Root to Rise Therapy's Posts, Helene's Posts, Relationships
Becky White George
When Healthy Love Feels Unsafe

Many people expect that a steady, responsive, emotionally available partner will automatically feel calming. Instead, many people feel tense or suspicious when someone shows up in a genuinely healthy way. This isn’t a personality flaw, it’s a predictable attachment and nervous system response. So why is this?

When Healthy Love Feels Unsafe
Jessica's Posts, Relationships
Becky White George
Sentiment Override

My bag only gets stuck on the door handle when I’m having a bad day. Everyone is super annoying when I’m grumpy. My friend’s irritating boyfriend breathes too loudly. When I’m feeling happy it’s easier to find joy in the smaller everyday moments. Does my inner monologue resonate with you?

Sentiment Override
Lauren's Posts, Self Care & Mindfulness
Becky White George
Shame vs. Guilt

Shame can be one of the most painful and overpowering emotions in the human experience. It can feel intense, overwhelming, and really hard to talk about. Some people believe both guilt and shame are useful emotions that keep us aligned with our values.

Shame vs. Guilt
Ali's Posts, Self Care & Mindfulness
Becky White George
Intuitive Eating: Holidays

When it comes to the holiday season, food is often at the center of the festivities. Throughout history, food has been one of the primary representations of culture, class, comfort, family, and love. With so much food quite literally on the table, it can be easy to fall into whatever habits you may have around food or body image. Whatever your pattern or struggle, Intuitive Eating could be a welcome practice this holiday season.

Intuitive Eating: Holidays
Trauma and Mental Health, Megan's Posts
Becky White George
How to Manage Grief

Whether your loss is recent or something you’ve carried for years, this season can make it especially hard to feel the joy and rest everyone seems to talk about or expect. It can also be hard to identify when grief emerges as it can take on many forms, often showing up quietly at first. When grief rises like this, it can help to shift from resisting it to making space for it. Here are five ways to let go of the metaphorical tug-of-war rope and gently manage grief this holiday season

How to Manage Grief

Relationships

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Family Triangles

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Family Triangles

Within each family unit, there are several subsystems. Subsystems can be thought of as allied relationships between two identified people within the family system, for example, parents are one subsystem, siblings are another, etc. Unlike subsystems, family triangles consist of three members. When triangles start to emerge, they can disrupt the functioning of the family system as a whole. If two family members are experiencing extreme tension in their relationship, similar to the example above, they might consciously or unconsciously look to bring in a third member to transfer that tension.

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Am I Too Much?

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Am I Too Much?

I have heard people speak before about this concept of believing that they are ‘too much’ when it comes to relationships. This belief can keep people self-rejecting, negatively spiraling, and making rules like "I should keep who I am all to myself and shut down because I am too much." It is a distancing fear-based act that signals sympathetic flight mode, which puts the nervous system in a place of stress where the hypothalamus that regulates mood, sleep, hunger, and thirst in the brain activates the adrenal glands which releases about 30 stress hormones. As a result, the body slows digestion, increases heart rate, shortens breath, and constricts muscles. These beliefs, rules, emotional, and physical responses can lead to a perpetual pattern of isolating and closing off from relationships.

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Toxic Positivity

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Toxic Positivity

Have you ever confided in someone about a vulnerable topic, only to be met with some variation of “Don’t be sad” or “It’ll be okay!” While well-intentioned, these responses can be more harmful than helpful.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized I was in a funk. I started sharing my experience with a friend after working up the courage to ask for support, who immediately launched into a very cheery explanation of everything that makes her feel better that ended with “You’ll feel better in no time!” After the conversation, I was left feeling withdrawn and confused. Why had this made me feel worse? The advice she gave me (journaling, positive affirmations, headspace shifting, and exercise) was exactly what I would and have recommended to clients and friends. On top of that, I know she was trying so hard to help me and I felt ungrateful. The problem was, I KNEW all of the advice she gave me already, but it’s really hard to “just shift your headspace” or “just think positively” when you’re struggling to get out of bed. Whether or not it was her intention, the subtext I heard was that the way I was feeling was a choice I was making and I should just snap out of it.

When I first heard the term “toxic positivity,” it felt like an oxymoron. How could positivity be toxic?

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I'm FINE

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I'm FINE

It’s 7 PM on a Tuesday and your partner asks, “How are you? How was your day?” You stop to consider how to answer the question. You do a quick scan of your body and try to remember the day. Your neck is hurting from sitting at the computer, thoughts swirling in your head about that salty interaction you and your partner had that morning that went unaddressed, you just got a panicked text from your mother who needs you to call her immediately, you are annoyed with yourself for eating the peanut m & m’s when you said you wouldn’t, and to boot, you were up half the night stressing about a work project, so you were completely exhausted the entire day.

So, when your partner asks “How are you?” all you are able to muster up is the answer “I’m fine. It was fine.”

I’ve heard a few acronyms to describe the word FINE. F=Fucked Up, I= Insecure, N=Neurotic, and E=Emotional.

I also heard that FINE stands for Feelings Inside Not Expressed- a slightly more compassionate description. In my example above, from the neck pain to the disappointment in myself for eating the M & Ms, to the salty interaction from the morning, there were many feelings happening that were not being said.

Attachment Styles

Attachment Styles

Working with a therapist can help you address and reflect on lingering issues from childhood that might be impacting your ability to form secure and meaningful relationships as an adult. It can help you develop a sense of security as an individual that can be carried over into your relationships with others. Your therapist can act as that secure base, listening attentively and non-judgmentally as you take a deep dive into this journey of your past and self-exploration.

A benefit of this work can be focusing on understanding and rebuilding your trust in others and the world around you, as well as learning techniques to understand how to set clear boundaries with yourself and others. Working with your therapist, you can learn to “re-parent” yourself with love and compassion, and that can help you realize your purpose and replace those fearful thoughts associated with abandonment and being hurt by others.

Attachment theory recognizes four different types of attachment: anxious, avoidant, fearful-avoidant, and secure.

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Couple's Therapy Types

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Couple's Therapy Types

So you have read the first post in this series, Can Marriage Counseling Save My Marriage, and now you are ready to take the brave step to start couples therapy. Maybe you began researching marriage counseling, and you found that there are multiple approaches to marriage therapy like CBCT, IBCT, Gottman, and EFT, and you may have become overwhelmed. Do not get discouraged! We hope to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about the different types of marriage counseling and how to pick the right one for your relationship.

The structure and style of marriage counseling vary depending on the therapist and the couple's needs. There are various styles of couples counseling approaches that therapists may primarily utilize. Some types are more behavioral-based, some rely on a structured method, and some are more intuitive and emotionally focused. It is helpful to find out what style of therapy a prospective therapist utilizes and see if it suits you.

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Conflict in Friendships

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Conflict in Friendships

The first big heartbreak of my life was a friend breakup when I was 16. The story is about as classic as it gets: childhood friends, awkward middle school years, different high school friend groups, and a crippling fear of confrontation coupled with a need for acceptance. You can imagine the betrayal I felt when I soon learned she had a birthday party the previous week and told people not to mention it to me. However, instead of expressing my hurt and embarrassment, my 16 year old self simply stopped being friends with her and never told her why. I think back to this friendship often and wish I had the tools to share my feelings and gain some sense of closure and understanding. In reality, however, I’m not sure if many of us have tools that are much more effective in handling friendship conflicts in adulthood!

Here are 5 tips for working through conflicts in adult friendships that we may have never learned:

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Adult Friendships

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Adult Friendships

When we’re younger, we have the built-in structure of school to introduce us to other children and adolescents our age. And let’s face it, adults can be more judgmental and closed-off than most children. The fear of judgment or rejection stops so many of us from putting ourselves out there, thus watching friendships dwindle in adulthood is incredibly common. However, we still need friendships now as much as we did as children.

When I googled “adult friendships”, the three most searched questions that came up were “Is it normal to not have friends in adulthood?” “Is it harder to make friends as you age?” and “How do 25-year-olds make friends?” These questions are so frequently Googled and so infrequently asked IRL. So why are so many of us experiencing this trend, and what can we do?

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Couple's Conflict

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Couple's Conflict

It’s Never about the Tacos

We’ve all been there: those tiny trivial triggers that lead to big blow-up fights. Sitting across the table from each other with scattered taco fixings between you, wrist deep in guacamole, fighting about who left the spoon in the sour cream. Luckily, my husband and I were able to break down and process the The Great Taco Fight of 2022, and get to the core of what was going on. And you would never have guessed (or maybe you would): all the different ways we were triggered that had nothing to do with tacos (ex: I was hangry, he felt unappreciated, etc, etc.) The good news for all of us (myself included) is that couples therapy is a wonderful opportunity to explore these faster-than-the-speed-of-light escalations.

 

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