4 Stages of trauma recovery

traumatized brain

Trauma is experienced when you face or witness a potentially life-threatening experience. A traumatic experience overwhelms the coping system of your mind. While most of us can deal with everyday stressors, a traumatic experience puts us in a state of permanent alert. It is an overactive and lingering stress response. Trauma that is experienced in …

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How to deal with trauma triggers

red hat

A trigger is anything that generates a cognitive, emotional, or behavioral response in us. It’s a stimulus in the environment to which we react mostly automatically. Here, the environment includes not only the external environment (people, places, and things) but also things that happen in the mind and body, i.e., the internal environment (sensations, feelings, …

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How to deal with extreme emotional pain

man in extreme emotional pain

Just as we feel physical pain when there’s something wrong with our bodies, we feel emotional pain when there’s something wrong with the non-physical parts of our lives. Pain is a feedback signal telling you that you must pay attention to and solve a problem. Emotional problems, real or perceived, cause emotional pain. Bigger emotional …

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Overstimulated: Meaning, signs & how to cope

overstimulation

Overstimulation, or sensory overload, is when the sensory information you receive from one or more of your senses exceeds the information processing capacity of your brain. Our brains have a limited capacity to process sensory information. Processing sensory information consumes mental energy and bandwidth. The brain does what it can to conserve energy. It’s designed …

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Deprogramming after narcissistic abuse

narcissistic abuse victim

The following traits characterize a narcissistic personality: Not everyone with these traits has a full-blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Most people have a mix of narcissistic and empathic traits. In some people, their narcissism overshadows their empathy. They’re the ones likely to hurt others and have NPD. Narcissistic abuse Narcissists are like children who think …

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