👉🏽 Subscribe for thoughtful, bite-sized emails — from Liz Zhou, a neurodivergent therapist — on how to take care of your nervous system & understand your brain.
How do we heal when painful things keep happening in the present?
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There’s a lot happening in the world. And while that’s always been true, maybe it’s feeling especially true for you in this moment, this season, this year. To name a few things — we have ICE targeting immigrant communities in the US. Humanitarian crises, genocides. Loss of freedoms, rights, safety. And much more. This is in addition to the personal struggles (& yes, joys) that each of us is already navigating on a daily basis. So, with everything going on, with your nervous system hanging on by a thread… what does it mean to heal? How do we heal from the past when painful things keep happening in the present? ​ If you know me, you know that I don’t often give simple answers. But here’s what comes up for me. I think about how, when it comes to healing our nervous systems, things heal in the order that makes most sense. If we’re feeling deeply unsettled by what’s happening in the world right now, then that is what our nervous systems are going to focus energy on processing. If we’re feeling deeply impacted by things that happened to us at 5 years old, then that is what our brains will focus on. And sometimes, we find ourselves in a moment where we’re needing to both heal from the past and sustain ourselves through the intensity of the present. Sometimes, healing is not about what happened back then, but also about what’s happening now and how do we get through it. So, this is my way of validating that if you’re feeling unsettled right now, and painful experiences from the past are jumbling with painful experiences in the now, you are not alone. In fact, you are joined by many of us in this collective human experience. And my hope is that we continue to sustain and heal together. And if your nervous system needs some support in these times, get in touch with me to talk about a Nervous System Healing Intensive — 3 90-minute sessions dedicated to deep processing through gentle yet powerful brain-body therapies (Brainspotting and IFS). This is the work I love to do, and I am here with you and for you if you need it. ​ Talk soon, P.S. Interested in working with me 1:1? I offer Nervous System Healing Intensives — short-term, accelerated support for highly sensitive, neurodivergent adults, available online worldwide. Click ​HERE​ to learn more. And if you want to get an Intensive on the books, contact me ​HERE​. ​ P.P.S. Know someone who needs to hear this? Forward it along. New readers can subscribe ​HERE​. I help highly sensitive, neurodivergent adults heal their nervous systems & connect with their authentic selves.
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​Liz's Neurodivergent Letters
👉🏽 Subscribe for thoughtful, bite-sized emails — from Liz Zhou, a neurodivergent therapist — on how to take care of your nervous system & understand your brain.
When people ask me what Brainspotting therapy is and how it works, I have a couple different responses. The first is the clinical answer: “Brainspotting is a trauma-informed modality that uses fixed eye positions to facilitate deep healing and processing in the brain, by bringing unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories into conscious awareness.” And if you’re thinking, hmm, okay, but what does that actually mean?, then you might find my second response more helpful. Instead of just...
I have a funny relationship with time, and I’ve noticed a lot of other neurodivergent people do too. Here’s what I mean. You might sit down to write an email for five minutes, and then half an hour passes and suddenly you have nine tabs open, you’re baking a cake in the oven, and the email is still incomplete. (No judgment at all here, by the way – sometimes our brains are non-linear like that, and flow in unexpected ways.) Maybe you have a hard time remembering what you ate for dinner...
I’m writing to you from the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan, the place where I grew up & the land of the Ojibwe people. And my time here, this past week, has me really appreciating the element of water. Water is so healing for the nervous system. Not just because we physically need water to survive. But also because, for many of us with highly sensitive systems, water is uniquely calming & soothing. A view of the lake, with a snippet from the book We Are Water Protectors: "Water is the...