Nicole Symcox | Psychotherapist

As many of you know, I am based in California, and we have just been given a shelter-in-place order as of the day I'm recording this. If you’re not in California or you haven’t been quarantined yet, the chances are you will be soon and many people are already self-isolating as a precaution, so it’s time to start a conversation around how we can take care of our mental health under quarantine. This ... Read the Post

We all have ideas of who we should be, how we think we should show up in a relationship or within our family. And we think of this as keeping us in-line, right? However, we also hold the same level of expectations, if not more, for the other person in these scenarios. And where this becomes a real problem is we never really talk about it, and rarely even acknowledge it internally. So, when this ... Read the Post

When it comes to trauma, we often think of these big life events as being the cause - death, abuse, accidents. However, it’s completely possible that throughout your life you’ve been experiencing trauma on a much smaller scale, in some cases constantly, that you wouldn’t even really notice occurring. And this can culminate in the exact same results of those who’ve had big traumatic life-changing ... Read the Post

People always ask me, “When somebody comes to me with a problem, how can I make them feel supported?” Now, we know that we can’t make other people feel a certain way, so when somebody comes to us with some deep emotional pain, what can we actually do in order to support them? When another person comes to us with an issue they’re struggling with, it’s very natural for us to want to solve their ... Read the Post

Unless you’ve been brought up in a super healthy family unit, where you were taught how to be assertive and this type of communication was modeled to you, most of us humans default into three common categories of communication styles. Today, I’m defining what these three are, what they look like, and why they should be avoided. We all probably have someone in our lives that we can point to when ... Read the Post