Self-Care for Peri-Menopause: Understanding the Challenges Recently I’ve been slogging through a book for physicians, Menopause Practice, and I’ve gotta tell ya, it reads like a Stephen King novel. One of the realizations I’ve had is that if I had this information in...
ACEs: Adverse Childhood Experiences and Why They Are Important The ACEs assessment is a tool that is useful in helping us understand the impact of childhood (up to age 18) trauma on our functioning. It asks questions about emotional/psychological abuse, neglect...
Perimenopause: I thought I was Going Crazy I went through a lot of life changes in my 40s: sold my home in New Orleans, bought a new one in Baton Rouge, quit my job, left my support system, found a new job, got married, and had an instant family of three to care...
Trauma, like ogres and onions, has many layers. What is trauma? Trauma is anything that happened to you that changed the way you look at yourself or the world. I know that’s pretty broad, but what is trauma to one person may not be trauma to another. Trauma doesn’t...
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about estrangement from family. It is something that has always existed, but is being talked about more and more. The old ideals of putting family before everything, at times even before one’s self, no longer holds. But...
Finding a Therapist Therapy! Why do I need to go to a complete stranger and open up my deepest darkest secrets? Why would I want to remember the sad or bad things that have happened to me when I’ve worked so hard to keep them tucked away in a box? What if I try it and...
Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) Study – Physical Problems Due to Unresolved Trauma How scary is this? From 1995-1997, Kaiser Permanente, a huge hospital in Southern California studied over 17,000 patients for this study. It asked questions about abuse and...
Help! Someone Is Saying They Want to Kill Themselves, What Do I Do? It is hard to hear someone we care about suffer so much that they think that suicide is the only answer. We want to provide them comfort and keep them safe. But what if we’re not a trained...
When Love Hurts Fred and Ginger sit side by side on the couch. They’ve been arguing a lot the past few months, but right now, she feels a surge of love for him, and reaches for his hand. He pulls it away, and claps for the team playing on the screen. The moment has...
Coming Out: Tolerance and Acceptance Bob’s son, Fred, came out to him the other day. Bob did not hug Fred. He did not say anything. He made a distasteful face, turned his back on Fred, and walked away. The family still eats meals together at the table, but Bob ignores...
