#063 - Sex Anxiety: The Three Minute Game

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#063 - Sex Anxiety: The Three Minute Game

My own experience with sex has been a long journey, which still continues. I started out not knowing anything about sex and it being treated in my family and in my religion as a purely procreative act. Pleasure, consent, desire, and fun were not mentioned in any sex talk or education I received. Also being queer and non-binary didn’t add any more ease to it since these were invisible and unspoken identities. As I grew up I created a sexual identity that more closely resembled a masculinity found in R-rated movies and what I heard my cis male friends were doing. All this had very little to do with me and what I wanted and more to do with performance and power.

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#060 - Dating with Disorganized Attachment

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#060 - Dating with Disorganized Attachment

When I was in grad school a teacher asked the folks in the class to raise their hands to indicate which attachment style they most identified with. For most of us at the beginning of our grad school experience we were just starting to learn what “attachment style” meant. We “knew” that secure attachment was the best and anything else was bad. Beyond that, very few of us understood the nuances of attachment styles. So those who raised their hand as being securely attached were given the stink eye, because competitiveness in grad school extends to attachment styles too!

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#049 - A good enough body

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#049 - A good enough body

About 13 years ago I was involved in a near fatal car accident. And I was the one who almost died. We, my coworkers and I, were driving from snowboarding in Colorado back to Utah to continue working as wilderness guides. I was 23 years old and for the most part thought I was going to live forever and didn’t really consider the vulnerability of living in a human body. As we crested a hill on I-70 we hit an elk, the truck rolled, and I was ejected out of the passenger side window going 70 miles per hour.

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#045 - Losing fear of ourselves

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#045 - Losing fear of ourselves

For many years I spent my time managing and controlling my outside circumstances (and, honestly, still work with this!). My belief I could find safety through control was a purely unconscious drive. All I knew was that the world felt overwhelming to me, and that I was restless and irritable. I would make the connection that when I was in a certain situation or with a particular person I felt anxious, so I tried my best to stay out of or control those situations or people. I rarely thought that my real problems were my internal reactions and unacknowledged fears, which drove me and dictated my life.

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#043 - Longing for resolution - Opening through the layers

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#043 - Longing for resolution - Opening through the layers

Often in my work with clients we talk about resolution of layers of trauma. Our work together is to explore and metabolize the layers of trauma and pain held in the body and psyche. The process seems to often start at the gross layer, an extreme desire to fight or run, a longing to cry or rage. These opening layers are themes that continue to show up as the layers are worked through.

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#036 - Spiritual/Emotional Growth: The hard way or the easier way

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#036 - Spiritual/Emotional Growth: The hard way or the easier way

I was talking with some friends the other night and we were exploring what it’s like to enter therapy. My friend had a very insightful statement that going into therapy is stressful because it “stirs stuff up.” I had to agree with that! That’s been true in my professional life with my clients and with my own personal journey. And yet my perspective is a bit different than my friends: Yes is stirs stuff up, and this stuff is going to get you no matter what!

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#033 - Making room for Disconnection

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#033 - Making room for Disconnection

Most of my life I have been pretty distant, fairly aloof. I did not want to feel the pain that came from human connection. I developed tools and methods to keep people at arms length. This felt like the best way of doing things, I was safe and they were safe from me. Underlying these actions were deep and powerful beliefs about safety and about my worthiness. On the surface these behaviors and beliefs point towards someone afraid of connection, scared of the closeness inherent in human relationships.  Though on the surface this may be true the deeper issue is a fear of disconnection.

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#019 - Relationships: Room to Come and Go

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#019 - Relationships: Room to Come and Go

Has your partner ever said to you, “Babe, I need some space tonight.”? Then your knee jerk reaction is something like anxiety, anger, dread, or fear? If so, then congratulations you are in a relationship in which you are connected enough to have your core issues arise!  While no one likes to feel these deep issues of abandonment they are often hanging around right under the surface unconsciously driving your behavior. 

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#011 - Love: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it

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#011 - Love: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it

“For even as love crowns you so shall she crucify you.

Even as she is for your growth so is she for your pruning.

Even as she ascends to your height and caresses

your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

so shall she descend to your roots and shake them

in their clinging to the earth.”

-The Prophet

 

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#001 - 5 steps to self-regulation: You want this!

/ Karolina Walsh Psychotherapy/
#001 - 5 steps to self-regulation: You want this!

"Trauma is a word that has been used more and more frequently over the past 10 years to describe various situations that bring about certain symptoms in the people affected. Some of these symptoms include feelings of overwhelm, nightmares of the event, anxiety, depression, rage, avoidance of memories, and disconnection from reality. The curious factor when facing a potentially traumatic situation..."

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