Tag Archives: mental-health

Planning for High-Risk Situations, explained:

Planning for high-risk situations is a way to protect future, you when you know your nervous system, habits, or environment might get activated and pull you off course. It’s used a lot in substance use recovery, trauma work, and relapse-prevention, but it’s really about anticipating vulnerability and adding support ahead of time.

Here’s a clean, practical breakdown.

What counts as a “high-risk situation”?

Anything that reliably increases the chance of:

  • relapse or acting out
  • emotional overwhelm
  • dissociation or shutdown
  • impulsive or self-defeating behavior

Common examples:

  • Strong emotional states (shame, loneliness, anger, grief)
  • Interpersonal triggers (conflict, rejection, criticism)
  • Environmental cues (certain places, people, times of day)
  • Internal states (fatigue, hunger, pain, stress)
  • Cognitive states (“I don’t care anymore,” “What’s the point?”)

High-risk ≠ weakness.
It means predictable nervous-system activation.

Core elements of planning for high-risk situations

1. Identify your personal risk profile

Not generic, yours.

Ask:

  • When do I usually lose access to my values?
  • What patterns repeat before things go sideways?
  • What sensations, thoughts, or urges show up first?

This is somatic + cognitive:

  • Body: tight chest, buzzing, collapse
  • Mind: all-or-nothing thinking, justifying, numbing logic
  • Behavior: isolating, seeking relief fast

2. Name early warning signs

Catching it early is everything.

Examples:

  • “I stop answering texts”
  • “My inner critic gets louder”
  • “I feel unreal / detached”
  • “I start bargaining with myself”

This shifts you from reactive to observant.

3. Pre-decide coping responses

You choose before the trigger, because during activation, choice narrows.

Good plans include:

  • Immediate regulation (grounding, breath, movement)
  • Delay strategies (urge surfing, 20-minute rule)
  • Connection (specific people, not vague “reach out”)
  • Environment changes (leave, remove access, change location)
  • Meaning anchors (values, commitments, consequences)

Simple beats clever.

4. Plan for impaired thinking

In high-risk moments, insight often goes offline.

So ask:

  • What will I forget when I’m activated?
  • What lies does my mind tell me?

Then write counter-statements in advance:

  • “This urge will peak and pass.”
  • “Relief now = pain later.”
  • “I don’t have to decide anything tonight.”

This is borrowing your wise mind ahead of time.

5. Rehearse the plan

This part gets skipped and it matters.

  • Visualize the trigger
  • Walk through the response
  • Feel it in your body

You’re training the nervous system, not just the intellect.

Why this works (psychologically & somatically)

  • Reduces cognitive load under stress
  • Interrupts habit loops
  • Restores a sense of agency
  • Builds trust in yourself
  • Shifts shame to strategy

Planning isn’t rigidity, it’s compassionate realism.

Shervan K Shahhian

Substance Abuse Counseling, an explanation:

Substance Abuse Counseling (often called Addiction Counseling or Substance Use Disorder treatment) is a therapeutic approach that helps people change their relationship with substances while addressing the underlying reasons the use developed in the first place.

Here’s a clean, structured overview

What it is

Substance abuse counseling supports people who:

  • Are using alcohol or drugs in ways that cause harm
  • Feel out of control with substances
  • Use substances to cope with emotional pain, trauma, anxiety, shame, or identity distress
  • Are in recovery and want relapse prevention support

It treats substance use as a learned coping strategy, not a moral failure.

Core goals

  • Reduce or stop harmful substance use
  • Understand why the substance became necessary
  • Build safer coping and regulation skills
  • Repair relationships and self-trust
  • Support identity reconstruction beyond “the addiction”

Common approaches used

Motivational Interviewing (MI)

  • Helps resolve ambivalence (“part of me wants to stop, part of me doesn’t”)
  • Non-confrontational, autonomy-respecting
  • Especially effective early in treatment

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

  • Identifies triggers, thought loops, and behavioral patterns
  • Builds relapse-prevention plans
  • Teaches urge management and alternative coping

Trauma-informed therapy

  • Addresses attachment injuries, chronic shame, or developmental trauma
  • Recognizes substance use as nervous-system regulation

Harm Reduction

  • Focuses on safer use if abstinence isn’t immediately possible
  • Meets people where they are, not where they “should be”

Group therapy / 12-step or alternatives

  • Provides belonging, accountability, and shared meaning
  • Alternatives include SMART Recovery, Refuge Recovery, etc.

What happens in sessions

  • Assessment of substance patterns and risks
  • Exploring emotional, relational, and somatic triggers
  • Learning skills for craving management and regulation
  • Planning for high-risk situations
  • Strengthening identity, purpose, and values

Who it’s for

  • People questioning their use (“Is this becoming a problem?”)
  • People with diagnosed Substance Use Disorders
  • People in early recovery or long-term maintenance
  • People whose substance use is tied to trauma, shame, or existential distress

Important reframe

Substance use is often:

An attempt to regulate pain, not a desire to self-destruct.

Effective counseling treats the function of the substance, not just the substance itself.

Shervan K Shahhian

Understanding Somatic Signatures:

Somatic signatures are the distinct, patterned ways your body signals a particular emotional or psychological state, often before your conscious mind catches up.

Think of them as your nervous system’s calling cards.

What they are, simply

A somatic signature is a reliable body pattern (sensations, posture, breath, tension, impulses) that shows up when a specific emotion, belief, memory, or survival strategy is activated.

They’re not random sensations—they’re meaningful, repeatable, and context-linked.

Examples

  • Anxiety signature: tight chest, shallow breathing, jaw clenching, forward-leaning posture
  • Shame signature: collapsed chest, downcast eyes, heat in face, urge to hide
  • Anger signature: heat in arms, clenched fists, pressure in jaw, urge to move forward
  • Grief signature: heaviness in chest, slow breathing, throat tightness
  • Safety/connection signature: warmth in torso, fuller breath, relaxed shoulders

Each person’s pattern is idiosyncratic, your anxiety may live in your gut, someone else’s in their throat.

Why they matter (clinically + practically)

  • They show up before thoughts, early warning system
  • They’re harder to lie to than cognition
  • They reveal which survival system is online (threat, attachment, collapse, mobilization)
  • They allow regulation without analysis

For trauma and attachment work, somatic signatures are gold because the body remembers what the mind rationalizes away.

Somatic signatures vs emotions

Important distinction:

  • Emotion = category label (fear, sadness, anger)
  • Somatic signature = the body configuration that carries that emotion

You can change the emotional trajectory by working with the signature directly (breath, posture, movement, grounding), without disputing thoughts.

In practice (micro-intervention)

  1. Notice: “What is my body doing right now?”
  2. Name the pattern (not the story): tight throat, shallow breath, pulled-in shoulders
  3. Track it with curiosity (not control)
  4. Offer a small counter-signal (lengthen exhale, widen posture, orient to room)This gently tells the nervous system: “You’re not in danger now.”

Specifically

Somatic signatures are also the interface layer, where perception, meaning, and regulation meet. They’re the substrate beneath cognition, belief, and even anomalous experience.

Shervan K Shahhian

Cognitive Coping, what is it:

Cognitive coping is about using your thinking to regulate emotion, stress, or threat—basically working with the mind to keep the nervous system from running the show.

Here’s a clean, useful way to understand it.

What cognitive coping actually is

Cognitive coping uses top-down processes (attention, meaning-making, appraisal) to change how a situation is interpreted, which then changes how it feels.

You’re not changing the event—you’re changing:

the story about it

the focus of attention

the meaning assigned to it

Common forms of cognitive coping

These are the big ones clinicians usually mean:

Cognitive reappraisal “Is there another way to understand what’s happening?”

Perspective-taking Zooming out in time, context, or role (e.g., “How will this look in a year?”)

Reality testing Checking assumptions: “What evidence do I actually have?”

Normalization “This reaction makes sense given the context.”

Self-talk / inner dialogue Using language to soothe, guide, or ground.

Meaning-making Integrating the experience into a larger narrative (“This is hard and it fits into my growth arc.”)

What cognitive coping is good at

It works best when:

arousal is mild to moderate

the nervous system is already somewhat regulated

the person has cognitive flexibility online

It’s especially helpful for:

rumination

anticipatory anxiety

moral injury / shame narratives

existential or identity-based distress

Where cognitive coping breaks down

This is key—and often missed.

Cognitive coping fails when:

the body is in high threat (fight/flight/freeze)

shame or attachment threat is activated

the prefrontal cortex is offline

That’s when it turns into:

intellectual bypass

arguing with emotions

“I know this isn’t rational but I still feel it”

increased self-criticism for “not coping correctly”

Cognitive coping vs body-based regulation

Think of it like this:

Body-based regulation: calms the signal

Cognitive coping: interprets the signal

Best practice (and what you’ve been circling lately):

Body first → cognition second

Once the body settles even 10–15%, cognitive coping suddenly works again.

A gentle integration move

Instead of “changing the thought,” try:

“What would a regulated mind naturally think right now?”

That question respects the nervous system and cognition.

Shervan K Shahhian

Self-Sabotage, explained:

Self-sabotage is when a person undermines their own goals, wellbeing, or values, often outside of conscious awareness, even though they genuinely want things to go well.

In simple terms:
one part of you wants growth, safety, love, or success — and another part interferes.

What self-sabotage actually is (psychologically)

Self-sabotage is not laziness or lack of willpower. It’s usually a protective survival strategy that once made sense.

It emerges when:

  • Success, closeness, calm, or visibility feels unsafe
  • The nervous system associates growth with threat, loss, shame, or punishment
  • Old learning overrides present-day reality

So the system says: “Better to fail in familiar ways than succeed and risk danger.”

Common forms of self-sabotage

  • Procrastinating right before important steps
  • Avoiding opportunities after working hard for them
  • Starting strong, then disengaging when things improve
  • Choosing familiar but harmful relationships
  • Creating conflict when closeness deepens
  • Dismissing praise or minimizing achievements
  • Breaking routines that support health or stability

Often it shows up right at the edge of change.

Why people self-sabotage

Some of the most common roots:

1. protective survival strategy
Success may mean visibility, responsibility, envy, or abandonment.

2. Fear of failure
Failing confirms a painful internal belief (“I’m not enough”), but paradoxically feels predictable.

3. Internalized shame or harsh superego
A part believes you don’t deserve ease, love, or good outcomes.

4. Attachment injuries
If closeness once led to harm, the system disrupts intimacy to stay safe.

5. Identity threat
Growth can destabilize who you learned you had to be to survive.

The paradox

Self-sabotage often:

  • Protects against emotional overwhelm
  • Preserves attachment or belonging
  • Maintains a coherent identity

Even though it causes suffering, it’s trying to prevent something worse.

What self-sabotage is NOT

  • It’s not stupidity
  • It’s not moral weakness
  • It’s not a lack of motivation
  • It’s not “wanting to fail”

It’s an outdated protection system running on old data.

How it begins to resolve

Self-sabotage softens when:

  • The protective intention is recognized, not attacked
  • Shame is reduced (not argued with)
  • Safety is increased at the nervous-system level
  • Change is titrated, not forced
  • New success is paired with regulation and support

Compassion, not pressure, is what updates the system.

Shervan K Shahhian

Understanding Conditional Attachment:


Conditional attachment refers to a relational pattern where connection, care, or safety is experienced as dependent on meeting certain conditions—rather than being reliably available.

In short: “I’m attached if I perform, comply, please, succeed, stay regulated, or don’t need too much.”

Core features

  • Love = earned, not given
  • Attachment is contingent on behavior, mood, usefulness, or achievement
  • Safety feels revocable
  • The nervous system stays on watch for cues of withdrawal or disapproval

How it forms

Most often develops in environments where caregivers:

  • Gave affection selectively (praise for success, withdrawal for failure)
  • Were emotionally available only when the child was “easy,” calm, or impressive
  • Used approval, attention, or closeness as regulation tools
  • Rewarded compliance and punished authenticity (emotion, need, protest)

The child learns:

“To stay connected, I must manage myself—and often you.”

Common adult expressions

  • People-pleasing, over-functioning, or perfectionism
  • Hyper-attunement to others’ moods
  • Fear of being “too much” or “not enough”
  • Collapse, shame, or anger when needs arise
  • Relationships that feel transactional rather than resting

Nervous system angle

Conditional attachment keeps the system in sympathetic vigilance or freeze-compliance:

  • Attachment = threat + reward
  • Proximity doesn’t fully down-regulate
  • Safety is never assumed—only temporarily granted

This is why even “good” relationships can feel tiring or precarious.

Contrast: secure attachment

ConditionalSecure
Love must be maintainedLove is assumed
Safety is earnedSafety is baseline
Authenticity risks lossAuthenticity deepens bond
Needs feel dangerousNeeds are welcomed

Healing direction

Repair isn’t about “detaching” but re-patterning attachment:

  • Experiences of non-contingent presence (“I’m here even if nothing changes”)
  • Learning to tolerate being seen without performing
  • Nervous-system level safety before insight
  • Relational repair where rupture ≠ abandonment

Given your trauma and phenomenology-focused lens, conditional attachment is best understood not as a belief problem, but as a learned survival contract the body once needed.

Shervan K Shahhian

Difficulty Accepting Compassion, an explanation:

Difficulty accepting compassion is very common—especially in people who grew up needing to be self-reliant, vigilant, or emotionally contained. It’s less a flaw and more a learned survival strategy.

Here’s a clean way to understand it, psychologically and neurobiologically:

What “difficulty accepting compassion” really means

It’s not that compassion feels bad.
It’s that compassion feels unsafe, unfamiliar, or destabilizing.

When someone offers warmth, care, or gentleness, the nervous system may interpret it as:

  • a loss of control
  • a setup for disappointment or betrayal
  • an invitation to dependency
  • a threat to a hard-won identity (“I survive by being strong / competent / independent”)

So the system subtly resists.

Common internal experiences

People often report:

  • Feeling awkward, exposed, or undeserving
  • A reflex to deflect, minimize, joke, or intellectualize
  • Sudden tension, numbness, or irritation
  • Thoughts like:
    • “They don’t really know me.”
    • “I should be able to handle this myself.”
    • “If I accept this, I owe something.”

These are protective responses, not character flaws.

Developmental roots (typical pathways)

Difficulty receiving compassion often develops when:

1. Care was inconsistent or conditional

Compassion came with strings attached, role reversal, or emotional cost.

Result: care = danger or debt

2. Vulnerability was punished or ignored

Needs were met with shame, dismissal, or overwhelm.

Result: softness = exposure

3. Identity formed around competence or insight

Being “the strong one,” “the wise one,” or “the self-sufficient one” became how safety was maintained.

Result: receiving care threatens identity coherence

Nervous system explanation (why it’s felt in the body)

Compassion activates social engagement systems (ventral vagal).
If those circuits were underused or paired with threat early on:

  • the body may respond with unease, vigilance
  • numbing, dissociation

So even kindness can feel like overstimulation or collapse.

Subtle forms of resistance (often overlooked)

  • Preferring to give compassion rather than receive it
  • Framing everything as insight, spirituality, or theory
  • Accepting compassion cognitively but not somatically
  • Feeling safer with respect than with warmth

These are elegant adaptations.

What helps (without forcing openness)

The goal is not to “open the heart” aggressively.

More effective approaches:

1. Micro-doses of compassion

Brief, low-intensity moments (a kind tone, a neutral acknowledgment) tolerated without needing to feel moved.

2. Choice and agency

Compassion that is invitational, not engulfing:

“Would it help if…?”

3. Somatic tracking

Noticing where the discomfort shows up (throat, chest, gut) without trying to fix it.

4. Reframing compassion as regulation, not dependency

Compassion = nervous system co-regulation, not weakness or debt.

A key reframe

Difficulty accepting compassion usually means
you learned to survive without it, not that you don’t deserve it.

That adaptation deserves respect.

Shervan K Shahhian

Global Self-Condemnation, what is it?

Global self-condemnation is a cognitive–emotional pattern in which a person judges their entire self as bad, defective, or unworthy based on specific mistakes, traits, or experiences.

Rather than thinking “I did something wrong,” the person concludes “I am wrong.”

Core Characteristics

  • Totalizing self-judgment: One flaw, failure, or behavior is taken as evidence that the whole self is bad.
  • Stable and global: The judgment feels permanent (“always,” “fundamentally”) and applies across contexts.
  • Moralized shame: Not just regret or guilt, but a sense of being inherently corrupt or unredeemable.
  • Resistant to evidence: Positive feedback or success doesn’t disconfirm the belief.

Common Forms

  • “I am a bad person.”
  • “There’s something wrong with me at my core.”
  • “If people really knew me, they’d reject me.”
  • “My past defines who I am.”

How It Differs From Related Constructs

  • Guilt → Behavior-focused (“I did something wrong”)
  • Shame → Self-focused but situational (“I feel bad about who I was then”)
  • Global self-condemnation → Identity-level and absolute (“I am bad, period”)

In CBT terms, it’s a global self-rating error.
In trauma psychology, it often reflects internalized blame or attachment injury.
In psychodynamic language, it resembles a harsh superego or introjected critical object.

Developmental & Trauma Links

  • Chronic criticism or moral shaming in childhood
  • Conditional attachment (“you’re lovable only if…”)
  • Religious or ideological absolutism
  • Trauma where self-blame preserved a sense of control
  • Environments where mistakes threatened belonging or safety

Psychological Functions (Why It Persists)

Paradoxically, global self-condemnation can:

  • Create a false sense of control (“If I’m bad, at least it makes sense”)
  • Prevent hope (which would risk disappointment)
  • Maintain attachment to critical caregivers or belief systems
  • Serve as a protective identity against vulnerability

Clinical Markers

  • Language of essence rather than action
  • Difficulty accepting compassion
  • Collapse into shame after minor errors
  • Strong resistance to self-forgiveness
  • Identity fusion with past behavior or symptoms

Therapeutic Reframes

Effective work usually involves:

  • De-globalizing identity (separating self from actions)
  • Restoring moral complexity (good people can do harmful things)
  • Contextualizing origins (how the belief once protected the person)
  • Developing self-compassion without bypassing responsibility
  • Relational repair (being seen without condemnation)

A key shift is from moral absolutism to human fallibility.

Shervan K Shahhian

Does Shame Narrows Perception, why:


Shame narrows perception because it is a high-intensity social threat response that shifts the brain and nervous system from open, integrative processing into defensive survival mode.

Here’s how that happens, layer by layer:

1. Shame Activates the Social Threat System

Shame signals “I am unacceptable; I may be rejected or expelled from the group.”
Because social belonging is essential for survival, the brain treats shame like danger.

Neurobiologically (Consult a Neurologist):

  • The amygdala and threat circuits activate
  • Stress hormones (cortisol, norepinephrine) increase
  • The prefrontal cortex (perspective-taking, nuance, mental flexibility) goes partially offline

Result: the mind prioritizes self-protection, not exploration or complexity.

2. Attention Collapses Inward

Under shame, attention narrows toward:

  • The self as an object of judgment
  • Perceived flaws, mistakes, or exposures
  • Imagined evaluations by others

This produces:

  • Tunnel vision
  • Loss of contextual awareness
  • Reduced ability to mentalize others accurately

Instead of “What is happening?” the question becomes “What’s wrong with me?”

3. Temporal Constriction

Shame compresses time:

  • Past mistakes feel ever-present
  • The future feels foreclosed or catastrophic
  • The present feels frozen

This is why shame often feels inescapable and global rather than specific or momentary.

4. Meaning-Making Becomes Rigid

Shame pushes cognition toward:

  • Global self-condemnation (“I am bad,” not “I did something”)
  • Black-and-white thinking
  • Certainty without curiosity

This rigidity protects against further exposure but blocks learning, repair, and growth.

5. Nervous System Immobilization

From a polyvagal perspective:

  • Shame often activates dorsal vagal shutdown or a collapsed sympathetic state
  • Energy drops
  • Voice, posture, and gaze constrict
  • Sensory richness diminishes

Perception narrows because the body is preparing to hide, disappear, or endure.

6. Developmental Roots

Many people learned early that:

  • Visibility led to humiliation or punishment
  • Being seen meant danger

So the nervous system learned:
“Narrow awareness = safety.”

Shame becomes a perceptual strategy, not just an emotion.

In Short

Shame narrows perception because:

  • It is designed to prevent social exile
  • It shifts the brain into threat-based efficiency
  • It collapses attention, time, and meaning to minimize risk

It is not a failure of insight.
It is survival intelligence doing exactly what it evolved to do—at the cost of openness.

Clinically Useful Reframe

Shame doesn’t mean “something is wrong with you.”
It means “your system believes visibility is unsafe right now.”

Restoring perception requires safety, attunement, and relational repair, not insight alone.

Shervan K Shahhian

Reduced shame around Survival Behaviors, explained:

Reduced shame around survival behaviors refers to the process of recognizing, reframing, and emotionally releasing shame tied to coping strategies that once helped you survive threat, trauma, neglect, or chronic stress.

In trauma-informed psychology, this is considered a key marker of healing and integration.

What are “survival behaviors”?

Survival behaviors are adaptive responses, not character flaws. Common examples include:

  • Hypervigilance or control
  • Emotional numbing or dissociation
  • People-pleasing or fawning
  • Avoidance or withdrawal
  • Aggression or defensiveness
  • Perfectionism or over-functioning
  • Addictive or compulsive patterns
  • Fantasy, absorption, or retreat into inner worlds

These behaviors emerged because at one time they worked.

What does “reduced shame” mean in this context?

It does not mean approving of harmful behaviors. It means:

  • Understanding why the behavior developed
  • Separating identity from coping strategy
  • Replacing moral judgment with compassion
  • Holding accountability without self-attack

Shame says: “I am bad.”
Integration says: “This was a solution under pressure.”

Signs that shame is reducing

You may notice:

  • Less self-contempt when recalling past behavior
  • Curiosity replacing self-criticism
  • The ability to say, “That makes sense” instead of “What’s wrong with me?”
  • Greater choice: the behavior is no longer automatic
  • Increased nervous system regulation
  • A felt sense of dignity returning

Clinically, this reflects movement from trauma-based identity fusion toward self-coherence.

Why shame loosens as healing occurs

Shame is often:

  • An internalized survival strategy itself
  • A byproduct of relational trauma
  • Reinforced by moralistic or pathologizing frameworks

As safety increases, the nervous system no longer needs shame to enforce compliance or conceal vulnerability.

This is especially true in somatic, parts-based, and phenomenological approaches, where behaviors are contextualized rather than condemned.

Reframing formula (simple but powerful)

“This behavior arose to protect something vulnerable when no better option was available.”

This reframing does not erase responsibility, but it restores humanity.

Clinical note

In both trauma work and parapsychological phenomenology, reduced shame is essential for:

  • Clear discernment
  • Decreased projection
  • Less distortion of perception
  • Greater signal-to-noise clarity

Shame narrows perception. Integration widens it.

Shervan K Shahhian