Author: VKM

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Mental Health

Tips to Manage Post-Holiday Blues

Holiday Feelings

For many of us, the holidays are a time of mixed feelings. Whatever our family situation looks like – whether we’re surrounded by loved ones, celebrating with friends, or in solitude – most of us tend to revisit our feelings about ourselves and our families of origin this time of year.

If we live in the northern hemisphere, nature supports us to spend time indoors, as well, through colder weather and shortened daylight hours. As we know, time spent indoors and in darkness tends to bring out the blue notes.

Paused in our normal routines, we might be eating more, exercising less, suddenly more or less social than we’re accustomed to, as well.

The activity of the holidays leads inevitably towards an afterward time of interiority and pause. Reflection on what has come before, and preparation for what we imagine or hope will come next.

Whether our feelings during the end of the year are positive or painful, it’s a good idea to remember and validate for ourselves that the holidays are a big deal. Even joy, togetherness, connection, and celebration can be a lot to hold. When they’re over, we end up with a lot to process.

What Are Post-Holiday Blues?

There’s a phenomenon called the “post-holiday blues”. Post-holiday blues are temporary feelings that set in after the holidays are over, triggered by returning to normal life and starting a new year after a period of holiday intensity.

Post-holiday blues can include loneliness, sadness, flare-ups of low self-esteem, and a desire to check out of reality. Self-destructive, distracting patterns of behavior can show up. We may realize we’re avoiding our feelings.

These January blues can easily spread to one’s thoughts about the upcoming year, giving us a false expectation of what’s to come based on feeling depleted, let down, or moody now.

If you find yourself with a case of post-holiday “meh” this January, don’t worry. You’re not alone – it’s just the blues. Like all symptoms and struggles, your feelings are knocking at your door, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Times of melancholy are always an invitation to greater self-intimacy – some valuable get-to-know-you time spent with yourself.

What Triggers Post-Holiday Blues?

For some people, post-holiday blues kick in when we start missing the positive feelings associated with the holidays. If you tend to look forward to and enjoy the energy of the holidays, you might simply be feeling disappointed and let down that they’re over.

The inner child, the one inside us who gets excited about celebrations, presents, sweets, magic, and fun, can easily be a source of sadness once the holidays have concluded.

If this is you, the cure lies in connecting with your inner child nature, helping her understand how life works, and that there will be other positive experiences coming soon in the future. Reassurance that it’s perfectly natural and okay with you (speaking to the inner child from the point of view of the inner parent inside you) to feel like this now is sometimes all that’s needed.

On the positive side, the inner child is easily cheered by small pleasures of human life – going for a sloshy walk in rain boots, collecting leaves and pebbles, and getting out into the momentum of life is often enough. Knowing that it’s your inner child who’s sad about the end of a bright time and that all she needs is some cheering up, may be enough to turn the tide.

Love, Guilt, and Frustration: Those Family Feelings

For many of us, the holidays bring up very complicated feelings that we aren’t able to fully process until we’re back in our lives again. Once we have space, time, and enough privacy, the feelings we couldn’t afford to feel in the moment come to us to be felt.

Things like seeing family members who for whatever reason have the effect of making us feel bad about ourselves, re-exposure to triggering family dynamics and old roles, being around alcohol or other drugs, and the pressure and stress to join together as a family unit again without too much friction can create a lot of tension in the body.

Pent-up, suppressed frustrations about even little petty family squabbles can easily turn inward into depression. We start telling ourselves there’s something wrong with us, rather than listening to the small but important voices within who are still feeling angry, hurt, or upset about all the “little things” that happened during the holidays.

If this is you, validate that you have every right to feel anger. As long as you don’t lash out at people, anger is just information and boundaries, it’s not anything bad about you. Women especially often need help knowing anger is normal, and that we are not alone in feeling irritation or even anger when having contact with family members.

If we don’t understand anger, we feel guilty. Anger isn’t the opposite of love, and doesn’t mean we’re bad people. Anger is just information about the edges of ourselves, where we need help having healthy separateness.

We’re all in the same boat ultimately. Everyone feels anger and frustration when needs aren’t met, and when boundaries are crossed, intentionally or unintentionally. Most of us also feel bad about it because we don’t want to hurt our loved ones or make them feel bad either.

If you’re experiencing that guilt-anger-love hangover this season, see if you can be kind to yourself about the fact that you’re angry, and don’t make a negative self-image out of it. Instead, try a “just like me” statement to soothe yourself.

Just like me, people all over the world struggle with loving their families and also needing to have a separate self

Just like me, people all over the world feel angry and guilty around their families sometimes

What Are Some Facts About Individuals Experiencing Post-Holiday Blues?

As a seasonal, time-specific kind of depression, post-holiday blues haven’t been extensively studied, but some studies on the effects of the holidays do exist. One review of holiday-related studies concludes that while the holidays themselves aren’t associated with a change in mental health status for most, the season is followed by a noticeable rise in people experiencing dysphoria, or low moods.

It is also very likely that seasonal affective disorder is at play in the phenomenon as well, at least in the northern hemisphere, as the holidays mark the start of the winter season.

Those who experience post-holiday blues may be able to link them to the after-effects of stress, related to weeks of seasonal shopping, preparation and managing of group gatherings, increased eating and drinking, disruption of normal routines, the impacts of air travel and driving, being a guest or hosting guests, and in general, revisiting family dynamics.

When Are Post-Holiday Blues Considered Serious?

The post-holiday blues are most likely a passing, temporary mood disorder. You can expect that you will regulate and reset your normal mental health status within a few weeks. Your body, emotions, and mind just need some time to process everything that happened, feel the feelings, and make space for the next thing.

On the other hand, for people who already struggle with depression, the post-holiday blues can set off a bout of more serious blues. If you tend towards depression to begin with, it’s important to look out for the possibility of post-holiday blues turning into a more serious episode.

If you have a self-care program that normally helps you stay well in your heart and mind, such as an exercise regime, regular contact with loving friends, and so on, it would be wise to get that program back in place sooner rather than later after the holidays.

For women with a history of addiction, it’s important to take the post-holiday blues more seriously as well, for the simple reason that they can represent a relapse trigger. As women who didn’t feel good in our skins without substances to help us cope, we’re always a little more vulnerable than most to getting sucked back into negative patterning.

Proactively going to meetings, refreshing our commitment to sobriety, and making sure we connect with other people who will understand and accept us for exactly how we feel is key during this time.

Tips for Managing Post-Holiday Blues

1. This, Too, Shall Pass

The post-holiday blues too shall pass. Even if your wholehearted goal was to stay depressed, one day you would still wake up feeling different – a little more lively, awake, curious, and lighthearted. It’s just how we are.

Remember that the animal within you, the child within you, who loves life and wants to find out what happens next, will most likely get you through this phase once you’ve had a chance to feel the feelings and process everything you need to process. It’s a natural thing and you’ll get through it.


2. Stay Connected With People Who Get It

If you can think of anyone in your world who will get what you’re going through and be nice to you about it without encouraging you to stay stuck in victimization, call them and tell them how you’re feeling. Hear their holiday stories as well. If you speak it out (to the right people), you can send your suffering gently on its merry way.


3. Exercise

Exercise is nature’s antidepressant. You can’t stay depressed and have a good exercise routine at the same time. If you choose to exercise, the blues will have a hard time sticking around.


4. Go Outside

Go outside every day, no matter what the weather is, and whether you feel like it or not. Just 20 minutes a day walking outside will suffice. If it helps, set a short-term goal that’s easily achieved, like “Every day for 7 days straight, I will walk for 20 minutes in my neighborhood” rather than worrying about it forever. After the first 7 days, you may want to extend but don’t evaluate until you complete the 7 days.


5. Green Time Not Screen Time

If you can, get out in nature. If no nature is accessible, get to the greenest freshest zone you can find. The natural world lifts our spirits, reminds us of our belonging to all of our lives, and restores our liveliness. The beneficial impacts of nature have been documented by studies galore, but also you can just feel it for yourself. This is opposed to screen time, which has documented negative effects on mental health, which you can also feel for yourself.


6. Sleep It Off

Get enough sleep, and if you need it, let yourself sleep in when you can. Do less, and lower the expectations just for now, if you can do that without swinging into too much self-indulgence. Moderation is key, but don’t make war on the body for showing the symptoms of depression. If you need to be soft and slow, find ways to do that comfortably, cozily, and kindly. (This might seem like it runs counter to the exercise recommendation, but it doesn’t. Do both. Get tired through exercise and then rest fully).


7. Stay Away From Social Media

As everyone knows by now, social media makes people feel terrible. Stay off it. Consider something like a social media fast for 12 days straight. As a trade-off, allow other forms of (non-screen time) entertainment, like reading paper books.

May your New Year come with many gifts, dear reader. Sending you all our love for a bright and healthy 2024!

Categories
Co-Occurring Disorders

Co-occurring Disorders: PTSD and Alcoholism

What Is PTSD and Why Does It Develop?

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a very serious, painful condition that can develop when we are exposed to something too intense for the human psyche.

As the name indicates, PTSD develops after going through an incident or series of extremely stressful incidents. PTSD is commonly diagnosed alongside alcoholism and other substance addictions as a co-occurring disorder.

PTSD is a risk for people who are exposed to war, sexual assault, child abuse, violence, poverty, and car accidents, among other things. It’s not uncommon for people involved in these kinds of events to come away with shattered nervous systems.

A shattered nervous system creates a life of acute personal misery, of constantly being stuck in a state of high stress. People with shattered nervous systems very often turn to alcohol, drugs, and other self-destructive behaviors out of desperation to modulate their inner experiences.

Trauma can also come from repeated, long-term exposure to less acute but still very damaging and still life-threatening conditions, such as what happens in childhood if we are not appropriately cared for at all levels of our being.

Many experiences that are considered part of a normal childhood are trauma risks for human beings. Attachment trauma – when we do not have enough of a psychologically healthy and secure bond with a parent – is very widespread. Certainly sexual, physical, and psychological harm and neglect of childhood emotional needs are demonstrably damaging to human development.

All in all, PTSD and chronic trauma are epidemic among women, operating side by side with addiction to cause severe suffering across America.

The Problem With Traumatic Stress

All the above-mentioned situations are damaging to women because they are extremely stressful. Stress is a natural biological response that gets activated in us at the pre-conscious bodily level when something potentially dangerous or harmful is taking place.

Stress operates more or less the same way in all mammals – heart rate increases to pump blood into our muscles, we’re flooded with adrenaline, cortisol, and other body chemicals, and we breathe rapidly to increase oxygen levels.

Stress is natural and life-protective, but it’s not healthy to be in a state of stress for longer than a few moments or it damages the body and nervous system. Many important bodily processes, like digestion, healing, learning, and psychological development, are disturbed and put on pause while we’re in a state of stress, and if we don’t exit the stress state quickly enough, it leaves lasting wounds in the body and nervous system.

Psychologically, stress disrupts our empathy, our higher mental functioning, and certainly our creativity, pleasure, and joy, replacing our humanity with emergency mode. No one is their real or best self while in a state of stress. So it’s very important that stress is a temporary state with a clear ending, and that after the stressful incident, we are allowed and able to float back down to more whole, embodied, relaxed states of being.

We need to relax again for our naturally loving, creative, and calm human nature to re-inhabit our bodies and continue with the process of growing up into the wonderful selves we’re here to be.

How Can Trauma and PTSD Lead to Problems With Alcohol?

For women who develop PTSD, a return to relaxation and feelings of safety never really happens. We stay stuck in the nightmarish, surreal, hyper-stressed condition of perceiving danger everywhere. This also means that our lives are on pause and our human development is arrested in some ways.

To be able to release the stress response, all women need time, space, and the opportunity for physical, and emotional release. We also need help making sense of the experience, and integrating it into our understanding of ourselves and the world.

Many of us do not get that time. Instead, the stress response gets trapped in the body, where it becomes a source of living hell of permanent physical and emotional distress.

People with trauma are at exceptionally high risk of addiction, including alcoholism. Why? Because we need something to help us cope.

PTSD is characterized by intrusive obsessive thoughts, disturbing memories and flashbacks, nightmares, and night terrors, and feelings of extreme dread, helplessness, anger, and shame. It is one of the worst experiences known to mankind.

How Can Alcohol Problems Lead To Trauma and Problematic Relationships?

Tragically, people who have alcohol addiction also are likely to expose themselves to more and more traumatizing situations.

Alcohol numbs our higher functioning, and leads women towards emotional and physical harm, as can happen when driving under the influence or entering into risky sexual situations because of lowered inhibitions and being in the wrong places at the wrong times.

There is a high correlation between domestic violence and alcohol, as well, on both sides of the equation. Many abused women use substances to deal with their victimization.

We will discover upon getting sober just how many terrible situations we have endured and survived. And while our conscious mind has been numbed into forgetting, our nervous system remembers forever what happened to us.

Our trauma is waiting for us to heal it. The return to warm, connected safety that never happened still needs to happen. The good news is, no matter how long ago the events that damaged us were, our return to safety can happen now, with some help through trauma-informed treatment.

Treatment for Alcohol and PTSD

If you have trauma, what your soul and body need is a chance to heal it. Alcohol is the opposite of that. For people who have PTSD, alcohol is a misleading solution, one that works in the short term and makes everything worse in the long term.

All trauma symptoms are worsened by alcohol – anxiety, dread, anger, panic, and the desperate urge to flee one’s own nightmarish experience are increased by the presence of alcohol.

The restoration of peace, goodness, and safety inside yourself is possible, but not as long as you’re drinking. That’s why it’s very important if you have alcohol addiction to receive help for it.

Alcoholism is notoriously tricky to beat and almost impossible to conquer alone. You don’t have to do it alone, because there are many resources and loving people who will help you recover. After all, it’s personally meaningful for them to help other women out of the nightmare that they also lived through.

Villa Kali Ma takes our mission of healing women very seriously. We know the misery inside and out, we know the path to healing and the joy that’s possible even after living in hell. If you’re seeking help for PTSD and alcoholism, think about whether you might want to come to start your trauma-healing journey with us. We’d love to have you.

Categories
Co-Occurring Disorders

Alcohol and Depression in Women

What Is Depression?

Depression is the clinical word for feeling very down, low, or blue. Depression can feel like our life force has been drained out of us: we have no energy, we feel sad and hopeless, with a dark outlook.

Temporary depression can be a perfectly normal response to difficult chapters of life, so it doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong with you. Some people argue that depression is a natural reaction to a deeply unwell world.

Depression can be an important part of grieving, recovering from abuse, and waking up to who you are and want to be in this world. Depression is a messenger from the soul like all other symptoms and doesn’t have to be treated as a completely bad thing.

That said, depression is tricky and we can also get trapped in depression in a way that doesn’t serve us. Depression may be a signal from the soul, but we often need help from other people to figure out what it’s trying to tell us!

Depression Is Treatable

Perhaps unsurprisingly, depression is widespread in contemporary life. Many people meet the diagnostic criteria of the so-called spectrum of “depressive disorders.” Depressive disorders can become dangerous because of the link to suicidal feelings, so they are important to pay attention to.

The most important thing to understand about depression is that it is very responsive to help. Simple changes, for example in habits of thought, diet, and lifestyle can go a long way with depression.

Depression affects the body, mind, and emotions in equal measure, so you have many ways of changing your life to feel better: through exercise, training yourself to think better thoughts about yourself and the world, and prioritizing positive people and activities that fill you with joy, for example.

With time, you may even come to value your depression as a way of deepening your relationship with yourself, as it is known in the world of psychotherapy as a call to go inward to get to know the real you. In other words, when you’re living out of alignment with who you are in your deepest nature, that tell-tale depression will pop up to let you know it.

All of that said, depression is a formidable dragon to slay – it’s best to get help on the quest, in the form of kind, knowledgeable people who can help you because they understand the nature of the beast. You don’t have to do it alone.

Symptoms of Depression

People don’t always realize that they’re depressed while it’s happening, but there are a couple of clues that can help you catch it.

Depression is characterized by certain types of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When you’re depressed your thoughts will be more negative, gloomy, and doom-oriented, usually with a kind of “what’s the point of trying, it will always be this way” vibration.

When you are thinking thoughts that make you feel demoralized, beaten down, and hopeless, those are depression thoughts. It’s important to understand depressed thoughts as distortions: they are interpretations of reality, not facts.

Depressed thoughts can feel logical and true to us, but they’re full of assumptions about a future we cannot possibly predict, including obvious fallacies like, I will always feel the same as I do right now. We also tend to interpret other people’s feelings and behaviors towards us with a negative slant, without even noticing that we’re doing that.

The emotional tones that go with depression are a mixture of sadness, being unable to face things, a feeling of “I don’t have what it takes to get through this”, low self-esteem, and hidden, often unrecognized anger.

We can feel tired, like our bodies are extra heavy, as though we have no vitality in us that could be used to move or get something positive going for us.

Behaviorally, we might decide to skip, cancel last minute, or even totally stop doing positive, self-loving, and self-caring behaviors. Staying connected with people, hobbies, eating well, exercising, and self-care activities that normally make us feel good are at risk when we are depressed (these are also the things that will help us feel better again if we start doing them again).

How Does Alcohol Affect a Woman’s Mood?

Alcohol creates depression. It is classed as a “depressant” substance for a reason. It also exacerbates pre-existing depression.

Although when depressed we may temporarily feel better through self-medicating with alcohol, the starting state of depression will be far worse after the effects of inebriation wear off. We often don’t see the connection between depression and our alcohol use, but the correlation is a strong and direct one.

Does Depression Drive You to Drink?

Even though alcohol makes depression worse, many women who start drinking to excess were depressed as a starting condition. It’s not rocket science – if you feel bad all the time, you may get roped into using substances as a way to cope.

So yes, depression may drive you to drink. If you have a disordered relationship with alcohol, you can be fairly sure that underneath the desire to drink lies a hurt self full of negative thoughts and feelings, who is actually in need of love and kind attention.

What Is the Relationship Between Depression and Binge Drinking?

Depression is a direct biological effect of binge drinking, part of the damage that alcohol does to the body. Since binge drinking is also connected to self-destructive behavior and making poor decisions, there is a secondary effect, which is that the life we wake up to after drinking too much is usually more depressing than it would be without the impacts of alcohol.

Drinking too much damages relationships, careers, and the things in life that give joy. Sooner or later alcohol erodes our native ability to feel happy in our skin.

What Should You Do if You’re Struggling With Alcohol and Depression?

If you’re struggling with alcohol and depression at the same time, first of all, our heart goes out to you. You’re truly not the only one, this is a widespread problem and there are solutions to get your natural life force and happiness back.

If this is you, it’s best to get some kind of help that will address the destructive behaviors associated with alcohol and will also help you meaningfully get at the emotional and mental pain you’re carrying, that is causing you to seek relief through substance addiction.

The twin burdens of trying to stop drinking and also trying to face down depression can be too much to handle for most women without someone to be in your corner and help you figure it all out.

And there’s no shame in that. The cure for pain lies within you, but it is in connection to other people that you can learn to activate that for yourself.

If you’re looking for treatment or a holistic approach that can address your alcohol use and your depression at the same time, and you like the idea of a positive, whole-woman approach, Villa Kali Ma could be the right place for you. We’d love to help you, sister.

Categories
Co-Occurring Disorders

Co-occurring Disorders: Trauma and Anxiety

What Is Trauma?

The word trauma is used a lot these days! Well, good.

Why is that good? Because trauma is the elephant in the room. Trauma is what underlies all the things that are truly hard about human life.

Trauma is why people treat each other badly. Trauma is why people become addicts, and why the ego defense mechanisms we all have, and through which we hurt each other every day, are necessary in the first place. Trauma creates psychopaths, victimizers, and victims.

Let’s face it, humanity, we are not ok. We’re mentally ill, socially isolated, self-destructive, violent, addicted, and disconnected. Whether I’m coping a little better or a little worse than the person next to me, the fact remains that I’m coping.

Coping with what? A wounded soul.

The Wound

In the mental health context, trauma means psychological wounding.

There are biological parts of trauma – the permanently keyed-up nervous system, the numbing and dissociating, the terrible, indescribable dread.

The body creates these sensations, the way that your screen creates a TV show. Through tiny chemical interactions and electromagnetic signals firing on and off, a message, an experience, a whole show is transmitted to you through the wiring of your nervous system and brain.

But what is the trauma show that your body is broadcasting? Is it a feel-good rom-com, a story of human triumph, a Hallmark channel movie?

Nope, it’s a horror show, a surreal nightmare. How do you feel when you watch a scary movie? That’s right, afraid.

What Is Anxiety?

The clinical word for fear is anxiety. Like all emotions, fear runs a spectrum from soul-annihilating terror to vague, floaty unease.

Anxiety can be so intense as to represent a serious interruption to a person’s ability to live their life and participate in the world. When that’s the case, doctors and psychologists say this person has an anxiety disorder.

The anxiety-disordered person may be given habit-forming anxiolytic medications or, if they’re lucky, steered towards the many holistic solutions for anxiety (yoga, meditation, diet, vigorous exercise, hypnotherapy, time in nature, and creative hobbies are just a few of the widely available options that help with anxiety).

The question might still be asked, though, why are we anxious in the first place? What are we so afraid of?

Why is the body acting as though this is a life-or-death situation when all it is is a phone call from someone I haven’t talked to in a while? Why does my heart pound like I’m in the deep end with the shark from Jaws when someone asks me a question in a work meeting that I wasn’t prepared for? Why can’t I stop thinking, why can’t I breathe deeply, why can’t I relax?

I’ll tell you why: trauma. That’s right – trauma and anxiety are very, very closely related.

How Do Trauma and Anxiety Interact?

Trauma and anxiety are so close as to almost be the same thing. Traumatization, when it shows up at clinical levels, is diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which used to be classed as an anxiety disorder until it was decided that traumatization deserves its category.

The difference is really that anxiety is a key component of the trauma experience, but not the only aspect of trauma. Anxiety stands alone as a diagnostic category of its own, as a certain flavor of experience that may or may not be mixed with the other aspects of traumatization.

However the distinctions between diagnostic categories are blurry, and the phenomenon of “co-occurring disorders” – in which you qualify for more than one diagnosis – is widespread.

When you throw substance abuse into the mix, things become even more complicated, as substance use creates many problems in the human experience, such as depression, anxiety, brain damage, loss of empathy, and psychosis. In other words, substance abuse creates effects that would earn you a mental health diagnosis if it wasn’t coming from the substance abuse.

Trauma and anxiety are both about fear, and they’re reflections of a tragic aspect of human experience: our inability to feel safe after we were exposed to something damagingly scary that we never quite got over.

How Does Trauma Lead to Anxiety?

When people are exposed to life-threatening events, it shocks the human nervous system. A lot of the time, we can release the shock out of our systems, provided that the event is not too intense, and doesn’t keep happening over and over again.

We can get over a shock, even a big one if we have time, space, and support to feel the feelings, make sense of what happened, and if we come out of the experience knowing that even though that bad thing happened, we are still good, loved, worthy, capable, connected to our loved ones, and safe in this world.

Suppose instead you go through an event and you have no support, connection, love, and understanding to help you make sense of it. In that case, you will likely form one of the following conclusions: this is somehow my fault, I am bad, this happened because of something I did or didn’t do, and I have to figure out how to live differently so that this never happens again. And since I can’t quite figure out how I could have stopped it, it’s at risk of happening again, right now, right here, any time, any place. This is a threat forever. 

Whatever the origin, trauma leads to anxiety, because both trauma and anxiety are about having lost your ability to feel fully safe.

What Is Trauma-Induced Anxiety and How Can I Heal It?

Trauma-induced anxiety is anxiety sourcing from shocking experiences you went through at some point in your past. You most likely do not fully remember the events consciously, but the body remembers them and recreates the memories even when you’re in a different situation entirely, sometimes in baffling and exasperating ways.

The symptoms are the same as other forms of anxiety, effects as rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, nervousness, tension, sleep problems, sweating, and trembling. You probably also have some kind of rapid, obsessive, or intrusive thoughts, and feel unsettled, uneasy, full of dread, or even panic.

Anxiety is a symptom of something serious that needs to be healed at the root cause level. The good news is, it can be healed. Yes, it takes some effort, but the difference between living life with a relaxed nervous system versus a keyed-up one is worth however long it takes to restore yourself to sanity.

Villa Kali Ma’s New Offering for Women With Trauma: The Retreat

More and more is learned every day about how to help the human body, mind and spirit recover from traumatization. Wonderful new healing therapies and approaches are offered at more and more facilities.

Villa Kali Ma’s own new residential trauma treatment program, The Retreat, is one option you have available to you if you’re thinking of getting some help for your trauma-induced struggles with life.

The Retreat is offered in service for women who want to retrieve their lives from the nightmare of traumatization, to instead discover how possible it is to create lives of peace, meaning, and human connection.

Categories
Co-Occurring Disorders

Co-occurring Disorders: Trauma and Depression

What Is Depression?

When we’re depressed, we have a low mood, coupled with negative thoughts about ourselves and the world. We may feel very heavy-hearted and sad, as the old word for depression, “melancholia”, captures.

Depression can feel like we’re over-grieving without even knowing what we’re so blue about, maybe even grieving our own lives or who we used to be. We can feel isolated, still, and broken.

It is not unusual if we’re depressed to start to think about our own death. Even if we don’t think we would ever act on it, if we have some degree of longing to exit our life experience because we have no hope of ever being happy, that’s depression.

When we’ve got it bad, depression interferes with our ability to live our lives. The presence of depression and its signature bad feelings and low energy can make it very hard to complete our necessary life tasks. Seemingly simple things like participation in work and family life can feel impossible! If ignored for too long, depression worsens to an active desire to harm and even kill ourselves.

Depression is a symptom of deep heartsickness, and it can come from many things. One starting point of depression is trauma.

How Are Depression and Trauma Related?

Trauma leaves a tragic legacy of unresolved fear, anger, and helplessness in the nervous systems of affected people.

What is recorded in the nervous system as biological information is experienced by us subjectively as our lives, who we are and what are our life stories. When trauma has shaped us, we feel and think about our lives through the lens of dysregulated, imbalanced states: deep disconnection, anxiety, shame, suppressed rage, unworthiness, loneliness, and a profound lack of safety.

The trauma response is biological – it feels like death to the mammal you are because trauma is related to your natural, instinctual gifts for survival and self-protection at the deepest levels of your body and being.

When something we lived through activates our survival instincts into high gear, and we never quite get the opportunity to fully complete and resolve that experience and return to true, total safety, we may struggle with trauma symptoms until we finally have the chance to do so.

One clue of the relationship between depression and trauma lies in the fact that depression carries a strong note of helplessness, which is the essence of the trauma experience.

Depression is anecdotally sometimes called “anger turned inwards”. In the case of trauma-generated depression that is literally true. The lingering feelings of life-protecting anger (think mama bear protecting cub) that were once a natural biological response to extreme boundary violation or life threat, turn toxically against the self.

The more trauma is researched and understood, the more it looks to be the case that most mental health problems originate in, or at the very least are inextricably interwoven with the phenomenon of traumatization.

How Is Depression Treated?

Depression can be treated in a lot of ways, so think about your values and what matters to you, as you will probably be able to find help that fits to your best and highest nature and beliefs if you look around a bit. From yoga to functional medicine, art therapy to somatic experiencing, logotherapy to plant medicine, many different avenues to healing from this particular kind of pain exist.

Quite commonly in the mainstream, people with depression are given prescriptions for anti-depressants. Many voices within the mental health field represent the point of view that anti-depressants are not a good solution for many reasons, so it is wise to inform yourself before necessarily taking that route. If you are curious to evaluate this for yourself, a good starting point resource may be the website Mad in America, which takes a critical look at whether or not psychotropic medications are delivering the benefits they are advertised as delivering.

Regardless of your decision about whether or not to medicate, depression is beneficially supported by many other paths as well. Cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches you to think better thoughts, Parts Work and other trauma modalities help you feel safe and valuable again, and the many tried and true forms of traditional psychotherapy have helped many women before you.

Finally, a healthy lifestyle, food choices, and exercise should not be underestimated or overlooked when treating depression, as these are nature’s most powerful allies for returning your body to the land of the living.

What Should I Do About Feelings of Depression?

If you’re struggling with depression, the first thing we urge you to do is stop blaming yourself for it. No one wants to be depressed or get depressed on purpose. This is a case for compassion, not criticism! That said, take it seriously. It is causing more harm than you probably are in a condition to fully see.

You are not alone if you have depression. Even though our very disconnected society makes it hard for us to have those conversations, the truth is that many, many other people also deal with the challenges of this particular soul sickness.

On the positive side, many people who know what depression is like have found viable, joyful paths out of it, and live happily enough on the other side. You can too.

It is a good idea to get help. It is very hard to cure depression from within the experience because having positive, kind attention is a human necessity to even see ourselves and understand what’s going on.

Once you’ve had enough help from another person, you will know how to handle it on your own most of the time, and you don’t have to worry about becoming dependent on therapy. In the beginning of figuring out how to get out from under a depression, kind, compassionate, smart help is key.

The nervous system learns what safety and balance are mainly through the mechanism of mirror neurons, that co-regulate us to the nervous system of someone who’s not in a state of trauma, so just being around other people is a big part of healing.

If you are struggling with depression and trauma, you may want to get support from us here at Villa Kali Ma, at our new treatment center, The Retreat! We have opened the doors of this very special trauma-focused treatment center so women can have a safe, beautiful space to reside while they turn over a new leaf. Consider it – we’d love to have you.

Categories
Alcohol Addiction

Alcohol and Domestic Violence in Women

What Is the Link Between Substance Use and Domestic Violence?

Domestic violence, also called Intimate Partner Violence, is closely linked to substance use. Where substance use disorders thrive, so does domestic violence.

Domestic violence includes any behavior or action that takes place in the context of an intimate relationship, which creates harm. This can mean physical harm and sexual violence, as well as emotional harm.

Forms of bodily assault like hitting, slapping, and throwing objects are obvious examples of domestic violence. Forced sexual intercourse, as well as emotionally violent behaviors like controlling another person through monitoring or isolating them from friends, family, and help also counts as partner abuse.

Studies on the topic are difficult to conduct due to the known underreporting of domestic abuse. Domestic violence is estimated to affect 1 in 10 women in America.

If you are experiencing domestic violence it’s important to understand that help is available and that it is possible to find support to remove yourself from that situation. If you’re reading this article for yourself, please consider consulting the domestic violence hotline for direct help with your situation.

Understanding Alcohol Addiction and Misuse

Not everyone who uses substances is also violent. Abusers sometimes explain away their behavior as owing to alcohol or substances but that is not a complete understanding of the nature of the problem. It is true, however, that tendencies towards violent expressions of anger are made worse by substances.

Drugs and alcohol distort people’s thinking and bring out tendencies in behavior that are already in place before substances make these tendencies more dangerous and out of control. Alcohol and drugs are disinhibiting, removing the ability to refrain from impulses that we normally wouldn’t yield to. Where there is a pre-existing pattern of violent tendencies and/or a history of having been abused, these patterns are severely aggravated by substance use.

Alcohol Use Disorder is a clinical umbrella term that covers a spectrum of alcohol-related problems. The range is from those who misuse alcohol (drink to excess, to the point of creating health or social consequences) periodically, to those who are chemically dependent on alcohol, to those who have the full disease of alcoholism, which includes serious degradation and damage to the body, mind, and life of the individual.

Generally, alcohol abuse leads towards dependence, and any alcohol use at all tends, in the main, to lead more quickly or more slowly toward the eventual condition of addiction.

Signs that you have an alcohol use disorder or may have one soon are:

  • you drink despite negative consequences to your life
  • you have cravings and strong urges to drink
  • you have withdrawal symptoms such as trembling hands after stopping drinking
  • you are losing control over your use, such that you drink more in amount or frequency than you mean to, can’t stop, or can’t stay stopped
  • you are “restless, irritable, and discontent” when not drinking, and need to drink to feel normal

What Is the Prevalence of Domestic Violence and Alcohol Addiction?

According to existing studies on the subject, substance abuse is correlated with bringing out dangerous traits, including incidents of intimate partner violence.

A large percentage of those who are violent to their partners also use substances, but not everyone who has a substance use disorder is violent to their partner. Women in the victim role are often also substance users, and women who are abused are more likely to have a substance use disorder than women who are not in an abusive partner relationship.

Men who are violent to their partners are more likely to cause the death of their partner when substance use is also a factor.

What Are the Risk Factors of Alcohol-Related Domestic Violence?

Some factors found to be correlated with alcohol-related domestic violence include:

  • Growing up in a violent household
  • Poverty, unemployment, financial stress
  • Regular use of alcohol to cope with life problems
  • Unplanned pregnancy and family problems
  • Depression and suicidal ideation
  • Anger and hostility
  • A previous history of having been physically abused and/or abusing another person
  • Lacking empathy, antisocial personality traits, aggression
  • Social isolation, disconnection from friends and family
  • Frequent conflict in the relationship
  • A need for excessive control, jealousy, and possessiveness

What Are the Effects of Domestic Violence on Women?

Domestic violence has immediate and long-term effects on women.

In the immediate term, domestic violence impacts women’s health and well-being. The following are the effects of domestic violence on women:

  • Injuries, cuts and bruises
  • Broken bones, damaged organs, and other body parts
  • Sexual trauma and damage to sexual organs
  • Psychological trauma

In the longer term, domestic violence has lasting physical and psychological effects, including:

  • Chronic pain
  • Migraines
  • Sleep disorders
  • Immune system problems
  • Stress
  • Traumatic brain injury
  • Memory problems, problems thinking clearly
  • Depression, anxiety, and PTSD

What Are the Signs of Domestic Violence?

Part of the problem with domestic violence is that women fear the repercussions of speaking up to authorities or even friends or family. Abused women have been taught to expect violence from their partners if they do not keep their secrets and have become used to complying to stay safe.

Women also frequently doubt their own experiences, gaslighting and blaming themselves rather than seeing abuse for what it is. This is what it is, and it’s important not to blame the victim, as becoming excessively insecure, dependent, and frightened is part of the pattern rather than something the woman is doing wrong.

Some signs of being in an abusive relationship include:

  • You feel controlled by your partner
  • Your partner demands that you are always available to them, requiring that you respond immediately to emails, calls, and texts
  • Your partner demands sex or pressures you to have sex, or insists that you get pregnant when you don’t want to
  • Your partner is physically violent with you, and/or uses threats of physical violence to get their way
  • Your partner interferes with, controls, or makes your decisions for you, things like where you spend your money, what you wear, who you see or talk to
  • Your partner is jealous even in innocent situations. Your partner frequently accuses you of cheating or flirting
  • Your partner has frequent and/or sudden outbursts of anger
  • Your partner blames you and makes you responsible for how they feel, especially if they feel jealous or threatened by your independence
  • Your partner threatens, intimidates, and blocks you from making a move to free yourself

Villa Kali Ma Can Assist Women With Alcoholism

If you use alcohol regularly and/or in excess, and you are in a situation where domestic violence is at play, your alcohol use is likely playing a role in keeping you trapped in the situation that is causing you harm.

It is important to know that you are not alone with these troubles and that help exists for you.

Many women who come through our doors needing help for their alcoholism or other substance problems are also fleeing unsafe situations and relationships that have been causing them deep harm at many levels of their being.

Villa Kali Ma is a safe place for women needing refuge and help recovering from destructive tendencies and struggles that are hurting them. We offer mental health, trauma healing, and addiction treatment programs that will help you find the strength to rescue yourself from danger.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8729263/

Categories
Alcohol Addiction

Effects of Alcohol on Women

Why Do Women Face Higher Risks of Alcohol Addiction?

Alcohol has stronger effects on women than on men, due to biological factors like body weight and how much water women’s bodies retain compared to men. These biological distinctions explain why women can tolerate alcohol less easily and will have a higher blood alcohol level than men consuming the same amount of alcohol. Women have a higher likelihood of blacking out from drinking too much and are also more likely to experience hangovers.

What Are the Health Risks for Women Drinking Alcohol?

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, alcohol presents many health risks for women.

Alcohol Addiction

Primary among the health risks for women who are associated with alcohol use is the risk of developing Alcohol Use Disorder, which is the clinical name for a spectrum of conditions ranging from alcohol abuse (drinking too much periodically) to alcohol dependence, to full-blown alcoholism.
Alcohol addiction is a serious, progressive disease with wide-ranging impacts on physical as well as mental health.


Brain Damage

Alcohol may be more likely to result in brain damage in women than in men, according to the hypotheses of some researchers studying the effects of alcohol on women compared to men.

Alcohol-related blackouts, which create gaps in memory, suggest damage to the areas of the brain responsible for memory. Some researchers believe that there is shrinkage of portions of the brain in people who use alcohol beyond what the body can tolerate safely (which is a daily limit of 1 serving of alcohol).


Breast Cancer

Alcohol has been linked to breast cancer. It appears that women who drink one drink daily have a higher likelihood of developing breast cancer compared with those who do not drink that amount, and that chance increases when women drink even more than one drink daily.


Liver Damage

Alcohol is notorious for leading to liver damage, such as cirrhosis, which is what happens when there is permanent liver scarring due to the use of alcohol. Women who regularly drink more than the body can safely process (again, a daily limit of 1 serving of alcohol) also have a higher risk of developing the potentially life-threatening liver condition of hepatitis.


Alcohol and Pregnancy

Drinking during pregnancy is unsafe for the mother and the infant. Known impacts of drinking during pregnancy include fetal alcohol disorder, higher risk of pre-term labor, brain damage, and physical as well as developmental impairment in children.


Heart Disease

Alcohol use over a long period leads to heart disease. Women are at a greater risk of developing alcohol-induced heart disease than men, even when consuming a lower daily amount than men.

All in all, women experience the adverse health effects of alcohol to a greater degree than men do.

Why Should Women Consider Avoiding Alcohol Use Completely?

Some women choose not to drink at all, and an argument can certainly be made for that choice. It is recommended to avoid alcohol completely if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant, are under the age of 21 (underage drinking leads to disruption of normal brain development), taking medications that interact negatively with alcohol, or if you have a physical or mental health condition which is made worse by alcohol, such as anxiety or depression.

What Are the Treatment Programs for Alcohol?

Medically Supervised Detoxification

Alcohol represents a danger to your health during the withdrawal process and can result in death if not done with care. Seizures, delirium, and other complications are often part of the process.
It is wisest to detoxify in a medically supervised detoxification facility, especially if you also use medications of any kind in addition to alcohol, as not enough is known about interactions between alcohol and medications, especially ones that haven’t been on the market for so very long. Medical detoxification facilities have nurses and doctors on staff to monitor your withdrawals and provide medical support where necessary and will be able to intervene if something goes wrong.


Inpatient or Residential Treatment (Rehab)

Alcohol treatment is also offered in Inpatient Treatment Programs. These are your classic rehabilitation facilities, where you check in and receive treatment onsite as a stay-away option, usually for a length of time between one and three months.

Inpatient, also called Residential, is the best level of care in most cases of serious alcohol disorders because the safe, sequestered environment is critical to having a chance to stabilize away from temptations and triggers. These facilities also have trained medical staff onsite.


Outpatient Programs (IOP)

It is also possible to attend a day treatment program while still staying in your home and keeping your work schedule if that is advisable in your case.

Intensive Outpatient Programs offer addiction treatment services several days a week including during evening hours. Depending on how much care makes sense in your case, you may want to enroll in a higher or lower degree of structure and supervision to help you have success.

It’s important to understand that your level of care is something to be assessed by a medical professional. Generally speaking, more structure, safety, and length of treatment are better if it is possible to secure that for yourself, as time helps when healing from substance use.

Villa Kali Ma Can Assist Women With Alcohol Addiction

Villa Kali Ma offers addiction and mental health recovery programs for women who suffer from substance abuse and co-occurring disorders. We offer treatment at all levels of care, so whatever your circumstances, you will likely be able to find a program with us that fits your needs.

At Villa Kali Ma, we heal alcohol problems alongside underlying mental and emotional struggles, including traumatization, which is a very common problem for women.

Our facilities are located in sunny Southern California close to San Diego. At the core of our program, we believe in the health and individuality of each woman, and that there are many paths back to wholeness. For that reason, we offer a range of holistic modalities alongside our core treatment program.

References:

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15303629/

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/women-and-alcohol

Categories
PTSD Treatment

Women With PTSD: Signs, Symptoms, Tips, and Treatment

PTSD and Women

When you imagine a classic sufferer of PTSD, do you think of a man or a woman?

You don’t need to be a male combat veteran to have experienced deep shocks to the core of your being, of the kind that create severe and lasting psychological distress in your life.

Post-traumatic stress disorder in women is gaining recognition as the field of trauma research matures. The more we learn about the subtleties and finer details of how traumatization can present in a person, the more women’s suffering is recognized.

Part of the delay in recognition of PTSD in women stems from the fact that women tend to manifest their symptoms in more subtle, internalized ways than men. For example, women are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression, whereas men may act out violently or use substances in ways that create more obvious problems.

Once we can recognize the telltale signs of lingering biological states of distress, we can see how much trauma has been a part of the lives of women all along.

Signs and Symptoms of PTSD in Women

Gender is not a determinant of PTSD. The symptoms of PTSD can present in any gender. However, it seems that some PTSD symptoms are especially likely to be present in women who have the disorder.

Startle Response

Are you easily startled by sudden sounds or movements in the environment? Women with PTSD are more likely to present with this trauma symptom than men and may be more visibly frightened or rattled.


Hyperarousal

Do you find yourself in heightened states of awareness, on guard, watching your back, monitoring situations for safety? The state of hyperarousal, or hypervigilance, is often accompanied by anxiety, trouble sleeping, agitation, inability to concentrate, and panic attacks.


Re-Experiencing

Re-experiencing trauma is a core component of the PTSD diagnosis. Re-experiencing means feeling the feelings all over again, often provoked by distressing thoughts and bad memories invading the mind from out of nowhere. Re-experiencing may mean having nightmares, flashbacks, and intense fears or dread that an event is about to happen again or is happening again. Women are especially prone to re-experiencing.


Avoidance

When we start going out of our way to avoid contact with people, places, and topics that might remind us of our trauma because we are afraid of the feelings and flashbacks that could be triggered, we are in an avoidance behavior pattern.
Avoidance is one of the most widespread signs of PTSD in women. Depending on how much time and disruption to our lives is caused by our avoidance behavior, avoidance can represent a significant problem or merely a sign that we have wounds that need healing.


Depression

Depression is a sign of emotional distress that can be linked to some level of traumatization. Depression is typically connected to feelings of anger related to violations of boundaries of physical and psychological safety, and when anger is not released and resolved, depression is likely to result. Depression may be compounded in women because there is a greater social stigma around appearing to be angry and expressing anger.


Anxiety

Post-traumatic stress disorder is essentially an anxiety disorder in the extreme, as it revolves around the fear of having episodes of re-experiencing. Constantly worrying about when where and if we will suddenly be plunged back into psychological distress can create a lot of anxiety which is held in the physical body, mind, and emotions. Many women who are diagnosed with anxiety disorders are anxious because they are dealing with some form of traumatization.

Common Causes of PTSD in Women

PTSD is caused when an overwhelming, shocking event is perceived, and the event creates a nervous system response in the body and brain that becomes permanent instead of resolving back to normal.

To return to normal levels of arousal, the body would need to perceive itself as safe again, and the threat fully resolved. If the resolution back to safety does not happen fully, the hyperarousal energies become trapped in the body.

The residue in such cases is biochemical, in the form of elevated levels of certain neurotransmitters and hormones, specifically those associated with the state of stress.

The presence of these particular chemicals in the body explains why people continue to think fearful, angry, and helpless thoughts and feel stressed as a permanent feeling state, even when no longer enduring the original event.

The human nervous system gets activated whenever it is exposed to an event or situation that represents a threat to the human being’s survival. During childhood, our survival depends on being cared for by adults, so whenever there is a threat to a relationship bond with our caregivers, this is also interpreted by the nervous system as a life threat.

The trouble arises when the hyperaroused state is never concluded, and the body stays permanently shocked, and trapped in fear, anger, and helplessness rather than returning to normal after the event has concluded.

As you might imagine, to return to normal after a shocking event, we need a period of recovery and time away from more shocking events to repair in between. That is why repeated exposure to smaller shocking events over time can be just as damaging as one big event.

Any event that creates a big stress response that never gets fully repaired could be the origin of trauma. Examples of events that are commonly known to create big stress responses include:

  • Sexual Abuse as a Child
  • Sexual Assault at any age
  • Physical Assault, such as being mugged
  • Domestic Violence
  • Witnessing violence to another person or in a collective event
  • Car Accidents
  • Involvement with the Military, especially combat
  • Sudden and/or violent death of a loved one
  • Loss of a parent through death or abandonment during childhood

How to Manage PTSD in Women

PTSD can be healed through comprehensive trauma therapy.  Working over a longer period of time with a trauma modality like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, or Parts Work represents the best path to healing the nervous system fully.

While recovering from core traumatization, it is important to also manage the symptoms of behavioral patterns of PTSD through many supportive modalities that will help reset thoughts, emotional patterns, and relationship behaviors.

If substance use is present, it is critically important to achieve sobriety first, or all trauma therapy work will be undermined.

Finding PTSD Treatment for Women

When looking for treatment for PTSD, look for a provider who specializes in trauma therapy, and someone who is working with a modality specifically designed for healing trauma at deep, and bio-neurological levels, such as Parts Work, Somatic Experiencing, or EMDR.

If you are using substances, prioritize getting clean and maintaining sobriety above all, seeking addiction treatment where necessary, as any work you attempt to accomplish while still using substances will not last. If possible, attend an addiction facility that offers trauma healing alongside addiction services, such as Villa Kali Ma.

Villa Kali Ma Can Assist Women With PTSD

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we have deep compassion and understanding for the intense suffering represented by a diagnosis of PTSD. We specialize in supporting women, and because women are especially likely to have experienced some form of traumatizing threats to their well-being, trauma healing is a daily part of our treatment work.

We offer EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and Parts Work as a part of our core offerings for women. We also use other modalities that help women feel safe and strong again, including yoga, Ayurvedic diet, equine therapy, expressive arts therapy, outdoor therapy, spiritual perspectives (if resonant to you), and fun group activities with other recovering women, that help you discover core safety at all levels at last.

Categories
Trauma Therapy

Women and Trauma: Using Trauma Therapy to Heal

What Is Trauma?

Trauma comes from the Greek word for “wound”. Just as we sometimes say that the physical body has sustained trauma, for example, if we have been injured in a car crash, the subtle tissues of our minds and emotions can also be wounded.

Psychological trauma is defined as a lingering experience of intense mental, emotional, and physical distress. Trauma from past events gets triggered when we encounter situations resembling the conditions in which we were first wounded. Trauma is periodically re-experienced as flashbacks of specific frightening situations, and also as ongoing feelings of terrible dread.

The experience of trauma is intense and uncomfortable and feels like fear energies (anxiety, panic, dread, obsession, a need to be in control) anger energies (irritability, rage, depression, aggravation, impatience), and numbing or spacing out energies (floating away, checking out, dissociating).

These three components of the trauma experience, fear, anger, and numbing, correlate to the body’s three main natural biological responses to survival threats – flight, fight, and freeze.

It’s important to understand that trauma happens when the body isn’t able to recover from a shocking, intense experience. It is normal and biologically okay to experience temporary anger, fear, and immobilization during a life-threatening moment. In a healthy body and nervous system, we might be scared, angry, or frozen in feelings of helplessness for a short period of time, but then these states dissolve away.

If terror, dread, rage, and helplessness become permanent or recurring episodic emotional states, this is a sign that we have been traumatized and need help healing from the impacts of events in our lives. Holistic residential treatment can be a valuable resource for individuals seeking support in overcoming and managing the effects of trauma.

Are Women More at Risk of Experiencing More Trauma?

It appears so, yes. Each person is unique and therefore traumatization happens differently to different people depending on how a person’s nervous system processes overwhelming events. A sensitive nervous system in combination with frequent and/or too-intense exposure to threatening situations will often result in some form of traumatization.

The meaning we make of the experiences we have is highly personal and depends on many factors including our unique personality and genetic make-up, which is why children with different temperaments may have different degrees of trauma even when they grow up in essentially the same conditions.

Trauma exists on a scale, and in severe cases, we have the classic archetype of the veteran with PTSD, who was so damaged by exposure to the horrors of warfare that they are psychologically shattered.

However, we do not have to have been exposed to combat to be wounded psychologically. Many conditions that are common to many of us may be traumatizing to us. Common sources of trauma are the death of a parent, neglect or abuse (including verbal), sexual abuse or too-early sexual experiences, alcoholic households, poverty, and living in a country at war.

A key reason that women are more at risk of traumatization than others is because of the higher incidence of sexual trauma, including childhood sexual abuse, assault, and rape. Women also experience considerable pressure to comply with sexual situations which may be classed as more subtle, and are typically groomed by society to ignore their own bodily sense of yes or no. For women who use substances, there can be traumatization due to participation in sex that they wouldn’t have chosen to be part of if not under the influence.

The Connection of Emotional Distress and Trauma in Young Women

There is a link between emotional distress and trauma. Trauma creates a background environment of fear, anger, and numbing, the three biological responses to life-threatening situations.

Most mental health disorders can be looked at through the trauma lens for extra understanding. Anxiety disorders are about the experience of fear. Depression, suicidal thoughts, and self-harm are related to anger (turned inwards), and all addictions are connected to the biological drive towards numbing.

Women are more likely to experience anxiety, depression, emotional instability, low self-esteem, and self-harm. These kinds of suffering match women’s greater vulnerability to traumatization.

What Does a Trauma-Informed Treatment Approach Look Like?

Taking a trauma-informed treatment approach means understanding how symptoms are connected to a root cause of deep unsafety at the biological and nervous system levels.

It is important to understand this factor before, for example, prescribing solutions aimed at lessening the impacts of a symptom. Symptoms are uncomfortable, but they are messages from deeper levels of a person’s being, and these deeper levels should be addressed if you want a long-term cure.

Understanding mental health disorders and especially addiction in light of the likely presence of traumatization is an enormous help. It makes sense why certain behaviors, dysfunctional as they may seem at first when viewed only on the surface, are actually in place.

When we understand why a person has felt it was helpful or necessary for their survival for them to behave in a certain way, or think certain distressing thoughts over and over again, we can begin to unravel the Gordian knot of mental health and addiction trouble. Trauma treatment, rooted in this understanding, becomes a crucial aspect of addressing the underlying issues.

Trauma-informed approaches to therapy are exceedingly gentle, compassionate, and kind. They work with us at the very most basic and tender levels and are focused on creating feelings of safety and basic OK-ness in this world, first and foremost. They work with the principle that when we are at last able to feel sufficiently all right in our own skin again, we will naturally have no need for coping mechanisms that cause us harm in the long run.

Villa Kali Ma Can Assist With Trauma Therapy for Women in California

Villa Kali Ma places high value on addressing trauma alongside addiction and mental health problems. We take a kind and comprehensive approach to getting at those deep levels and layers of being that are most tender and sensitive and which have been most hurt by the slings and arrows of this world.

You don’t need to have grown up in a traumatic environment to have sustained traumatic patterning in your soul. Suppose you are wounded at the psychological level. In that case, it will affect every aspect of your experience, including your capacity for joy, loving and connected relationships, creativity, career, physical health, and spirituality.

That’s why we offer trauma therapies like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and Parts Work, to help you repair and restore at the deepest levels of your biology, knowing these core changes in your experience will have transformational effects on the rest of your behaviors and choices.

Categories
Outpatient vs Inpatient

Outpatient vs Inpatient Rehab for Women

What Is an Outpatient Treatment Program?

An outpatient program is a structured, supportive treatment setting that offers help for people who are recovering from substance addiction, mental illness, or both.

Outpatient programs and intensive outpatient programs (IOPs) represent a medium level of care. Because addiction and mental illness vary in severity, treatment is offered with greater and lesser degrees of structure, depending on how much direct care (time with a healing professional) is necessary for an ill individual to get better.

Greater structure, intensity, and frequency of treatment are offered to those needing higher levels of care. Fewer treatment hours per week are administered when people do not need as much direct support at this stage of their journey.

Outpatient programs represent a sort of “in-between” option, where people can receive varying levels of intensity while living in their own homes and working jobs. Within outpatient programs, there are differing levels of intensity, so it is possible to taper down the level of care gradually.

The stages of structured care offered in OPs are often pre-determined, such that a set number of weeks or several sessions are required to be completed before graduating to the next phase. Phases of less structure mean higher self-responsibility, greater ability to navigate risk, and less direct intervention by the therapeutic support team.

Outpatient programs offer different tracks for people requiring different levels of support, and so may have daylong, half-day options, and twice-weekly offerings. OPs are designed to provide some flexibility for work and family life.

Since the goal of all treatment programs is to be able to live one’s life independently, as well as more happily and meaningfully again, treatment is organized around what is truly needed in the current stage of recovery to be able to handle autonomy and experience well-being.

What Is an Inpatient Treatment Program?

Inpatient treatment programs, also called residential treatment programs, are stay-away programs, sort of like a healing retreat, where you leave your home environment and check in at a facility to receive intensive treatment onsite for some time.

Inpatient treatment programs are often preceded by medically supervised detoxification programs in California. Medical detoxification facilities are similar to hospitals, with doctors and nurses on staff to monitor your safety during withdrawal.

After completing your detoxification process, you would enter inpatient treatment at a rehabilitation facility, where you would stay for a predetermined length of time (usually somewhere between 1 and 3 months, depending on the program and your needs).

It is very common to follow your inpatient treatment with some length of time receiving follow-up outpatient treatment.

The typical recommended path would be to start with medically supervised detoxification, then complete inpatient (rehab), then attend outpatient while living and working in the community, then progress to relying primarily upon community resources (such as 12 steps).

What Is the Difference Between Inpatient and Outpatient Rehab?

The main difference between inpatient and outpatient rehab is whether you stay overnight at the facility (inpatient) or whether you stay in your own home, receiving treatment services only during the day (outpatient).

Inpatient is typically offered in rehabilitation facilities that are designed for around-the-clock care, involving daily treatment programming, activities, and a heavy component of community and co-living. These are sometimes offered in comfortable, retreat-like settings, (as is the case for Villa Kali Ma), and will provide an extra element of protection from one’s normal life challenges while you focus on stabilizing your recovery.

Outpatient provides as much structure and frequency of services as possible during treatment hours but does not also include the aspect of checking in and staying at the facility for the duration of your treatment. Outpatient usually has less intensity of activities and communal experience built in, though some group activities and meetings will be offered.

Outpatient treatment services are frequently provided for people who have completed inpatient treatment and are gradually stepping down the degree of structure and intensity of treatment.

Whether outpatient or inpatient is better for you should be determined together with an addiction services provider, who can assess your level of need and make recommendations.

What Are Some Therapy Options for Outpatient and Inpatient Treatment Programs?

Both inpatient and outpatient treatment programs provide a comprehensive core structure of addiction treatment. The core treatment programming of either will cover certain required aspects, which include education about addiction, individual therapy, family therapy, therapy groups, activities, and involvement in 12-step or another community-based recovery model.

For example, at Villa Kali Ma you can receive many of the same core services and therapy modalities whether in outpatient or inpatient, though there is a difference in frequency and intensiveness. We provide individual counseling, groups, and our many holistic modalities in both contexts.

What Are the Benefits of Inpatient Treatment?

If possible, it is best to attend inpatient treatment, as it is the most effective way to reset to a sober life pattern.

Inpatient settings such as Villa Kali Ma’s residential treatment program at the Villa are designed to provide a holistic, round-the-clock treatment that works best when approached like an intensive or a retreat (like a yoga retreat or a teacher training, for example).

Being in a harmonious, safe setting that is designed to support your initiation into your new life is enormously beneficial for getting everything settled in place. It is very helpful to be away from the possibility of using or drinking and to be away from life stressors and even loved ones for a short time in which we are fully free to prioritize our safety and sanity first.

The community aspect is also an important part of treatment, as living with other women in a retreat-like setting, and forming bonds of trust with others who have similar stories to us, is a big part of getting better. Addiction is an isolating disease, and intensive togetherness – even if it’s an intimidating thought at first! – is a big part of the cure.

Inpatient is a short-term, non-permanent way to kick off your recovery and new life and make sure it has a strong foundation before you go test it out in the real world.

What Are the Benefits of Outpatient Treatment?

Outpatient treatment is the next best thing to inpatient treatment. It is often offered as a down-stepped level of care just after completing inpatient treatment and it is designed to support you while you return to your normal life, while still providing training wheels.

In cases where it is not possible to leave home long enough fhttps://villakalima.comor an inpatient stay, outpatient can be the next most viable option.

Villa Kali Ma Offers Inpatient and Outpatient Programs for Women

At the beginning of our recovery, we need treatment every single day. We need to have contact with healing professionals and to express our feelings, fears, and struggles to others who truly get it and have the ability to understand what it takes to put sobriety first (friends and family, even when well-meaning, typically do not understand what goes into making such a big life change).

Whether you’re looking for inpatient treatment in a retreat-like getaway, where you will eat healthy, get some sunshine, and have the chance to participate in activities and form bonds of connection with other recovering women, or whether you would like to participate only during our day treatment options at our office, Villa Kali Ma has programs for women to meet your needs in a creative, supportive, unique and healthy way.

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