Category: Mental Health

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The Unburdening Process in Internal Family Systems Therapy

Post author By VKM
Post date February 20, 2026

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Women recovering from addiction, mental illness and trauma can find relief and improve their lives through learning to use the healing tools of Internal Family Systems Therapy. That’s why Internal Family Systems Therapy is one of the many trauma-informed approaches we offer at Villa Kali Ma. We use IFS tools to help women who are reclaiming lives of purpose, beauty and meaning. In this post, we’ll dive in to the topic of unburdening, a key component of the IFS approach to healing trauma.

What are Exiles in Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) is a parts-work model, which holds that all of us have many different sides of our nature, sometimes called sub-personalities in other psychotherapy approaches. Figures like the inner child and the inner critic are examples of parts, but IFS shows that there are a surprising number of parts inside of each person’s system, and that parts can be very unique and personal. By learning to relate kindly to each of our parts, we dramatically improve our inner world, learning to meet our own needs assertively, and eventually behaving very differently in the outer world as a result.

IFS divides parts into two categories, protectors and exiles, based on their role within the inner system. Protectors act defensively and reactively to try to shield us from overwhelming amounts of pain. Protectors are recognizable within the concept of psychological defenses, where behaviors like rationalizing or denial serve a protective function.

IFS holds that the parts of us that try, preventatively and reactively, to block us from feeling too much pain all at once are well-intentioned, misunderstood heroes. They have been helping us get through what otherwise might have completely blown us to smithereens, psychologically speaking. Protectors are the parts of us tasked with meeting expectations and maintaining relationships deemed necessary for our survival, such as making sure loved ones don’t abandon us and that we keep our jobs. Protectors can be quite extreme, but IFS says the extreme roles our protectors take on reflect accurately just how extreme our childhood circumstances were.

Exiles, on the other hand, rather than taking strategic action or trying to manage pain, are the ones that feel the feelings. These are the parts of us that have been burdened with extreme beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviors. An example of an extreme belief could be “I am a bad person” or “I don’t deserve love”. These beliefs are considered burdensome and extreme by IFS, because it is impossible to hold such a core belief and function well in the world for long. As long as a part of us continues to believe that about ourselves, the way that we perceive our lives, and how we feel about being alive, will be painful and dysfunctional. Burdens ultimately create suffering and problems in our lives. For us to get better, it is suggested that burdens be cleared from our system and fully healed, so that we can operate in a healthier way. Once these burdens are removed, we can expect that our parts become naturally free, happy and high-functioning, turning from burdened parts into wonderful versions of themselves!.

Other common burdens include shame, guilt, fear, rage, abandonment, betrayal, and powerlessness. Those of you who are familiar with the effects of trauma will notice that the feelings, thoughts, sensations and beliefs that exiles hold as burdens match the unresolved emotions and stresses of traumatization. The exiles are the parts within us, in fact, who are traumatized.

Recognizing Parts as Helpful

Because of the way that trauma works in the psyche, most of us found a way to divide our inner world into parts that can function well in the world, perhaps even carrying on with normal life. It was necessary to carry on with daily life tasks without excessive pain, shame, guilt, fear and anger. The way that this is possible is through a kind of compartmentalization, which means that the trauma-generated beliefs, thoughts, feelings and sensations are stored separately, sometimes in a completely different part of the brain.

This capacity of separating out parts internally is not pathological, but rather an ingenious mechanism invented by a psyche facing life-threatening circumstances. It is a way to temporarily not process what would otherwise be overwhelming to be consciously aware of in that moment.

In IFS, the parts that were stored away, who are holding the trauma experience, are in need of a process called unburdening. Although we have hidden traumatized parts away, their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations still have influence on us. These wounded parts hold baggage that is weighing us down, and they keep trying to release it.

Their feelings and needs erupt to the surface at inopportune times. If you’ve ever overreacted to something, that suggests hidden parts inside, to whom that big reaction rightfully belongs. For example, we sometimes react “childishly” to something. In such cases, rather than calling ourselves immature, it is probably more accurate to say that a child part within us has surfaced. That child part’s way of looking at the world, the feelings she’s having, her very immaturity, are actually completely developmentally appropriate for a child her age.

The IFS Unburdening Process

IFS therapy calls the process of healing exiles “unburdening”, in honor of the fact that the goal of the process is to allow exiles to lay their burdens down once and for all. The heavy trauma baggage that these exiles have been carrying can, more often than not, be transmuted and transformed into something positive for the individual.

The unburdening process requires relating very differently to the parts within that are still carrying the beliefs, feelings, and sensations of our traumatic past. Rather than shutting them up and pushing them aside, we learn to support them by giving them what they didn’t have the chance to receive back then when the bad things were happening. By listening to them, believing them, and validating their feelings, we get into a position where we can give them the opportunity to drop the burdens they were forced to take on.

IFS likes to use symbolic processes inspired by the natural world during the unburdening. These metaphors serve to help young parts intuitively grasp how toxic mental, emotional, and even physical baggage can be utterly transformed into a new state. Burdens can be burned up in fire, faded in sunlight, or liquified in a volcano. They can be dissolved into the ocean, washed away in the rain, or pounded to bits by a giant waterfall. Old beliefs and emotions can be buried and digested by the earth, whisked away by the wind and evaporated in fresh air.

Once a part has told her story, and all the aspects of the burdens have been identified, the part is asked whether she would like to get rid of her burden using one of the natural world elements. There is no pre-defined way to use the elements – the burdened parts get to choose how they want to dispose of the material they have been carrying. Unburdening is, therefore, a creative, spontaneous, and unscripted process, drawing on images that arise naturally in the mind’s eye of the person who is healing. Intuition, instinct, and imagery are important parts of the unburdening process.

When in the Therapeutic Process Does IFS Unburdening happen?

Unburdening generally takes place at certain spontaneous openings in the healing journey, quite a bit later on in the overall arc of the IFS process. It is not at all unusual for most of the IFS session work to be centered on working with protector parts, rather than exiles. As with all trauma work, a certain degree of safety and stability must be established first.

This is because it is not possible to safely unburden exiles without the full permission and cooperation of our protector parts. Protector parts, like the inner critic and the addict, are powerful forces. If they do not feel it is safe to access our pain, or are afraid that healing this pain would somehow lead to consequences that wouldn’t be safe for us in the outer world, these parts easily sabotage or derail our attempts to heal. Sometimes the desire to heal runs directly counter to a protector part’s mandate.

If we try to heal our exiles without the express consent of our protectors, we will fail and experience backlash. Symptoms that are present in our inner system as the result of the operations of one of our protectors will increase rather than decrease. For example, if we have a substance-using part in our system, we must have the trust and cooperation of that substance-using part before trying to access an exile that substance-using part is protecting. If we do not first gain permission, the substance-using part could very likely increase the substance use as a way to defend against conscious contact with the traumatized exile.

If and only if we have first befriended protectors, understood their concerns in full, and come to a friendly agreement about unburdening some of the exiles’ load of pain, is it a good idea to try unburdening an exile.

Gaining consent from our protectors can be a long process. We must honor the wisdom and experience of our protectors, proceeding very slowly and with utmost respect.

For all of these reasons, it is not recommended to try to undergo the unburdening process in full without an IFS practitioner to facilitate. At the same time, learning about the unburdening process can be helpful for anyone, as long as you remember not to venture into dangerous territory without a professional to help you. In that spirit, we offer the following exercise, for you to explore on your own time and authority, as you see fit.

Journal Exercise to Explore the IFS Concept of Burdens

Please take what you like and leave the rest of the following journal exercise for exploring the concept of burdens and unburdening. If you notice that you are getting activated, take that as a sacred “no” and stop doing the exercise. There is no benefit to pushing through or overriding your boundaries or concerns; that will only result in backlash.

Please, we mean it. Slower is faster with all healing work!

This exercise zeros in on one particular part of the unburdening process, which involves asking the question, “What would you have rather experienced?”

Think of a specific, light-to-medium burden that you already have noticed you carry, which you can use to explore this process. The way to detect a burden is you notice that there is constriction, heaviness, resistance, or a sense of unhappiness around a topic.

Please don’t go for an item that has a lot of emotional charge. Instead, pick something that you know you will be able to explore without getting triggered.

For example, perhaps you feel under-confident in your cooking abilities. It’s not enormously triggering to think about, but you know that you have some kind of negativity around it.

Think of a specific time when you encountered this burdened feeling, thought, or sensation in yourself. Recall the scene in which you encountered this burdened energy, and write down the following:
Sensations-What happens in my body when I encounter this burdened topic? Sensations, postures, & movement impulses, etc?
Feelings-What emotions do I feel? What comes up for me?
Thoughts -What goes through my head?
Behavior Impulses-What do I notice I want to do?
Beliefs-What core beliefs get activated? What negative self-concepts seem to get confirmed?
Do-Over time! For each of the above items you noted, what would you have rather experienced?

I would have rather experienced…

Sensations
Feelings
Thoughts
Behavior Impulses
Core Beliefs

Congratulations! You have explored one aspect of the unburdening process – identifying what you would rather have had.

IFS Therapy for Women at Villa Kali Ma

Villa Kali Ma is a licensed provider of integrative mental health services, trauma treatment, and addiction recovery. In all of our programs, we use a combination of clinical and holistic approaches to help women heal from substance abuse, psychological disorders, and trauma.

Our clinical program is built around evidence-based practices widely recognized within the addictions, mental health and trauma field to work best with women. These effective clinical modalities include Internal Family Systems Therapy (https://villakalima.com/internal-family-systems-therapy-for-women-with-addiction/), EMDR, Ecotherapy, and several other wonderful approaches, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (https://villakalima.com/sustainable-recovery/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy/), Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Therapy (MSC), and Somatic Experiencing (https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-somatic-experiencing-5204186).

In addition to our clinical core, we administer a comprehensive suite of holistic interventions, in complementary sessions interwoven throughout main treatment hours. Our holistic program includes yoga, breath work, acupuncture, nutritional medicine, spiritual coaching, and more.

Tags IFS Therapy, Internal Family Systems, Parts Work, Trauma Healing, Unburdening Process, Villa Kali Ma San Diego, women's mental health

Mental Health PTSD Treatment

How Childhood Trauma Impacts Adult Mental Health and Relationships

Post author By VKM
Post date February 20, 2026

best trauma therapy san diego california

How Childhood Trauma Impacts Adult Mental Health and Relationships

Childhood trauma has far-reaching effects, shaping the course of our lives in significant ways. Depending on several factors, including genetic predisposition, temperament, position in the family, and how young we were when encountering adverse childhood events, we may be burdened with a variety of symptoms.

For women recovering from addiction and mental health disorders, it’s important to recognize childhood trauma effects when they show up within our own personalities and patterns of relating. We will want to invest some amount of personal work healing our inner child, and undergo trauma therapy, in order to restore our true selves and regain control of how we show up in the world with others.

It is not necessary to fight darkness, but rather to turn on a light, the saying goes. It is very similar with traumatization. By restoring the flow of life force within the body, psyche, and spirit, trauma blockages will eventually dissolve, allowing psychological development that was once arrested to proceed.

The first step is to recognize trauma’s presence by its signature energetics and impacts. In this post, we take a look at how trauma affects adult mental health and relationships.

The Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma on Women’s Lives

In order to complete the most basic developmental tasks involved with growing up physically, emotionally, and mentally into a healthy, high-functioning adult, a degree of physical and psychological safety is required. Safety means both that we are nurtured and that we are protected. All humans have needs and boundaries. Children cannot thrive when developmental needs are unmet, nor when boundaries are violated.

Provided we are sufficiently nurtured and protected, we naturally grow up, learning in a self-directed fashion through exploratory play and interactions with people, animals, and nature. In addition to safety, we need a high amount of autonomy – the chance, permission, and support to grow into our own unique self, in our own unique way.

For a variety of reasons, many families are not able to provide the right mix of safety and autonomy that is required for children to have a healthy sense of self. In fact, our families may have done very poorly in one or more requirements of meeting needs, protecting boundaries, and supporting autonomy. If our families did a good job of this, that still doesn’t mean that our peers and teachers were able to.

It’s important to understand that trauma is not in the events themselves, but in the way that a human nervous system responds to certain events. Many relatively common childhood experiences are identified by trauma experts as being traumatogenic, which means that children who are exposed to such adverse events tend to develop recognizable symptoms of trauma and even patterns of personality. Examples of traumatizing childhood events include physical, sexual and emotional abuse, physical and emotional neglect, having a parent who uses substances, witnessing domestic violence in the home, and separation, death of a parent, or divorce.

What this means is that if you survived such circumstances in your childhood, chances are high that this impacted you in ways that are so ingrained into your personality and way of perceiving the world, that the effect might be invisible to you. Common signs of having been traumatized in childhood include sleep disorders, substance abuse, relationship troubles, intense emotions including fear and anger, spacing out, fatigue, illness, inability to relax, and shame.

Understanding How Early Experiences Shape Adult Patterns

The key to understanding how untreated trauma from childhood affects life as an adult lies in recognizing trauma’s presence underneath cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns. Many mental and behavioral health symptoms can be unmasked as ingenious adaptations to trauma. Symptoms are likely to be mechanisms for coping with stress from being exposed to too many threats in the past. An excess of fear and anger indicates unintegrated experiences of being exposed to impacts which were life-threatening and violating.

Keep in mind that events can be traumatizing to the human nervous system, brain and body, even when the people who affected us didn’t mean to hurt us. Remember also that many aspects of our culture which the majority of people consider to be normal are considered by some experts in the field to be lightly or even heavily traumatizing.

We can begin to recognize trauma by getting curious about ourselves. Specifically, we must ditch the idea that we are sick, and ask instead how a symptom is helping us. What is the purpose of our depression? How does our irritability help us? What is anxiety good for?

When we get to know our anxiety, irritability, anger, and depression, as well as our seemingly counterproductive behaviors like substance use, self-sabotage, and low self-compassion, we may come to see that in actual fact, these legacy symptoms once helped us adapt to an environment that was trauma-generating. If we have symptoms of excess fear (anxiety, insomnia, dissociation) and excess anger (depression, irritability, self-harm, etc), that almost certainly means that we have spent some time in an environment that failed to meet our developmental and nurturance needs, violated our natural boundaries, or both.

Breaking Free from Trauma Bonds and Unhealthy Relationships

It isn’t easy to heal trauma, but it is absolutely possible and certainly worth it. One area of life which can improve significantly through trauma healing is relationships with loved ones.

If you experienced physical or emotional neglect, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, or any combination of those in your early years, it is very likely that you have had trouble with founding and maintaining healthy relationships as an adult. You probably unconsciously sought out partners with whom you would experience a bond that resembles the bond you had with the same people who neglected or abused you.

This may mean that you accept a low level of nurturance, a high level of boundary violation, or both. You may have an enmeshed, codependent relationship, in which you give your partner the love that you actually always needed to receive. You may prefer partners that treat you in a way that matches your own low self-esteem – with some level of neglect, misunderstanding, or disregard.

All of this is terribly common among women, and please hear us that this isn’t your fault. Rather, fraught relationships are unavoidable until trauma is addressed. Until we have healed our trauma, we likely wouldn’t know healthy love if it walked right up to us. Rather, we will tend to fall intensely in love with people who have similar patterns of relating as the people who hurt us the most.

Nevertheless, each relationship attempt, even when it clearly mimics certain patterns of our childhood, is also a sign that deep inside, we have not given up on trying to get the genuine and appropriate love that we have always wanted and needed. And the good news is that, through trauma healing, we get one very important bonus: a chance at experiencing that love. We get this love when we activate our inner Self (https://ifs-institute.com/resources/articles/larger-self), becoming a source of the parenting, kindness, and even adoration that we always needed. We become the loving person we have always needed to have in our lives.

Learning to love ourselves, to recognize our own value, we attract a higher quality of emotional intelligence in partners, and interact differently with existing love relationships than we used to. Overall, we can expect that we gradually learn to behave with dignity and self-compassion, requiring that others treat us the same.

Reclaim Your Story with Compassionate Trauma Treatment

If you have a trauma history, you have probably had moments in your life when you wanted to give up on trying to be yourself. Trying to be here in your best potential, in this world, in your skin, has felt too much at times – too painful and too difficult.

To live openheartedly and authentically in this world, amid the interference of loud and often self-conflicting trauma symptoms; amid emotional instability, self-attack, and demoralizing outcomes; amid escalating substance abuse, relationship problems, and career struggles; it has undoubtedly been a lot for you at times.

But hear this: trauma healing is possible. The work that it takes is worth it. The path of healing is emotionally intense, it’s true – but nothing you haven’t already been living with every day since the trauma started. There will be psychological pain at times, yes – but no more intense than the pain you already cope with. There is nothing to lose by healing trauma, and a lot to gain. In facing trauma, you risk short term triggering – having to re-experience what you already have experienced, and most likely still re-experience on repeat – for the potential reward of at last healing the wounds in a permanent way.

You might be surprised, furthermore, to find out how sweet, rewarding, deepening, and meaningful the trauma healing journey is. You might feel silly for not starting the journey earlier, and have to remind yourself that you needed all the time you did, to get to the point of facing it. You might be happy with every aspect of your history, in the end, recognizing how each wounding poison also brought its own magnificent antidote into your life. You just might.

Villa Kali Ma offers trauma-informed treatment for women struggling with substance addiction and mental health disorders. We also run a state-of-the-art trauma treatment center, offering several forms of cutting-edge treatments for helping women address their trauma.

Tags Adult Relationships, Attachment Styles, childhood trauma, Emotional Healing, San Diego Treatment, Trauma Recovery, Villa Kali Ma, women's mental health

Mental Health Women's Mental Health

Understanding Complex PTSD: Signs, Symptoms, and Hope for Healing

Post author By VKM
Post date February 14, 2026

Understanding Complex PTSD: Signs, Symptoms, and Hope for Healing

Famously, some cultures have more words for snow than we do in English.”Snow on the ground”, “snow in the sky”, and even “drifting snow” were once purported to have different names in Inuit languages.

Accurate or not, the oft-quoted idea of Inuit peoples having seven words for snow illustrates the fact that there can be many ways of naming and conceptualizing the same phenomenon. It also suggests that those who are directly exposed to something, who see it and work with it every day, and who have good reason and opportunity to pay close attention to it, will naturally perceive distinctions significant enough to call by another name entirely.

Those of us who work with women to recover from addiction and mental illness have our reasons to pay ongoing attention to the heartbreaking, baffling mystery of psychological trauma. It is no wonder then, that collectively we have discovered new names for trauma’s many different faces, forms and phases.

Once upon a time, trauma wasn’t even a concept, at least not in its modern form – the word, from the Greek, means simply wound. What was originally observed by psychology pioneers like Jean Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud, a phenomenon that eventually earned the name “shell shock” around the time of the first world wars, was known of, but only very imprecisely understood. Fortunately for the traumatized among us, as the field of psychology evolved, the term and its subcategories have become more delineated, astute and refined.

In 2026, we now have more names for trauma than ever before. Acute trauma, complex trauma (C-PTSD), developmental trauma, intrauterine and pre-verbal trauma, trans-generational trauma, vicarious trauma, collective trauma, and religious trauma are categories meriting distinct therapeutic approaches, according to the International Trauma Professionals Associationfor one. Professionals in the trauma field today generally concur that there are many different variants of the phenomenon that Freud long ago referred to as an “hysterical attack”, in keeping with conceptualizations forged by his mentor Charcot.

There is one form of trauma which is very important to be aware of, especially for women. This type of trauma is called complex post traumatic stress disorder, or C-PTSD. C-PTSD first entered the collective awareness through the truly pioneering work of Judith Hermann (https://www.yourcomplextrauma.com/blog/dr-judith-herman-on-complex-ptsd-and-what-survivors-need). Hermann discovered that PTSD was not the only kind of trauma, and that trauma originating from chronic exposure to abusive and neglectful circumstances was widespread. Since then, collective awareness and understanding of this less obvious, but in many ways equally insidious type of trauma and its impacts on human development has grown.

We at Villa Kali Ma hold that C-PTSD is exceptionally important to be aware of, as women. Many of the women we encounter struggle with C-PTSD symptoms, without knowing that there is a name for the pervasive negative experiences they are enduring. C-PTSD treatment can be a life-changing form of trauma recovery for women. So much so, that we feel every woman should know about the disorder and about the options which are available to her for healing it. In this piece, we share a little bit more about C-PTSD and how it affects women, to that end.

Understanding Complex PTSD and How It Affects Women

Complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) is more subtle, as well as more integrated into personality. This means that it feels like “me”. For that reason, it is usually harder to detect than traditional PTSD. C-PTSD feels like water to the fish, meaning that the symptoms have been with a person for so long, that she wouldn’t know that it is always there in the background, informing and affecting her experience.

Many chronic mental and physical health conditions, such as ADHD, depression, anxiety, and physical health problems like migraines, autoimmune problems, and inflammation, may actually be manifestations of traumatization. Because trauma affects the brain and the nervous system, in turn impacting hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, it affects every aspect of the human experience.

C-PTSD pervades women by impacting their brains and neurology, their very perception of events, influencing cognition and interpretation of what is going on in the moment. Whether we are in a state of high nervous system arousal (irritable, anxious, edgy and on guard), or on the other hand in a kind of nervous collapse (numb, fatigued, spacey and drained), either way our sense of who we are, as well as our read on what is taking place in the moment, is highly skewed. Specifically, our experience is flavored by social or physical survival fear, and deep dread.

This constant state of low-grade social and/or physical survival fear has widespread influence on our work and relationship lives. Whatever women with C-PTSD encounter in love, family and career, tends to be at least slightly tinged with a background sense of terror and dread. Additionally, acute episodes of severe emotional distress commonly interrupt daily life and make it hard to participate at the same level of capacity as non-traumatized people.

Recognizing the Signs and Symptoms of Complex Trauma

Here are some common signs of C-PTSD.

Emotional Flashbacks

For women with C-PTSD, their bodies, minds, and emotions have a tendency to return to bad, scary, dreadful memories on repeat, rather than leaving memories in the past. We aren’t able to process or release those feelings once and for all, and instead are prone to emotional flashbacks.

An emotional flashback means feeling the old bad feelings even when the old bad situation isn’t actually happening again. For example, no one is actually abandoning us, but we feel just as distressed and fearful as we did back when we really were being abandoned and our lives depended on the person staying with us.

Flashbacks are often triggered by stimuli in the environment that were coupled with the event itself. For example, a person can be triggered by a certain smell, place, person, or type of situation.

During flashbacks, it feels like a bad thing from the past is happening again, or is still happening. The body perceives danger, and signals this to us with a racing heart, sweating, and shaking. Tunnel vision, muscle tension, and feeling unreal can also be part of the experience. These physical symptoms are signs that the body has mobilized for action, such as running away, fighting off an attacker, or clinging to a protector. It is also common to collapse and go numb after a certain amount of over-activation into stress. Flashbacks are often triggers for relapse in substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, and other

Shame, Guilt, and Low Self-Esteem

Shame is the belief that you are bad, that you don’t deserve love and belonging. Guilt and feelings of worthlessness are close by when there is shame. Women who have C-PTSD may have the classic “doormat” personality style, apologizing for their existence and not consciously aware of their inherent value as beloved members of the family of life. Crippling perfectionism and harsh self-judgment are chronic conditions. For women with C-PTSD, any life event can trigger shame, since the shame is attached to who they believe they are in essence. Shame is one of the tragic legacies of childhood sexual abuse, as well as emotional and physical abuse or neglect.

Hypervigilance

Hypervigilance means that a person is always on guard, expecting the worst to happen at any moment, and being prepared to take preventative, protective action if needed. The classic example of hypervigilance is a combat veteran with PTSD, who can’t stop seeing danger everywhere, even when the war is over.

For women with C-PTSD, the danger they’re on guard against may be social or relational rather than physical (though it can also be that). Women with C-PTSD tend to feel like they need to be in control and feel very threatened when facing uncertainty. They also pay close attention to all details in the environment, including facial expressions of their loved ones. Depending what type of danger was experienced – aggression, neglect, abandonment, sexual violation – women will be on the lookout for signs of these interpersonal events at all times, ready to take action to avoid the social or relational danger they are expecting to happen at any moment.

Substance Abuse, Eating Disorders and Self-Harm

Women with C-PTSD often have a problem with substances, abusing food through overeating or restricting or both, self-harming behaviors like cutting, and suicidal tendencies, feelings and thoughts. This is because the pre-existing condition of chronic stress, fear, dread, and shame is so hard to live with, that it sets a person up for seeking relief through whatever works to block out the feelings, sensations, and thoughts.

Self-Sabotage

Finally, women with C-PTSD may have a lifelong pattern of self-sabotage. Any time a good thing gets going in their lives, whether it be a loving partner, a good job, or another positive life event, they may be triggered to subconsciously take negative action or act out in such a way that destroys progress made, burns bridges, and returns them to life circumstances that are smaller in scope, less lovely, and more shut down.

The reason for this is that women with C-PTSD are on the search for basic safety, and are still trying to solve the puzzle, on some level, of what went wrong in the past that so deeply destroyed their intactness. To open up into higher vibrations of love and purposeful life is enormously threatening to the traumatized parts of the personality, that would rather lock a woman up in her own fear prison than risk exposure to new forms of danger (or to risk having to encounter the old forms of danger again).

For more in-depth information about C-PTSD, we highly recommend the work of Dr. Arielle Schwartz.

Evidence-Based Treatments for C-PTSD at Villa Kali Ma

C-PTSD responds to several forms of treatment. At Villa Kali Ma, we offer many forms of trauma treatment in parallel, to help women heal their PTSD in the most holistic and global way.

EMDR and Brainspotting

EMDR and Brainspotting are believed to change the way that the brain recalls a memory. Not erasing memories, but changing the amount of activation in the nervous system that takes place when thinking of certain memories. Before this type of trauma treatment, it may be impossible to think of a certain event without re-experiencing the emotions, thoughts and physical sensations of the event, as if they are happening now. EMDR and Brainspotting help the brain to differentiate the present from the past, at least in terms of how it feels to the body and emotions.

Body Work and Somatic Therapies

There are several wonderful modalities that help women with C-PTSD build feelings of basic safety in the body, improve their here and now orientation, and complete trauma responses. Trauma Tension and Release Exercises (TRE), Somatic Experiencing, massage, and trauma-informed Yoga are some of modalities we offer that help women allow their bodies, brains, and nervous systems to process unfinished business at the level of physiology.

Internal Family Systems Therapy and Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) is a highly transformational psychodynamic therapy that helps a person to heal all the traumatized inner children that live inside the soul of a person who has C-PTSD. IFS changes a woman’s subjective sense of herself, shifting her from a state of chronic shame and low self-worth, to an accurate recognition of her own inherent and unconditional marvelousness. Symptoms like rage and fear transform into more balanced and helpful forms, like boundaries and appropriate caution.

Mindful Self-Compassion, likewise, is a popular modality that helps women accustomed to treating themselves with severity, harshness and coldness, to activate their inner fountain of self-love and kindness. Both of these powerful approaches are offered at Villa Kali Ma because they are so good at restoring a foundation of softness, love, and self-support.

Begin Your Healing Journey with Trauma-Informed Care

It’s important for women to receive trauma-informed care. Trauma-informed care means that emphasis is placed on subjective experiences as well as objective measures for safety, control, and empowerment, placing each woman in charge of her own choices in recovery.

Trauma-informed care insists on respect for all parts of a woman, understanding that each symptom has a role which has, at its origins, a positive intention of helping a woman to cope in challenging circumstances. Rather than viewing negative and even self-destructive behaviors as a problem, trauma-informed care understands that every feature in the ecosystem of the psyche needs to be understood in full, before any changes are suggested. Finally, trauma-informed care means that women are given the body and nervous-system support they need to gradually shift gears out of a mode of perception that feels dangerous, to a perception which feels safe, before they are encouraged to be “positive” or “look on the bright side”.

At Villa Kali Ma, trauma-informed care is integrated into all of our services, in our several facilities in northern San Diego County. We also offer a stand-alone, trauma treatment facility that administers cutting edge treatments which can be difficult to access outside of such a licensed facility.

Tags childhood trauma, Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), Emotional Dysregulation, Holistic Therapy, PTSD Treatment San Diego, Somatic Healing, Trauma Recovery, women's mental health

Depression Mental Health Ptsd in Women Women's Mental Health

How Being a Woman Affects Addiction, Mental Illness and Trauma

Post author By VKM
Post date August 2, 2025

Are you grateful to be female? Is femininity a gift or a curse to you?

If you’re like a lot of women, you may have mixed feelings about it. In particular, it can be hard to separate out what you yourself feel about your own femaleness, from all that has been said to you, in so many words, about what being a woman means.

Can you find your true Self under the pile of projections that were thrown over you, the many rules of conduct you were taught, the words put in your mouth?How were you mirrored? What explanations were given to you, as a way of helping you understand what you feel, what you want, how you are to find your way in this world? Did the explanation of your own motivations that was given to you match what you really were experiencing on the inside? Did your role models show you what a woman can be in full?

Without knowing you personally, we here at Villa Kali Ma can venture a guess: probably not. The chances that you were seen, and reflected, for what you actually are – a vivid aliveness, a source of powerful agency, a genius creator in your own right – are slim. Because the understanding of how women and men have been wounded, and what they each need to come into more balanced fullness, is still in its infancy.

Writing about women’s rage in Coming Home to Myself: Reflections for Nurturing a Woman’s Body and Soul, Jungian analyst Marion Woodman says:

“There’s personal anger, but underneath there’s often universal rage; and when we are possessed, God help the man who’s on the end of that. Deep rage is not about the man; deep rage is this: Nobody ever saw me. Nobody ever heard me.

As long as I can remember, I’ve had to perform. When I tried to be myself, I was told, That’s not what you think, that’s not what you ought to do. So, just like my mother and her mother, I put on a false face. My life became a lie. That’s deep rage. We have lived our lives behind a mask. Sooner or later —if we are lucky— the mask will be smashed.”

In this age of heightened pressure and deepened pain for all humans, comparisons and distinctions between the male and the female experience can come out in even greater clarity.

At Villa Kali Ma, we uphold the fact that women are special. Men are special too. It’s not a competition, actually. But women have an experience of life that requires special care and tending, a kind of attention that’s distinct from the kind that best nurtures men. We have shared humanity with all humans, but we are not identical and the differences between us need to be honored.

That honoring – of the ways that men and women experience embodiment and socialization differently – informs our unique, holistic treatment programs for women.

Women experience mental illness, trauma, and addiction differently than men. Here are some considerations we keep in mind in all of our treatment programs.

Women, Complex Trauma and PTSD

Women are more vulnerable to traumatization than men. A major source of traumatization for women, in addition to the types of trauma that affect all genders equally (like physical abuse or neglect in childhood), is sexual violence.

Women are more likely to have sexual trauma originating from childhood sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. Women are also more vulnerable to traumatization from criminally motivated violence, like mugging or kidnapping. Women who have experienced sexual violence are significantly more likely to attempt suicide and to be given a diagnosis for a severe mental health disorders.

The impact of traumatization in mental health is extensive. Many mental health diagnoses reflect the presence of symptoms and coping styles originally stemming from trauma. In women in particular, it is important to tease apart which symptoms may be healed through resolution of traumatic responses, as opposed to mental illness which may be present for biological or hereditary reasons.

Gendered Diagnoses: Depression, Anxiety, and Borderline Personality

Top among risk factors for development of a mental health diagnosis like depression or anxiety is simply being a woman. Women are statistically more likely to experience mental health symptoms, by a meaningful factor. In the case of anxiety, for example, women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed.

Given the higher incidence of traumatization among women, this imbalance in distribution of symptoms which could be coming from traumatization isn’t necessarily surprising. At the same time, biological influences, such as the impact of female hormones on mental health, trauma, and addiction have been shown to play a role as well.

Certain mental health diagnoses have a history of being disproportionately assigned to women, such as Borderline Personality Disorder. Borderline Personality Disorder is under review in some areas of the mental health field, due to its high correlation with trauma.

Eating Disorders, Self Harm and Body Image

Women are socialized to identify with their physical appearance to a great degree, and are expected to uphold perfectionistic standards of beauty at great cost to themselves. Beauty standards for women are extremely narrow, favoring not only certain body types and abilities, but also assigning higher or lower value along lines of race and ethnicity.

This socialization factor makes the mental health topic of self-love and self-acceptance very challenging for women. Women have been trained from birth to reject or disdain our physical bodies as inadequate when not perfectly matching given ideals. Women who are considered beautiful by the mainstream standards enjoy privileges of higher social status, but typically suffer from feeling the highly conditional nature of that status. Such women are made aware how much of their good social fortune depends upon maintaining physical desirability, as well as cooperating with the boundary intrusion and open attempts at exploitation by unwholesomely interested parties.

Women are generally encouraged to try to change their bodies to be more appealing to men, in whatever way may be required in order to have a greater chance of fitting into the standard. Extreme behaviors, such as eating disorders, over-exercising, undergoing harsh beauty treatments, and shaming the self when not meeting standards, are topics more commonly affecting women than men.

Women who are given the message that they are less attractive to men than other women in their peer group may suffer low self-esteem and shame related to their appearance, but women who are considered beautiful suffer shame and low self-esteem due to the underscoring of the message that what is lovable about them is limited to their ability to perform in the role of “desirable female”. These issues are installed, experienced, and processed in distinctly gendered ways.

Women’s Boundaries in a context of Sexualization and Objectification

Women are expected to be ok with being objectified, if not overtly sexualized, beginning in puberty or even already in childhood in some contexts. Very often, women face social pressure to tolerate subtle or obvious transgression of their boundaries to greater or lesser degrees. Women are frequently trained out of the ability to detect their boundaries, let alone protect them.

Objectification means being thought more of in terms of usefulness for gratifying another person’s needs, rather than regarded as having personhood and agency in her own right. Women are socialized to expect greater reward and ease in life when tolerating some degree of violation of boundaries, including basic boundaries of safety from intrusive sexual energy or other harm.

In its most benign form, this socialization makes the mental health topic of boundaries very challenging for women. Women are socially reinforced to say yes to what they would like to say no to, to say no what they would like to say yes to. This makes the topic of recovering women’s right to experience anger, and its connection to boundaries, self-protection, and self-care, a core treatment issue for many women.

Emotional Caretaking and Women’s Work

Women are largely socialized to be emotional caretakers of people around them and to perform “invisible work” without being asked or noticed. Women frequently provide emotional support, attention, and encouragement to the men in their lives, including work colleagues and bosses, without explicit recognition or appreciation of this function as requiring energy and skill. For related reasons, many women develop patterns of codependency, which can make treatment more difficult than for men, who may feel less relationally fused and oriented towards survival through the specific strategy of psychological enmeshment with others.

Although some of this has changed, women are generally expected to assume household and child-rearing tasks, as something that “goes without saying”. Women are still unconsciously expected to assume a caretaker role in the workplace, if not for material comforts like getting coffee and making a nice environment for people, then for emotional comforts, such as attending to the psychological atmosphere in the room, helping people to feel at ease, seen, and acknowledged.

Women and men performing in the same role at work are still sometimes paid quite differently, women being paid less than men on average, even within the same job title and responsibilities. The gap in pay widens further when looking at overall pay, versus comparing people in the same roles, reflecting an “opportunity gap” across higher paid roles. Finally, performance of traditionally masculine work roles is given greater financial reward, while professions centered on more nurturing roles, professions generally dominated by women, like social work, child, elder and dependent adult care, nursing, and teaching, are paid far less.

Setting aside the psychological implications of valuing women less than men, women are strongly socialized to place the emotional and physical nurturance needs of others first, which makes appropriate selfishness difficult. More problematically in the immediate sense, is that due to ongoing problems with pay inequality, many women are financially dependent on their abusers.

Treating Women with Care

At Villa Kali Ma, we understand why it is that women do better in female-only healing environments, for all the reasons outlined above and many, many more.

The focus of treatment for women, in many ways, needs to be the exact opposite of the focus of treatment for men. For instance: where many, many men need to learn to experience feelings of vulnerability safely, to lower their boundaries, and to be allowed to soften, women often need to be able to experience their right to power, independence, strength, and boundaries. While men may fear that they will not be loved and respected if they are “weak”, women often have the opposite question: Will I still be loved if I am vital, strong, a force to be reckoned with?

Similarly, where men sometimes need help understanding how their outward expressions of anger, dominance, or sexuality can impact those around them in destructive ways, many women need help with the reverse – to learn how hiding their anger and their vitality away is a problem for them and others. How have we withheld ourselves from this world, and deprived it of our awareness, wisdom, our heart, kindness? Even our pain, our tears, our sensitivity are gifts that are needed here. The type of strength that women have – the strength to feel a wound from within – is sorely missing in our rigid, fragile world.

It’s not about strong versus soft, tender versus fierce, but about allowing both, inside of all people. Here at Villa Kali Ma, we are devoted to helping the women we meet to activate whatever needs activating – all within that longs to birth into this world, but has not had the encouragement, protection, and nourishment needed to do so. If you’re looking for a place to walk a path of recovery from addiction, mental illness, and/or trauma, we’re here for you.

Tags Addiction Recovery, mental health, Women and Addiction

Addiction Treatment Detox Mental Health

How to Prepare Mentally and Physically for Detox

Post author By VKM
Post date June 5, 2025

Have you made the courageous decision to recover from substance addiction? Sincere congratulations, from our hearts to yours!

You might be wondering what comes next. Well, every recovery journey begins the same way, with detoxification. Drugs and alcohol have to be purged from the body in order to get a fresh start – physically, mentally and emotionally.

In this post, we here at Villa Kali Ma will share some thoughts on how you can prepare for this all-important first step of the journey.

Preparing for Detox: A Mental and Physical Wellness Guide

Detoxification is the beginning of recovery. For safety and effectiveness of this important purification process, we highly recommend a medically supervised detox facility, such as Villa Kali Ma’s Detox Program for Women.

The key reason to enter a medically supervised detox program is to reduce dangerous complications which can arise due to severe withdrawal symptoms. Some substances, including alcohol, have potentially life-threatening withdrawal symptoms, like seizures, heart attack or delirium. Whenever alcohol has been used in combination with other substances, including prescription medications, for your own safety it’s not wise to try to detoxify without medical monitoring.

In addition to the potential danger linked to withdrawal from certain substances, and especially substances used in combination, detoxification can be psychologically distressing and physically uncomfortable. Medically supervised detoxification is designed to minimize the difficulty of going through withdrawals.

Withdrawals can be physically painful, and it is also normal to experience intense cravings to return to drug or alcohol use as withdrawals peak. Medical personnel and a contained setting help safeguard you during this especially vulnerable stage, during which many women are tempted to return to using, just to treat the physical and emotional discomfort that surfaces during detox itself.

Finally, medical detox is really the start of treatment, and helps prepare for successful participation in a substance abuse program down the road.

Steps to Take Before Entering a Detox Program

It’s a good idea to prepare the body and mind for detoxification before you enter a program. Detoxification is physically demanding. Every part of the body will be working hard to help eliminate the substance out of the system.

Detoxification is likely to activate painful emotions and mental processes as well. There are some emotional and mental preparation steps which can help to ensure readiness for the experience.

Here are a few simple ways you can prepare for entering a detox program.

Exercise

In the days or weeks before entering detox, support the body with gentle exercise. High-intensity workouts are not advised – you don’t want to tax the body. Rather, try stretching, yoga, or qi gong. These practices help circulation and lymphatic drainage, both important during detox. Low-impact activities like walking, cycling, and easy aerobics in moderation can also be used to promote relaxation and release stress.

Reduce Screen Time

As soon as possible, reduce exposure to screen time. Whenever not strictly necessary, stay away from computers and phones. The body’s health is affected negatively by exposure to artificially-generated electromagnetic fields (EMF), including from devices. To help reduce the toxic load, you can give the body a break and help it attune to healing rhythms simply through avoiding artificially-sourced EMF wherever possible.

Other Ways to Prepare for a Detox Program

Increase Green Time

To actively support the body to tune to healthy EMF, let the body have time outside in nature, or a park or garden. The benefits of natural elements, including plants, animals, and exposure to the open air, are extensive. The body will be grateful for any fortification of immunity that can be had. If possible, arrange for skin-to-nature contact, for example through lying on the beach, walking barefoot, swimming, or even just touching nature materials like grass or leaves. There are many immune and psychological benefits to nature-bathing in any form.

Drink Water and Eat Clean

You can already begin gently flushing your system through increasing hydration and eating clean food. Drink plenty of pure water, and start consuming simple, nutrient-dense meals based on whole ingredients, fresh vegetables and lean proteins. Ideally, slowly reduce or eliminate sugar, caffeine, and junk food, as these stimulants deplete the body’s resources.

Sleep and Relaxation

Get as much good sleep and down time as you can. If the body wants to rest, let it rest and do not place unnecessary demands upon yourself at this time. You may also want to begin practicing breathing and other relaxation exercises, which can come in handy during the detoxification process. Below are some tips on breath work for beginners.

Breath Work

There are many simple, helpful breath work tools to choose from. The most basic way to practice breath work is to just notice it without changing it, perhaps saying to yourself “I am breathing in” while you breathe in, and “I am breathing out” while you are breathing out. It is normal to become distracted relatively quickly – that’s part of the practice. When you notice you got distracted, celebrate that you noticed, and start again.

The second-most useful breath work tip is to experiment with lengthening the out-breath. Making the out-breath longer than the in-breath will automatically induce a natural, gentle relaxation response in the body and stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.

To try this approach, experiment to see if you can make your out-breath a few seconds longer than your in-breath. Begin with just counting the natural length of your in-breath (one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi…). Regardless of the length of the in-breath, try lengthening the out-breath by just a few counts longer. For example, if the in-breath naturally has a count of 6 seconds, then you may aim for an out-breath of 8 counts.

Do this for a short cycle of around 6 – 10 breaths total, then take a break and notice if anything shifted for you. Just observe, there is no other objective than to see if it works for you.

If the out-breath lengthening experiment doesn’t seem to work for you, don’t worry, there are many other breath work techniques. Choose one of the breath work exercises found here or try pairing breath work with visualization.

Pack Your Bag With Essential Detox Preparation

Some essential items can come with you into the detox facility. You will want to bring the following items:

What to bring:

-pajamas

-slippers or indoor shoes

-comfortable, loose-fitting clothes

-work out clothes

-options for layering, like sweatshirts and long sleeves

-personal hygiene items: toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, soap and hairbrush

-wallet, including ID and insurance cards

-list of any current medications

-a journal and pen

What not to bring:

-Scented products or perfume

-Electronics and devices

-Valuable items

-Jewelry

-Weapons or items that could be used as weapons (sharp objects)

-Drugs and alcohol

Managing Anxiety for Healing (Steps 1 and 2)

You can prepare mentally for detox by setting conscious intentions for your detox stay and practicing anxiety management techniques.

Intentions

Intentions are a powerful tool for any change process. Here is a brief process you can complete in your journal as a way to prepare.

Step 1: Set Intentions

Begin with tuning into your personal reasons and motivations for change. What do you sincerely intend?

I want to detox because…

I intend to be sober so that…

I will clear drugs and alcohol from my body in order to…

My goal is…

My heartfelt desire is…

If I didn’t have to know how, but could just focus on what I wish, I would wish that…

Step 2: Air Doubts and Concerns

The next step is to ask yourself if there are any parts of you inside who have doubts, fears, or concerns about the detox process. Name these worries.

I’m afraid I’ll mess this up and fail…

I’m doubting if I really have the willpower to follow through…

I’m concerned I’ll feel overwhelming cravings…

Setting Intentions for Healing (Steps 3 and 4)

Step 3: Surrender Your Fears

For each of the above-identified fears, reframe it using the phrase “I choose to surrender this [doubt/fear/concern] because…”

I choose to surrender this fear that I will fail because… all I can do is do my best

I choose to surrender this doubt about willpower because… I deserve a chance to try again

I choose to surrender my concerns about overwhelming cravings to use because… that’s why the medical staff are there, to help with that

Step 4: Give Kindness to Yourself

Finally, write out a few positive, sincere messages towards yourself. It can be hard to kind to ourselves, so if it helps, imagine what you would say to a very lovable friend going through a similar thing.

You are so brave, I love you

I’m so proud of you

I love you for who you are

I know who you are on the inside, you are not your addiction

All around the world, women just like me are suffering in the same way, and just like me, they deserve so so much compassion, help, and protection

If this step of self-kindness is hard, you’re not alone! You may find some inspiration in Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion practices.

Anxiety Management Strategies

Anxiety is a common experience during detox. Here are three anxiety management strategies you can practice ahead of time.

Three Easy Techniques for Managing Anxiety

Tune into your feet. Wiggle your toes, and notice sensations down there. Spread, lift, and press your toes into the floor, with no goal other than to observe any physical feelings you can detect. For many people, the feet are a safe part of the body, absent of feelings of stress or danger. Is that true for you?

See if you can notice any differences in sensation between distinct parts of the feet: heel, ball of the foot, arches, toes, top of the foot, sole of the foot, sides of the foot. If you’re not able to notice much sensation, use your hands to gently massage, stroke, or tap your feet. Ask yourself: is there any sensation of danger or discomfort in your feet, or do they feel like they could be a neutral zone? If neutral, then remember that you can always check back in with sensations in your feet when you need a non-stimulating part of your experience to focus into.

Activate your legs. In whatever way is comfortable and available to you, gently tense, bend, twist, and release the large muscle groups in the bottom half of your body. Focus on muscles in your glutes, quads, and calves. If available to you, try doing some gentle, slow-motion squats, or just crouch in a squatting position. As you’re tensing and releasing these muscles, know that you are helping your body to process and eliminate anxiety out of the body.
Send Your Anxiety into the Core of the Earth. Imagine that on your in-breath, you are gathering up all your burdens, worries, and concerns. Gather up the anxiety itself into a big ball of anxiety. Then on the out-breath, picture that you are sending all of the anxiety down through a firehose that goes all the way into the center of the earth. Keep breathing out to dump out all the anxiety into a space at the core of the earth. Leave all anxiety you breathe out there in the center of the earth, where it can do no harm and will easily be composted, processed, or burned up by the earth. Repeat for a few breaths if desired, allowing all anxiety to be moved from inside your body, into the body of the earth, who can hold it for you easily.

Supportive Detox Resources at Villa Kali Ma

As a holistic facility, Villa Kali Ma approaches detoxification as an honored, important phase of the sacred process of recovery. In our medically supervised detox program, we combine effective, safe medical monitoring of the biological detoxification process with our signature approach of supporting mind, body, and spirit with holistic interventions.

Integrating light and gentle practices from the ancient healing systems of yoga, mindfulness, breath work, acupuncture, massage, and Ayurvedic nutrition, we help women start the journey homewards to what matters most inside.

Detox is where recovery begins. Eventually, we may be lead through our recovery to a more natural and soul-centered path. A path to healing all that once harmed us beyond measure, and to a life beyond that story. Through Villa Kali Ma’s many holistic resources and supports, we guide women who are recovering from drug and alcohol abuse to connect the detoxification process to their highest goals and sincerest heart’s longings for a better life.

Tags Addiction Recovery, Detox Preparation

Mental Health

PTSS vs PTSD

Post author By VKM
Post date January 14, 2025

At Villa Kali Ma, we talk a lot about healing women’s trauma. Healing women’s trauma is central to our mission of helping women recover lives of joy and meaning.

Unhealed trauma is a root cause of severe addiction and mental illness. We know from our own stories, and from the lives of women we have helped to recover, how important it is to recognize and have respect for the powerful role of trauma in human life.

These days, many people have heard about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but did you know there is also a diagnosis called Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS)? In this article, we will talk about the differences between these two kinds of trauma.

What Is Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS)?

Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS) refers to a normal, healthy, and short-term stress response. PTSS is characterized by the following symptoms:

quickened heartbeat
trembling
sweating
muscle tension
agitation
sense of danger
a mental replay of events

PTSS is a form of acute, uncomfortable stress that can feel like impending doom. PTSS is triggered automatically, set off unconsciously by parts of the brain responsible for our physical survival.

PTSS is triggered when the body has perceived some kind of danger to its own survival, or the survival of another person. Perception of danger results in a cascade of neurotransmitters from the brain down into the rest of the body.

Neurotransmitters are the messengers in the body, and in this case, they tell the muscles, heart, and lungs to prepare the body for physical action. This is for the purpose of mobilizing the body to respond to the life-threatening event.

The acute stress response is also known as fight-flight-freeze. When we experience terrifying danger or shocking violence, the nervous system responds in a specific way, designed by nature to protect us and move us into instinctive, life-preserving action.

We can recognize the fight-flight-freeze response whenever our muscles have tensed up, we are breathing faster, and our heart is pounding. We may feel hot and sweaty, and feel like we need to move. We may notice tunnel vision and a strangely heightened awareness of specific details – fight-flight-freeze is a kind of altered state.

At the emotional level, it may register as fear, panic, dread, agitation, or rage. What’s going on is that the body has been primed for quick action, so that we can make a split-second decision to fight off an attacker or to move out of harm’s way, as may be necessary to protect ourselves or someone else.

A common source of PTSS is car accidents, injuries, surgeries, muggings, and similar kinds of experiences which can be perceived as harm or threat to our physiology.

PTSS is, generally speaking, a set of uncomfortable symptoms that are linked to something that happened very recently. With appropriate psychological processing of the experience, PTSS symptoms will fade and discharge out of the body within 30 days or so.

What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a serious condition with heartbreaking effects on human life, can develop when fight-flight-freeze symptoms don’t get fully processed and released out of the body.

Symptoms of PTSD include:

Hypervigilance
Exaggerated startle response
Easily frightened
Easily agitated and irritated, low frustration tolerance
Intrusive memories of a scary event
Reliving a scary event as if it is happening again now
Insomnia
Nightmares
Depression and anxiety
Emotionally numb
Rage
Disconnected from people
Avoidance of people, places, and things that remind you of a scary event
Survivor guilt
Shame, negative thoughts, and self-destructive tendencies
Substance abuse
Eating disorders and self-harm

Like PTSS, PTSD is a neurobiological disturbance, caused by people being exposed to shocking and life-threatening events. Combat, natural disasters, and horrific collective events, such as bombings or school shootings, are the types of events that often give rise to PTSD. It is also possible to develop PTSD in response to childhood abuse, sexual assault, bullying, neglect, poverty, and other kinds of chronic adversity.

Both PTSS and PTSD have to do with the biology of survival, with fight-flight-freeze. There is nothing wrong with fight-flight-freeze, it is a life-protecting state of activation. However, if this activation in the physical body doesn’t get released through the resolution of the issue (a full return to safety), the energy of being rattled and riled up can get stuck in the body, where the cascade of hormones and neurochemicals turns toxic.

Although it is life-preserving, stress is hard on the body’s other systems, such as our organs of digestion, and the parts of the body responsible for healing, immunity, and restoration of our energy levels.

During stress, the body decides to prioritize safety and survival, but at a cost that it will need to recuperate later. If “later” never comes, because we do not get the help we need to be able to understand and psychologically resolve what happened, then the body and psyche may get sick with PTSD.

PTSD is a nightmarish state of experiencing and re-experiencing the terror, dread, and horror of a psyche-shattering experience. This state of permanent or recurrent terror, dread, doom, and deep lack of safety is one of the hardest psychological experiences for a human being to endure.

What is the difference between PTSS and PTSD?

PTSD is a temporary traumatic stress reaction, whereas PTSD is chronic and recurrent.

It is normal to experience symptoms like shakes, heart pounding, and psychological disturbances after having been deeply shocked or scared by something. If your shock symptoms arise and fade within 30 days of a traumatic experience, you may be given a diagnosis of PTSS. PTSD does not fade after 30 days; it may still affect a person decades after the original shock.

It is normal to feel guilty, scared, angry, ashamed, numbed, and confused after a shocking event. It’s also natural to have some nightmares, ongoing dread, to feel that your life outlook has changed, or to have some obsessive thoughts of the event, as you figure out what happened, why it went the way it did, and so on.

If you get appropriate therapeutic support for these feelings and for the resolution process, the disturbance doesn’t have to stay with you over time. You may be able to heal the wound in a way that it doesn’t turn into a scar.

What doesn’t help is numbing feelings, avoiding the mind’s meaning-seeking questions, or inducing the nervous system to relax artificially with substances. That’s how people end up with a double diagnosis of PTSD together with SUD (substance use disorder).

Trauma can affect women in several ways

Trauma is surprisingly prevalent. The more research is done on the subject, the more it turns out that wide swaths of the population are getting by in life while enduring semi-nightmarish states of being.

Very many people do not recognize their own traumatized state, because it is hidden behind substance use, behavioral disorders like compulsive internet and phone use, spending, or overeating, and plain old denial. Since numbing is a symptom of trauma, people may feel disconnected or unimportant, and not realize that without their trauma, they would feel more alive and well.

Women in particular are prone to traumatization, due to many factors that make the mainstream culture unsafe for us at multiple levels. Childhood sexual abuse, early sexualization, objectification, harassment, assault, and other forms of subtle or dramatic violence that affect women disproportionately, are major sources of serious traumatization.

Women with substance abuse problems very often have underlying trauma as a root cause. The majority of women entering treatment for substance abuse will end up tracing the self-medication habit to a need to deal with a disturbed nervous system and psyche, engendered by early experiences of not feeling fully safe, loved, and valued in this world.

It’s important to understand that trauma is the underlying condition, but the outer expression can look quite different in each woman. We all have different ways of coping, but what we’re coping with is the traumatization itself. Depression, anxiety, perfectionism, obsessions, compulsions, self-sabotage, negative thinking, guilt, shame, self-harm, narcissism, and overeating are all adaptations to a damaged psyche.

For more about women and PTSD, we share more detailed information on the topic.

Villa Kali Ma addresses women’s PTSD

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we acknowledge the central role trauma plays in the lives of women. Since we are dedicated fully to healing women’s hearts, minds, and bodies, we address trauma as a top priority.

When core trauma is treated in parallel, lasting recovery from substance abuse is much more likely. When trauma is resolved, mental health symptoms are no longer fortified by the body and nervous system. The unholy trinity of trauma, psychological disorders, and substance abuse can be unraveled and removed.

We have a holistic approach that makes use of the most effective clinical treatments in combination with the ancient, soul-repairing practices found in yoga and other alternative modalities. Read more about how we help women recover from PTSD.

We are also very proud of our dedicated trauma treatment center, lovingly dubbed The Retreat – a pioneering trauma-healing facility for women. Read more about why we’re excited about The Retreat.

Whatever your story is, dear reader, we honor you and your path of recovering from harm and all its many implications and effects. We’re here, cheering you on.

Tags ptss vs ptsd

Mental Health

January is Self-Love Month

Post author By VKM
Post date January 9, 2025

How is your self-love today, dear reader? Have you treated yourself with kindness and regard? Have you nourished the unique flame of your own life? Have you fed your body and thickened your spirit? Have you allowed yourself to feel how humanly lovable you are, just as you are right now?

If you have, well done. We know how much this goes against the grain. Love fights the deeply etched grooves of habit, our ancient training to treat ourselves with disregard. Every act of self-care is a true and lasting victory for all women.

If you have not managed to actively give love to the woman you are, today, that’s ok too. We can always begin again.

We here at Villa Kali Ma know how compelling shame can be, how strangely difficult it is just to love ourselves even a tiny bit. Self-dislike is the hardest habit to break. It is linked to the heaviest burdens women carry. The burdens of trauma, addiction, and mental illness are all connected to the absence of self-love and lack of self-care.

Yet here we are. January is a month of new beginnings. Serendipitously, January is designated “Self Love Month”. This January, we over here at Villa Kali Ma lend our support to Self Love, by way of this blog post in its honor.

What is Self-Love Month?

Self Love Month is a national awareness campaign, a celebration designed to keep our minds on the topic of caring for ourselves.

Why do we at Villa Kali Ma care about self-love? You can say that self-love gives rise to self-care, which is an important tool in all healing.

Through self-loving actions, we can walk our way into experiencing true love. We wouldn’t ask our loved ones to “just know” that we love them if we never behaved in loving ways, would we? We must behave towards ourselves in loving ways, through acts of care, and then love will find a home within us.

We women need self-love and self-care, both.

What is the history of Self Love?

The modern concept of self-love as a conscious choice started in counterculture. Following the appalling revelations of World War I and II, people began to question the way we live, and whether or not we really have to comply with what our rulers want from us, given how little regard they seem to have for our lives.

Beginning in the 1950s, small but important subcultures, such as the Beatniks, began to loudly question and push back against social authorities. Once unassailable organizations of church, state, money, education, and culture were examined with more scrutiny. People began to notice all the ways we are taught to treat ourselves with a lack of respect and love.

In the mid to late 1960s, the hippie generation and civil rights movement added to the growing wave of opposition to violence against humanity, waged inside and outside of the United States. People began to object to violence against our own population and against foreign nations.

Into the 1970s, different minority communities more openly questioned standards of beauty, lovability, masculinity, and femininity.

In the personal terrain of self, ruled by psychology, spirituality, and philosophy, significant changes took place as well. In every aspect of our life, from the outermost political expressions to our innermost privacies of thought, a new idea was taking place, which is the deepest revolution any of us could ever imagine: that perhaps we can “rule” ourselves. Not as tyrants who hate all that is truly human, but with love, kindness, and respect for human life.

Self Love Month timeline

A few centuries back, before the Renaissance, Western culture did not have an idea of self-love, because there was no strong sense of an individual self at all.

We were more collective in our identity and did not yet have a theory of a personal right, let alone responsibility, to live out the story of our own life. We were more tribal, communal, and familial.

Through sweeping changes brought about by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the notion of personhood gained a foothold. Philosophy (and eventually the newborn field of psychology) began to gradually explore the idea that each individual life has meaning and dignity of its own. These paradigm changes were connected to geopolitical shifts, like the end of the slave trade and the dismantling of colonialism.

The term “Self Love” entered American thought around the 1960s, when people who were working with trauma victims needed help handling secondary trauma. It was discovered that first responders are more resilient if they actively care for their own needs.

Fast forwarding to the year 2024, self-love has, in our opinion, gotten wildly confused with indulgence, narcissism, and materialism. In this sense, we may have gotten a bit off track, as though it is self-loving to go shopping or to spend a lot of time doing our make-up. (It might be, but it also might not be).

No. Self-love has very little to do with glamor (though we admit comfort can be a part of love). Self-love is a deep embrace of all that is genuinely human. Our sorrow, our ordinariness, our imperfect skin, our follies, and our inner flame, our true shine, are all to be loved.

We may have gotten a bit off the path, but the revolutionary root of self-love is here, and can’t be fully removed. It is a thorn in the side of all who, for whatever their reasons are, hate humanity and can’t stand the idea of us loving ourselves as we are.

Self Love FAQs

How can I give love to myself? Don’t I need another person to love me?

It’s natural to want to love and be loved by others. We can have that too. However, we also can and should learn how to love ourselves, that’s necessary too. How to do that?

Start with thinking about your love language. How do you show your love to other people in your life? And how do you like other people to show their love to you?

Everyone has a slightly different way of showing love, but if we really want people to know that we love them, we have many ways to get the message to them. Once you know your love language, start using it on yourself. You can use the other love languages too, but the ones that really mean something to you will have the most impact.

Think about whether you could set up a self-care routine with many opportunities to use your love language on yourself. A self-love schedule, that will ensure you take loving actions regularly.

How can I tell if I love myself or not?

If you love yourself, you will feel that you are loved and lovable, no matter what. There will be no questions of undeserving, nor on the other hand of inflation or entitlement. Self-love doesn’t mean thinking we’re better than others, that we deserve more, or that others owe us their energy, attention, and love.

Nor does it mean that we are less than, that there is something that makes us inferior or unimportant – that’s not true either!

The challenging truth is full and true equality – all human beings are equally deserving of love, we all partake of love, or have a right to, anyway.

Self-love does mean that we let ourselves receive our own love, first. We make sure that we are filled to the brim with the vibrations of love, knowing that when we are well-fed with love, we will naturally share it with others too. We ideally do not love another person more than we love ourselves.

How can I tell if I am missing self-love?

For those of us with addiction histories, we needn’t even ask this question. Addiction is perhaps the fiercest form of self-hatred. It’s not our fault – we didn’t mean to end up like this, but we did abandon ourselves to forces that mean us no good. We treated ourselves with great, great disregard. If you have a history of addiction, you have a self-love issue.

Even after we enter recovery, and even if addiction never was part of our story, we may have a pattern of codependency, in which we subtly or obviously feel that pretty much everyone else is more deserving of our love and care, than we are.

If we feel guilt, shame, negativity, victimhood, and sabotage ourselves from receiving basic recognition and love, we need to work on loving ourselves. If this is you, don’t feel bad. It is tragically common among us women!

For more about learning to love ourselves, check out this post from Villa Kali Ma.

What are Self Love Month activities?

Self-love activities are actions we take that help us feel in our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls that we are genuinely loved, and worthy of our own love. These activities will be different for different people, as meaning is highly personal.

Why not take the month of January to try a nourishing routine of new self-love activities? Draw up a plan made from activities that you know will transmit love to yourself.

Self-love activities may address any and all layers of a woman’s being: physical body, emotions, thoughts, friendships, creativity, romance, vocation – the possibilities are endless.

How could you show your body that you love her? Healthy food? Going to nature spots she likes? Dancing once a day?

How could you show your tender emotional self that you love her? Journalling about your love every morning for a month? Letting yourself read a book that nourishes your inner child? Playing around creatively in a new medium?

Think about all the sides of the human being you are, then think of ways that you could communicate love to that aspect of your being. How could you show love to your working self? To your romantic self? To your friend self?

Give yourself the gift of dreaming up, and then living out, one heavenly month of loving you most of all.

Important facts about Self Love

1. Human beings need love to be healthy physically?

Love boosts immunity, boosts energy, regulates the nervous system, and helps the body thrive. It is a wonderful thing that with practice, we can give ourselves the love we need. As wonderful as it is to give and receive love from and with other human beings, the most powerful generator of love for the unique being we are is right here within us.

2. Children need love to develop normally

People who for whatever reason aren’t fully loved and cared for appropriately in childhood grow up with mental, emotional, and physical deficits. Luckily, we can restart our growth process by applying self-love later on. As the saying goes, it’s never too late to have a happy childhood. It’s also never too late to be loved. You as your adult self can adopt your past child, bringing her forward in time to live in the present with you as a loved, cherished little girl.

3. Self Love is the key to healing trauma, mental health disorders, and addiction

It’s necessary to apply love to the self in order to be able to recover from serious injuries to the psyche, body, and brain. In fact, lack of love has been part of the problem all along.

Deciding to get help and to heal ourselves might be the greatest self-love act of all. And make no mistake, though we call it the inner healing power, observer mind, and even presence, these are nothing if not alternate names for real, true love.

Why we love Self Love Month at Villa Kali Ma?

Villa Kali Ma is devoted to healing women from the many injuries and burdens that seek to weigh us down in pain. These places within us, parts of the oneness that have been cut off from love through traumatization, can keep us from releasing our unique gifts into this world.

This is tragic because each and every one of us is needed. Every woman’s life is felt as a missing or present vibration in the world.

Self-love is the real holy grail. A magic potion, an elixir, a cure for pain. It is produced, amazingly enough, right here in the chambers of our own hearts.

Since we have come to know this truth inside and out, we over here at Villa Kali Ma join in this January celebration of Self Love. Let it be applied to heal all the wounds known to womankind.

Villa Kali Ma can help women with Self Love

Villa Kali Ma’s unique treatment program helps women recover from addiction, trauma, and mental illness. We strengthen women’s hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits by teaching them how to love and care for their own life force, to keep the flame of their own being lit. If this is something you need, come join us in the healing halls of recovery. Our circle is growing every day!

Tags self love month

Mental Health

Impact of Mental Health Resolutions on Mental Health

Post author By VKM
Post date January 3, 2025

Many centuries ago, a decision was made that the start of each year should fall just ten days after the winter solstice. Before Julius Caesar’s Roman calendar, and in some cultures still, the start of the new year was celebrated in springtime instead, on the spring equinox.

For the body, certainly, springtime is when feelings of newness, freshness, and possibility tend to arrive. Tender leaves on branches, singing birds, blooming flowers, and warming days pair well with hope and creativity.

Why would the Romans choose to honor fresh starts and new beginnings right in the dead of winter, in our coldest and most inward months? It is into this frosty, pale terrain that we are expected, to this day, to send forth our hopes and dreams for the next year. Could these cold environs be part of why so many of our resolutions fail?

Whatever the wisdom or folly of our traditions, New Year’s Day is loaded with expectations for women. We may try to honor them or try to ignore them, but either way, they affect us. This is the day that marks annual renewal and recommitment, to do better and to become better.

How does the New Year affect mental health?

The New Year can be a rough time for people with pre-existing mental health conditions. While we’re still recovering from the psychological whammy of the holidays, who should come knocking but the New Year, with all its unanswered questions about how we’re turning out? Are we who we’re supposed to be?

For some of us, pressure, expectations, and the pain we carry around past hopes and dreams rush to the forefront for our attention at this time. People who have depression may struggle with their moods more during the winter months in general. Whatever our particular way of suffering may become more intense in these times. If we are anxious by habit, we may be more so around this day.

Overall, the question of “Can I improve myself this year?” is an unsettling one for anyone who lacks complete and total self-love and self-acceptance as a starting point.

While to some people, the New Year represents a fresh start and a fresh chance to begin again, for many people it represents a danger of reflecting on the self in an unkind way, with perfectionism, self-doubt, and disappointment looming large.

If this is you, you are not in any way alone. The month of January was named for the Roman god Janus, a difficult character, a two-faced god of doorways, passages, and transition. That description about sums up January, for many of us. An awkward moment of shifting weight, stepping from a suddenly ended year into an unsettlingly open future.

Why do we create New Year’s resolutions?

The practice of creating New Year’s resolutions is traced back more than 4000 years to the Babylonians, who made promises to gods and kings in exchange for divine or imperial favor and protection.

The root of “I will be good this year, I promise” is directly linked to guarantees of personal safety and hope of reward for our good behavior. In a dangerous world, we may find comfort in magical thinking: if I am good, bad things won’t happen to me. If bad things happen to other people, maybe it’s their fault.

This magical thinking, a fallacy of cause and effect, lies at the heart of one of the most painful mental illnesses, OCD. The person obsessed with purity, ritual, and perfection believes, in their confusion, that the world turns around their own morality alone.

This childlike mechanism of being good for the pleasing of parental-feeling authorities, in hope of it earning us what we need to have a good life, is deeply at play still for many of us when we draw up our New Year’s resolutions.

How many of us attach a feeling of morality to our resolutions, when we succeed and most especially when we fail? Are people who manage to keep to their diets somehow imbued with virtue, too, as well as societal approval of their physique? Is it inherently a sign of being a superior person if we manage to change ourselves dramatically? If so, why? Why are we not allowed to be as we are already? Why do we have to change into something else? Aren’t we changing all the time anyway?

What is the psychology behind why New Year’s resolutions fail?

Most New Year’s Resolutions fail within the first month or two. The surface reason for this is that people’s goals are too broad and undefined.

If we truly want to accomplish something, we need to perform a series of tiny acts, and incremental changes. One step at a time, as long as we keep walking, we will get to the end of the trail we meant to walk.

But underneath our poorly defined goals, there often lies a bigger complexity: ambivalence about change. As everyone says, where there’s a will, there’s a way. If we felt fully lined up with the changes we say we want to make, then we would make them. We would break those changes down into tiny steps and take those steps.

When we don’t do that work of breaking a desired change down into a realistic change plan, sometimes it’s because we actually aren’t fully sure about the change.

How to work with change ambivalence? Here are three ideas to ponder, from us over here at Villa Kali Ma.

1. Pressure to Change Makes it Hard to Change

If we place pressure on ourselves to change, before really understanding and honoring why we are how we are to begin with, we will hit big waves of inner resistance.

For example, we may pressure ourselves to lose weight and set an ambitious resolution, but not understand what we get out of being a little bit overweight. When we understand all the benefits and pay-offs of our existing overeating and avoidance-of-exercise habits, then and only then can we make a fully informed choice and commitment to change. And we may very well realize that all things considered, we’d rather stay the way we are! To understand more about how that could be, read the next section: Perfectionism and Self Rejection.

2. Perfectionism and Self Rejection

Deep within us is a wounded child, who is still mourning the fact that we were never completely loved and accepted in our full nature, but rather loved only for our conformity to what our parents asked us to be for them.

Depending on the type of environment we grew up in, we may have been fully deprived of our right to be an individual person with our own impulses and dreams, instead expected to fulfill other people’s expectations, or else. We may have been abused, neglected, and mistreated, instead of loved.

A part of us is still mad about that. This inner part has a lot of psychological power, and she kicks back against perfectionistic standards and expectations to change to fit some imagined ideal. When this is the case, inner parts are at war with each other. The perfectionist who wants to be beautiful wants to put us on a diet, but the child who wants to be loved unconditionally no matter what she looks like is not on board with the latest scheme for making us conditionally lovable. This inner conflict has to be resolved before any change will be possible.

3. Unrealistic Expectations About How Much Change Can Happen, How Fast

When we do decide to make a consciously chosen change, we often get lost in polarities and black-and-white thinking, thinking we must conquer our past self rather than work with her. In reality, change is slow, and it must be incremental, or else it will not stabilize. Successful change happens one tiny little step at a time, without pushing, aggression, and forcing. Most of us try to run before we can walk because we want so much to be different from what we are now that we skip over the very basic wisdom, that change takes time and each change must be integrated by the existing system, or else the whole thing will fall apart.

What are psychological factors contributing to resolution-related stress?

Almost all of us are narcissistically wounded, which means that we have pain related to our sense of self. Who we think we are, that person we imagine other people perceive when they interact with us is some kind of a problem.

It is true that some people have an inflated sense of their value and importance, and these people may feel entitled to excessive admiration. This narcissistic patterning, looking like self-esteem on the outside, is actually the worst kind of low self-esteem, in which one so devalues themselves that they project all of their own less flattering qualities on everyone else, keeping all the good qualities for themselves.

These people are the most afraid of change, since any change may cause them to lose their fragile grasp on imagined superiority. For the rest of us, who may wonder how it is that such people are so confident while we are crippled with insecurities, may be more prone to a deflated self problem, in which we imagine that we are truly inferior to other people.

In reality, we may have areas where we think we are superior and other areas where we think we are superior, but whether we’re at the top of the Ferris wheel or the bottom matters little – wherever we are in this consciousness trap, we will find resolutions stressful.

It’s either our chance to improve ourselves (implying that we are not good enough as we are), or it’s our chance to prove again that we are the best (implying that were we to fail, we would no longer be valuable).

This pressure of the entire question of what makes a person “good” or not, is the core of the dilemma for any of us who grapple with it.

How can past traumatic experiences affect New Year’s resolution stress?

Whatever our core trauma, New Year’s resolutions will touch into those. Here’s how.

Setting aside for a moment our negative self-image and the fact that we may be judging ourselves unfairly, it is also true that pretty much all of us have non-ideal behaviors too.

For example, no matter what anyone else thinks about our body, it really is a problem, most likely, if we never exercise and only eat bad food. It makes us unhappy, stifles our life force, and deadens our spirit.

But whatever problematic behavior we have, it is a trauma response. It is a coping mechanism, a way of not having to directly confront a problem that we are scared we don’t know how to solve. We do not avoid feeling life energy coursing through our bodies (a result of good exercise and diet) because we are lazy, no-good people, but because we fear the activation of our hearts and nervous systems. This is trauma. When the trauma is healed, we have nothing to avoid anymore.

What are strategies to alleviate New Year’s Resolutions Stress?

Rather than approaching the New Year with a sense of pressure and stress to change, let’s lighten it up a little.

Here are three questions to journal on that can help with New Year’s Resolution Stress:

What about me is already great, that I would like to simply carry forward into the next year?
What did I do in 2024 that was fun, easy, light, and positive? What was great about those highlights of the past year?
What comes easily and naturally to me at this point?
What qualities and habits do I have, that I deeply approve of?
What would delight me, if it should happen all on its own, without any forcing and effort?

Tips for effective goal-setting

If you have something serious and life-threatening going on, like addiction, then neither self-acceptance alone nor New Year’s Resolutions will help you. Rather, you need to surrender the whole question of trying to manage and change yourself and get help. This is not a personal failure, this is an important psychological emergency.

But if you are stably sober already, or not struggling with addiction at this time, you may want to reframe your resolutions as goals. In general, making SMART goals is the key: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely.

In addition to breaking your intentions into concrete actionable items which can be checked off your list without major struggle, we suggest the following approach for a gentle approach to change.

1. Start with honoring and understanding what is in place in your psyche already

When you reflect on yourself and how you are, try on the lens that everything you do actually makes perfect sense and has its advantages. Try to find out what the advantages are. For example: “If I am a little bit fat, fewer people hit on me and I don’t feel as scared”. Look for a secret payoff that makes you understand why you may be living as you live now. Listen to yourself and believe in yourself. Everything you do and are, is for a reason.

2. Get Buy-In From All Parts of You

When considering changing something, check in with all parts of you to see if they have any objections. Do not expect any inner part of you to give something up without supporting them with a different way to meet their need. For example, if you currently eat ice cream and watch TV every night to relax, but you want to stop eating ice cream, what will you do instead, that will still meet the need for pleasure and comfort?

3. Make A Conservative Plan of Tiny, Easy Changes

If you have buy-in among your inner psychological parts to make a change, then make a reasonable, slow, cautious plan for changing.

The first few goals will be for building feelings of success and confidence first and foremost. Starting with something very, very easy can be the foundation. For example, instead of running for 20 minutes three times a week, start with going for a 10-minute walk times a week. Once that easier habit is anchored in, and all parts of you are still ok, you can gradually and incrementally raise the bar.

It is better to think of these as “willingness test runs” more than failing or not. If you set an intention to go for a walk three times a week for a month and you fail in the second week, that doesn’t mean you’re bad or weak-willed, it means that some part of you wasn’t on board with the idea. Find out why not and do what you can to create inner consensus.

Villa Kali Ma can help women set effective mental health resolutions

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we are committed in full to sharing what we know about the self-change process, with all women who are ready to heal themselves. Across our multidisciplinary team of clinicians, practitioners, and healers, we represent a wide range of expertise that helps women discover true transformation and lasting change. We do this not only to help women, and to help ourselves, but to help create a future that’s safe and positive for women to live in. Each woman with a lit torch brings light to all of us and also lights many more women’s torches.

If you’re curious about changing yourself this year, consider joining us!

Tags mental health resolutions, why new year's resolutions fail

Mental Health

How to Overcome Post-Holiday Depression

Post author By VKM
Post date January 2, 2025

Happy New Year, dear readers! Thank you for your attention to Villa Kali Ma and what we have to share about how women can heal from addiction, mental illness, and trauma. We are wishing you a very bright, expansive, and beautiful 2025, full of inspiration, connection, and joy.

At the end of last year, we wrote a post about how to take care of yourself if you experience depression during the holidays.

Holidays survived without sinking into a pit of gloom? Congratulations, it’s truly no small feat! Take a moment to be happy about yourself, you are a treasure and you deserve it.

Now, for some of us, fortunately, or unfortunately, it’s on to the next challenge: post-holiday depression! Here are some thoughts on how to pass through this next phase, with kindness and care.

What is post-holiday depression?

As the name suggests, post-holiday depression kicks in as we come down from the holidays and all that they were or were not for us this year. Post-holiday depression has all the same symptoms as regular depression: lowered energy and mood, loss of enjoyment, bleak outlook, and feelings of sadness or mourning.

The key difference between post-holiday depression and regular depression is that post-holiday depression is seasonal, and will fade as the holidays recede further into the rearview mirror.

What causes post-holiday depression?

Depression is a call to go inwards. When we have been giving a lot of attention to the outside world, and perhaps neglecting our inner world, depression may appear as a psychological messenger who beckons us inward. Come home, she says, come back to me. I am your person.

Once we go back into our own psyches, pulling our attention and thoughts away from other people and what they think of us, we may find emotions that we have not yet had the time to process.

These were feelings we put on hold during the holidays because it wasn’t the right time or place to mourn, flash with anger, or tingle with creative inspiration. But now that we’re back in our routine again, we can make time and space to catch up with ourselves. Just as a child might need extra time with a parent who has been traveling, after that parent comes home, your inner child may need some extra time with you, after you have been “away” from her.

All of this takes time and space. We may need to rest, get out into nature, and do soothing manual tasks like cooking, baking, or cleaning while our mind free roams, in order to sort through what we took in during the holidays.

Why do women experience post-holiday depression?

Women experience depression for lots of reasons. One factor that affects us in particular is how we feel about loved ones, family, and togetherness.

Most of us have complicated feelings about our family of origin relationships, and the temporary reunion with family brings up a lot. The holidays can be a bittersweet combination of longing, nostalgia, anger, bitterness, sadness, joy, and who knows how many other emotions. Once they’re concluded, we may find the holidays have left us with a bag of surplus emotions to feel.

Also, it’s simple but it’s true: at the body chemistry level, a lot of us overeat during the holidays. Overeating anything, but sugar, in particular, is linked to depression.

Finally, if we have been away from routines we rely on for sanity-saving, such as exercise routines, morning journaling, and so on, we may also just be out of balance. The best way to get back into balance is to gently return to routines that we know to be helpful and stabilizing.

How long does post-holiday depression last?

By definition, post-holiday depression is a temporary state, and it will fade within a few weeks of returning to our normal life.

If we are depressed for months after the holidays, it is probably not really the holidays that got us, or at least not only the holidays. Rather, we may also be affected by seasonal affective disorder or topics that are surfacing in our psyche for witnessing. Whatever the reason, if depression is lingering on, then we may need to get some support for clearing it out.

What are post-holiday depression statistics?

There is little formal research available about post-holiday depression, perhaps because the symptoms tend to resolve on their own naturally by early spring, latest, and therefore do not necessarily represent a serious issue for humanity.

That said, it is anecdotally evident, at least to those of us who work in mental health, that the entire span of the year from November to the end of January is a difficult time for many people.

Whether that’s because of the shortened daylight hours, pressure about the year’s end, the holidays, or getting over the holidays, remains to be explored in clinical research. More information would need to be gathered.

But rest assured, if this happens to you, you are not alone. Many women do experience these months to be the hardest time of their personal yearly cycle.

How to overcome post-holiday depression?

The way to overcome post-holiday depression might be different for each woman.

In general, it always works to start with feeling better physically, and trusting that emotions and mind will follow.

Eat fresh green food (or whatever clean nourishment your body is asking for), sleep abundantly, turn off your devices, connect with nature, and get the body moving.

In addition to letting the body guide you back to feeling good, start taking some self-loving actions. Use your tools.

Wherever you’re at, you can start right now by making a list of all the tools you already possess, which you know work to make you feel better.

Just brain-dump all the things you know help, in no order:

I can go for a walk around the neighborhood every day. I can make some green juice. I can start intermittent fasting again. I can drink a big glass of water with lemon. I can cook myself a nourishing vegetable soup. I can turn the phone and the computer off. I can read my book. I can make and send thank you cards, including one to myself for staying sober. I can pay for the coffee for the stranger behind me in line. I can cuddle my cat. I can get into my pajamas early. I can go to the botanical garden. I can collect eucalyptus leaves at the park.

Depression is cured in part with kindness and caring for yourself, and remembering to do the self-loving, self-caring things that you have already discovered.

For further inspiration, we offer the following journal exercises:

1. Say Goodbye to Last Year

Sometimes depression is just mourning. If you haven’t yet done it, take some time to mourn, honor, and release what you have been through. Reflect on all that you experienced, discovered, and worked through in 2024. Say goodbye.

Dear 2024 me, I am writing to say goodbye to you. There were many experiences I had with you that were really great. A highlight was in the summer, I am still so amazed we managed to complete that project, we really pulled it off!… A difficult moment that I endured and learned from was…I am grateful for you because…

2. Welcome the New Year

If you haven’t yet done it, take some time to welcome in your new life. It is unknown to you now, a surprise. But imagine what highlights and interesting surprises may be in store. What will come to you this year, if this is a good year for you?

Dear 2025 me, I am so excited to meet you! I hope I will be ready for you. I know that you will be brighter and bigger than any past version of me. I am a little scared, I don’t want to let you down. I’m excited too, though. If it were up to me, I would wish for some really great traveling to happen, maybe we could go to Hawaii or someplace like that. Even better, I hope I make some new friends, I want to laugh a lot, and feel tender and connected, and feel like I am a good person….

Dear reader, whoever you are and however you’re feeling today, lots of love to you from us over here at Villa Kali Ma. May your 2025 be full of magic, meaning, and transformation!

Tags post holiday depression

Mental Health

Tips for Dating Someone in Recovery

Post author By VKM
Post date December 27, 2024

There are many beauties and benefits of recovery. To sustain recovery, we have to approach some aspects of life with more delicacy and deliberateness. Romance is one such area, where greater clarity of intention is required of us. Dating, falling in love, and starting partnerships are all a little different in recovery than they are in ordinary circumstances.

In this post, we here at Villa Kali Ma go over some topics to be aware of when dating someone in recovery. This information can be helpful whether you’re the one who’s in recovery, you’re dating someone who’s in recovery or both!

Tips for dating someone in recovery

The most important mindset shift about dating in recovery is to understand that the blissed-out, woozy, and mind-altering aspects of love, romance, intimacy, and sex can be dangerous and confusing zones for people who are new to sobriety.

Intimacy, infatuation, obsession, fantasies, crushes, and even falling head over heels in love are regarded as potential pitfalls to look out for and steer clear of in the early days especially.

This is because the boost in mood brought on through these experiences can be euphoric and addictive, a state of being that a newly sober person cannot tolerate easily without relapsing.

Likewise, too much intensity of feeling may also mean that a person is heading for the roller coaster ride of drama, which is not a safe or fun zone for someone trying to achieve basic stabilization in their life.

It is very common, therefore, that people are advised by elders in the recovery community not to date at all in their first year of sobriety. If dating, a person in recovery will be encouraged to go very slowly and carefully, paying attention to avoid extremes and to resist the “urge to merge” until they’ve had the chance to really get to know someone.

It is not at all unusual to be given the advice to delay getting involved sexually until you are reasonably sure that they would like to bond with the other person in a more lasting way, for example. This is for the recovering person’s own protection and is, in the long run, certainly better for the other party, too.

All of this runs counter to expectations people who aren’t in recovery may have about love and dating. A need to take it slow and steady can be mistaken for a lack of passion or heart, but this would be a misunderstanding of the situation.

There are also certain communities and subcultures within which having many partners, or other liberalities of sexual expression, are considered almost de rigueur. Here the contrast becomes even sharper since a recovering person needs to be relatively cautious with sex.

Whatever your scenario, here are some tips which can help you understand how dating in recovery goes best.

1. Slow it down and space it out

In recovery, dating takes a lot longer. That means more time between dates, less happening on each date, and allowing for a gradual build-up in natural intimacy, versus plunging into the deep end. This may mean waiting several dates before having intimacy, or even before kissing.

This should not be mistaken for a lack of passion or heart, as it most likely isn’t, and may mean the opposite – that this person takes you seriously enough to do the work, emotionally, of making sure they’re not losing their footing, which would be bad for both of you.

Have patience, if you can, for this trust-building phase. If they keep showing up, they’re interested, even if they take longer to do so. If you can allow another person to come and go as they need to in order to keep steady and to take the time they need to be safe, it is building a better foundation.

2. Contain the Fire

Passion and attraction are beautiful aspects of love. On the other hand, sexual energy, obsession, fantasy, mind games, and feeling incomplete without the other, are not love.

Attraction, endorphins, and, not infrequently, emotional drama are often misidentified as being the same as love. But while these are sometimes present when we fall in love, they are not always signs that it is love – these things are often present when it’s love addiction, in which we avoid ourselves or manage our trauma through sensation-seeking. It’s important to know whether we’re dealing with love or love addiction because one is healthy and the other one is very risky for people in recovery.

We here at Villa Kali Ma are not so cynical to say it can’t possibly be love, perhaps it is. Even so, containing the fire is a wise practice.

It is a normal part of the process of falling in love to experience merging, which entails a temporary loss of boundaries. When we’re in love, we may want to be around the other person all the time, and forget our distinct self-hood for a while. The sweet togetherness is part of the love experience.

However, to sustain and also get the benefit of this union over time, it’s necessary that each person is also able to return to their own individuality, to enjoy their own intactness of being again, before going back for more union.

This is a good rhythm to establish and will come in any case at some point, whether relatively consciously or with explosions of drama. Even the most committed relationships will always require both parts of the dance – coming together into the shared space, then returning back to individuality for a while.

All in all, it’s best to keep fire in the right place and to tend it in consciousness. Allow the energy to build, take it slow. Date at a pace which allows steady integration of changes and adjustment to higher levels of intimacy or connection. It is far better to shoot for a steadily burning smaller passion connected to heart-centered love than to go recklessly into a blazing bonfire.

3. Learn about addiction and recovery by going to meetings

It will be enormously helpful for both people if everyone is fully educated about addiction and its cure.

How to get up to speed, if you’re the one who is not in recovery? There are two steps which are recommended, in this order.

a. Go to Al-Anon Meetings. Go for yourself, not your partner, and learn what is helpful for people in your position. We recommend that you commit to a pre-determined number of meetings, such as 12 over the span of a month. It will feel like a lot if you are not used to it, which in and of itself will help you understand the level of dedication which is asked of your partner.

Al-Anon will help you understand what is your part, and what is not your part. The reason this is important is because it is very easy to get confused and over-involved in another person’s recovery, which is actually destructive for sobriety. Al-Anon will teach you to focus on your own area of personal power and to not get overly triggered into codependent modes of over-caring, over-doing, and over-protecting.

b. Go to open AA meetings. Again, shoot for about 12 before you stop and think about what you learned. Listen to the experiences of people who have experienced addiction and, even more importantly than that, recovery. You will understand more about the “wisdom, strength, and hope” which can be found inside recovery circles, which no individual person, not even a romantic partner, can provide.

4. Face the Truth Together

At an appropriate point in the relationship formation process, the recovering partner should share their addiction story. As the non-recovery partner, it may shock you, spur you into fear, or cause you to feel a desire to protect or control them.

And yet, you won’t be able to protect or control them. At best, your commitment to self-possession and integrity in doing your own emotional work may make it easier for the recovering person to do the right thing. But there will be times when you can do nothing at all, only witness.

Together talk about the very real possibility of relapse, because truthfully, although it’s not inevitable, it’s relatively common. Then get practical and make a plan. Ask your partner what their triggers are, and to let you know what you should do if they relapse. Have a realistic discussion based on likely outcomes.

5. Understand that sobriety is always priority number one

Finally, both parties have to understand through and through, that recovery comes first, no matter what, for the simple reason that sooner or later everything else, including the relationship itself, will be destroyed if someone relapses. The non-recovery partner absolutely cannot take this personally, or be offended that their love and help is not enough, but rather that recovery circles are where the cure is. It isn’t personal, it’s just how it is.

How to adapt when dating someone in recovery?

Recovery is a total lifestyle. It requires much more of us than just refraining from substances. Recovery also has implications about where, how, and with whom we spend our time. It means certain kinds of self-discipline, such as avoiding emotional dramas, taking responsibility for courageously airing resentments sharing tender feelings, and being mindful of thoughts. It requires active participation.

In the end, recovery is not all that different from other positive lifestyle choices such as a serious commitment to meditation, yoga, exercise, and diet, though it has a heavier component of community involvement than may be required with those other changes. It’s not unusual to, for example, go to meetings several times a week, if not daily, to have voluntary service positions, and to make many phone calls a day with other recovering people.

All in all, recovery works just fine in tandem with another person’s healthy lifestyle, as it is mainly about structure and repetition, and has a beauty and rhythm which can be stabilizing and helpful for others, too.

The recovery community is also, generally speaking, warm, loving, non-judgmental, wise, and full of some of the most loyal, committed, and emotionally-available people alive.

If you like the idea of having a life centered on community, giving and receiving emotional nurturance and connection, laughter, and activities, as well as a priority on personal growth, you will not have to adapt too much to your partner’s recovery focus.

If you are using substances yourself, however, and enjoy participation in the types of activities which are dangerous for your partner, you will likely have a hard time accommodating the central role that recovery needs to have in your partner’s life. If you are very attached to using drugs or alcohol, you may not want to date someone in recovery at all.

When to begin dating someone in recovery?

It’s best for both of you not to date during the first year of either person’s recovery, for many, many tried and tested reasons. A person has a hard enough time getting through those first months of turmoil, new habits, and trekking the steep incline in self-responsibility, without any other changes.

If you feel a strong emotional or romantic connection with someone who is newly sober, wonderful! If it is genuinely meant to be, that strong connection will still be there one year from now. To get involved earlier, no matter how strong the feeling, represents a risk for them and is therefore not a kind or loving thing to do. It also represents a risk for yourself, as nothing is worse than being in love with someone who is destroying themselves and you too, with drugs and alcohol.

It’s also good to remember that especially in early recovery, someone may be seeking out the highs of romance, fantasy, sex, and other euphorias for the simple reason that they are still going through post-acute withdrawals and are looking for a way to numb, distract, avoid, or have an excuse to hate themselves into a relapse.

People with addictions are often charming, charismatic, passionate, and vulnerable, and their intensity can be attractive. So try to remember that any addict in their first year of recovery is not reliable quite yet.

What are the risks of dating someone in recovery too soon?

If you date too soon, the risk is relapse. Relationships are tricky, intimacy is triggering in and of itself, and the highs and lows of adventures of the heart are destabilizing enough, even when we have a solid footing in sobriety.

Relapse means having to start all over again. The tragedy is, to even have the chance to start all over again is not a guarantee. A desire to be sober, and any days of sobriety strung together, are precious, not to be taken for granted. Quite simply, it’s not worth the risk.

Drugs are People Too: Love addiction

It is extremely common to have a tendency towards sex, love, and relationship addiction, as well as codependency, alongside substance addiction. We may not notice it while active in our addiction, or it may be hard to detect underneath all the other dramas, but they often go hand in hand.

At Villa Kali Ma, we have a group which centers on healing love addiction, since so many women find they need support learning a healthier understanding of what love is actually supposed to be like.

If you are in recovery, or you’re dating someone in recovery, remember to look out for love’s pale imitation (sexy drama). Check with your deepest wisdom whether this love connection is good for you before you get involved.

Advice on how to navigate healthy relationships

The single most important piece of advice to pass along to anyone dating a person in recovery would be, to do your own emotional work.

If you are in a relationship with someone in recovery, make sure you know your own story, too. Your love and attachment style may not be totally healthy yet.

Especially if your parents were addicts, and/or if you come from a background of neglect or trauma, the chances are very high that it’s the wounded child inside you who is hoping to redo her childhood by saving another person.

You may be suffering under the idea that you can rescue, heal, or even just live through, another person. The reason we say this, with love and from one recovering codependent to another, is that it is so incredibly common and widespread to confuse caretaking, over-responsibility, and self-sacrifice with love.

This confusion comes from our own trauma, our own heartache, unmet needs, desires for intimacy, healing, and maybe even a craving for the good feeling that comes from knowing that we are helping someone.

It’s a common temptation for all tenderhearted folks to consciously or unconsciously avoid the tasks of our own lives through helping someone else. We might have the best of intentions – to take the pain of another person away, for example – but still, we would do well to understand our own personal motivations. Only with total self-honesty can we avoid the accidental harm of enabling.

Falling for the trap of enabling doesn’t make you, or any one of us, bad or wrong. What it makes us is confused about how life works. Because in the end, we can only ever play in our own sandbox. Any sandcastles we build for someone else are ultimately doomed to fall apart. We can’t ever take away another person’s agency, right, and requirement to create or destroy sandcastles in their own box. And we have a duty to look into our own and work with what’s there.

Villa Kali Ma can assist women in recovery

At Villa Kali Ma, we help women recover from addiction, mental health disorders, and trauma, through a combination of cutting-edge Western clinical approaches and alternative, holistic modalities.

If you’re in recovery, or looking to start your recovery path, consider one of our many inpatient and outpatient programs that help women. Learn to recover your native strength, dignity, and beauty. You can free your body, mind, and spirit through love, kindness, and compassion.

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