What the butterfly knows is transformation and the metaphor they provide is one that survivors can use to see their own transforming recovery. The beginning of the year is a liminal time and like the butterfly in a cocoon, you are out of one life experience but not yet in another.  You are betwixt and between not knowing what the new year will bring. This is a time... 

The holidays are coming.  If you are feeling hurt or betrayed, it’s painful to see others “making merry” when you are in so much pain.  How can you change this? The holidays can be enjoyable or miserable, based on your beliefs about themselves.  Negative beliefs can fill you with anxiety or depression during the holidays.  If you transform your negative... 

Pathological Love Relationships leave an aftermath of problems of which the most bothersome are all the anxiety symptoms. These include racing heart, racing mind, intrusive thoughts. obsessional thinking, adrenaline rushes, and cognitive dissonance. Part of recovery is symptom management and finding tools that bring relief to the some distressing of symptoms. The... 

Once upon a time, the Road Runner* was being chased through the desert by Wile E. Coyote.* Wile E. was shooting arrows at the Road Runner. Road Runner, being a creative and resourceful bird, found a u-shaped water gutter and held it up. The arrows went into the gutter, made a u-turn and went right back at the coyote. ‘What,’ you may ask, ‘does... 

Do you ever have present day experiences that trigger  old, extremely distressing memories as if they were stuck in your brain?  Do sights, sounds and smells that remind you of the original event leave you in an extreme state of anxiety, hypervigilance or panic?  When this happens, do you hear the abuser’s ideas in your head, putting you down, criticizing or...