas for how to connect with your grief. Grief is a profound feeling often involving pain. I can understand why people hesitate moving towards grief - because it can be so painful. Culturally, we are not always used to displaying our sadness after a loss - we often like to present that we are “strong” or “have it all together.” We use all different kinds of defense mechanisms or self protective strategies to keep us away from our grief… these can include denial, busyness, trying to focus on the “positive,” spiritual bypassing, and many others. If you find yourself engaging in these strategies here are some ideas for how to connect with your grief.
Slow down - Life gets busy and we can sometimes “forget” to grieve or be “too busy” to grieve but its important that we slow down all our activities and connect with this adaptive feeling. If you’re jumping from thing to thing check in with yourself and see what might be going on. Ask yourself am I using busyness to push away my grief? Am I using ___ to not connect with my grief? Take moments through out the day to be present in your life.
Feel the sadness - This may seem obvious but I think its worth saying. Allowing yourself to have tears about the loss can be healing. Let yourself cry. Let yourself have sadness that you feel in your body -notice where in your body you feel the sadness and let it move through you. I like to encourage clients to feel their sadness with a compassionate other, a friend or family member that can be with you as you cry and mourn.
Journal/paint/dance/sing - Journaling, painting, dancing, singing, etc are some tangible ways to connect with what you’re feeling. Paint what you feel or dance what you feel. Perhaps you’re not a big talker or writer but you enjoy other creative ways of expressing yourself- all of the arts can be a helpful way to feel the sadness, pain, and loss.
Invite others in - What can make loss so painful is the aloneness of it all. It can feel like you are are the only person that is experiencing this. I encourage clients to challenge this thought and include others in their grief. Tell trusted others about what you’ve lost - whether its the death of a loved one, the death of a dream, loss of innocence, a breakup, divorce, miscarriage, a move, these are all important life experiences that we can connect vulnerably with those around us.
3 important questions to ask when choosing a therapist
It can be difficult to know what to look for in a therapist! There are a lot of different routes to go in choosing a future counselor. You can search websites like psychologytoday or good therapy, you can ask for referral lists from your doctor, church, or psychiatrist office. But where do you go from there? How do you talk to potential therapists and then know if they are right for you? I have a few questions I think might be helpful.
** I did not include logistical questions like What is your fee? Do you take insurance? Where is your office located? These questions are about determining if the therapist is a good fit for you.
What do you think will help me? I think its important to know what the clinician sees as “curative” - what do they believe will help improve whatever you are going through. if they are not able to offer to a straight answer on this, I would probe more. Of course there are no one size fits all therapies! No therapist will be able to give you a specific step by step treatment plan in a phone call but they should be able to give you a general sense of how they would work with your issue.
Do you have experience with people like me/what I’m going through? It very important to know if the clinician has experience with your specific issue. You are a unique person and they might not have experience with the exact details of your situation but have worked generally with what you are struggling with.
What can I expect when I start therapy with you? This question will help you better understand the therapist’s style and personality. Some therapists give “homework” some offer journaling assignments and some just want you to “hold space” for the next session. I think asking yourself “does that fit for me?” is a good next step.
I hope these three questions were helpful in your hunt for a therapist!
5 counseling tips for surviving a post COVID world
I recognize that we are still in a pandemic and that it continues to impact people around the world. There is a lot of new information out there including the vaccine and new medicine that can help with COVID. I’ve had many people ask me about how to “survive” as things are open/opening back up.
Be gentle with yourself. This may sound incredibly obvious but gentleness towards the self goes a long way! It can be easy to let your inner credit lead the way. Your inner critic may have all different kinds of ideas of what you “should” be doing but that won’t be helpful to you in the long run. Kindness may feel cliche but it does go a long way in being able to navigate the world as we know it.
Take things slowly. Similar to tip #1 this involves dipping your toe in the pool vs. diving in head first. Its ok if you don’t attend every single wedding this summer. Let people know that you are working towards adjusting to what life is like now. Do what feels ok for you.
Don’t forget what we’ve been through. It can be so easy to pretend like this whole pandemic never happened… things seem so normal. But I think its important to remind ourselves occasionally that we made it through. There were some difficult and desperate times in there! Let us not forget our own strengths in resiliencies.
Be honest (with yourself and others). Honestly towards the self is another important. You may find that you are not quite yourself. Its ok! As I mentioned above, its alright to let others know you are still adjusting. Life is different know and its perfectly fine to acknowledge that.
Connect with others. One of the most incredible things about the pandemic is that we have all been through it together. I know each person has had a different experience of what it was like for them, however there are very few events in history that has this level of universality. Connecting with others about how they are doing and what has worked for them could be helpful in navigating life now!
