Depression and anxiety tend to pair up and be a common motivator for someone to begin therapy. Depression may be chronic or situational. Depression tends to occur when people ruminate or concentrate on their past.

Anxiety is also common, especially in today’s world where so much about our lives feels uncertain and unsafe! I tend to believe any misery we feel having to do with anxiety is caused by the brain!—I’d like a chance to simply explain my concepts concerning the causes and some of the antidotes to modern day anxiety. The primary types of anxiety I deal with in my therapy practice are: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Attacks, and Social Anxiety Disorder. Anxiety tends to occur when people ruminate or concentrate on the future.

When asked about “trauma,” most clients state they have not experienced trauma in their lifetime or childhood. I believe people don’t understand the nature of what trauma is and therefore deny having experienced it, but that most of us have encountered incidents from a very young age in some degree or another and probably don’t remember them. Our reactions to events may, therefore, be borne out of those traumatized feelings and we need to understand that process and what to do about it in order to lessen our feelings of danger – i.e., not being safe or secure. We all know the meaning of PTSD, but I believe most of us have some degree of Complex-PTSD, which is a series of “smaller” traumas that have built up over time, starting in childhood and existing throughout our lifetimes.

Also, we’re all aware of the concepts of child abuse, especially physical or sexual abuse. But the fact is that many of us also suffer from Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN, which is a form of trauma), unrecognized, misunderstood, and not motivated by malice.