MentalSpace Therapy

Is selective mutism a part of autism? No. They're two different conditions, even though people mix them up all the time. Selective mutism is an anxiety disorder: a child (or adult) talks easily in comfortable places but freezes and can't speak in others, like the classroom, a doctor's office, or ar Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #Co...

What childhood trauma causes avoidance? There isn't one specific kind. Abuse, neglect, growing up around violence or addiction, losing a parent, a frightening medical experience, or being bullied for years can all teach a child that the safest thing to do is steer clear. That lesson made sense at Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHeali...

What are 5 symptoms of GAD? 1. Feeling restless, keyed up, or on edge 2. Getting worn out easily 3. Your mind going blank, or struggling to focus 4. Being irritable and short-fused 5. Tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, aches from holding tension There's a sixth too: trouble falling asleep, staying a Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHeal...

What is the main cause of panic disorder? Honest answer: researchers haven't found a single cause. It tends to come from a few things stacking up. Panic and anxiety can run in families. Some people have a more reactive stress response. And a first attack often lands during a rough season, like a lo Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHea...

What causes generalized anxiety? There isn't one cause. It's usually a combination of the genes you were born with, the temperament you've always had, and the stress life has put on you. It is not a weakness, and it's not something you brought on yourself. One way to picture it: three layers. The Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia...

This one is for the friend who apologizes three times in a single text. Does 'can we talk later?' from your boss make your stomach drop? Do you rewrite a simple email five times so nobody could possibly be annoyed? If so, you may find a term useful: rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD. People wi Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAn...

There's no right way to grieve someone who died by suicide. Some people want to talk about it constantly. Some can't say the word yet. Some go back to work the next week, and some can't get out of bed for a long time. All of that is part of normal grief. What often makes this loss different is the Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #Cop...

Imagine someone who has held it together for years. Great at work, the friend who remembers birthdays, always 'fine.' Then one winter the energy just goes. Grocery stores become unbearable. Words come slower. A shower feels like a project. If you're an autistic adult, or you suspect you might be, t Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #Co...

The hardest part of cancer, for a lot of people, starts after the last treatment. While you're in it, there's a plan. Appointments, a team, people showing up with casseroles. Then it ends, everyone exhales, and you're left alone with a follow-up schedule and a body you no longer fully trust. A com Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #Cop...

Something people with chronic illness say a lot: "I don't get to be sad about this. Other people have it worse." You do get to be sad about it. Grieving your old body is not self-pity. It's grief, and it behaves like grief — it comes in waves, it ambushes you in the grocery store, and it doesn't re Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for G...

For the Georgia military families — the part after the welcome home. A composite that lands for a lot of people: he's been back four months. The homecoming was great. But the house learned to run without him, and now he's standing in his own kitchen unsure where anything goes. His wife handled ever Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingA...

A composite, but a familiar one: a woman moves to Gwinnett with her husband and two kids. Everyone says how well she's doing. Three years in, she's getting headaches every afternoon, snapping at her teenager, and crying in the car after work for reasons she can't name. That's acculturative stress. Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia...

Something we hear a lot, in different words: "I don't know if what happened to me counts." If a church, temple, mosque, or ministry was a place where you were controlled, shamed, or frightened into compliance, your body kept a record of that — the same way it would with any other frightening enviro Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #Co...

If you have ever apologized for how sad you were about something, read this. There is a category of loss that our culture just does not make room for. Grief researchers call it disenfranchised grief. The loss is real, and the world around you acts like it is not. A pet of fourteen years. A miscarr Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHealing #...

For anyone taking care of a parent right now. There is a kind of grief that starts long before the funeral, and almost nobody prepares you for it. You lose the phone calls. You lose their opinion on things. You lose being someone's kid. All while they are still alive and you are still managing thei Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHea...

Friendly reminder for anyone in the middle of a separation right now: you are not behind schedule. There is a strange expectation that once the paperwork is done, you should be fine. Meanwhile the actual hard stretch tends to start after everyone stops checking on you. Around month four or five. Wh Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHealing...

If you have ever closed a weather app and felt your chest tighten, this one is for you. Eco-anxiety is the name for distress about climate and environmental change. It is not weakness and it is not a failure of perspective. It usually shows up as dread that will not switch off, guilt attached to sm Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHealing...

Here is a conversation I wish more people got to have. Someone tells you they are the responsible one in the family. The one who gets the call at midnight, handles the paperwork, smooths things over. Everyone praises them for it. And privately they are running on empty and feel guilty for even noti Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHealing...

A thing that does not get said enough: a hard birth can leave a trauma response, not just a low mood. Postpartum depression and postpartum PTSD get talked about like they are one condition. They are not. PTSD after birth usually traces back to something that happened in the room. An emergency trans Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHealing...

Nobody sent flowers. That is the part that keeps coming up. After a miscarriage, a stillbirth, or a loss early enough that most people never knew, the grief is real and the rituals are missing. There is no service. Coworkers do not know. Someone says at least you know you can get pregnant, and mean Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHealing...

Myth: if money stresses you out, you need a better budget. Plenty of people with a solid budget and money in savings still feel a jolt of dread opening a banking app. Meanwhile plenty of people under genuine financial strain are not anxious in the clinical sense at all. Those are two different thin Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHealing...

You are not "too much." You are also not "bad at relationships." There is a decent chance you are describing an attachment pattern, and those are learnable. Attachment insecurity is the template you built early for what closeness costs. It runs quietly underneath adult relationships. Anxious patter Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgi...

To everyone who just dropped a kid off at college or watched one move into their first apartment: The quiet is loud, isn't it. Empty nest adjustment gets treated like a punchline, and that's a shame, because for a lot of parents it's a genuine grief. Not because anything bad happened. Because eigh Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #Cop...

Here's a myth that hurts people: retirement is supposed to be the happy part, so if you're struggling with it, something's wrong with you. Not true, and honestly it keeps a lot of folks from saying anything. What we actually see: about three to six months after the party, things get quiet in a way Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #Cop...

Something worth knowing on a Thursday morning. The U.S. Surgeon General put out an advisory in 2023 on loneliness and social connection. The findings were blunt: being socially disconnected is linked to a 29 percent higher risk of heart disease and 32 percent higher risk of stroke, with effects on Generated from Coping & Healing Counseling: Accessible Telehealth for Georgia #CopingAndHealing #...