Category Archives: mental health

EMDR is for EVERYONE!

If we have ever interacted, you have probably heard me talk about EMDR excitedly at least one time. EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, is an evidenced-based trauma focused therapy. It also happens to be my greatest passion, and most useful tool for any client!

So, what is EMDR, and why do I think it can benefit EVERYONE?

EMDR is a process that activates the brain’s natural healing process to address improperly stored memories. You know a memory is improperly stored if you think about it or are reminded of it, and have a physiological response (heart beats faster, sweating, shaking, stomach ache, or feeling sad, nervous, and/or angry).

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If you’ve ever heard of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, the process is similar. When we enter REM sleep, our eyes move back and forth rapidly. This activates a process in the brain that files our memories from the previous day away nicely. So, when I wake up the next day and think about what I had for breakfast the prior day, I can remember I ate an omelette without any sort of activation of stress response. However, when we experience trauma, these memories are often times not stored properly. If I had a car accident last week, I may walk to my car today and trigger the improperly stored memory, causing my heart to race, my stomach to turn, my breath to quicken, and a feeling of dread to wash over me.

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EMDR uses this same natural brain organization mechanism by activating a trauma memory, and having a trained therapist assist in recreating the REM movements while awake. The therapist tracks the movement of information with verbal cues from the client throughout the process, and can redirect as needed to make sure the memory is completely properly filed. The therapist is trained to keep the person in the present moment while also activating the past memory simultaneously. This delicate dance between memory and present moment allows the brain to activate its healing mechanism during waking hours and assists in filing memories that may have been improperly stored for an individuals entire life.

In a successful EMDR session, a person might have a memory that causes them a 10/10 on the distress scale, and a negative associated cognition such as “I am bad” or “I am not safe.” By the end of that session, that person will ultimately be able to remember the memory, but will have a subjective distress rating of 0/10 and will honestly be able to report and believe the positive cognition of “I am good,” and/or “I am safe.”

I have seen clients make immense amounts of progress in a very short duration of time. I had one month before moving out of state to work with a woman who agreed to 2x/week hour sessions, and in those 4 weeks we successfully reprocessed and worked through over 40 years of complex trauma. I cannot begin to explain how long that process could have gone on with traditional talk therapy or trauma-focused cognitive behavioral techniques.

The best part of EMDR is it can help ANYONE. You do not have to have “big T Trauma” to benefit; you only need to have a memory that activates distress. If that happens to be the time you were 6 and spilled your juice on your shirt in front of your crush and thinking of it now still causes you to blush and your heart to race, that’s just as much a target for EMDR as an accident.

We all have trauma. It’s a part of living, learning, and growing. We cannot undo what has happened in the past, but we absolutely have the power to ensure it does not have a hold over us in the present.

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If you’re interested in EMDR therapy, I would love to have a phone or in-person consultation with you. EMDR sessions must be done in person, however. Give me a call or email me, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Kristina Hoff, LCSW

704-965-1172

KHoffLCSW@gmail.com

Self Love

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For the past week, I have had company in town and therefore I have not been able to stick to my routine. Going to bed hours later than usual has led to me hitting snooze on my alarm, rather than get up an hour or so before work to do my yoga practice and journaling. I caught myself yesterday, for just a moment, beating myself up for not practicing and “falling off the wagon.” This brief moment of being overly harsh to myself led me to think more about self-love, self-acceptance, and forgiveness.

I thought for a moment of putting someone I love in my shoes. If my best friend had called me and said “I’m doing great on my yoga teacher training! I am one class away from my 200 hour certification, I’ve been working overtime seeing private therapy clients after my day job, and I have been hosting company this week and having a great time getting some social life TLC! I engaged in a daily yoga practice up until last Thursday, but then I got caught up in everything going on and haven’t practiced in a week! I feel like I’m failing because I can’t juggle all of the balls in the air right now. I should be able to go to bed at midnight and still get up at 6:30 for yoga… I don’t know why I’m being so lazy…” I would have stopped her in her tracks and said “Are you kidding me?! You’re doing AMAZING things and I am SO PROUD of you!!” So, why is it so hard to do this for ourselves?

I do assessments with clients all week, and after going through their childhood, teen years, what’s not going good, and lifelong trauma, they only really squirm when I ask “So, what are you good at? What are your strengths?” I’ve noticed that we as a collective can rattle off a serial list of things not going well, things we could do better at, things we wish we would do but we don’t…. but then struggle intensely to list 3 or 4 things we excel at.

Society has unfortunately conditioned us well to play small. Think of all of the negative words for someone talking about why they are awesome: conceited, big-headed, self-absorbed, vain, arrogant, cocky just to name a few. On the flip side, words like confident and self-assured come up as positive words to use for the same concept… but these words don’t carry the same sharpness and intense energy that their counterparts do. I also struggled to find more than these two words to describe self-affirmation positively, whereas I could keep going and going with the negatives.

Sometimes people are absolutely unable to come up with good things about themselves. The easiest way I have found to build self-love in myself and others in this case is to step into the shoes of someone who loves you. What would your mother/sister/best friend/favorite teacher/co-worker say about you? Even if you don’t believe it? “Well… my best friend always laughs at my jokes and says I’m funny.” Ok! Great start. Now, if we understand Abraham-Hicks’ concept of beliefs: a belief is a thought you keep thinking, all we have to do is keep thinking “I have a good sense of humor” until we believe it. Eventually, if told enough that we are good or bad, we come to believe it. That’s why it is so damaging to have constant negative self-talk; we really buy into and believe the negative things about ourselves that we think. To counteract these patterns, start small with one or two things that other people would say are your good qualities. Repeat these strengths over and over. Use “I” language; not “they think I’m creative” but “I am creative!” Write them on post-its and put them around your house. Put them in your planner. Set them as your desktop background. Whatever will help you to have constant exposure to your positive mantras is good practice.

While we are working on instilling the positive thoughts and feelings about ourselves, however, we also need to spread this concept to how we interact with the world. Each time we focus on positivity, self-love, and strengths, we reinforce that network in our brain so that it becomes easier and easier to engage in these thought patterns. In that same vein, we also need to weaken the negative connections that pull us into the mean, harsh, demeaning thought patterns, for ourselves and others. We reinforce the societal trap of playing small each time we engage in conversation that intends to keep others feeling small, and trying to put them in their place (aka, not loving themselves too much). How many times have you heard. thought, or said (and I’m guilty as well) “Wow, he’s really full of himself!” “Did you see what she was wearing? She doesn’t have the body for that” “She’s really not that pretty/good/skilled/etc.” Every time we allow ourselves to fall in this trap, we are strengthening the idea that this other person shouldn’t feel so good about themselves, and therefore neither should I.

Self love is a process, and it takes a lot of self-awareness. I sometimes am still catching myself engaging in these thought patterns; but I am to the point where I can recognize it and then choose to change my thoughts. “I can’t believe she’s wearing that” becomes “Actually, good for her. I’m glad she has the confidence to wear what she wants without worrying about what other people are thinking. I am going to work more on doing the same, and wearing things I love rather than things I think other people will love on me!” Also, loving actions can really help to focus on the positive. Give compliments! Tell others what they are doing well and what you like about them, and see how it becomes easier to begin to tell yourself the same!

As you practice loving yourself and giving love and acceptance to others, you will start to emanate positivity and love. Imagine a world where people love and accept themselves, and encourage others to do the same. Imagine school aged children seeing this modeled by their parents; instead of bullying others for seemingly innumerable differences, they spread self-love and acceptance, and encouraged others to do the same. Loving yourself and changing your thought patterns sends out a vibrational pattern that has a ripple effect that extends far beyond just yourself. As you feel better about yourself, you are kinder to others, in turn helping them to feel better about themselves and be kinder to others, etc.

In summation, I missed a week of my practice, and I’m ok with that. I spent the week having a great time with company, working my butt off to get closer and closer to my goals doing a job I love and excel at. I help people in significant ways every single day. I empower people to be their best selves, and they in turn impact the lives of their family, friends, and others in positive ways. These ripples start with me; I have the power to make a difference in this world. I am living my truth and fulfilling my purpose. I am kind, I am loving, and I am generous. I am grateful I woke up this morning and practiced a yoga class I created for the people visiting. I am grateful that someone somewhere will read this post and gain some new insight into how they’ve been treating themselves and others. I am beautifully and wonderfully made, and am happy with the person I am growing into!

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I decided to post the above picture because I tend to automatically engage in negative thought patterns when I see a side-profile picture of myself. My habit is to see all of the things I don’t like, and to focus on flaws. Today, I choose to focus on how happy I look in this photo being at a dear friends’ beautiful wedding with people who I love deeply! Self love is a choice, and the more you make that choice, the easier it becomes.

Please feel free to start your self-love journey below by posting your strengths, what you like about yourself, and what others like about you! ❤

Raise Your Vibration

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My intent in a large part of this blog is to make integrative holistic knowledge understandable and accessible to anyone. Many people hear of alternative health practices (energetic medicine, essential oils, crystals) and scoff due to the mainstream presentation of these methodologies being woo-woo and conducted by people resembling Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter:The truth is, these practices have been around a lot longer than modern medicine. They all revolve around the same thing: energy! Everything (and I mean everything) has a frequency. These electrical frequencies are scientifically measurable, empirical phenomena that have major implications. Different things will have different frequencies, and higher frequencies have been correlated to better health in living beings. Scientists have measured the frequencies of people and found definitive frequency ranges for different diseases.

The analogy of keeping food hot because at lower temperatures bacteria starts to grow and thrive is helpful in understanding talk of keeping a person’s frequency high. The same concept applies to frequency; if disease has definitive ranges and thresholds at which it can survive and thrive, by keeping the vibration of the body high you can maintain health and vitality.

So, how can we raise our vibrations? The good news is, everything you do has the potential to raise your vibration. Even the thoughts you think (whether you’re ruminating on something negative or reframing/refocusing on something positive) can have an effect on your vibration. Major shifts in vibration come from putting high vibrational objects into your vibrational field.

One way to raise your vibration is by eating fresh, high frequency foods. As a general rule, the closer a food resembles what is found in nature, the higher the frequency. Dried food and herbs still have frequencies, though lower than fresh. Unfortunately, the “easy” foods we usually reach for, canned and processed foods, have 0 Hz.

Other major ways to increase your frequency include the use of high-frequency crystals and/or essential oils. When we use an essential oil or bring a crystal into our electromagnetic field, the frequencies of the crystal or oil will vibrate with related frequencies in our own energy field. This effectively creates a third, high frequency energetic field, and raises our vibrations.

Exercise (yoga!), meditation, positive social interaction, expressing gratitude, energy work (Healing Touch, Reiki, chakra work), and positive speech are also some of the ways to keep your vibration high. There’s an interesting article on the power of positivity and its effects on the external world that outlines some of the physical evidence of the power of vibration. These studies conducted by Dr. Emoto can help some of us more left-brained people wrap our minds around the concept that we have immense power and influence over ourselves and everything around us. Below is a water crystal from Dr. Emoto’s work that had the assigned word of “love.”
I hope that this post has helped to explain some of the concepts and tools used in holistic healing in a way that is easy to understand. If you have questions about anything please comment below! Also, I offer many of the services outlined above that can aid in raising your vibration- including yoga, meditation, Healing Touch, chakra work, Reiki, and essential oils. I would love to work with you on a personalized plan to empower you to be your best self ❤

Keeping an Open Heart

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I have been working on creating a recorded yoga series focusing on balancing the chakras. I began with focus on the heart chakra as it is my personal chakra needing the most attention. In writing and practicing my class, I reflected on the journey I have been on in the past year or so, and the struggles I continue to deal with as a result. During my Yoga Teacher Training, my teacher used a quote that really resonated with me:

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This quote has been playing in my head for the past few days, and I have been processing the significance of how much of the negative emotion we struggle with in our heart center is purely from grasping, from ruminating, from closing ourselves up and holding on. I reflected on my worst days, and found this to be absolutely true. When I was in my darkest moments, it was solely due to me getting in my own way; my fear of feeling what was inevitable was blocking the flow of energy and causing me even more distress.

Getting rid of negative emotions is not a healthy goal to strive for; being angry, annoyed, sad, or nervous are natural human responses to situations in life. Balance in life requires the lows as much as the highs, but one does not need to get stuck and suffer longer than is necessary. The trick is to work to keep the heart open, allow the energy to flow freely, and experience fully the emotions as they move through you. The emotions cannot last longer than the energy feeding them, so if you sit with them long enough for them to move, you will experience relief.

Emotions linger and escalate when we try to block them. If I tell you not to think about a pink elephant, chances are you’re thinking about a pink elephant right now. If you set your mind to not feeling the anger/sadness/anxiety/fear that is caused by your situation, you’re effectively putting a cork in your heart and bottling that emotion to brew and intensify. By opening your heart, you take the cork out and let the emotion express its way out of your body which can take many forms and only you will know best how to work it out. Follow your impulse (as long as it’s safe): if you feel like you need to cry, cry. If you want to run away, put on your sneakers and go for a run. If you feel like you want to rip the situation up- write it down and tear it to shreds. If you feel like venting, call a safe friend and tell them you just need them to listen without feedback for a few minutes. Do whatever you can to let it out, sit with it, feel it, and then cleanse yourself with a few deep breaths once you feel it slip away.

This process is easier said than done, and I continually work myself to keep myself open. Doing chakra-specific meditations and yoga helps to physically and mentally align the energetic centers of the body. A Reiki energetic healing session can also help in balancing the chakras. You can also simply set an intention to keep an open heart, and be mindful of unintentionally blocking when you feel negative emotions coming on. Finally, you can use this mantra either written where you can see it, mentally, or saying aloud to help to stimulate the heart chakra:

“I am grateful, courageous, and willing to open my heart to unconditional love.”

The Importance of Ritual

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This morning I explained my morning routine on Instagram:

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“Morning ritual. I used to wake up with just enough time to get ready and run out the door; usually with a granola bar hanging out of my mouth and half the time spilling tea or coffee everywhere in the rush. This year, I have committed myself to waking up at least an hour earlier to practice yoga and have a relaxed breakfast and journal/planning time with my Desire Map Planner. I was the person who would roll my eyes and say “I’d rather have the extra hour of sleep…” But I find this hour invaluable now. Starting my day in a centered, grounded, and intentional way helps to set me up for a less stressful, more joyful, and more productive day. Try it for yourself for a week, and then keep enjoying it as you won’t want to go back!“

After posting, I continued contemplating the importance of rituals throughout the day, not just in the morning. For my Reiki practice, I begin with a specific prayer to signify to spirit that I am ready to connect and begin the healing process. For my yoga practice, I always start in a seated pose breathing deeply to become fully present, and I always end in savasana, followed by a bow to signify the end of my practice. These ritual cues allow my mind, body, and spirit to shift into and stay present with my different activities.

After considering the practices where I already have rituals, I began to think about other times when a ritual may be useful for getting prepared for a transition. The two that really stood out are my arrival at work and bedtime. For the next week I have decided to incorporate two new rituals to see the difference they make in how I feel. I plan to sit in my car upon arrival to work, close my eyes, and take a few diaphragm breaths to center myself before starting my workday. Before bed, I plan on applying my sleep essential oils, taking a few deep breaths, and mentally reiterating what went well during my day and what I am grateful for. As I said in my post yesterday, I already focus on gratitude in the mornings, but I think it would be excellent practice to begin and end my day in gratitude.

Think about your own life and where a ritual may be beneficial to help you with transitions. Try to incorporate one for a week, and see if you can feel the difference!

An Attitude of Gratitude

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256867-When-You-Are-Grateful-Fear-Disappears-And-Abundance-Appears Some days there just seems to be a recurring theme that keeps popping up throughout the day. Today, the theme is definitely gratitude! I began my day with a heart-opening and gratitude-focused yoga flow, followed by my daily ritual of journaling and writing down what I am thankful for.

A dear client today was talking about how she is going to stop talking about how good she is doing and the progress she has made because it is turning her support system away from her and causing trouble. She explained that other people think she is being pretentious when she speaks of doing well, instead of understanding that she is trying to express gratitude for having moved away from the depression and anxiety that once inhibited her from being her best self.

When I heard her say this, I almost shouted at her “You will absolutely not!” I helped her to see that it was not her expressing her blessings that was the problem, it was the people around her who just wanted to bring her down as misery loves company. I explained that she will know a true friend when she expresses how well she is doing and they respond with “That’s wonderful! Let’s celebrate!” and find their own JOY in her happiness.

I also gave a brief overview of the law of attraction– which is how we attract into our lives that which we focus on and believe. If we expect negativity and trouble all of the time, you will attract such. However, if we focus on everything going right and the blessings and joy we have in our lives- we will continue to attract these things tenfold.

I encouraged my client to continue to sing her song of happiness, health, and gratitude- and to use people’s responses as an indicator of whether they are truly supportive or someone she must love at a distance. I encourage you all to spend more time focusing on what is going right and what you want, and see the amazing positive changes that will follow suit.

My Story

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My name is Kristina Odom Hoff, and I created Manifest Wellness to incorporate my holistic and alternative practices such as Reiki, yoga, meditation, and essential oils, into traditional therapy to treat the entire person- mind, body, and spirit.

My schooling includes a BA in Psychology and a Master of Social Work degree. I am a fully Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in North Carolina. I have worked with a variety of clients of all ages as individuals, couples, families, and groups. Extensive time has been dedicated to working with anxiety, depression, anger, and trauma; but I am also well versed in working with individuals with adjustment issues, addictions, grief and loss, personality disorders, identity issues, spiritual concerns, chronic pain, and relational issues including codependency, infidelity, and divorce. The goal of therapy is to empower my clients to make positive changes through the use of skills, resources, self-awareness, and introspective work. This work ultimately allows clients to be able to live their healthiest, happiest, and most vital lives.

Along with therapy, I am also passionate about complementary alternatives therapies. I am a Certified Reiki practitioner and 500 hr Certified Yoga Teacher. I incorporate these modalities into therapeutic sessions when desired and appropriate.

I offer a dynamic array of services that are tailored to individual needs and desires. I believe everyone can benefit from therapy because life is a constant current of change. There is always room for growth and the ability to strive to be your best self, no matter your circumstances. I hope to be able to assist you in achieving your goals and dreams soon!