Hi, I'm Piper Harris, licensed professional counselor, and welcome to the Untangled Mind Podcast. This is a show for people who want to understand why their mind works the way it does, not just how to cope with it. Drawing from neuropsychology, neurophilosophy, and data-driven CBT, we look at how anxiety and trauma shape perception, behavior, and choice and what actually helps people change. I'm an integrative CBT therapist based in the Atlanta suburbs. Each episode is designed to teach you something concrete, how to recognize what's keeping you stuck, how to interrupt unhelpful patterns, and how to move forward with clarity and steadiness. There's a difference between processing a wound and picking at one. Both can look like you're doing the work. Only one of them heals you. In today's episodes, we'll be speaking about the five signs your nervous system isn't asking for more therapy, it's asking for more time. Well, hello, hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Untangled Mind podcast. So uh really trying to get back into the swing of things of beginning my um weekly podcast recordings for you all. If you have any suggestions, anything that you would like me to dig into, I am all ears. So please feel free to message me at info at untangledmind.net. Um, with any of those um ideas of yours, I tend to I look through my blog and the newsletter and podcast, and I do speak uh pretty routinely on the same things. Um and I don't know if that's boring to y'all. I had a client tell me that she appreciates it, that it's the same kind of ideas about things, but there's just a different twist on it. But all that to be said, I would love your information. And again, like I said, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I took the summer off, I was pretty um exhausted. But now that my um kids are out of here, my eldest went back to college, and I only have one left, one left in senior and high school. So life is uh pretty quiet. Uh I got some good rest this summer. I hope that you did as well. So let's get into um today's conversation. I've spoken about this um a lot of times actually over the years, and I think it is uh worth repeating. So um just last week I had somebody sign up for a consultation, um, and really based on what they were telling me about their needs and everything, I thought, you know, we can move forward with um, you know, going into the baseline measures and preparing this person for the initial intake. And so that you know, my consultation, every person fills out a consultative questionnaire, and it's pretty robust because I can really determine if someone's going to be um a fit for myself or untangled minds, because I really have developed something that is um pretty focused, you know, singularly focused or you know, with trauma and anxiety. And so I know pretty quickly when I read these questionnaires. For example, I had somebody ask about uh their statement was I'm in a terrible divorce and um need marriage help. And I was like, I I'm just the wrong person for that. So referred them out. But all that to be said, this consultation, everything pointed to absolutely this individual um, you know, is is ready. We had a great consultation. They were actually really um well read. They'd read a lot. Um, what I did notice was there's a lot of psychological verbiage being used. Um and so I just kind of kept that note. So a lot of times when I have people that use a lot of psychological language, it can be kind of two different things. One side, sometimes I see it in younger generations, and it really is um they're trying to learn, but it's almost um, oh, I hate to use this word. Um, it's almost a peacocking. I hate to say that word. I'm not trying to be mean to my younger listeners. Uh, and it's not because they're trying to be arrogant, I think it's actually from a place of insecurity. Um, and then oftentimes I have people um in older generations, myself and older, um, where they're using the verbiage, but I can tell that means that they're doing the work, which is a great indication for somebody that comes to work on with me because I am so um clear on how people work with me, they work through the untangled minds pathway. So, all that to be said, the consultation was great. And I thought, you know, this is gonna be an extraordinary individual to be working with. Um, and they were 100% behind, you know, how the untangled mind pathway works. So as I'm preparing for the intake, I'm going through all of the assessments. And if you've been around for a while, I do a pretty robust baseline assessment because it gives you a clinical picture. I'm not saying that somebody is just the numbers. That's not it at all. But number one, we need to have some sort of objective criteria that I'm going to be following. Second of all, yes, the when you have a robust baseline um assessments, um it really does develop a clinical picture that you add into the consultation and what you learn. So it really is, I believe, um a phenomenal tool to have in practice to be the best for your clients. So, all that to be said, I'm working through all of these assessments and I was like, what in the heck? And really, it was a wonderful thing. Everything was completely flat. And yeah, I mean, there was no distress levers that I was seeing at all. The only one that kind of pinged surrounded grief, um, which this person was coming to me who was going through an unfortunate um dissolution of a long-term uh marriage. So it made sense to see grief. It it made sense, but everything else, there were no no high levels of um depression or anxiety. And people listening might say something like, Well, you know, they could be blocking or blunting, they could be, you know, whatever it may be. Um, it could be, you know, gender-driven. This was a male. People could say that, but because I do such a robust baseline level, I just wasn't seeing it. And it was kind of hard because I I sat there and um I just thought, okay, I I I need to, you know, talk the walk or walk the talk, being that I am a business owner and I'm also a therapist. I think too often that um in my field, it's like, well, you you have to be one or the other. And I really do disagree. What makes that really hard though, when you have clinical integrity, and that's what I'm gonna call it, is that when you're looking at your business numbers and you're like, damn, I really need a new client to come in. Yet that clinical integrity, that counseling side of me is like, nah, we can't do that to them. Um, this is not something that follows what we say about ourselves and what we say about this work. And so ultimately I called this individual back and I just said, let me tell you about your data. This is your data, um, and this is what I'm seeing. And it was a really wonderful conversation because the individual said, you know, it's funny. The more I thought about it and talked to you, I guess I didn't realize that I'm doing as well as I am. And I really do think today I want to talk about this. I want to talk about why we don't turn people away in this industry, why what's happening? And I mean, there is so much news uh right now about therapy, about therapists. And um, I actually think that we are under attack, and I do believe rightly so. And one of the reasons, too, is about this it's this pattern of people being placed into therapy when there's no indication that that that that is you know what they need, that what they need is actual therapy. And so I really want to spend this episode talking about a distinction. The distinction of, and you know, I'm talking about a scab, and I'll tell you where how this came to me the other day. Um, you know, I want to talk about this distinction between um processing and healing. So um that's the plan for today. But first, I want to walk you through this um odd analogy that came to me the other day of a scab. So I just recently got to spend a wonderful vacation with my brother down in Texas, and they have this beautiful pool in the backyard. And he and my sister-in-law, um, they knew I was exhausted and I literally sat in that pool for like four days straight. One day I didn't get out for six and a half hours. Um, well, I mean, I got out to go to the bathroom, but I just stayed in there. I roasted myself because I was just so desperate for it. But what was funny is that the day a couple days before we'd gone into one of the cute little towns and my sandals had rubbed the top of my foot and it caused a little scab. And so we were out in the pool one night with all the kids, and my brother's like, that's nasty. Because you know, when a scab gets wet, it gets all green and slimy and disgusting. And so um I was like, Yeah, that's pretty gross. And and I was and I looked at he's like, Don't touch it, don't pick the scab, because we all know we can all um envision in our minds when we had one of those nasty scabs. Every one of us can think about that. And how many times did our parents say, Don't pick the scab? Don't pick it when it's just healing and it gets tight on the knee, don't you know, wipe it off when it's that nasty green. You have to let it heal. And so um, oftentimes as I'm trying to fall asleep, ideas for the blog or a podcast come to me, and I literally thought about a scab. And I know that's so gross, but please go with me on this. So um I'll go more concretely into the scab narrative, but what I really want to say is from there, from talking about the scab, the analogy, you heard a little bit about the client is that there really are about five signs that you can use to tell whether you're in need of processing territory or you need healing territory, hence the scab. Um, and then I want to kind of spend some real time on why I believe that the industry is getting this wrong, because I don't, I really don't think it's incidental and I I do think it's a structural issue. And then I'll close with what to actually do if you think you're in a healing phase, not a processing phase. So let's talk about that. So this nasty scab analogy. So just think about a scraped knee that scabs over and it honestly does look gross, right? While it's healing. So sometimes, like I said, it's like green, yellow, yucky stuff, or it's uneven and it's super, super itchy. And so a kid looks at that and they're they're like, okay, there's something wrong. And the kid's instinct is to pick at it. And listen, you might one of those be those people that's already a picker anyway. But what I want to state is, and what we've always been told when we were kids, or what we fusted our kids about, is that just because it's nasty and itchy does not mean that's a sign of a problem. Okay. That's often what healing looks like mid-process. And so if we pick at it, it doesn't speed anything up. In fact, what it does, it just reopens the wound and resets the clock, and we can, you know, get all kinds of bacteria in there and all kinds of stuff. And it slows down healing time because now, you know, if we pick that scab, the body has to redo all the work that it had already done. And I really want to say that psychologically, it really is the same mechanism. And I want to be specific about why, because it's like a scab. You it can sound like a nice metaphor without actually explaining anything. Okay. So, and I know, granted, a scab metaphor is not nice, but just bear with me. Again, this came to me at about 3 a.m. in the morning. So if you think about this, when someone processes a difficult experience in therapy, what's happening is reconsolidation. Now, everybody uses the word process. Now, um, please people get off social media. Um, if you have people on social media, and I'm on social media too, but I try to do long form content to actually give educational and um tools to everybody. But if if people are constantly saying, I need to process this, I need to process that, you're just using the word. The words are just getting bastardized, it's driving me nuts. But what happens when we truly go through a reconsolidation or a therapeutic process of processing? We go through something called reconsolidation. So what happens is the memory gets activated through this experience. And then what happens is it's held in a very different context compared to when that memory took place. So there's safety, there's support, you're using new tools. And if you're unclear of any of these things, please go back to my trauma therapy series or trauma series that I just finished, talking about the triphasic model, because this really explains um what good therapy looks like, I think. So what happens though is it's held in different contexts. And then what happens is the brain and nervous system are almost forced to restore, um, like store it differently, that memory differently in a totally new context attached. So if you're processing a highly traumatic event, maybe it's a car wreck and you come in and working through exposure therapy with me, in that moment of being safe in that space, we've gotten you ready for tools, we've had you stabilized, all of the things, the the brain and the nervous system are forced, are actually forced to reconsolidate, to say, wait a second, I don't have to live, actively live as if the car wreck happened because I'm sitting in Piper's office and I know I'm safe. So this process of reconsolidation is really cool. And the mechanism behind um why I'm talking about that, or when you're talking about something painful with the right support, is that it really can change how we recall it later. But that reconsolidation process, it does have a shelf life. So once it's happened, going back in, so once we have reconsolidation, and I believe, and I said this in the trauma podcast, it's about two hours. Once that reconsolidation process is started, you need to leave it alone. You gotta leave it alone. Because once it's happened, going back in and then reactiving reactivating that memory again and again and again without new information to integrate it, that doesn't add another layer of healing. That's what I'm trying to say is that it just re-exposes the material. And at best, it's just a neutral repetition. At worst, um, especially if it's done outside of a stabilizing context, it can resensitize the response instead of actually continuing to calm it. So the wound that's processed, finger quotes processed, can still look unfinished from the inside. Okay, but so meaning it can still itch, right? It's itching for meaning, it can still kind of generate discomfort, maybe intrusive thoughts, or kind of has this pull to revisit. And the instinct, especially in a culture that treats doing the work, processing as inherently good, unlimited, and always the right move is basically it's going back in and checking it again. But checking it isn't healing. Sometimes you're just picking at it. So the itch itself isn't information that something's wrong. Does that make sense? That itch, whether it's intrusive thoughts, whatever is going on. Often, often, what is is just a mid-healing feels, it's what mid-healing feels like from the inside. Same as our kids' actual scabs. So just because you feel like you need to go back and revisit it, doesn't actually mean um that's about trying to find more healing. You just got to give it time. So, you know, back to that client that came in, um, we were all ready, you know, and to to get going. And um it was hard. And not in a I it was generally very clear that they understood um what had shaped them in the way that it did. It was very, very clear. They could actually trace the pattern from the original event to how it showed up in their relationships now. And so they made connections. We didn't even get into therapy, and so in a lot of ways, they done more of the insight work on their own and in prior therapy than a lot of people actually do in years of sessions. And what they were asking me was for more sessions, more digging and more going back in. And I I want to be honest about um the position that this puts me in. This is someone who is highly motivated, very insightful, insightful. They're able to pay, they're asking me directly for exactly the service I provide. So every incentive was in the room, right? Think about that. Every incentive was in the room, financially, professionally, even the simple desire to just be helpful to someone who wants help. It all pointed toward me wanting to desperately say yes. And I had to tell them as gently as I could that I didn't think that's what they needed. You know, what I thought that they needed was to stop checking the wound and let it close. And that I could see the work, right? I could see the work that they'd already done, and that the pattern they were describing to me, the repeated return to the same material, that that searching for like a slightly different angle on the already understood story, although it looked like unfinished business, I said to this person, this is just more of an itch. It's the urge to pick. And that's the hard thing to say to someone who's really ready to keep going. I mean, it is, and especially again, as a business owner, someone that's willing to pay. Um, it's even harder thing to say, um, like I said, when you're running a business, it's it's so hard because this is someone that wants to actively engage in the business. It would, it would help me financially. But I I couldn't, I one, I can't pretend that part's not real. Like I said, I'm both business owner and counselor. But the thing is, is that I kept coming back to you is that, and what I kept saying to this person is continuing to process the material that's already been metabolized, it isn't a neutral kind of thing. It's not, it's not, you know, extra work can't help. It's like, no, actually, it can. Um, it can actually really keep reopening that wound over and over and over again, and it can retrain your nervous system to keep returning to something instead of letting it settle. And it can quietly actually reinforce the belief that the feeling um, that feeling like okay is completely unreachable. Because every time they check it, right, it still hurts a little bit, which feels like proof that it's not healed when actually it's just that's what happens. Um, I think people have the misunderstanding that in therapy, if if there's still pain attached, it means you haven't processed it. And what I say over and over and over again on this podcast in my office is that we have to learn to suffer well. We have to stop looking externally to feel better when really what we have to do is to heal the wound the best we can. But we all know if we had that big scabby knee when we were a kid, we probably still have a scar. So the scar is still part of the person. It's not gone, it's not erased. And and um therapy can't do that for you. It cannot erase anything. So if you're constantly going into your um clinician's office saying the same thing over and over again, you really need to consider, okay, is this actually helping the healing or do I just keep excavating the wound? And the other thing that I want to say very gently too is people that want to keep rehearsing their story, oftentimes I think what a clinician needs to do is they need to um confront that they have chosen to identify with the story because the identity of that story um is really who they are, who they've developed. So to release the identity within the trauma and within that story means that they just don't know what they have. Does that make sense? So that can happen as well, too. And so we need more clinicians to step into the arena of confrontation. Um, a lot of clinicians are afraid of confrontation. Um, and listen, I've done the confrontation with these clients before in the past, and I'm like, okay, well, you keep talking about the same thing and the same problems, you know, it's the same thing over and over again. What are what are you doing? Because it's always externalized. What are you doing? What are you doing to change this? How are you changing your thinking? How are you changing your behaviors? And listen, uh a lot of times it does not land and they get pretty pissed. And that's okay. That's okay because my job is to interrupt that pattern of thinking that's kept you stuck. And if that pattern is you keep going back to that damn scab and picking it off because, you know, whatever the reason may be, um, I need to call you on it and I need to open your eyeset. What you do with it is on you. But I'm not a good clinician. I just sit there and nod my head and help you to reinforce these um beliefs and thoughts and pains. So um, how do you tell the difference between the I need to keep processing this and I need to let this heal? Right? So I've got five signs I use, and I wrote these up more in the uh detail on a blog, if you want the longer version, um, with kind of some clinical reasoning behind each one. But here's the full walkthrough. Okay, number one, the insight is already there. Okay, so this means you can narrate what happened, you understand the why, even if the why doesn't make sense, especially when I work with my individuals that have uh really long childhood sexual abuse history, there's not really an understanding of why there. Um, we can't make sense of the why, but if you've gone through The therapeutic process, oftentimes the why comes from the other end of things, the why comes from like who you are today, despite what happened to you. Um, you can connect it to a pattern. Um, it and it's it the the pattern it it created its life of its own. So you can connect the pattern, right? You can connect, okay, this is what happened to me at age five. I can see the pattern that it led me to on you know, age 15, whatever it is. Um, if you're still going back anyway, like session after session, that's often not incomplete understanding. That is just a habit. That is all it is. And habits, especially ones reinforced by the belief that more work is always good, are very, very hard to distinguish from progress unless you're specifically looking for that marker. I hear this over and over and over again. And again, this is why I do confront clients that get stuck in that pattern because I do not want to be party to them building in uh a maladaptive habit. Okay. So number two, um, relief doesn't stick, meaning real processing tends to compound its effect. You'll feel a little bit better and it'll hold. And then the next time the topic comes up, it's just slightly less charged than before. That is a signature of integration. That is absolutely a signature of I did the process and now everything's slightly less charged. A different pattern is worth flagging, though. So temporary relief that resets by next week, every week with no real movement in your baseline distress over a period of months. That is not integration happening at all. Or it could be that it's happening very slowly. What I tend to think is that's repetition without the reconsolidation. That's that's a concern. So if you're just you a lot of people talk about this. Well, I go, I love my therapist. I go in and I feel so good. And then the relief is gone, you know, by the next day, and they have to go in the next day. And we really need to talk about that. That repetition has nothing to do with the actual integration process and that memory reconsolidation. Um, that has more to do with your therapist wanting to build your hours. I hate to say it that way, but that's that's what it is. And it's worth naming it out loud because you can go on for a really long time without anyone noticing the pattern. So it doesn't mean that every therapist is terrible, but they should know better if we're saying the same thing over and over again and they should be redirecting you, confronting you, working on those things. Um, so you know, every individual session can feel very productive in the moment, but it doesn't mean it actually is. All right, three. Here's a big one. Um, and again, this is about habit formation and identity formation. Number three, you're asking for reassurance, not information. Right? So am I over it yet? Or is it normal I feel like this? Did I handle that right? These are these aren't really information-seeking questions, even though they're phrased that way. They're really reassurance seeking. And reassurance-seeking has a very specific, frustrating property. It works, but only briefly, usually minutes, maybe an hour. And then the underlying uncertainty definitely returns and often prompts the same question again. So this um pattern actually shows up a lot in anxiety-related presentations generally, not just trauma process processing. And it's worth learning to recognize, but can it can look identical to genuine, unresolved material from the outside while functioning completely different? And again, this is where your clinician should really step in and say, you know, are we really looking at information and tools, or are you feeling the need for reassurance? Because ultimately, the job of a therapist is to teach you that you do not need externalized reassurance. That's the problem with this world. Everybody doesn't need therapy and you don't need reassurance every single week. That that is really what has happened in the therapy industry is we've forgotten that we're we are here to help people provide tools, but we are not here to maintain their paralysis in life. We're just not. That's not what we do. So just keep in mind, ask yourself, am I seeking reassurance or am I saying, hey Piper, I actually need some different tools? So, for example, did I handle this right? I um had an intrusive thought and then I went immediately to um, you know, like a thought stopping uh mechanism, or um, I had a really bad nightmare and I'm freaked out. Am I over it? If you have it in context, great. If you keep revisiting it, you just want reassurance and ultimately the process of therapy, finger quotes therapy, is actually just gonna serve to paralyze you. All right, four, uh the distress is about right now, not back then. Okay. So grief, um, burnout, even a genuinely very hard year, like a job loss or health scare, or maybe a relationship ending, these can produce symptoms that look a lot like unprocessed trauma, you know, like low mood, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, disrupted sleep. But the appropriate response isn't excavating the past. It's not. It's support for what's happening today. So maybe that's rest, maybe it's structural changes, maybe it's social support. Sometimes it's just you need time. Treating present tense distress as evidence of a deeper unresolved history can send you looking for a wound that isn't actually the source of what you're feeling, which means the intervention misses, even when the diagnosis of your struggling is completely correct. My industry unfortunately has perpetuated this hugely so. Any sort of distress obviously needs to be treated, but they can't actually tell you what intervention they're using because all they do is they sit on a couch, and what do they do? They provide you reassurance. That is not an intervention. And what I tell people, some people say, well, maybe they're just lonely and they need a friend. Then you need to encourage them to get out in the community to go to their church to make friends. We cannot be a paid friend. We are doing a disservice to people that have genuinely had a distressing year, but is not the need to dig into that wound. Don't don't start scratching at that scab just because you had a bad week, a bad year. Give them the tools and send them on the way. And maybe that sounds harsh to a lot of you, but this is really what I believe. I really do believe. Um, and finally, number five, you're actually looking for permission to stop. This is a big one. So a lot of people show up already knowing, you know, somewhere in them that they've done enough work on a particular issue. What they're actually looking for is a professional to confirm that. Because stopping on your own without that confirmation can feel like giving up or not taking your healing seriously. And that's completely legitimate, legitimate thing to want from a clinical relationship. The answer just isn't always keep going. Sometimes the most clinically appropriate answer is, yeah, you can stop. This is done. And again, done done doesn't mean perfection. Done doesn't mean that there's no distress. There's no such thing, people. You will not be freed from distress. You will not. And I want to spend some time here because again, I don't think that this is a minor blind spot in um the therapy field. I do think it's a structural issue. So start with training, for example. Um, some of you don't really know a lot about our training. So most clinical training is oriented around depth. So go deeper, uncover more, don't start a stop at the surface. And that's not wrong as a general orientation. A lot of good clinical work does require going further than a client initially wants to go, obviously. But it means the entire professional instinct is calibrated toward more, finger quotes more, as the default correct answer. So there's very, very little training comparatively on recognizing when the correct answer is less or stop or not right now. Right? So stopping doesn't get taught as a skill ever. It gets treated as an absence of skill, like um you'd only stop because you ran out of things to work on, not because stopping is itself the clinically indicated move. Um, then there's a business model. Listen, we got to talk about it. Most of us are paid per session. Um, and I don't say that cynically at all. Most clinicians are. And I know, listen, I know I didn't get into this for the money. I did not get into this for the money. Um, and plenty plenty of us actively work uh against our own financial interests. We really do. Um, and a lot of us we are referring out. We really are. We refer out, um, we reduce frequency when it's warranted, but the incentive is there. It's quietly underneath. Uh, excuse me, my dog started barking, but really what there is underneath under every session is continued engagement means continued income. Um, and so telling a motivated, insightful, paying client client that they don't need you right now runs directly against that incentive. And it takes a specific kind of discipline to say it anyway. And our field doesn't build much structural support for that discipline. Uh, nobody really audits a therapist for under-treating in the sense of stopping too early. There, there's no such thing. There's there's much more scrutiny, um, formal and informal, around under-treating in the sense of not doing enough. Um, and there's a cultural layer, I would say too, which I think is actually the deepest one. Doing the work, finger quotes doing the work has become shorthand broadly for taking your mental health seriously. It's a good phrase in a lot of contexts, but it pushes back against avoidance, against denial, against people who genuinely do uh need to engage with something they've been running from. But it's been generalized past its useful range. It really has. Now, doing work gets applied indiscriminately to people who've already done it, as if the amount of work is what matters rather than the fit between the work and where someone actually is. So stopping actually doesn't fit that narrative. Stopping looks like from the outside, like giving up or not being serious, and even when it's the more sophistical, sophisticated clinical read. And I think that I get a lot of grief from my counterparts because they think I sound harsh when I say these things. But let's just call a spade a spade. If you're keeping keeping people on your couch in in your chair, um, and you're they're restating the same thing over and over, and you have nothing else to add, you're simply there to ensure that you have the income incentive. Listen, I get it, I have to pay my bills true, but let's call a spade a spade. And also doing the work, you're you're applying that shorthand. Doing the work is not sitting there and um allowing your client to cry about a difficult week or maybe a really difficult past trauma. But if there's no forward momentum, there's no tools, what have you actually done for that individual? What have you actually done to help them? All you did was give them space. I can't tell you how much I'm so tired of my industry saying, but we give them a safe space. Okay. Um, but let's listen, putting those three things together, training that rewards depth by default, a supposed depth. And I'm saying depth in the sense of they call it depth, but is there any depth there? A business model that rewards continuation, 100%. That's what's going on, and a culture that equates more work with seriousness. And what happens is you get a field that is structurally better at starting and continuing continuing than it is at recognizing completion. Does that make sense? So the whole field structurally is really good at starting and continuing, but they have no idea how to get to completion, and that is a total disservice. It's not the individual clinicians, excuse me, are acting in bad faith. Some of them are. It's just that the system doesn't make um your done go heal an easy one or even a visible option most of the time, and we don't get it in training. So if you've listened um to these five signs and you're recognizing yourself, what do you actually do? So the first thing is I'm that's great that you're recognizing yourself. First, this isn't um a case against therapy generally. Um most of the time. I'm I'm having a hard time with that one, but it is worth being clear about that because um it would be easier to hear this episode as therapy doesn't work or stop going. I don't want you to hear this episode like that. I want you to be more discerning. That it's not about them me saying that it doesn't work and stop going. The point is much narrower. There is a difference between the phase where you need active processing and the phase where you need integration. And the second phase requires a different support, not more of the first kind, okay? And what that support actually looks like is consistency and daily structure, like sleep and movement and routine. Um, because integration happens way more reliably in a regulated nervous system than a dysregulated one. What you need is supportive relationships, the ordinary kind, not a clinical one. Time with people you know, um, you don't need the story to be re-explained. And you aren't treating you as a case to be worked through. You have to understand that if you rely on the clinical model only, then what you are identifying it at with is a case to be worked on. That doesn't sound great, does it? Um so reduced frequency rather than a full stop in a lot of cases, like moving from weekly to monthly, for instance. So that there's a checkpoint, right? If you don't feel like you can stop, you can do a checkpoint without constant re-engagement. And permission, explicit permission, if you need to hear it from someone credible, that's that feeling of like it's not entirely resolved is not the same as being unhealed. So some residue is just what's happening and what's lived through. Um, it's something that that feels like the afterward. Does that make sense? There's always kind of a residual. Um, it doesn't have to go all the way back to where you've done the active work. So again, if you feel yourself needs five signs, then this is actually a wonderful thing. Stop picking the scab. You don't need to pick the scab. Just because you have some residual, some pain left over, doesn't mean it's not healed. It means it needs more time. And what I want to say is you're if you're a therapist listening to this, build check-ins with yourself about whether continued sessions or st are still the right tool. Not just whether the client wants to continue. Wanting to continue and needing to continue aren't the same thing. And a good clinical relationship should be able to hold both possibilities honestly. So that's all of it. Um, just kind of thinking about don't pick the scab. I know that was a really gross analogy, but that's what comes to you at you know, three o'clock in the morning. Um, I did turn down that intake. Boy, as a business person, I could have used it, but not because it wasn't, you know, good good work to be had, but because I didn't think it was the right time um or the right work. And I'll be honest, it's still one of the harder calls I make professionally, precisely because everything about the situation um pointed towards saying yes, right? They were motivated, they're willing to pay, they they were willing to dig in. Everything pointed to yes. Um, and I just couldn't do it. So if any of these five signs um sound familiar to you as a clinician, thinking about a client or as someone listening who recognizes yourself, I know you are out there listening. I'd sit with that for a minute before the next session or before you book the next one. Not everything that itches needs to be picked. Not everything that itches needs to be picked. So that's the episode. Full breakdown of the five signs with clinical reasoning behind it is on the blog. If you want to sit with it in writing, the link will be in the show notes. I will see you all next time. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks for joining me. I hope you learned some tools that can equip you to untangle your mind and untangle your life. If you're curious about working with me for your anxiety or trauma, head on over to my website at untangledmind.net to connect with me. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review me on your podcast listening platform and share it with your friends and family. As always, thanks so much for listening to me, Piper Harris with the Untangled Mind Podcast. I'll talk with you next time.