The Overwhelmed Brain

Emotional Intelligence for Critical Thinkers

Is it always necessary to dive into the past to heal old traumas?

How to heal old trauma without diving into the past

Where should you start when it comes to healing old stuff from the past? Should you do a deep dive into your childhood, bringing up all kinds of memories and traumas that you may or may not have repeated to therapists over and over again?

Or should you talk about how it bothers you today and see if someone can help you gain a new perspective? What about skipping over the trauma and just looking at what behavior came out of it?

There’s a path you can take to reverse old emotional triggers just by doing something different to get a different result. If it sounds too easy, then you definitely need to listen to this episode.

Walking around as an adult with dysfunctions from childhood

Dysfunctional behaviors often come from trauma, neglect, or abuse, but some can come from seemingly benign areas of life as well.

We don’t know the full impact our childhood had on us until we’re older trying to relate to other people outside of our family.

In this episode, I talk about one person’s experiences from childhood and how she recognized a lot of her dysfunctions, and how she is finding a way out of them.

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The emotional aftermath of getting free of the narcissistic relationship

The emotional challenges you experience after breaking up with a narcissist usually go way beyond grieving the end of a relationship.

You can be stripped of your ability to see life clearly from that point on unless you heal.

In this bonus episode, I cover a lot of ground when it comes to dealing with what happens to your mind and body as you transition out of one of the more toxic relationships that exist.

My Healing Journey from Being an Emotional Abuser

Emotional abuse is the ultimate brainwashing technique. It often hides in the form of feigned helpfulness, generosity, compassion, and love. The perpetrator knows how to appear kind and caring while intertwining abusive behavior, causing their victim to become powerless.

Emotional abuse is a method of controlling, manipulating, belittling, and invalidating a person over time. It is often hard to spot in the moment as it can be seen as benign or even “normal” to most observers. But as this behavior is repeated time and time again, the insidious compound effect of this form of hidden abuse causes its victims to lose confidence in themselves, stop trusting in their own decisions, feel devalued and unimportant, and blame themselves for being the cause of, and sometimes even deserving, of the abusive behavior.

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Is it ever okay to release toxic family?

I received an email from someone who was very angry with me. She said “You should be ashamed of yourself for teaching that it is okay to break ties with family!“

She was referencing an episode I did on toxic family members and how I said if they are too toxic to be around that it’s okay to part ways with them.  [Read more…]