Every person alive has experienced some challenging life experiences. Every body has a nervous system, and every body has a fight, flight, or freeze response. This means that at some point in your life you experiences a situation where you felt unsafe and needed to either run away, fight the problem, or play dead. If you experienced a sittuation in your life where you felt unsafe and couldn't do any of those things, check out our page on 

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Anxiety and depression can be thought of as our brain responding to small ongoing stressors, such as challenges as work, difficult family members or friends, financial or food insecurities, or other experiences that threaten our sense of safety. Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be thought of as our nervous system responding to a threat that was a bit more scary than your average worries. Car accidents, medical trauma, childhood abuse, spousal abuse, natural or manmade disasters, are just some examples of experiences that can lead to symptoms of PTSD. 

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At Nothing About Us Without Us Creative Arts Therapies, we take a trauma informed approach with all clients no matter if they are struggling with mild depression, or intense PTSD challenges. Often we are taught to minimize our symptoms of mental health, telling ourselves that "it wasn't that bad" or "I don't have anything to be upset about". The truth is, if you have feelings about a situation that you are struggling to manage, it doesn't matter how small the situation was, your body is responding to a threat, and you could benefit from talking to a trained mental health counselor.