A quiet year-end reflection on trauma-informed therapy, art, anxiety, and family healing The Year Has a Way of Lingering Years don’t really end cleanly. They trail off. They leave things behind—unanswered emails, half-processed grief, small wins that didn’t get celebrated, and losses that were pushed aside because there was no time to feel them properly. By the final weeks, many people aren’t exactly burnt out. They’re… tender. The nervous system feels thin. Anxiety hums a li

A quieter conversation about what really happens once you walk through the door Therapy is often imagined as a single moment. A couch. A question. A sudden emotional breakthrough. In reality, it’s softer than that. Slower. More human. Most people arrive carrying a mix of hope and hesitation. Relief that help exists. Fear about what it might ask of them. Questions they haven’t said out loud yet. Therapy doesn’t rush those questions. It makes room for them. This guide isn’t her

Some people arrive in therapy knowing exactly what hurts. Others arrive with a vague sense of heaviness. Tight shoulders. A nervous laugh that comes too quickly. A feeling that something is always about  to go wrong, even on good days. Trauma-informed therapy begins there—not with labels or urgency, but with attention. With patience. With the quiet understanding that many people learned long ago how to survive, even if those survival skills no longer fit their present lives.

When you’re searching for help—whether you’re feeling overwhelmed, navigating a major transition, or simply longing for a calmer inner world—you’ll often run into two words that seem interchangeable: therapy and psychotherapy. Many people assume they’re the same thing. Others wonder if one is “stronger,” “more serious,” or “more medical.” The truth is more nuanced and, in many ways, more empowering. At Still Waters Therapy in Springfield, we meet individuals every day who com