The Stuck Stops Here ©

All-or-nothing thinking is a a cognitive distortion.  Cognitive meaning the way you understand, think, and perceive. And Distortion meaning misleading or irrational. All-or-nothing thinking and fear of failure paved a perfect path to perfectionism.  I was raised with impossibly high expectations that I could never meet and as miserable as that made me, it was familiar, so I stayed on that poison path for far too long and continuous...

Object Constancy is a cognitive skill we acquire at around 2 years old and is defined as the ability to maintain an emotional bond with others, even where there is distance and conflict.  In adulthood, Object Constancy allows us to trust that our bond with those who are close to us remains whole even when they are not physically present.  We understand that absence does not mean disappearance or abandonment, only temporary distance...

Toxic family rules live at the center of a dysfunctional family system and are designed to keep secrets hidden, enable abuse, keep children in line and avoid responsibility while also preventing safety, growth and connection.  Toxic family dynamics can have far-reaching impact on our lives as adults.  Children of toxic parents are emotionally starved. The family dynamic functions around the needs, wants, desires, and chaos of the p...

Albert Ellis, who is considered the 2nd most influential psychotherapist in history died in 2007 and believed psychological problems are due to pervasive patterns of irrational thought.  It is not events that create emotional states, but the way we interpret them. Chronic unhappiness is not caused directly by adversity but by us, it is our irrational beliefs and thoughts that cause suffering.  He said “There are three musts that ho...

“Something happened to us a long time ago. It happened more than once. It hurt us. We protected ourselves the only way we knew how. We are still protecting ourselves. It isn’t working anymore.” ― John C. Friel, Adult Children Secrets of Dysfunctional Families: The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families

“recovery is a process rather than an event.”
― John C. Friel, Adult Children Secrets of Dysfunctional Families

Millions of people grew up ...

Boundaries are a way to take care of ourselves. It means verbalizing what impacts your comfort levels. It means learning how and when to say "no." When we set boundaries, we’re less angry and resentful because our needs are getting met and our space is respected. Boundaries make our expectations clear, so others know what to expect from us and how we want to be treated.  Toxic people will do everything they can to ignore an...

The healing journey was and is not easy for me.  It is a continuous and rigorous cycle of aha moments followed by grief followed by acceptance.  If your parents were narcissistic, controlling,  smothering, unavailable, overly critical, manipulative, angry and emotionally immature...you may feel as lonely and disconnected as I have felt and battled the same crippling anxiety and depression that I did.   I fantasized often that my pa...

In March of 2021, my youngest daughter and her teammates experienced horrific emotional abuse from the coach of a Division 1 collegiate athletic team.  It was a sickening combination of narcissism, toxic leadership, and verbal abuse and I was crushed by it as there was nothing I could do.  I witnessed my daughter getting the exact same treatment that received during my entire childhood and I worked SO HARD to make sure she never ex...

Coming from a home filled with alcoholism and abuse, Gina knows the grit & grace it takes to not just survive, but to move into a life filled with peace. She trusts that her immediate instinct to follow her intuition (which she calls her light) has been the catalyst to every success she has been blessed to experience. Her greatest passion is to help others find, and trust, the light inside of them—no matter their past.

With a mo...

"I am four years old in that photo, half-naked and burned all over. I am propped up into a sitting position. My hair, which had been honey blonde and bouncy with waves, sprawls in a dark, stringy mess. My chest is completely covered with tight, raw bands of scars.  My right arm, also constricted by scars, is attached to my torso by contractures. My left wrist contracts in as well. You can see my tiny right ear and my nose unsca...

Vera Wilhelmsen was once ill with "incurable" chronic illness as a result from narcissistic abuse from her parents and grandparents. She fought her way out on her own, realized the root causes, cut contact with her entire family and all toxic people in her life and went deep into her own trauma to heal.

 She states on her web site “I was severely ill. Around Christmas 2018 I was preparing to die. I had been bedbound for 3,5 ...

There is significant truth behind the statement "everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about".  A conversation with my stepsister reveals how toxic parenting, favoritism, manipulation and emotional immaturity can fracture family ties - usually beyond repair.  My stepsister was the scapegoat and I bounced back and forth from golden to lost child.  All the assigned roles have their poisonous ripple effects.

It may hel...

Codependency, the habit of gaining your self worth from pleasing others, is something most people know of nowadays. But it’s lesser known opposite, called counterdependency, can be just as much of a problem and is often related to codependency.  Those who suffer counterdependency have a dread of ever depending on or needing anyone, at heart of which is an inability to trust. If there was a mantra that all counterdependents have, it...

On my healing journey, I wrote (but never sent) a letter to my toxic parents.  Journal therapy originated in the 1960s with psychologist Dr. Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal method. With his developments, the therapeutic potential of journal writing moved into public view. One of the ways to deal with any overwhelming emotion is to find a healthy way to express yourself. This makes a journal a helpful tool in managing your menta...

Emotional abuse is a way to control another person by using emotions to criticize, embarrass, shame, blame, or otherwise manipulate another person. In general, a relationship is emotionally abusive when there is a consistent pattern of abusive words and bullying behaviors that wear down a person's self-esteem and undermine their mental health. Children often lack the perspective to be able to identify the abusive elements of th...

Shame is often referred to as “the toxic cousin of guilt. Guilt says “I’ve done something bad”.  Shame says “I am bad”.  Shame may show up in some of these ways: feeling inferior, defective, flawed, worthless, phony, and unlovable. For codependents, shame can lead to control, caretaking, and dysfunctional, nonassertive communication. Shame creates many fears and anxieties that make relationships difficult, especially intimate ones....

Comparing ourselves to others allows them to drive our behavior. I often worked too hard to determine what others expected so I  can make sure I  fit in.  I was constantly feeling less than, wanting to be greater than – leading to an ultra-competitive and unhealthy mindset.

You can be anything but you can’t be everything. When we compare ourselves to others, we’re often comparing their best features against our average ones. Not onl...

When parents emotionally ignore children, they feel invisible, invalidated, worthless, and disconnected from their true self.  Parents with unhealed emotional wounds are unable to authentically connect with their children and this lack of connection makes children chronically question their value.  They then turn to OUTSIDE forms of validation in an attempt to block feeling the deep pain of rejection. And then grow up to unconsciou...