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How COVID 19 Impacts Marriage?

If you’re married, then might have experienced a challenging time over the last few months with the advancement of COVID-19. For many people, the COVID-19 experience has become a traumatic event triggering heightened emotional stress responses, i.e., flight & flight. Whenever couples are experiencing fight & flight stress responses in a relationship, it can feel emotionally unsafe and wildly conflictual.

A fellow therapist friend, Kerry McCoy, LMFT, and I did a 45-minute podcast on how the worldwide collective traumatic experience of COVID-19 is impacting marriages and what we can do to stay connected to our spouse during this challenging time. We talked about the different responses people have to trauma and how this might show up in marriage.

Kerry and I both practice a type of therapy called Emotionally Focused Therapy with couples and its main focus is to increase the security and sense of safety in relationships; something that is needed more than ever now.

At the end of the podcast, we leave you with 5 Connecting Questions During COVID-19 you can use to engage your spouse in a conversation around how this collective trauma may be impacting them, and how you can get re-connected and find your emotional footing.

**Discounted Phone & FaceTime Sessions available today! Don’t let COVID-19 keep you from getting the support you need!

Let’s connect!

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Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in Orange County

Meet Anna Barsoe, LMFT

I help clients to see beyond their symptoms to reach their goals and enhance their sense of well-being. I am extremely proactive and believe in offering the most holistic approach to help people reach the best version of themselves. I provide a safe and down-to-earth environment for my clients to express themselves. I believe that developing new healthy ways of thinking can lead to a healthy mind and body.

I specialize in helping people with anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, grief, & women’s issues.

I am 100% committed to the success of my clients and we will work together in your healing process to help you find solutions that work. I am also available for phone or virtual sessions. I look forward to hearing your story.

Let’s connect

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I recently sat through a lecture on addiction presented by a woman who marketed herself as an industry-expert on the subject of chemical dependency. About ¾ of the way through her lecture, she said something provocative that really piqued my interest.

This is what I heard: “The worst form of denial is believing that your addiction is environmental”.

She said it again: “The worst form of denial is believing your addiction is environmental”. After hearing it again, I was really paying attention. The industry-expert was expounding on elements of the idea that addiction and alcoholism is purely a biological disease, and that people struggling with addiction are genetically predisposed to the illness, and looking at other elements in one’s life history that may have contributed to the addiction is futile.

Her message is common in some facets of the substance abuse treatment world that seems to rely solely on identifying addiction as a genetic illness and that your early childhood experiences, social environment, parental attunement & modeling are not relevant to your current situation.

In my humble opinion, I don’t believe the worst form of denial is believing your addiction is environmental because I believe part of your addiction is environmental and certainly dependent on external factors outside your generational genetics. I would prefer to not call that denial, I would rather label that as self-awareness, and would applaud any of my clients for recognizing what is or was environmental for them.

Part of the counseling process for people struggling with addiction challenges is helping them recognize the environmental factors that contribute or have contributed to their challenges, because once they get his part, they are empowered to change!

As I sat through the rest of the lecture, I wondered what could be the motivation for this lecturer to feel so emphatic about her stance. And then it dawned on me. In her opening segment, this lecturer freely discussed the devastating history of her own daughters struggle with addiction at the age of 14 and all the torment that impacted her family. I couldn’t help but wonder if her fear of possibly acknowledging her contribution (environmental), however big or small, to her daughter’s struggle with addiction may be keeping her from delivering a more balanced lecture. I began to empathize with her, and I could understand why she would want to believe what she was saying was true.

After all, denial is just a defense mechanism that protects us from internal pain. Could it be, for this speaker, her own worst form of denial is believing that addiction is purely biological?

If you’re struggling with addiction or alcoholism, please know that we can help. Our trained therapists have decades of knowledge and experience helping people overcome even the most severe forms of substance abuse challenges. Contact us today!

We are currently offering Phone & FaceTime Sessions at a discounted rate for those financially impacted by COVID-19. Please let us know about your situation and we'll make accommodations for you.

Connect with us now

[theretreatcounselingcenter]

Work with our highly-skilled team of marriage therapists trained in the most cutting edge and evidenced based marriage counseling approaches; Gottman Method & Emotionally Focused Therapy.

Working with couples and watching relationships grow and blossom is such a gratifying experience.  As a team of licensed Marriage Therapists in Orange County, our education, expertise, and professional training revolve around healing and helping couples become unstuck from the painful patterns that many couples fall in.

We have so much faith in the potential that most couples are able to work through many of their most difficult situations – even the ones that feel certain they have lost all hope.  If this is you, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Couples Counseling can be a powerful experience that unlocks newfound hope and happiness.

Being a Couples Counselor in Orange County with a divorce rate close to 70%, we have found it very important to look at struggling marriages within the context of our Orange County culture to makes sense of some of the common marital pitfalls.

SOME OF THE COMMON CHALLENGES WE HELP OUR CLIENTS WORK THROUGH:

Helping Emotionally Unavailable Partners

Navigating Couples Differences Regarding Finances

Marriage Friend Zone; Feeling Bored in Marriage

Christian Couples Counseling for Christian Marriages

Healing Marriages Impacted from Alcoholism

Pornography & Sex Addiction Couples Counseling

Affair Recovery; Couples Counseling for Infidelity

Healthy Couples Communication for Marriage

Negotiating Parenting Differences in Marriage

Premarital Couples Counseling

Developing Healthy Sexual Intimacy for Couples

Possible Divorce; Should I Stay, or Should I Go Counseling

The overwhelming majority of the couples we have worked with in Couples Counseling have experienced enormous growth, change, and newfound happiness in their marriages.  For a look at some of our client testimonials, please let us know and we’ll happily provide references.

We would be honored and privileged to hear more of your story.  If you and your significant other are currently in the midst of a relational crisis, or you’re looking to just improve upon your current relationship, please reach out to us via the contact form.  We would love to meet you and show you how couples counseling can help you.

We are currently offering Phone & FaceTime Sessions at a discounted rate for those financially impacted by COVID-19. Please let us know about your situation and we'll make accommodations for you.

Connect with us now

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5 Ways To Build Trust in Relationships

We are currently offering Phone & FaceTime Sessions at a discounted rate for those financially impacted by COVID-19. Please let us know about your situation and we'll make accommodations for you.

Click here to contact us.

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As the summer is beginning to wind down, and wanting to take advantage of the remaining great weather, I decided to take my 7 year old nephew on a camping trip.

Before leaving for the trip, my sister (his mother) and I spoke on the phone and she sternly warned me: “Quinn, please be careful with him this weekend – he’s coming to an age where he wants to do everything on his own and doesn’t want any influence from adults”. I said, “OK” a little nervously, and wondered if this was going to be a frightening weekend trying to corral an obstinate, high-energy, 7-year-old? Was my memory of the sweet-natured boy I had seen just a few months earlier completely wrong?

Thankfully, my nephew wasn’t nearly as “independent” as I had feared he might have been and we had a wonderful time together. However, he is 7 and just like any 7-year-old, he is at times in need of limits. So the trip offered me a chance to reflect on, and work at implementing healthy limit setting.

Throughout the weekend, I was often stunned by the parallels of a 7-year-old’s behavior, and some of my adult clients that eventually land in rehab. Age seems to know no bounds when limits are needed and whether your child is 7 or 27, healthy limit setting is critical for any child’s developmental, emotional, interpersonal maturity. Here are some thoughts on setting limits for your children:

Children naturally experiment and push boundaries in their quest to mature and learn to be a part of society. Not everything they try will be right every time. Parents are part of their lives to correct them and teach them appropriate behavior. It is, after all, better to learn young the realities and expectations of life than to learn later in a much higher risk situation. I often find very regretful, remorseful, guilt-ridden parents whose children are sadly bouncing from rehab to rehab, wishing they had learned the valuable life-lesson of limit setting early on.

When parents work with their children in setting and enforcing appropriate limits, they teach them skills and tools for a productive life. If you set and maintain limits, your children will learn from your positive discipline and develop their own sense of right and wrong and attitude of self-discipline. Sometimes, we feel like spoiling our children a little is a way to show them love. But do they feel loved? Perhaps, but more importantly, they feel empowered to do as they please. A better sign of love is to see that our children develop positive behavior by consistently following appropriate rules.

1. Set limits and consequences together.

Rules are set best when parents and children set them together. Being a part of the rule-setting process helps them understand the rules and consequences better. Work with your children in a collaborative manner to get the desired behavior that is best for you and them.

2. Show your love by consistent application.

Being a “marshmallow dad” that gives into his children regularly rather than enforcing the rules of good child behavior may seem fun and loving, but it is not showing true love and concern for them. Having them obey rules and face the consequences when they are broken is real love.

3. Make the consequences stick.

When the rule is violated, remind the child of the consequence and make it happen. No matter what. Consistent application gives the child a feeling of security in knowing that your word is real and that you expect hers to be the same.

4. Remember that firmness is not cruelty.

Being firm creates a strong foundation in your relationship with your child. You can be firm but kind. And you should be fair. That is why a clear setting of expectations for child behavior and the consequences – good or bad- is important in this process.

Setting limits shows love for your children. The parent who works with their children to set boundaries and consequences for appropriate child behavior and administers them fairly, firmly, and consistently creates a relationship of trust with them, and helps them develop into responsible and dependable adults.

We are currently offering Phone & FaceTime Sessions at a discounted rate for those financially impacted by COVID-19. Please let us know about your situation and we'll make accommodations for you.

To learn more, click here.

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Individual Counseling in Newport Beach, CA

As licensed Marriage & Family Therapists working in Orange County, CA, we have the privilege of doing therapy with a wide array of individuals struggling with different life challenges.  We feel extremely blessed and honored to have the privilege of journeying alongside people during difficult times of their lives and to offer a safe place to feel heard, understood, respected, and assisted to feel better and find renewed hope.

It takes a lot of courage to reach out and ask for help, and we are so glad you have found us on this website.  At our counseling center, we pride ourselves in being down-to-earth, extremely warm and caring, always fostering a safe place, as well as being highly effective in our treatment outcomes; to give you the best experience in therapy you can find anywhere in Orange County  As licensed therapists, some of the common ways we help our clients include:

As licensed therapists in Orange County, these are some of the common areas we help serve our clients in individual therapy:

Depression & Low Motivation

Anxiety & Trauma

Career Transitions & Job loss

Workplace Stress

Marriage Counseling

Spiritual Challenges

Addiction & Substance Abuse

Codependency & Boundaries

Relationship Struggles

Women’s Issues & Men’s Issues

Infertility Challenges

PTSD

Occupational Issues / Workplace Challenges

Self Esteem & Self Confidence

Sexual Orientation & Sexual Identity

Parenting Challenges & AD/HD

Pornography Addiction

Life can be complex and difficult – We’re here to help you and join with you! Life can be messy sometimes, and often we can feel inadequate in dealing with the challenges and pains that come our way. There are times in our lives when we feel hopeless, a deep sadness, lots of anxieties, worries, and sometimes, we experience a general sense of just feeling lost.

Sometimes, we know why we feel this way – such as a relationship with a loved one that seems to be falling apart, losing a job, or experiencing financial stress, and other times, these feelings seem to just come upon us for no apparent reason. Either way, both can be tremendously painful and make life incredibly hard and even scary.

What we want you to know is that help is available, and you don’t have to feel this way.

Research has confirmed that counseling is highly effective & successful in solving and managing life’s difficulties that cause us emotional pain.

If you’re struggling with:

Relationship challenges that are driving you nuts

Family difficulties that keep getting worse

Job worries or job stresses

Feeling anxious, depressed, and can’t seem to solve it on your own

Feeling lost, hopeless, or can’t imagine a way out

At our counseling center, we are confident that nearly all of life’s challenges can be dealt with and managed in a healthy way that offers people hope, safety, freedom, and peace of mind.

___________________

We are currently offering Phone & FaceTime Sessions at a discounted rate for those financially impacted by COVID-19. Please let us know about your situation and we'll make accommodations for you.

We would be honored to meet with you, hear your story and learn more about what’s going on, so please don’t hesitate to contact us.

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Great information for anyone struggling with our current quarantine and social distancing situation.

MENTAL HEALTH WELLNESS TIPS FOR QUARANTINE

Stick to a routine. Go to sleep and wake up at a reasonable time, write a schedule that is varied and includes time for work as well as self-care.

Dress for the social life you want, not the social life you have. Get showered and dressed in comfortable clothes, wash your face, brush your teeth. Take the time to do a bath or a facial. Put on some bright colors. It is amazing how our dress can impact our mood.

Get out at least once a day, for at least thirty minutes. If you are concerned of contact, try first thing in the morning, or later in the evening, and try less traveled streets and avenues. If you are high risk or living with those who are high risk, open the windows and blast the fan. It is amazing how much fresh air can do for spirits.

Find some time to move each day, again daily for at least thirty minutes. If you don’t feel comfortable going outside, there are many YouTube videos that offer free movement classes, and if all else fails, turn on the music and have a dance party!

Reach out to others, you guessed it, at least once daily for thirty minutes. Try to do FaceTime, Skype, phone calls, texting—connect with other people to seek and provide support. Don’t forget to do this for your children as well. Set up virtual playdates with friends daily via FaceTime, Facebook Messenger Kids, Zoom, etc—your kids miss their friends, too!

Stay hydrated and eat well. This one may seem obvious, but stress and eating often don’t mix well, and we find ourselves over-indulging, forgetting to eat, and avoiding food. Drink plenty of water, eat some good and nutritious foods, and challenge yourself to learn how to cook something new!

Develop a self-care toolkit. This can look different for everyone. A lot of successful self-care strategies involve a sensory component (seven senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell, vestibular (movement) and proprioceptive (comforting pressure). An idea for each: a soft blanket or stuffed animal, a hot chocolate, photos of vacations, comforting music, lavender or eucalyptus oil, a small swing or rocking chair, a weighted blanket. A journal, an inspirational book, or a mandala coloring book is wonderful, bubbles to blow or blowing watercolor on paper through a straw are visually appealing as well as work on controlled breath. Mint gum, Listerine strips, ginger ale, frozen Starburst, ice packs, and cold are also good for anxiety regulation. For children, it is great to help them create a self-regulation comfort box (often a shoe-box or bin they can decorate) that they can use on the ready for first-aid when overwhelmed.

Spend extra time playing with children. Children will rarely communicate how they are feeling, but will often make a bid for attention and communication through play. Don’t be surprised to see therapeutic themes of illness, doctor visits, and isolation play through. Understand that play is cathartic and helpful for children—it is how they process their world and problem solve, and there’s a lot they are seeing and experiencing in the now.

Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and a wide berth. A lot of cooped up time can bring out the worst in everyone. Each person will have moments when they will not be at their best. It is important to move with grace through blowups, to not show up to every argument you are invited to, and to not hold grudges and continue disagreements. Everyone is doing the best they can to make it through this.

Everyone find their own retreat space. Space is at a premium, particularly with city living. It is important that people think through their own separate space for work and for relaxation. For children, help them identify a place where they can go to retreat when stressed. You can make this place cozy by using blankets, pillows, cushions, scarves, beanbags, tents, and “forts”. It is good to know that even when we are on top of each other, we have our own special place to go to be alone.

Expect behavioral issues in children, and respond gently. We are all struggling with disruption in routine, none more than children, who rely on routines constructed by others to make them feel safe and to know what comes next. Expect increased anxiety, worries and fears, nightmares, difficulty separating or sleeping, testing limits, and meltdowns. Do not introduce major behavioral plans or consequences at this time—hold stable and focus on emotional connection.

Focus on safety and attachment. We are going to be living for a bit with the unprecedented demand of meeting all work deadlines, homeschooling children, running a sterile household, and making a whole lot of entertainment in confinement. We can get wrapped up in meeting expectations in all domains, but we must remember that these are scary and unpredictable times for children. Focus on strengthening the connection through time spent following their lead, through physical touch, through play, through therapeutic books, and via verbal reassurances that you will be there for them in this time.

Lower expectations and practice radical self-acceptance. This idea is connected with #12. We are doing too many things in this moment, under fear and stress. This does not make a formula for excellence. Instead, give yourself what psychologists call “radical self acceptance”: accepting everything about yourself, your current situation, and your life without question, blame, or pushback. You cannot fail at this—there is no roadmap, no precedent for this, and we are all truly doing the best we can in an impossible situation.

Limit social media and COVID conversation, especially around children. One can find tons of information on COVID-19 to consume, and it changes minute to minute. The information is often sensationalized, negatively skewed, and alarmist. Find a few trusted sources that you can check in with consistently, limit it to a few times a day, and set a time limit for yourself on how much you consume (again 30 minutes tops, 2-3 times daily). Keep news and alarming conversations out of earshot from children—they see and hear everything, and can become very frightened by what they hear.

Notice the good in the world, the helpers. There is a lot of scary, negative, and overwhelming information to take in regarding this pandemic. There are also a ton of stories of people sacrificing, donating, and supporting one another in miraculous ways. It is important to counter-balance the heavy information with the hopeful information.

Help others. Find ways, big and small, to give back to others. Support restaurants, offer to grocery shop, check in with elderly neighbors, write psychological wellness tips for others—helping others gives us a sense of agency when things seem out of control.

Find something you can control, and control the heck out of it. In moments of big uncertainty and overwhelm, control your little corner of the world. Organize your bookshelf, purge your closet, put together that furniture, group your toys. It helps to anchor and ground us when the bigger things are chaotic.

Find a long-term project to dive into. Now is the time to learn how to play the keyboard, put together a huge jigsaw puzzle, start a 15 hour game of Risk, paint a picture, read the Harry Potter series, binge watch an 8-season show, crochet a blanket, solve a Rubix cube, or develop a new town in Animal Crossing. Find something that will keep you busy, distracted, and engaged to take breaks from what is going on in the outside world.

Engage in repetitive movements and left-right movements. Research has shown that repetitive movement (knitting, coloring, painting, clay sculpting, jump roping etc) especially left-right movement (running, drumming, skating, hopping) can be effective at self-soothing and maintaining self-regulation in moments of distress.

Find an expressive art and go for it. Our emotional brain is very receptive to the creative arts, and it is a direct portal for release of feeling. Find something that is creative (sculpting, drawing, dancing, music, singing, playing) and give it your all. See how relieved you can feel. It is a very effective way of helping kids to emote and communicate as well!

Find lightness and humor in each day. There is a lot to be worried about, and with good reason. Counterbalance this heaviness with something funny each day: cat videos on YouTube, a stand-up show on Netflix, a funny movie—we all need a little comedic relief in our day, every day.

Reach out for help—your team is there for you. If you have a therapist or psychiatrist, they are available to you, even at a distance. Keep up your medications and your therapy sessions the best you can. If you are having difficulty coping, seek out help for the first time. There are mental health people on the ready to help you through this crisis. Your children’s teachers and related service providers will do anything within their power to help, especially for those parents tasked with the difficult task of being a whole treatment team to their child with special challenges. Seek support groups of fellow home-schoolers, parents, and neighbors to feel connected. There is help and support out there, any time of the day—although we are physically distant, we can always connect virtually.

“Chunk” your quarantine, take it moment by moment. We have no road map for this. We don’t know what this will look like in 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month from now. Often, when I work with patients who have anxiety around overwhelming issues, I suggest that they engage in a strategy called “chunking”—focusing on whatever bite-sized piece of a challenge that feels manageable. Whether that be 5 minutes, a day, or a week at a time—find what feels doable for you, and set a time stamp for how far ahead in the future you will let yourself worry. Take each chunk one at a time, and move through stress in pieces.

Remind yourself daily that this is temporary. It seems in the midst of this quarantine that it will never end. It is terrifying to think of the road stretching ahead of us. Please take time to remind yourself that although this is very scary and difficult, and will go on for an undetermined amount of time, it is a season of life and it will pass. We will return to feeing free, safe, busy, and connected in the days ahead.

Find the lesson. This whole crisis can seem sad, senseless, and at times, avoidable. When psychologists work with trauma, a key feature to helping someone work through said trauma is to help them find their agency, the potential positive outcomes they can effect, the meaning and construction that can come out of destruction. What can each of us learn here, in big and small ways, from this crisis? What needs to change in ourselves, our homes, our communities, our nation, and our world?

Please don’t hesitate to reach to us if you’re struggling and would like to schedule an appointment with one of our clinicians.

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4 Ways To Feel More Peaceful Right Now

Feeling anxious and overwhelmed is one of the most difficult feelings in all of life. And now more than ever, we are all feeling these feelings to one degree or another.

If you are feeling anxious right now, I want you to know that you are not alone. The world is experiencing a collective trauma. And one of the hallmark signs of trauma is that the traumatic event is unexpected. So much of what has happened has been unexpected.

But the great news is there are things we can do to help our anxious thoughts and our anxious emotions during this challenging time. Thankfully, we have incredible tools to help, and therefore we have lots of hope.

Here is a quick video where I share 4 easy things you can do right now to begin the process of feeling more peaceful.

I want you to know you’re not alone. Our team of therapists and I are making ourselves available around the clock for anyone feeling anxious and desiring help. Please reach out to me if you’d like to talk to a therapist about how you’re doing.

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How COVID 19 Impacts Marriage?

If you’re married, then might have experienced a challenging time over the last few months with the advancement of COVID-19. For many people, the COVID-19 experience has become a traumatic event triggering heightened emotional stress responses, i.e., flight & flight. Whenever couples are experiencing fight & flight stress responses in a relationship, it can feel emotionally unsafe and wildly conflictual.

A fellow therapist friend, Kerry McCoy, LMFT, and I did a 45-minute podcast on how the worldwide collective traumatic experience of COVID-19 is impacting marriages and what we can do to stay connected to our spouse during this challenging time. We talked about the different responses people have to trauma and how this might show up in marriage.

Kerry and I both practice a type of therapy called Emotionally Focused Therapy with couples and its main focus is to increase the security and sense of safety in relationships; something that is needed more than ever now.

At the end of the podcast, we leave you with 5 Connecting Questions During COVID-19 you can use to engage your spouse in a conversation around how this collective trauma may be impacting them, and how you can get re-connected and find your emotional footing.

**Discounted Phone & FaceTime Sessions available today! Don't let COVID-19 keep you from getting the support you need!

Let’s connect!

[theretreatcounselingcenter]

I recently purchased an iPad with the hopes that becoming increasingly tech-savvy would save me time with work stuff and eliminate the waste of frivolous paper-copies. My partner and I were “going digital”! All great stuff, until I stumbled upon Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja (the iPad was for work — I swear!).

After a few weeks of being obsessed with my new gadget, my wife was becoming increasingly irritated (my wife is one of the most easy-going people I know) at her husband who was now non-present and all consumed with finding the next great app and frantically responding to emails at every free second.

I was struck at how easy it was to become engrossed with my new toy (I mean — business tool!) and I knew things were going sideways when I, shamefully, found myself hurriedly trying to fumble through shutting down or hiding my iPad when I could hear her coming home. Really? Sadly, yes! I was obsessed and I realized my devotion to my new piece of technology was becoming a not-so-great distraction from my relationship and myself.

Later that week, I was out to dinner and as we sat at the table, I peered through the restaurant and I was stunned by all the people starring intently, or keying away rigorously into their smart phones. Texting, playing games, solving puzzles, etc. Sadly, no one was talking to each other. For one family of five sitting close to us, 4 of the family members were using their phones. That saddened me, because I could sense how disconnected and isolated they were from one another.

The verdict is still out whether or not technology can be an addiction, but regardless, like any other addiction, we know technology can serve as a distraction from our ourselves and it can get in the way from having meaningful connections with others. If you’re finding yourself spending large quantities of time being distracted by technology, I encourage to try implementing portions of the below list. I’m still working on it…

1. Take Baby Steps.

We don’t need to do an all-or-nothing; I’m throwing my phone in the river thing. Start small, and work through the anxiety of withdraw by experimenting with short periods of inaccessibility. Although it may feel like you’re life is going to come to an end without your gadget, I promise it won’t.

2. Try Making Saturday a Sabbath.

The weekend is a great time to cut off email and cell phone usage. For many, not having access to your phone for one day will offer you a much-needed refill of mental space so you can be more productive on other days.

3. Set limits.

Set predetermined times throughout your day to check emails and voicemails. For example, commit yourself to checking email and voicemail 3 times per day — that’s it. 9am, 1pm, and 5pm, or whatever works best for you.

4. Eliminate the Non-Essentials.

Lose the RSS feeders and other monthly subscriptions like that blog on perfecting your golf swing. Chances are, they’re just filling your inbox and you’re probably not even reading them.

5. Ask for Help.

Just like any other road to change, we need help along the way. Don’t try to accomplish this by yourself, instead ask a trusted friend or spouse to help keep you accountable to your new limits and boundaries.

6. Learn Moderation & Look Within.

Technology is not bad; it’s a great thing. But like many other things in life, too much can be soul-draining and damaging to us. Play around with introspective ideas and try to get at some underlying reasons why you may have a hard time putting down and taking a break from your technology. Perhaps you fear disappointing someone if you’re not “always” responsive? Or perhaps you feel lonely and using your phone is a distraction against those feelings? Or any other different reasons that may be more applicable to you.

Let me know if this blog feels helpful, or not, and feel free to email with any questions you may have! If technology has become a source of frustration in your family, please reach out to us and we can help you create a family plan on how to use technology for it’s benefits without feeling like it’s stealing your family!

Schedule an Appointment Today

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Work with our highly-skilled team of marriage therapists trained in the most cutting edge and evidenced based marriage counseling approaches; Gottman Method & Emotionally Focused Therapy.

Working with couples and watching relationships grow and blossom is such a gratifying experience. As a licensed Marriage Therapists in Orange County, our education, expertise, and professional training revolve around healing and helping couples become unstuck from the painful patterns that many couples fall in.

We have so much faith in the potential that most couples are able to work through many of their most difficult situations — even the ones that feel certain they have lost all hope. If this is you, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Couples Counseling can be a powerful experience that unlocks newfound hope and happiness.

Being a Couples Counselor in Orange County with a divorce rate close to 70%, we have found it very important to look at struggling marriages within the context of our Orange County culture to makes sense of some of the common marital pitfalls.

Some of the common challenges we help our couples in counseling overcome are:

Affair Recovery; Couples Counseling for Infidelity

Healthy Couples Communication for Marriage

Negotiating Parenting Differences in Marriage

Premarital Couples Counseling

Developing Healthy Sexual Intimacy for Couples

Helping Emotionally Unavailable Partners

Navigating Couples Differences Regarding Finances

Marriage Friend Zone; Feeling Bored in Marriage

Christian Couples Counseling for Christian Marriages

Healing Marriages Impacted from Alcoholism

Pornography & Sex Addiction Couples Counseling

Possible Divorce; Should I Stay, or Should I Go Counseling

Many potential clients are interested in the type of therapy we do. While we are certain there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to helping couples become unstuck, we tend to be inclined to use an eclectic approach of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Psychodynamic Therapy, Gottman Therapy, and Attachment Theory when working with couples.

Many of the couples we have worked with in Couples Counseling have experienced enormous growth, change, and newfound happiness in their marriages. For a brief look at some of my client testimonials, please click here.

We would be honored and privileged to hear more of your story. If you and your significant other are currently in the midst of a relational crisis, or you’re looking to just improve upon your current relationship, please reach out to us via the contact form. We would love to meet you and show you how couples counseling can help you.Working with couples and watching relationships grow and blossom is such a gratifying experience. As a licensed Marriage Therapists in Orange County, our education, expertise, and professional training revolve around healing and helping couples become unstuck from the painful patterns that many couples fall in.

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Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in Newport Beach

Hi my name is Vanessa Cain and I specialize in helping my clients develop healthy relationships with themselves and their partners. I have nearly a decade of experience working with parents, couples and their children.

With intensive training in couples therapy, attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and communication I have cultivated an integrated approach to helping people heal in relationship. Additionally, love to help single people prepare for love and define what they are looking for in a relationship, and as such work as a dating coach too!

Areas of expertise include, couples therapy, mindful parenting, premarital counseling, communication, love addiction, codependency, uncoupling, and attachment theory.

Connect with Vanessa now.

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4 Ways To Feel More Peaceful Right Now

Phone & Skype Sessions available today! Don’t let COVID-19 keep you from getting the support you need!

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5 Ways To Build Trust in Relationships

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Struggling with substance abuse can have devastating consequences on the lives of individuals and their families involved. Through my work as a licensed Therapist in Orange County treating thousands of addicts and alcoholics, I have a clear understanding of what’s needed (and what’s not needed) for individuals and families to recover from the devastation of drugs and alcohol. If you’re tired of the short-term successes you’ve achieved in sobriety, only to relapse again, please contact me. I truly believe freedom from addiction is very achievable with the right tools and the right process.

Therapy & Addiction Counseling

Maintaining sobriety and recovering from drugs and alcohol is an extremely complex treatment process and needs to be treated as such for the best hope of sustained sobriety and recovery. Addiction counseling is an important part in the early stages of the recovery process where people are looking for first-steps & basic tools to maintain sobriety. After these first steps are completed, we can address root-cause underlying issues that initial led to the original addiction

Our philosophy on AA

We are an advocate for AA — for the right person, and believe in the tenants of AA (community, spirituality, honesty, mentorship) are beautiful, life-giving ideas. We also believe that for some people, AA is not the right avenue and other resources need to be explored. Addiction is not what it once was during the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in the mid-20th century. Addiction now is far more complex, and our clinical understanding of addiction can be incredibly important as we look at factors such as attachment issues, emotional intelligence, interpersonal relationships, cognitive distortions, and a myriad of family-of-origin dynamics. The young adults of our modern generations are not the traditional alcoholics that AA was founded upon, and as such, that traditional model of help is not viable for some. Therapy can be a critical adjunct for people recovering from drug & alcohol addiction.

Our work history

Our clinicians have been treating people struggling with addiction issues for many years. In addition to private practice, we have worked at inpatient, and outpatient drug & alcohol facilities where we have had the privilege to get to know thousands of struggling people and their families. If you, or someone you know is struggling with any from of addiction; alcoholism, heroin, sex, or love addiction, we would be honored to meet with you and hear your story. we approach therapy with a fundamental belief that true, lasting change happens in the context of a trusting relationship, and that is what we hope to gain with all our clients.

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Big-T Trauma & Small-t Trauma

Blatant forms of trauma in the family include being subjected to and/or witnessing physical and sexual abuse is considered Big T Trauma. Trauma also occurs in more subtle forms—for example, living with fear on an ongoing basis, such as the fear of not knowing if or when a parent is coming home; or the fear that comes with listening to one’s parents argue night after night; or the fear of not being able to rely on a parent attending a significant event. This type of trauma is called small-t Trauma.To live with chronic fear during the vulnerable childhood and adolescent years—when one is developing beliefs about oneself and the world at large—is traumatic to emotional, psychological and spiritual development.

In addition to the more blatant forms of abuse, these children are often subjected to covert forms of sexual abuse; being called sexual names such as, “whore,” “slut,” or being asked if he or she got “laid” last night and then being laughed at in a humiliating tone; or being exposed to drunken nudity, which often reinforces negative statements to a child about his or her own body.  All small-t Trauma.

It is living with ­broken promises, lying and unpredictability—not knowing what will happen next.

With this type of small-t trauma comes a myriad of feelings, such as:


Fear—of being with an under–the-influence driver; of divorce, or no divorce; that someone will get seriously hurt or die.


Sadness—for the parent not showing up; for what the parent said or didn’t say to the child.


Anger—for broken promises; for the message that the parent’s using is more important than the child; that the parent does not try to quit or is not able to quit.


Embarrassment—for outbursts in front of friends; for the unkempt appearance of the parent; for what the parent said or did in public.


Guilt—for thinking that they are responsible for their parents’ behavior; for having negative feelings for someone they are supposed to love.


Confusion—about why this is all happening and who is at fault.

How does trauma affect addiction?

Stress responses and trauma

There are three types of stress: positive, tolerable and toxic.

Positive stress is associated with moderate short-lived physiological responses, such as the stress that comes with meeting new people, handling frustration, coping with parental limit-setting, etc. Positive stress is an important and necessary aspect of healthy development.

Tolerable stress is associated with physiological responses that could actually disrupt brain architecture, but are relieved by supportive
relationships, among other protective factors. These are stress situations such as the death or illness of a loved one; a frightening
accident; or a natural disaster. Certainly, these types of experiences can have long-term consequences, and they often become traumatic, particularly when coinciding with toxic conditions in childhood, which are traumatic in and of themselves. However, such stresses are emotionally and mentally tolerable when they are time-limited and the child has access to supportive people to provide buffering protection.

Toxic stress, the most threatening, is associated with strong and prolonged activation of the body’s stress management systems in the absence of the buffering protection of support. Toxic stress emerges in the face of loss—conditions of extreme poverty; continuous family chaos; persistent emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse; chronic parental depression; persistent parental substance abuse or other manifestations of addiction; and ongoing emotional or physical neglect. Without the protective factors that allow children the space to disengage, they become trauma victims.
Stereotypically, when we think of trauma, what comes to mind are public catastrophic events than can overwhelm an adult. What distinguishes childhood trauma from occurrences like combat stress is simply that the injuries occur to children. “Dear Lord, be good to me,” reads the epigram for the National Children’s Defense Fund. “The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.” A child’s personality and neurology—the little boat he or she must navigate in—are still developing.

When it is not safe psychologically or physically to be the person you are, to own your truth, and what you see and how you feel, then you move into various trauma responses—you fight, you flee or you freeze.
Today we know the body cannot tell the difference between an emotional emergency and physical danger. When triggered, it will respond to either situation by pumping out stress chemicals designed to impel someone to flee to safety or stand and fight.

Trauma is an incident or occurrence that happens inexplicably or without warning. It is categorized as an over whelming life-changing experience. It is typically a physical and/or emotional shock to the very fiber of ones’ being.

Trauma presents an imbalance to our emotional or mental system that is far beyond the norm. Plane crash, automobile fatality, sudden or near death experience or major life alterations can all be considered traumatic whether experienced or witnessed. A person’s response can result in intense fear, helplessness or horror.

Though one may have a substance abuse issue before trauma strikes, trauma often paves the way from abuse to addiction.

Everyone has varying degrees of trauma in their life. Depending on the person and their ability to handle traumatic situations, these experiences can range from shock-wave shivers when re-living the incident to an almost out of body experience due to the lack of acceptance from the event.

Similar to depression, trauma can lead to self medication (prescription or otherwise) to numb the pain in an attempt to dilute the reality of the occurrence; which in turn can lead to dependency and/or addiction.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a very real and professional diagnosis categorized under Anxiety Disorders. One has acute PTSD if the duration of symptoms is less than 3 months, and it becomes chronic if over 3 months.

Some of the emotional symptoms associated with PTSD are:

Avoiding conversations associated with the trauma and not dealing with or confronting emotions and feelings.

Avoiding certain people or places that may arouse memories of the incident.

Feeling detached or estranged from society and friends. Interests, hobbies or activities are considered unimportant and not worth any effort to reincorporate into their life.

Difficulty in having or continuing with intimate relationships. This is especially true if a sexual or physical violation upon the person is the reason for the trauma.

Some of the physical symptoms associated with PTSD are:

Difficulty relaxing, or sleeping soundly.

Easily agitated or irritable.

Mercurial behavior or mood swings

Concentration or commitment to a task is short lived.

Trauma should never be taken lightly, but especially if it involves a child. For a youngster, trauma can be anything from bathroom accidents at home or in school to being picked on for something that might catch the amusement of fellow classmates. It does not have to be of such magnitude as listed above, but to a child many events in their formative years become larger than life and therefore traumatic.

Parents frequently deny that their child has experienced any trauma, or they may down play its significance, or simply wish/believe the child is over it.

Regardless of child or adult, if these traumas are not dealt with in their infancy, it can result in unfinished business and could rear its ugly head later in life in the form of addictive behavior. Remember that self medication is an attempt to take away the pain can easily turn into addiction from wounds that turn into scars.

Most present day addiction therapists and researchers believe that trauma is at the root of most addictions. There are two basic types of trauma. The first is developmental trauma. This is where crucial developmental needs are not met or are thwarted so that crucial development does not happen, or happens in a skewed way.

Some examples of thwarted developmental needs include situations where a parent is too repressive, too critical, or too encouraging of an adolescence’s sexuality so that normal sexual development is interfered with and either does not happen, or happens in an unhealthy direction.

The second type of trauma is event trauma or shock trauma. One example of this kind of trauma is sexual abuse, which usually causes a state of traumatic shock within a person. This type of trauma can cause many problems – such as unhealthy sexual development, symptoms of unregulated emotions, or over stimulation of the nervous system to name a few.

This is why an addiction may come into play – because a person tries to use the addiction to “medicate” or handle the state of traumatic shock to better deal with the challenges of life, or move on with development that needs to happen.

When a person has developmental trauma the situation is somewhat different from shock trauma, but this kind of trauma can also lead to an addiction.

To illustrate this I will use an example of a person addicted to masturbation with pornography. A person could get into this type of addiction because their sexual development was derailed during adolescence and they turned to this type of sex at that time, instead of moving towards beginning to be sexual with other peers during adolescence.

Either type of trauma can interfere with healthy sexual development and can lead to sexual addictions (and/or other addictions) in an attempt to cope with the trauma and its symptoms.

The reality is that there is a closer link between addiction and trauma that is often overlooked.

The way I see it, there are at least 3 distinct stages to addiction:

What happens before drug use.

What happens once the drug use begins.

What happens once a person stops using.

Though we often like to pretend otherwise, trauma is a common part of the first stage.

How do we define trauma?

In this context, trauma is any event that affects a person in a way that can be seen to have caused a substantial, long term, psychological disturbance. The key to this way of looking at trauma is its subjective nature.

Things like divorce, bullying, rejection, or physical injury can all be considered traumatic if the subjective experience can be thought to conform to this definition. Anything counts as long as it leaves a painful emotional mark.

While we’re all pretty adapt at covering up such trauma, the emotional pain often needs to be soothed and a good way to soothe it is with drugs that make it temporarily go away. The first drink of alcohol, or hit of some other drug, will often take care of that.

The reality of early trauma and addiction

Some call the experience of covering up the pain of trauma with drugs “self-medication” (though the term also applies to other situations), some dislike the term, but I think the fact remains that often, emotional pain can begin a search that often leads to risky behaviors and drugs.

I’m nowhere near calling self-medication the only reason for drug abuse as some others do, but I think it’s an important factor and one that can’t be ignored. As the stigma of emotional pain, or emotional responding in general, is reduced, people’s ability to deal with such pain in a healthy way should lead to a reduction in seemingly helpful, but ultimately self-destructive behaviors.

The ignored reality about addiction is that it often has an origin in behavior and unfortunately, trauma is often that starting point.

There is a fairly common phenomenon where trauma can lead to addiction and addiction leads back to trauma.

A survivor of trauma is at a significantly greater risk of developing some type of addiction and the reverse is also true.

At The Retreat Counseling Center, all of our licensed therapists are specialized in treating trauma.  Please contact us today if you’re looking for help overcoming your own trauma.