Tag Archives: mental-health

What are you giving up for lent ?

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Triggered by Family at Christmas and Now Easter with the Family-Why Family Hurts:

Have you ever walked into your family home for the holidays and felt yourself slipping back
into old patterns—people-pleasing, shutting down, overreacting—even when you thought
you’d grown past them? You’re not alone, and more importantly, you’re not imagining it.
That phone call from your mother that shouts at you, Fix me! It’s all your fault! If you really loved me! You’re selfish and ungrateful!

You’ve just got over Xmas! That feeling of dread of being small again, uncertainty, not being
motivated-stuck, being told off for not doing enough for your family members, even though
they only contact you when they need you to fix something, scapegoated again?

The Neurology of Family of Origin Triggers

It’s not just psychological—it’s neurological. When you return to childhood environments,
familiar voices, smells, and even the layout of rooms can activate dormant emotional
pathways in your limbic system. Your brain essentially pulls up old programming, triggering
survival patterns (schemas) that you developed years ago, even if they no longer serve you today.

Think of it like this: your brain has been storing memories and emotional responses since
childhood, creating neural pathways that were designed to help you navigate your family
environment. When you step back into that same environment—same dining room table,
same family dynamics, same roles everyone expects you to play—your brain automatically
retrieves those old patterns. It’s doing what it was designed to do: prepare you for what itexpects based on your past experiences and perceptions.

The challenge is that you’ve grown and changed. You’ve done the work. You’ve developed
new ways of thinking, responding, and being in the world. But your brain doesn’t always get
the memo when you walk through that familiar doorway to your childhood experiences.

How to Remain Grounded in Who You Are Now

The good news? You can stay anchored in your present identity. In this post, I share
practical, science-backed tools to interrupt those old scripts and keep control of these
automatic early schemas, even when your environment tries to pull you back into the past.
You’ll learn why childhood environments trigger survival patterns in adulthood, how familiar
sensory cues activate your limbic system, and most importantly, what you can do about it. I
walk you through a practical framework that you can implement—along with simple
strategies you can use before, during, and after family visits to avoid emotional regression.

These aren’t just coping mechanisms. They’re tools for rewiring your brain’s automatic
reactions so you can show up as your authentic self, not the version of you that your familyremembers from years ago.


The 5-Steps to manage family holidays

Situation: Feeling triggered or regressing to old patterns during family holiday visits, usethese grounding strategies.


Step 1: Identify Triggers

Notice when your body signals that an old pattern has been activated e.g. tension in your
shoulders, headaches, anger rising, or the urge to withdraw. Recognize familiar triggers: a
specific comment or tone of voice, the smell from the kitchen, people over-indulging in
alcohol, or standing in a certain room in the family home. Ask yourself: “What am I feeling right now? What triggered this reaction?”


Step 2: Reflect on your automatic negative beliefs

Explore why this moment activated you. What old survival pattern is trying to take
over—people-pleasing, shutting down, or snapping back? Remind yourself: “This response
belonged to my younger self during family conflict when I felt threatened or responsible. I
am my adult self now and the threat is not so big now.” Consider what unresolved memory
(maladaptive schema) from your past is being replayed and the associated sensations,thoughts, and emotions.


Step 3: Write them down

Journal or voice-note your observations. Write down: the specific trigger (e.g., “Mum’s tone
when she asked about my career or the kids”), your automatic reaction (e.g., “I felt small,
insignificant, judged and wanted to defend myself”), your child part is responding because
deep memories or schemas have been triggered. Now, try to consider an alternative
response aligned with your present-day adult self (e.g., “I can calmly acknowledge her
question without being defensive, over-explaining or being upset”).


Step 4: Dispute your Automatic Negative Belief

Review what you’ve written and identify the pattern. Ask: “Is this reaction serving who I am
now?” “Does my reaction align with my values.” Notice how your body feels as you consider
a new, chosen response. Visualize yourself using your anchor phrase (“I’m the adult version
of me or I am worthy and capable”) and responding from your present identity (I’m OK as Iam) instead of your past programming (I’m not good enough).


Step 5: Formulate an Accepting Belief & Take Action

Create your new action plan. Choose a physical anchor (touching your ear or a piece of
jewellery, adjusting posture, taking a deep breath) and pair it with a neutral self-talk
response phrase like “I felt triggered, but I can handle it”, “I’m not 10 anymore”, “It’s OK, I
am enough.” This will help to ground you in the present and strengthen your own voice and
confidence. Practice this combination often, so it’s ready when the trigger appears. Committo using your anchor in the moment to give your prefrontal cortex time to re-engage before
responding, rather than reacting with your sub-conscious memories or schemas which arehard wired into our autonomic nervous system.

This Easter holidays, you don’t have to slip back into your child self or who you used to be.
You don’t have to brace yourself for conflict or shut down to survive. With the right tools
and an understanding of what’s happening in your autonomic nervous system, you can
show up as the person you’ve become—grounded, intentional, and more mindful andcompassionate about your early (childhood) schemas.


This Easter Holiday Can Be Different

The holidays can be a time of genuine connection rather than survival mode. It starts with
understanding your brain, autonomic nervous system and giving yourself the tools tomanage it effectively.

Is therapy worth it ?

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From The Sopranos to Frasier, TV loves a therapist. At home, everyone from AFL players to everyday Aussies now talks openly about getting help. But with mental ill-health affecting almost half of us, the real question is: is therapy actually worth it?

The short answer: yes — but only if you approach it properly.
Therapy is not a quick fix. It’s an investment, not an expense. And like any investment, the return depends on timing, commitment, and choosing the right professional.

Therapy works — the research is rock-solid

Across Australia, mental health issues now account for a massive share of our disease burden. Roughly one in three GP visits involve anxiety, stress or mood issues. Yet psychotherapy remains one of the most effective interventions we have — often outperforming medical treatments we take for granted.

When therapy works, people think more clearly, feel more settled, make better decisions, sleep more deeply and regain control. These aren’t abstract improvements: brain imaging shows real neurological changes, and measurable indicators — panic-free days, improved functioning, reduced symptoms — back it up.

But trauma therapy is not for the faint-hearted

Under a Mental Health Care Plan, you may receive 6 sessions, then a review, then 4 more — often capped across 12 months. That’s a helpful start, but real trauma work takes honesty about your limits:

  • family, study or work commitments
  • whether you’re in a safe and stable environment
  • whether your nervous system can stay within a workable window of tolerance

Big-T traumas (accidents, assaults, life-threatening events) can often shift in fewer sessions.
Little-t traumas (chronic neglect, emotional abuse, long-term instability) can take much longer — sometimes 12 months or up to 30 sessions. It depends on readiness, stability, and your ability to practice skills between appointments.

Therapy is best done in episodes

Practices like Artemis Psychology often recommend focusing on a few key memories or issues at a time, then pausing to consolidate — rather than pushing through a massive block of therapy all at once. These “episodes of care” allow you to learn tools, step back, practice them, and return when you’re ready for deeper work.

Choosing the right therapist still matters

Stick to evidence-based modalities — those recommended by AHPRA-registered psychologists, or by credible bodies like PACFA and ACA. Ask about their training, supervision, and outcomes. Therapy works best when you’re matched with the right person, the right approach, and the right timing.

The payoff

Therapy requires time, money, emotional effort and commitment — but the benefits are profound:

  • stronger self-awareness
  • clearer decision-making
  • better boundaries
  • more resilience
  • problem-solving skills that last for life

Done well, therapy helps you align your choices with your values, leading to greater clarity, purpose and fulfilment.

If you’re ready, motivated, and work with a qualified professional, therapy is absolutely worth it — for most people, most of the time, and for most problems.

Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model

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The Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model explains how unprocessed traumatic memories disrupt normal brain function and contribute to psychological distress, while memory reconsolidation is a biological process that can update and integrate these problematic memories, leading to a reduction in symptoms. The AIP model, a core component of EMDR therapy, suggests that traumatic experiences lead to maladaptively stored memories that trigger distressing thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations when encountered. By
activating the brain’s inherent capacity to process information, techniques like EMDR can facilitate memory reconsolidation, allowing these old memories to be updated with new information and thus become less disruptive.  This model states that, under normal circumstances, memories consolidate into adaptive networks. However, trauma can create “pathogenic” or dysfunctional memories that hinder this process. 


Maladaptive Storage: 
These unprocessed, maladaptive memories, which include the original cognitive, emotional, and somatic components of the traumatic event, remain “stuck”. 
Re-experiencing: 
When a current experience links to an unresolved memory, it triggers the full sensory and emotional components of the past event, leading to dysfunctional reactions in the present. 
Memory Reconsolidation A Biological Process: 
Memory reconsolidation is the biological process by which retrieved memories become temporarily unstable and are updated with new information before being stored again. 
Reducing Prediction Error: 
The brain seeks to reduce uncertainty by updating memories, minimizing future “prediction errors” (mismatches between what was expected and what happened). 

Updating Traumatic Memories: 
When traumatic memories are retrieved during therapy, they enter a labile state, allowing them to be updated and integrated with more adaptive information, thus reducing their emotional charge and disruptive impact. 
Connection to EMDR Therapy
EMDR’s Mechanism: 
EMDR therapy utilizes the AIP model to understand that trauma creates obstacles to information processing in the prefrontal cortex. 
Bilateral Stimulation: 
The bilateral stimulation (e.g., eye movements) in EMDR helps to activate the brain’s processing system, allowing for the re-evaluation and re-consolidation of these pathogenic memories. 
Resolving Symptoms: 
By supporting memory reconsolidation, EMDR therapy helps to transform these dysfunctional memories, resolving the associated symptoms of trauma and leading to a more adaptive and whole perspective.

What is EMDR Therapy & How does it work?

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Source: EMDR Institute 2025
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. 


Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of
psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.


EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.

Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes. Eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation) are used during one part of the session. After the clinician has determined which memory to target first, he asks the client to hold different aspects of that event or thought in mind and to use his eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across the client’s field of vision. As this happens, for reasons believed by a Harvard researcher to be connected with the biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, internal associations arise, and the clients begin to process the memory and disturbing feelings.


In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional level. For instance, a rape victim shifts from feeling horror and self-disgust to holding the firm belief that, “I survived it and I am strong.” Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients gain in EMDR therapy result not so much from clinician interpretation, but from the client’s own accelerated intellectual and emotional processes. The net effect is that clients conclude EMDR therapy feeling empowered by the very experiences that once debased them. Their wounds have not just closed, they have transformed. As a natural outcome of the EMDR therapeutic process, the clients’ thoughts, feelings and behavior are all robust indicators of emotional health and resolution—all without speaking in detail or doing homework used in other therapies.


How does it work?
Phase 1–2: Preparation & Stabilisation
We begin by creating a foundation of emotional safety. You’ll learn tools like breathwork, grounding, and self-soothing, and build insight into how your current symptoms are connected to past experiences.
Phases 3–5: Assessment, Desensitisation & Bilateral Stimulation
Together, we identify a distressing memory linked to what you’re struggling with today. You’ll explore the image, beliefs (“I’m powerless”), emotions, and body sensations attached to it. Bilateral stimulation (BLS)—such as eye movements or tapping—is used to gently reduce the emotional charge, making space for new, more adaptive beliefs (e.g., “I did my best” or “I’m safe now”).


Phases 6–8: Installation, Body Scan, & Integration
As the memory shifts, we strengthen helpful beliefs and check how your body is holding the change. The goal isn’t to erase the past—it’s to help you remember it without reliving it. You might find yourself thinking: “It happened, but it’s not happening now.”


How Can EMDR Help?
While EMDR is most widely used for PTSD and trauma, many therapists and clients report relief
across a broader range of concerns:
Anxiety, panic and phobic responses
Low selfesteem, shame, or imposter syndrome
Performance anxiety (even stage fright— as recently shared by singer Miley Cyrus who engaged in EMDR for this reason) 
Grief, loss, or relational wounds
Emotional triggers tied to identity, worth, or belonging


Sometimes it’s not one traumatic event, but the build-up of many small, dismissive, or hurtful moments that keep us stuck. EMDR can help unstick what’s lodged in the nervous system—often without needing to go into every detail out loud.


Why undertake EMDR?
If talk therapy alone hasn’t shifted things, EMDR offers a more embodied path to healing.
If you’re hesitant about revisiting painful memories, EMDR is paced to your tolerance, and often requires less verbal detail.
If you’re curious but sceptical, know that EMDR is backed by clinical research, meta-analyses, and a growing base of neuroscience—though like many good therapies, the specifics of “why it works” are
still being studied.


Is EMDR Right for Me?
EMDR is most effective when delivered by a therapist who:
– Is fully trained in EMDR
– Works within a safe, relational therapeutic alliance
– Integrates EMDR with emotional awareness, stabilization skills, stepbystep pacing and other evidence-based approaches


It’s not for everyone, and it shouldn’t be used without clinical support. But for many—especially those whose distress feels stuck, repetitive, or physiologically activated—EMDR may support healing to emerge when the memory is held, paired with bilateral stimulation, rather than
bypassed or intellectualised.

BURNOUT: Strategies for Self-Care

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Burnout is a form of emotional exhaustion that can occur in response to persistent and unrelenting stress. Since COVID-19 lockdowns, many people struggled to establish boundaries between work and home, and, in some cases, to juggle the twin demands of work, home school and childcare with no supports in place – the perfect combination of stressors that could eventually result in burnout, even after restrictions eased.


Burnout encompasses a wide range of symptoms, including low energy, motivation or mood; feeling isolated or trapped; feeling cynical or disengaged from work; decreased life satisfaction;
procrastination; irritability; feeling exhausted or drained; disrupted sleep; and physical responses like headaches and body pain.


You don’t need to exhibit all of these symptoms to be experiencing burnout. Conversely, if you’re exhibiting some of these symptoms, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily experiencing burnout. Burnout usually occurs when you experience some/all of these symptoms in combination with feeling emotionally overloaded. According to the World Health Organization, burnout is an ‘occupational syndrome’, which means


it’s often linked to work; however, new research from the Black Dog Institute and the UNSW School of Psychiatry found that it can also impact people undertaking unpaid home or care duties as well.In short, anyone can experience burnout, although not everyone will – researchers now believe that some personality types are more prone to burnout than others. Autistic Burnout is specific to neurodivergent people, however, the strategies to remedy it are similar, but in conjunction with, an inclusive plan & routine to mitigate triggers and sensitivities while still engaging in a rewarding and balanced lifestyle.


While burnout can feel overwhelming, the good news is that it’s highly manageable.
In fact, self-care – that is, activities you can do at home without the need for medical intervention – can be a good starting point for responding to the symptoms of burnout.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s important to be proactive about your emotional wellbeing, rather than hoping things will improve on their own.

Click to access Importance-of-selfcare-planning.pdf