New Moon in Virgo

The New Moon is a powerful time for fresh beginnings, a blank canvas in the sky that invites you to set new intentions and plant the seeds of your desires. This phase is about quiet reflection, aligning with your deepest aspirations, and envisioning the path you wish to walk.

As you sit with the energy of the New Moon, take a moment to tune into your heart. What do you wish to create or manifest in the coming weeks? Write down your intentions with clarity and purpose, knowing that this is the time to start anew.

If this resonates with you, consider embracing the New Moon as a time to reflect, set your intentions, and trust in the process of growth that unfolds.

A few questions should you desire a deeper reflection for self and add intention through the month to come.

• Where in my life am I seeking more order and structure? How can I invite more discipline without losing my sense of spontaneity and joy?

• What small, daily rituals or habits can I implement to honor my well-being and align more closely with my goals?

• In what areas am I overly critical of myself or others? How can I shift towards a more compassionate and nurturing mindset?

• How do I handle the balance between perfectionism and progress? What can I release to move forward more freely?

• What aspects of my life need a detailed review or reorganization? How can I use this New Moon energy to create a more supportive environment for growth?

• How can I better listen to my body’s needs and make adjustments in my health routine that reflect self-care and self-love?

• What intentions can I set to cultivate more patience and acceptance of the process, even when results are not immediate?

More information

“Being in White Spaces”

In allyship, solidarity, and partnership, Insightful Release Counseling is using this platform with the acknowledgment of the inherent privilege by taking action and asking Sari Wyckoff (she/her/hers), as a clinical therapist, and as a POC, to write blog posts from her point of view directly. To know more about Sari, please click the Meet Our Therapists tab.

“Being in White Spaces”

This can be a thought that comes in a POC’s mind. There can be a hypersensitivity emerging from being in spaces with white individuals. Where does this emerge from? The etiology of this can be very complex for each POC. This should definitely be addressed in safe spaces. 

What do these white spaces encompass? That can be a variety of situations and systemic structures. It can be living in certain towns, going to certain schools, stores, work environments etc. Imposter syndrome can form in these spaces as well with lack of diversity. Mental health can be affected from this construct alone. This can lead to symptoms related to depression, anxiety and trauma.

I would say increase your awareness of what emerges for you when you are in “white spaces.” Do physiological symptoms arise such as your heart rate increasing, body posture feeling more slumped, breath becoming more shallow? Do you feel a sense of worry, sadness, or flight or fight mode? It is hard to prevent yourself from being in white spaces making it imperative to empower yourself and find forms of safety in these spaces. Also, find more areas of universality. The feeling of confinement and not being around ancestral links can be painful. It is important to be around environments where you feel safe. That can be examples of family settings, cultural events, and organizations. 

Here is a quote from a 31 year old African woman that defines her idea of being in “white spaces”.

“I feel uncomfortable, I don’t like them, feel like they are better than me, got to be fake, feel like you got to be on edge around them, feel like they are fake around me, feel they are all racist no matter how close you are. Don’t like feeling like the thought of feeling less than.  They are entitled. This is not slavery days. They will always be ahead of us. We will never be as good as them, cause they will always one step ahead of us. We can never be equal.”

From this quote you can feel the pain this woman feels on a daily basis. I’m sure other POCs can relate. What can stop this feeling? There will never be a quick fix to ease the pain from oppression. Through healing by utilizing methods of holistic practices, self care, emotional regulation, and spirituality these can be there as support to nurture the pain. It is finding the healthiest source for you. I challenge you to pay more attention to the white spaces you are in and how that impacts you. 

Sari Wyckoff, M.S, L.A.C, N.C.C

Unhealthy Emotional Boundaries

In many ways, childhood is a time of freedom and exploration – but that freedom to explore depends on adults providing a child with enough structure and guidance to feel safe.   Children need to know their parents and the other grown-ups in their lives will take care of them.

Cultures around the world vary in how they raise children, but one thing is universal:  people everywhere recognize that we are not born knowing how to get by in the world, and that children need protection to learn and grow in healthy ways.   Kids aren’t just little adults, and there are many aspects of the adult world they are not ready to navigate on their own.

One of the most important ways that adults create safety for children is by setting healthy emotional boundaries.  Adults can help kids navigate intense emotions.   Kids are not equipped to help adults navigate their own emotional landscapes.   

A client recently brought up the concept of “Emotional incest” to me in session. I hadn’t heard of this and was intrigued. It is also called “covert incest” which takes place when an adult relies on a child for emotional support.  Instead of taking responsibility for the child’s emotional health, the adult treats the child like a friend, a partner, or a therapist.   It doesn’t involve sex – but it does involve expecting a child to play the role of an adult.

“Emotional incest” could be a mother asking a son for advice about navigating a rough patch in her marriage, instead of letting her son know that adults fight sometimes, but the grown-ups in his life will love and care for him no matter what.   It could be a father who constantly needs his daughter to praise him and make him feel accomplished and important, instead of focusing on celebrating her accomplishments and letting her respect and appreciation for him develop organically.

Closeness between a parent and child is great, and so is honest emotional sharing – but only if they are age appropriate.    When it comes to their parents’ finances, self esteem, and intimate relationships, kids need parents to model healthy boundaries, good self-care, and personal emotional responsibility.   

Children who are forced to become caregivers, protectors, or confidants for the adults in their lives struggle to get their own emotional needs met.   The unrealistic expectation that they can make the world safe for the people who are supposed to make the world feel safe for them can make kids feel anxious, inadequate, insecure, overwhelmed, and afraid.    

Children who experience emotional incest often grow into teenagers and adults who struggle to find healthy ways to meet their own emotional needs.    Lacking good models for building connection, they will often struggle to find balance in friendships, the workplace, and romantic and intimate relationships.    Trouble managing emotional intensity can lead to unhealthy relationships with alcohol, drugs, sex, work, or food.

If you are reading this and thinking that it sounds an awful lot like what took place in your childhood home, there is hope.   Healing from emotional incest begins with learning to give your inner child the love and care they never received and learning tools and techniques to establish good boundaries and manage intense emotions.   Therapy is one great way to find support for that healing.   As the saying goes, it is never too late to have a healthy childhood.

Fight, Flight or Freeze

Why is it so hard to think clearly when you are scared, stressed or overwhelmed?

 Our bodies evolved to help us get out of danger quickly without having to think about it.   If you are being chased by a lion, you don’t have time to try to figure out the best thing to do.   So the rational part of the brain begins to shut down, and you spring into automatic action – or inaction.

 “Fight, flight, or freeze.”  These are the three responses your body moves into when it perceives a threat to your survival – or to the survival of the relationships you depend on for you well-being – and you can’t see any way to get help or negotiate your way out of the situation.   Let’s break them down:

•  Fight. Your body is literally getting ready for battle. Your voice gets harsher and deeper and louder, your eyes glare, you might even snarl, trying to intimidate whoever (or whatever) is threatening you. Your fists clench. Your heart pounds. Aggressive feelings seem irresistible.

•  Flight. If it seems unlikely that you will be able to fight your way out of the situation, your body will want to run away instead. You will get tense and fidgety. Your eyes may dart back and forth looking for an escape route.

•  Freeze. If it seems impossible to win a fight and impossible to get away, you may begin to freeze. You might start to feel cold and numb. Your whole body will seem stiff and heavy. You begin to unconsciously hold your breath.

 If the situation doesn’t get resolved, you may stay stuck in a lesser version of one of these responses. You could find yourself feeling irritable or jumpy all the time.   Or you might feel flat and numb and unmotivated.    You can even feel a combination --- your rational left brain can be overactive, full of racing thoughts looking for solutions, while your right brain, which processes emotion and sensation, is shut down and you feel disconnected from your body and your feelings.

 None of these responses are wrong or bad – but they aren’t always appropriate to the situation.   We are animals, and these are the responses we developed to the kinds of situations all animals face:  being confronted by something that wants to chase you or hurt you or eat you, or being kicked out of your family or pack and left to fend for your self.    Often the threats we face are uniquely human: dealing with traffic, or an angry boss, or an overdue electric bill.   Situations that won’t be improved by fighting, freezing, or running away.

Sometimes the situation just reminds us of something intense that we experienced before.   When something scary or overwhelming happens, we hold onto the memory of what happened right before it, so we can keep ourselves safe in the future.   If you get yelled at by a man in a yellow hat, the next time you see a man in a yellow hat you might suddenly feel angry or afraid.

 Because these responses are not rational – and in fact involve partially or fully shutting down rational thinking – you can’t just think your way out of them.    You need to help your body recognize that the threat has been dealt with and become grounded and present.   Touch, movement, and mindfulness techniques are among the best tools for doing that.  There are many ways to help heal a frazzled nervous system so you will not be forever stuck in survival mode… even better you can thrive!

Don't Take It Personally

“Don’t take it personally.”

How many times have you received – or given – that advice?

How many times have you stopped to think about what it really means?

On a good day, it is an easy enough guideline to follow if a stranger is rude to you in a store or someone honks their horn at you in traffic.    It is never fun to be on the receiving end of someone’s negative emotions.  But once you get over the initial shock of the situation, it is easy enough to let it go.  

What that stranger said or did wasn’t about you.   How could it be?   They don’t even know you.   They have no idea who you are.   It truly wasn’t personal.    

Maybe they had just had a fight with their partner.   Maybe their favorite coffee cup broke.   Maybe they had just received bad news.   Whatever it was, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.   They were having intense feelings about something else, and you ended up being the accidental and incidental target of them.   It is frustrating, it might even be hurtful, but it is not personal.

It gets much harder to take that position when someone you love says or does something that hurts you.

Then it does feel personal.  They know who you are.   They must have known how their words and their deeds would affect you.

Yet, ultimately, the hurtful things that the people you love say or do aren’t really about you either.

Think for a moment about something you said or did that really hurt somebody you loved.   

Most likely, it wasn’t your goal to cause pain.   Maybe you had a really frustrating day and a friend got on your nerves and you snapped at her.    It wasn’t really her you were mad it.   You just had a lot of anger building up in you, and she happened to be the one who received it.

Maybe you did want to cause pain.   Maybe you were hurt that your partner forgot your birthday, so you said something really cutting and cruel, hoping that hurting him would make you feel better.   Of course, it didn’t.   Because deep down, your goal wasn’t to cause pain, your goal was to do something that might make you hurt less.

Even when things seem incredibly personal, they are not.    All of us are interpreting every interaction we have through a haze of unrelated emotions and a life time of experiences that might feel similar to this particular moment, but actually are completely different.   Along the way, we make wrong guesses about other people’s thoughts and feelings and intentions.  It isn’t personal.

Sometimes we do get to have moments of deep, authentic intimacy.  Those are truly personal, and we intuitively recognize the difference.  The more we learn to be present in our bodies here and now, present to each other here and now, the more often we get to have those interactions.

As for the rest – practice not taking it personally.

Connection

Humans need connection just like we need food and water.

We are born small and fragile, depending completely on others to nourish and protect us.   As we grow, we become able to do more and more things for ourselves, and we feel more independent.  But our need for connection remains.   We find meaning, joy, comfort, and safety in our relationships with each other and with the living world around us.

It has always been this way.    Whoever we are and wherever we come from,  all of us are descended from people who spent their whole lives, from cradle to grave, in tight-knit communities that depended on each other for survival.   They hunted together, dug roots and gathered leaves and berries together, told stories and made music together around the fire at night..   They gathered together to celebrate every child’s birth, and they mourned together when one of their kindred died.   

In this way they were connected also with the plants and animals and rivers and mountains and stars that formed their world.    Their world was filled with the scents of grasses and wild flowers, the sounds of wind blowing through the trees and water running over stone,  the sight of the Milk Way spread out across the sky.   We take comfort in these things still.   Japanese doctors have found that a mindful walk in the woods is one of the best ways to help the body recover from stress.  They call it “forest bathing.”

In some ways, we today are more connected than people have ever been before.    We can have instant communication with people almost anywhere in the world.   While at the same time, our lives are lonelier and our valuable webs of connection are smaller and weaker than those of anyone who came before us.

Authentic connection is a biological need shared by all mammals.    Our nervous systems evolved to measure safety or danger based on the voices and facial expressions of the people and animals around us.    When we hear a loving, familiar voice, or see a kind look in another’s eyes, we relax.

When that connection is broken, our first instinct is to try to repair it by attempting  to communicate.  If communication breaks down or feels impossible, we begin to feel afraid, and we fall back into old survival strategies we share with our reptile cousins:  we get ready to defend ourselves or run away.  Our muscles tense, our hearts pound, we become entirely focused on the feeling of danger and the need to either fight or flee.

If both fight and flight seem impossible, we begin to disconnect, go numb, and freeze.

The only way to come back to ourselves in those moments is to come back to each other.

This is especially challenging if we have never known anyone we could depend on and feel safe with, or if we have experienced danger, hurt, or betrayal from someone we trusted.    To some degree, this has happened in almost every life.

The only way to heal our relational wounds is in relationship.   The parts of us that have been hurt or frightened or rejected need to fully experience love, acceptance, and safety.

Therapy is one place that can happen.   Together, therapist and client build trust.   From within that trusting relationship, it becomes possible to explore new responses to frightening and overwhelming situations, new ways to come back to connection.

We get to be our truest selves when we know we are loved and accepted for who we are and who we are becoming.

Hindsight to Foresight

Sometimes when we experience difficult situations we want to just forget about them and move on. If only that idea was possible. Now of course we have all tried to forget our past especially the negatives we don’t want to remember and it can work for weeks or months or even years. What this does though is takes away our ability to gain hindsight. Looking back to see what has gone on so we can better predict how we should make decisions in the future (foresight). Another part of the journey which may get lost if we avoid objectively observing the past is insight. I named my private practice Insightful Release because of the importance insight has to releasing the chains which bound us.

And isn’t that we are searching for... the idea we can attain some level of freedom from our past? It is possible- I see it happen in therapy with my clients and have experienced it in my own life. The joy which is felt when we break our old patterns and no longer feel like a prisoner. I should mention that you do not have to dig up every last event and look at every detail of them to utilize hindsight. That would be overwhelming. It is done much more by objectively seeing your patterns, how they were formed, and then having foresight to see if you may be starting to fall into an old pattern. That is the work- that is awareness- that is how you will find healing.

I offer a gentle reminder that even though the past may be something we want to forget, that very act of forgetting may keep us bound. Be kind to yourself and look to hindsight as a helper which will honor you by offering insight (wisdom) and then you will have the foresight to live the future truly free.

Discover an amazing and easy way to start CHANGING your life!

When we think about change it can often feel like just ANOTHER thing we have to add to our "To Do" list. Nobody wants to work when it feels like work. Through a dear friend of mine I learned about the book Body Thrive by Cate Stillman. I joined my friend's book club and started my own journey with this book. My favorite part of the book is the fact it follows Ayurvedic principles.

WHAT are those you ask?? From chopra.com-

"Ayurveda is a science of life (Ayur = life, Veda = science or knowledge). It offers a body of wisdom designed to help people stay vibrant and healthy while realizing their full human potential.

The two main guiding principles of Ayurveda are 1) the mind and the body are inextricably connected, and 2) nothing has more power to heal and transform the body than the mind. Freedom from illness depends upon expanding our own awareness, bringing it into balance, and then extending that balance to the body."

So awesome...that means you can actively learn to heal your body, mind and spirit. You no longer have to feel lethargic through your day or need caffeine to wake up! You will begin to feel refreshed and energized and overall more content! Body Thrive works on one habit each week for you to explore using the workbook (super simple) and it isn't even about changing the habit immediately but much more just learning about yourself and experimenting with change to see if it actually makes you feel different. Who doesn't want to feel and live a more balanced life?! 

Right now I'm in week 4 and I have to say I am learning quite a bit about myself. Sometimes I do pretty good and other days I end up having some coffee and eating a delicious corned beef sandwich. I've found it really helpful to see the difference in how I feel the next day after I make certain choices the previous day- to actually FEEL the CHANGE! Let's see..........my favorite sensation so far has been not feeling nearly as bloated and waking up feeling rested!

If you're feeling like you'd like to change some habits in your life, I'd recommend trying Body Thrive. It has also been super great being a part of a book club to receive and offer support to others on the journey! Ask a friend or two to join you! Please comment if you've already done work with this book or are planning to start or just want to say hi!

Barbados Tree Frogs- Relaxation

An amazing trip to Barbados brought these awesome tree frogs to life for me. Laying in the night as it rained hearing them chirp was so totally relaxing. Give this a listen and perhaps you too can sink into a mellow relaxation.

Limit to your breath

A breathing exercise to help you determine if you are a shallow breather. If you have chromic shallow breathing you may experience symptoms such as tiredness and listlessness. Give this track a listen to find out for yourself. Enjoy!

Meditation 101