Feeling overwhelmed or unseen in your identity? LGBTQ individuals often face stress that goes beyond daily life—from family rejection to societal pressure. Therapy can help you unpack those experiences in a safe, affirming space. An LGBTQ-affirmative therapist can help you work through the deeper layers, without judgment. Learn more at https://michaelpezzullo.medium.com/common-mental-health-challenges-faced-by-lgbtq-individuals-and-how-therapy-helps-ab91ea5ddf34

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A Step-by-Step Breakdown of the EMDR Therapy Process

EMDR therapy is designed to help your brain and body process distressing memories that talking alone can’t resolve. Using simple techniques like tapping or eye movements, EMDR helps shift how trauma is stored in your nervous system—so it no longer triggers the same emotional response. It’s structured, flexible, and effective for issues like PTSD, anxiety, and more. Learn more at https://www.michaelpezzullo.com/emdr

EMDR isn’t just for trauma—it’s helping people manage anxiety, phobias, depression, and even sexual dysfunction. With a flexible, research-backed protocol and a low-risk profile, EMDR gently helps your nervous system release the emotional weight it’s been carrying. Many feel better—even when talk therapy hasn’t worked before. Book a free intro call to learn more. https://www.michaelpezzullo.com/emdr


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EMDR therapy uses bilateral stimulation, such as guided eye movements or tapping, to help individuals process traumatic memories that remain “stuck” in the nervous system, offering a structured, evidence-based approach that can be combined with talk therapy or used on its own. Treatment begins with a thorough assessment and progresses through adaptive phases that foster resilience and lasting symptom relief. Know more at https://www.michaelpezzullo.com/emdr

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Therapy in Chicago, IL specializing in pregnancy, postpartum depression and anxiety. Counseling for infertility and new moms. Removing the stigma of postpartum depression and helping moms feel more like themselves again.Therapy for women in the Chicago area. Mental health therapy areas of focus include depression, anxiety, EMDR, and trauma. Virtualmotherhood through infertility counseling, anxiety treatment and providing mental health therapy for moms.

EMDR Therapy Treatment Vernon

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Psychotherapy Kelowna - Next Step Counselling Group

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy is an interactive psychotherapy technique used to relieve psychological stress. Connect with Next Step Counselling Group in Kelowna for reliable services.

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5 Ways to Boost Your Brain’s Grieving Process.
A reader asks how to redraw the neural map more quickly after a string of losses.
Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

KEY POINTS-
Experiencing multiple losses in a short time is extremely challenging, so it’s natural and normal to feel overwhelmed.
Your brain requires lived experience and repetition to update the neural map, so you benefit from engaging with life to create your "new normal."
Embrace therapeutic living, such as moving your body, being in nature, and getting support, to boost your brain's grieving and rewiring process.
In response to the post, “As You Grieve, Your Brain Redraws Its Neural Map,” a reader writes:

How can my brain redraw its neural map when losses are piling on top of each other, not allowing ample time to grieve? In the past year, I've lost a sibling, a spouse, a friend, and a parent. Everything has overlapped to the point of crippling my everyday life with a seemingly endless void. How do I redraw and update faster so I can get out of this rut?

First, I’m so sorry you’ve had to endure so many significant losses in such a short period of time. That is an overwhelming amount of grief and adjustment, so it makes sense that you would want your brain to make quick work of redrawing your neural map.

Research on the neuroscience of grieving has yet to specify how the bereaved can more quickly update the brain's neural map. But we do know that your brain requires experience to update, plus there are known ways to nurture your brain's ability to form new neural connections and boost your grieving process, and perhaps these translate into facilitating the redrawing process as well. Here are five suggestions.

1. Have realistic expectations
Rest assured, with three significant losses and another on the horizon, it is natural for you to feel crippled and in a rut. And because your brain is redrawing the neural maps of four close relationships, this process will take time. You can reduce your distress by simply accepting that your grief and mourning will take as long as it takes. Life may seem hopeless as you’ll never recover what was “normal life,” but over time, your brain will update to reflect your “new normal.”

2. Engage with your “new normal”
Your conscious brain knows that your loved ones are gone. But during the formation of those deep bonds, your unconscious brain encoded the implicit knowledge that your loved ones “will always be there for you.” So whenever your brain is confronted with the fact that your loved ones are no longer “there” in the same way, you grieve. That’s why a key part of the grieving process is to redraw the neural map by overwriting it with new routines, new habits, and new predictions. For example, you might completely redo the bedroom you shared with your wife; you can reorder your daily, weekly, or monthly routines; you might seek closer relationships to others in your family or social circles; you could join a group to pursue favorite activities with new people. Leaning into your “new normal” life helps your brain accumulate new experiences, and over time, your brain will update with new neural connections. Eventually you’ll notice that your neural map is more and more reflecting your “new normal,” and those crippling pangs of grief will mellow and then recede.

3. Have faith in your brain
With realistic expectations for a lengthy and arduous grieving/redrawing process and actively engaging in your life, rest assured that your brain is qualified for the job of redrawing its neural map. Every pang of grief indicates that your brain is hard at work, rewiring its neural connections. By having faith in your brain’s expert redrawing capabilities—you can feel more patient, reassured, and compassionate with yourself.

4. Embrace therapeutic living
There are many therapeutic habits, routines, practices, and types of support that cultivate a calm brain and promote its ability to create new neural connections (neuroplasticity).

Daily habits such as getting sufficient sleep, eating nutritious foods, moving your body every day, and spending time outdoors.
Mindfulness practices, such as mindful breathing, meditation, staying in the present moment, and observing your thoughts.
Journaling, which can help you find the words, get clarity, and make sense of it all, rather than just getting lost in a giant blob of pain.
Emotional support also soothes your brain and reduces suffering, whether you lean on family or friends. Given your arduous journey, professional therapy is likely also in order.
Brain-based treatment for trauma, such as EMDR, might be of great benefit to you, as this could help you move forward with your life instead of continuing to feel stuck in reliving the past.

5. Seek growth
Crisis always provides opportunity for growth. Growing pains, indeed. But remember, what matters is not what happens to you, but what you do with it. Growth might include learning more about yourself, leaning into your worth, recognizing your strengths, acquiring new skills, and identifying your values, priorities, and passions so you can live your best life.

Yours is not an easy row to hoe, but with realistic expectations, engaging in life, having faith in your brain, therapeutic support, and seeking growth, you can redraw your neural map in ways that help you to heal and serve you well going forward.

VAGUS NERVE
An Owner's Guide to the Vagus Nerve.
How to help regulate your nervous system responses.
Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

KEY POINTS-
The vagus nerve is responsible for sending signals through all of the major systems in the body, from the gut to the brain.
By understanding how the vagus nerve regulates our nervous system, we can understand how and why we feel a specific way in a situation.
Healthy vagal tone is something we can work towards, and there are a variety of ways to achieve a more resilient nervous system response.
by Winden Rowe, MS, NCC, LPC

Running up and down the human body like a long and strong intricate cable of connection is something called the vagus nerve.

A few facts about the basic functions of the vagus nerve:
Your vagus nerve does something called “innervate,” meaning it taps into all of the major organ systems. It sends signals from the brain to the body and vice versa, all day, everyday. It is a key component of something you have likely heard of in the wellness field, the gut-brain axis.
This cranial nerve, a major component of the autonomic nervous system, is responsible for keeping us safe. In response to any sign of threat, real or perceived, this nerve is in charge of making sure that we are aware of the potential danger and then signaling to the brain and body a series of commands to ensure safety in the face of the threat.
The vagus nerve is polyfunctional, designed to signal whether things are safe or not–whether we need to run or to freeze and shut down. These responses originate in different branches of the nerve: the lower, middle, and upper vagus.

Depending on which branch your vagus nerve tends to operationalize most, that branch will, over time, tend to dominate the body as its primary function. For example, if you grow up in a safe place and feel a general sense of connection with those in your environment, the upper part of the vagus nerve, the ventral vagus, will strengthen over time like a muscle, making this branch of the vagus nerve your default mode. The reverse can also happen. If you grow up powerless in an unsafe environment (think children in poverty, or children in schools with gun violence—both real and constant threats), the middle or even lower branches of the vagus nerve dominate the body and win out over feeling safe and calm.

If you have experienced the vagus nerve overtake your ability to function, here are a few ways to restore a sense of safety and calm:

MOVE. The vagus nerve is an ancient pathway of our nervous system, found in animal models of all kinds; when animals are in trouble, they are most likely to move away from threat as a way to regain a sense of safety. This is not just a rational function but also a way that the body shakes off and expends any hormones, neurotransmitters, and other biochemicals and processes that carry out the fear response. Moving the body helps get such chemicals flowing, moving, and excreted or “used up” as a way to restore calm. Yoga, running, walking, stretching, even standing up and “shaking it off”—shaking your limbs—is a great way to rewire the vagal response.

BREATHE. Breathing is one of the most automatic processes in the body but also a function that we can influence with mindfulness. Breathing plays a role in the responses of both branches of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic.. Sympathetic responses engage in activation. Parasympathetic responses engage in calming, braking, resting, and digesting. Inhaling with intention signals to the body that we want energy, want to activate, want to feed the brain and body with oxygen, the primary fuel and driver for the nervous system. When we exhale, the body is signaled to calm, to slow, to recalibrate. Funnily enough when people are overwhelmed, they are traditionally told to “take a deep breath!.” But what we really should be advising is to take a breath of any length possible and then to focus on slowly exhaling, on repeat. If you have ever taken a yoga class and been cued to exhale three times in a row with emphasis, your instructor is hoping to engage your parasympathetic nervous system. The impact on the vagus nerve is tremendous: it is a positive way to regain a sense of calm.

FIND THE HELPERS. Not everyone has someone to turn to in a moment of overwhelm, but if we all learned to better support one another, and to be attentive to those in distress, the world would be a very different place. The vagus nerve is biology’s way of asking us to practice self-care and safe connection. If we learn that it’s okay to ask for help and that help is met, that’s the fastn route to returning to a sense of self-regulation and calm.

There are many more ways for healing the nervous system and restoring healthy vagal tone. They involve things like counseling, EMDR, psychedelic therapies, somatic experiencing, and more. It’s not always easy to access the care and support of trained professionals, especially in a moment of overwhelm. Learn to take time out to practice these simple tools and start to notice over time how you respond to distress. Just as vagal responses can increase in the negative, so can positive and healthy responses as we learn to practice these simple, free, and easy tools.

TRAUMA-
Women and PTSD: Using a Trauma-Informed Approach to Heal.
How to build a safe and soothing environment to recover from past traumas.
Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

KEY POINTS-
Untreated trauma can lead to PTSD, which females experience at nearly twice the rate as their male counterparts.
A recent CDC study reveals a sharp rise in sexual violence and attempted suicide rates among teen girls.
While EMDR is not a one-size-fits-all treatment, it has been found to be helpful in treating a variety of traumatic experiences.
A recent CDC study revealed that from 2017 to 2021, the number of teen girls in the United States who experienced sexual violence increased by 20 percent. On top of that, the study also shows in 2021, nearly 1 in 3 teen girls seriously considered attempting suicide.

Experiencing something traumatic, such as sexual abuse or violence, increases your risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the future. The concerning and disheartening results of the CDC study serve as an alarm for healthcare providers everywhere to be equipped to handle an influx of young females who may be desperately trying to heal from serious mental health struggles. To start, we should look at how we define trauma and how it may lead to PTSD.

What Is Trauma?
When you hear the word “trauma,” what comes to mind? Perhaps a natural disaster, poverty, prolonged neglect, violence, or abuse? Trauma, by definition, is a lasting emotional response to intensely distressing events or situations that occur when we fall outside of our ability to cope. Everyone's experience of trauma can be subjective and unique, which is why a divorce, for instance, can be experienced as traumatic for one person but not another.

At the time of a traumatic event, the strong emotions you experience can interfere with your ability to completely process the event, and this one unpleasant moment becomes “frozen in time.” Eventually, if not addressed, you may develop post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental health condition that is triggered by an overwhelming event—either experiencing it or witnessing it. Some of the most common PTSD symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event, avoidance, and substance misuse. While this condition is certainly a possibility, it is important to note that not all people who experience a traumatic event will go on to develop PTSD.

When receiving a diagnosis, it is easy to feel as though there is something wrong with us, but keep in mind that our bodies and brains are engaging in completely normal survival responses to abnormal circumstances. Therefore, many practitioners will refer to this experience as post-traumatic stress injury, rather than a disorder.

Are Women at Risk of Experiencing More Trauma?
Research suggests that people of all gender identifications can experience trauma, so it is important for healthcare professionals to approach the topic without gender bias. However, statistics show that women may be more likely to experience certain types of traumatic events, such as physical and sexual violence by intimate partners. For transgender and non-conforming individuals, the rates tend to be even higher.

The National Center for Victims of Crime reports that 1 in 5 women in the United States has experienced rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. Sexual assault is often underreported, and even within relationships, forced intimacy without consent or consent while under the influence can be considered assault.

When it comes to the effects of trauma, studies have shown that women's brains may respond differently than men's. Women can have higher rates of reexperiencing events, negative alterations in cognition or mood, and dissociative responses, among other post-traumatic reactions. Something else worth noting is that women typically have different ways of expressing their emotions compared to men, with women more likely to use words such as "anxiety.” Therapeutic providers must take these gender-specific differences into account when providing care for their clients.

Over time, some individuals learn how to cope with their trauma in healthy ways, however, there are many female survivors who cannot fully process the event and/or are afraid to reach out for help. As mentioned earlier, untreated trauma can lead to PTSD, which females experience at nearly twice the rate as their male counterparts. Aside from mental health consequences, those living with unresolved trauma may also struggle with physical side effects like gastrointestinal issues and sexual dysfunction.

Emotional Distress and Trauma in Young Women
Uncovering why women tend to experience more trauma than men is a complex issue with many layers. In looking at the previous CDC study, we can see in 2021, 3 in 5 young women in their early teens were feeling persistently sad and hopeless, common precursors to depression. These are the highest levels of sadness and hopelessness seen in a decade and nearly twice the rate among teenage boys. This trend is also reflected in members of the LGBTQ+ community with 55 percent of young teens experiencing poor mental health.

While emotional distress does not necessarily correlate with trauma in young girls, we, as healthcare providers, need to stay attuned to what this trend can potentially manifest into. Teen girls struggling with these strong feelings may pull away from their loved ones and lose interest in their favorite hobbies and activities. To distract from feelings of low self-esteem, teens may experiment with substances, make impulsive decisions and, at times, engage in higher-risk sexual activity.

The CDC study also shared that since 2019, young females being forced to have sex has increased by 27 percent. Traumatic experiences such as this can be very harmful to a teenager's emotional development, therefore, it is important for survivors to fully process the memory and move forward in a meaningful way. Teens struggling with a traumatic incident might have trouble forming healthy relationships due to a lack of trust and poor boundary observance as well as increased behavioral issues and emotional dysregulation.

Rather than seeing these statistics as an indication of something "wrong" with those who identify as female and non-conforming individuals, we must focus on how to support them and create a more resilient and uplifting environment. This can involve providing resources and tools for managing difficult emotions and experiences, like support groups and systematic trauma screening. Recognizing the strengths of women who have experienced trauma, such as their courage and resourcefulness in coping with difficult situations, can help them build upon their existing strengths and develop new ones. If we focus on recovery, rather than pathology, we can create a more positive and empowering narrative around mental health and trauma.

What Does a Trauma-Informed Treatment Approach Look Like?
Although we have a considerable amount of knowledge about how trauma and PTSD impact an individual, how we respond as care providers is crucial to the healing process for those with whom we work.

A trauma-informed treatment approach looks at an individual's experiences and past traumas to better understand and address their current physical and emotional challenges. This approach prioritizes creating a safe and supportive therapeutic environment where the client feels comfortable to share openly. Clinicians might use somatic therapies, such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which recognize that trauma can be stored in the body and can manifest in behavioral disorders and compulsions like eating disorders and substance use disorders. EMDR is an evidence-based psychotherapy that helps individuals reprocess traumatic memories to heal from PTSD.

One meta-analysis of 23 studies found that EMDR was effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. While EMDR is not a one-size-fits-all treatment and may not be effective for everyone, it has been found to be helpful in treating a variety of traumatic experiences, from combat and sexual assault to natural disasters, accidents, and childhood abuse.

By acknowledging the connection between the body and trauma, EMDR allows the individual to utilize their body's natural healing processes in the therapeutic journey. EMDR's client-centered approach puts the client in the driver's seat, empowering them to take an active role in their healing. Overall, EMDR provides a unique and effective pathway for women to address past traumas and move towards a more fulfilling future.

Although many women may deal with trauma and PTSD throughout their lifetimes, healing is possible. To help survivors navigate their struggles, we must provide more resources such as peer support groups, education on consent and healthy relationships, and accessible treatment options.

If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24/7 contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-TALK, or the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.