Wendy Riggs (she/her)

Relationships can bring joy to our lives, to have someone to share our time and resources with, to be open and vulnerable. It can also be a time that is consumed with fear, shame, secrecy, or self-doubt. When these thoughts and feelings begin to creep in we can become anxious, or withdrawn. We can feel like no one sees us, or hears us, least of all our partner. What if we tell them what we really like? Or what has happened to us in the past? It can feel scary, impossible even. I'm here to help.

You wake up in the middle of the night, your thoughts are racing, your heart feels like it's going to beat out of your chest. Everything seems intense throughout the day, you feel irritable, sad, on edge, and maybe you don't even know why. You're startled easily, untrusting of others, knowing that vulnerability and closeness can be unsafe. You feel the impact in your relationships, and at work, and you just want it to stop. I know this feeling, I understand this feeling, and I know how to help.

We learn our attachment styles early on in life, from our parents, and caregivers. We learn how to communicate, express and receive love, and how to care for others. But sometimes the way we learned to do that in our family wasn't helpful, or healthy. We were modeled something that doesn't quite connect with who we are as adults. We have seen how these early days have impacted current relationships. Through understanding the brain and body connection we will work together to repair those hurts.

Each family has their own system, their own way of doing things. How they run the house, how they resolve conflict, how they spend quality time together, etc. Within each system each person plays a certain role, this may be a role you want, but often it's a role designated to you, and without your knowing. Maybe this system works for us, but maybe it doesn't. It's when it doesn't work, when we feel this desire to challenge the system, to say, "NO!" that we are ready for change.

It's important to understand how our brain works and why it does what it does. All too often we can feel like our thoughts and emotions are in control of us, we feel all over the place and don't know what to do with ourselves. Well, I can tell you, our brains lie to us ALL. THE TIME. We love our brain, it's a big, beautiful, wonderful organ that only ever wants us to feel safe, but sometimes in its effort to keep us safe, it holds us back, we feel stuck. We don't need to feel stuck. I can help.

We learn from a very young age who we can depend upon, and who we cannot. We form our earliest attachments with our caregivers, it might be our parents, or an adult who was in charge to care for us. We learn that if we cry out, that if we ask for help, that if we have a need we will be taken care of, we have that security of the adults around us, or, we don't. We learn we are on our own. We become anxious, avoidant, and withdrawn. We are on our own. We can work to repair those attachments.