Get to Know Micaela
Therapist in Austin, TX

Have you heard the saying “you can only trust family”? It makes sense in a way, but how are you supposed to feel when your family hurts you? That confusing mix of emotions about your family is hard to work through. It is difficult to know why your family would try to control your decisions, give you ultimatums, or to assign blame when you make mistakes. One important reason these kinds of dynamics show up in family life is generational trauma. Sometimes our family members that came before us have experienced such distressing and traumatic events that the impacts of those events ripple through the generations after them. The experiences we live through growing up not only shape the way we view and interact with the world, but also impacts how our future family members experience it as well. Whether those experiences include things like war, poverty, racism, or other traumatic experiences, our ancestors, or even our own parents, have reacted to those events in many different ways, some less helpful than others. They might have been very cautious of trusting anyone who isn’t in the family, as a result it’s hard to know who to actually trust. Maybe they tried to control your choices at the expense of connecting with you on an emotional level or just ignored your emotional needs completely. It can be really challenging to try to tell your family no or even expressing how you feel when you don’t want to upset your family. The impacts of these experiences are passed down through the generations in a family, until someone recognizes them, names them, and decides to do the work of disrupting that generational pattern of avoidance and harm. 

Whether you’re starting a family of your own or going through an experience that has you reflecting on your own childhood, being confronted with the realization that maybe your family wasn’t the healthiest and that you would like to do it differently, means it is time for change.  When we focus on intergenerational trauma in therapy, we will focus on not just “what happened” but also what strength it took to make it through and how to break the cycle of harm that your family has carried forward over time. As Dr. Muriel Buqué has said “we carry generational trauma, but we also carry generational resilience.”

Whether you are preparing for college, are in college, or are leaving college —…you might be thinking what’s next, where do I go from here, or will I be okay? Big life changes are truthfully terrifying especially when we don’t feel as prepared as we need to and instead we feel the uncertainty growing bigger as the change gets closer. 

As you’re navigating high school you might be worried about how you’ll make friends, if you’ll be accepted, and if you’re actually ready to leave home after graduation. High school was hard enough, so how could I handle college? The thought of talking to teachers, taking responsibility for school in a way you haven’t had to before, and deciding what you wanna do for the rest of your life, is just too much! Not to mention, talking in front of a class, finding your friend group, and passing your classes, feels so overwhelming. Being away from family or friends that you’ve grown up with has really started to feel more and more isolating. It makes sense that you have started to feel frightened, on edge, or unsure of the future. Asking yourself, do I belong here? Did I make the right choice? I was so excited to come here, why do I feel like this now?

In college, there are times where we can struggle with the desire to have perfect grades, a perfect experience of college, and overall be the perfect version of ourselves. Sometimes we feel so incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of work, the responsibility of being independent, or juggling multiple roles that we keep pushing off doing our work and studying. There can also be the experience of feeling lonely, and we may be scared to reach out to our loved ones for support.  

Even when you make it through the challenges of college life, getting ready to graduate presents its own hurdles. As you’re getting ready to graduate you can feel the nervousness setting in. Am I ready? Did college prepare me for my career? What if this job isn’t what I imagined? However complicated the next steps feel, it’s always helpful to have someone to process with. When you’re scared, choices feel daunting and impossible. It’s hard to lean into our strengths and remember that we are capable of overcoming difficult experiences. Through our work together, even when scary, we can explore different paths and use your strengths as supports for our journey through. 

Loss comes in so many forms. From losing a loved one, to ending a career, or grieving the loss of a relationship, how to grieve the loss in the most helpful way for you, can be hard to do on your own. You may have emotions of sadness, confusion, anger, and uncertainty. Where do I go from here? How will I ever heal? Will I even heal? Did they know how much they meant to me? Could I have done anything different? You’re getting tired of hearing “I’m so sorry for your loss.” You cry every time someone mentions it. Maybe you feel emotional about a relationship or marriage that has come to an end. You thought this person would be in your life forever. You never imagined you’d be here. Perhaps your childhood home has been destroyed by an awful storm. You imagined yourself in this home for years, and even hoped to give it to your children one day. There are so many questions you have and yet no answer anyone offers feels right. There is no right or wrong emotion in grief. In fact, there is no right or wrong way to process grief. Everyone’s experience of grief and each individual loss is uniquely different. What may work for someone may not work for others.

I am here to support you in processing all the emotions you carry on your journey of healing. If you feel lost, we can take the time to just understand why the loss is confusing or where to begin to process. If you feel sad, we can take the time to explore what part of the loss that may be making the hurt linger. If you feel annoyed that it continues to bother you after all this time, we can explore what may be holding you back from healing. Loss has a way of feeling defeated, but together we can find a path to moving through this experience. Living without these consuming emotions is not far away.