Kate Motaung, Plano Christian Counseling

What is EMDR Therapy?

What is EMDR Therapy?

Ashlynn Barnette, Kate Motaung2025-05-27T06:56:37+00:00May 27th, 2025|Featured, Individual Counseling, Trauma|

Trauma affects people differently. Some people are affected in such a way that they need extensive treatment for their mental health issues. Traumatic situations can create memories that cause people to have a variety of mental issues, such as PTSD. One type of therapy that is becoming more widely used is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, or EMDR. If you’re wondering, “What is EMDR therapy?” this article is for you. This method of therapy for trauma revolves around eye movements as you process memories of traumatic experiences. The main goal of this treatment is to help you heal from those experiences and move toward better mental health. The most helpful aspect of EMDR is that it is based on the body rather than just talking about the problem. This can be helpful for those who are affected by PTSD, panic disorders, depression, and anxiety. How does EMDR help with PTSD? To understand how EMDR can help PTSD, you need to understand what PTSD is and how it affects people. PTSD is one of the most common mental health issues related to trauma. There are thousands of people who deal with post-traumatic stress disorder each day. PTSD was at one time associated with combat veterans but has been expanded to include those who have experienced a serious event such as rape, terrorist act, sex trafficking, natural disaster, or serious accident and injury. Those who suffer from PTSD usually show signs of having flashbacks and may seem detached from people. They do not want to be around any situation or person that may remind them of the traumatic event. To overcome these feelings and behaviors, those with PTSD may engage in therapy with a counselor who is trained to understand PTSD and its effects. In addition to these therapies, medication [...]

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5 Relationship Types and How to Strengthen Your Bonds

5 Relationship Types and How to Strengthen Your Bonds

McCartney Paul, Kate Motaung2025-05-22T07:13:04+00:00May 22nd, 2025|Couples Counseling, Featured, Individual Counseling, Marriage Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Relationships are a part of life, but why? If we have learned anything during the pandemic, it has been that although isolation is necessary for particular seasons of our lives, we thrive when we are part of a social circle. This circle can include your spouse, children, parents, siblings, coworkers, or the friendly mail delivery carrier. You choose the people and how much access they have to your life. Knowing the five relationship types and how you can strengthen those bonds can serve you well in every area of life. Why Relationships are Necessary Positive relationships are necessary for the formation of social skills and happiness. Different types of relationships fulfill various needs throughout life and can result in better emotional and mental health. Not feeling alone, even when you are struggling, is crucial to avoiding specific mental condition symptoms such as depression. Relationships, even the hard and toxic ones, help build emotional resilience. Resiliency will help you overcome challenges throughout life and move forward instead of staying “stuck,” reliving hurt, disappointment, or trauma. Relationships provide a support system and other people to share your burdens. When going through something challenging, you want people who love and care about you to help stand in the gap. Relationships allow you to support others and be a blessing when they need it. As relationships form early, those bonds may shape the person you become. But remember, even if your relationships throughout childhood were tumultuous, you have the resources to lead a different life. You can choose to surround yourself with people who can push you to learn more, think differently, and act appropriately. The relationships you choose later in life can either bless you or harm you. Not every relationship needs to be a close, intimate one to benefit you. Building [...]

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Gaslighting in Relationships: Effective Ways to Respond

Gaslighting in Relationships: Effective Ways to Respond

Sarah Harris, Kate Motaung2025-05-21T06:50:10+00:00May 21st, 2025|Couples Counseling, Featured, Individual Counseling, Marriage Counseling, Relationship Issues, Trauma|

Imagine waking up to a world where your reality feels like a mirage, where the truth is foggy and distorted by someone else’s perceptions. This is the haunting reality of gaslighting. Gaslighting in relationships can leave you feeling disoriented, questioning even your reality, and undermining your self-worth. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which one person tries to make another person doubt their perception of reality, memories, or feelings. The term originates from the play, “Gas Light,” where the husband manipulates his wife into thinking she is losing her sanity by dimming the gas lights and denying it. Gaslighting in relationships often involves tactics such as denying facts, twisting the truth, blaming the victim, and using emotional manipulation. The goal is to gain control over the victim, leading them to feel confused, anxious, and insecure about their own judgment and perceptions. Powerful Strategies to Combat Gaslighting in Relationships During this emotional turmoil, it’s important to respond in ways that are effective. Here are some powerful strategies to combat gaslighting in relationships. Trust your gut Listen to your gut feelings. If something feels off in your relationship, don’t dismiss those feelings. While the world might tell you that you should trust your instincts, as Christians, we know that at times, that still small voice warning you of potential danger may be the Holy Spirit. Journal your truth Start a personal journal dedicated to your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Document specific incidents where you felt gaslighted, including quotes from the abuser and your reactions. This practice can serve as a concrete reminder of your reality and help you reclaim your narrative. Be sure to store your journal in a secure place, out of the hands of your abuser. Keep evidence If you feel comfortable doing so, gather evidence of [...]

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The Link Between Abandonment Trauma and Vulnerability

The Link Between Abandonment Trauma and Vulnerability

Ashlynn Barnette, Kate Motaung2025-05-20T09:35:44+00:00May 20th, 2025|Abandonment and Neglect, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues, Trauma|

Most of us have one or two close friends to whom we can open up, even though we might default to bottling things up and dealing with struggles alone. Vulnerability is a risk that requires us to trust someone else with personal information, not unlike an animal exposing its belly to potential predators. We might not have realized it, but there is often a link between our struggles with letting our guard down and abandonment trauma. As tricky as vulnerability can be, it is a skill that we can learn and practice. However, we might have to confront the abandonment trauma we have experienced before we can learn to trust others. The Lonely Child The first person we learn to trust in life is the parent we are closest to. We tell them about our day at school and the things we learned, and we ask them questions about the world around us. Their openness and availability provide a safe place in which we can learn, grow, and feel valued. However, not every child has this kind of bond with an adult. Others experience moments of closeness and intimacy with their parents, followed by times when they are distant and closed off. Some children learn to be self-reliant at a young age. This is a survival tactic; they are learning to cope with the trauma that comes from neglect or abandonment. A parent might be physically present in their child’s life, performing all the tasks that a parent should, but emotionally distant from them. When a parent fails to show concern and interest in their children’s lives, their kids will learn that their experiences, fears, preferences, and accomplishments are meaningless. Some children appear to be resilient on the outside, while on the inside, they are lonely and scared, always [...]

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Avoidance Anxiety and How It Affects Relationships

Avoidance Anxiety and How It Affects Relationships

Tammy Varghese, Kate Motaung2025-05-09T07:04:42+00:00May 9th, 2025|Abandonment and Neglect, Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

There’s something about unpleasant experiences that just shouts, “Don’t do this again!”. We instinctively tend to avoid unsavory things to save ourselves time and effort and to preserve our peace of mind. For example, if you have a bad experience at an eating establishment, you’re unlikely to patronize it again. It can be scary getting into a car again after an accident or it may feel uncomfortable walking where you were mugged. We tend to avoid the unpleasant, or what reminds us of unpleasant experiences. This can be advantageous, for the reasons already mentioned. However, it can also have a downside. There are situations in which it is necessary to face unpleasant things for another, bigger purpose. You may not enjoy public speaking, for example, but it enables you to effectively communicate your ideas to more people. In key instances in life, it may be necessary to face the things that make you anxious or that you ordinarily try to avoid. Understanding avoidance anxiety and its impact on your life can help you take steps to deal with this anxiety and reclaim your freedom and ability to enter diverse situations unhindered by fear. Avoidance Anxiety Unpacked We all have moments or situations that make us anxious. Perhaps it is dinner with your family, talking or eating in public, going to a social event, a first date or job interview, driving, addressing conflict, or any number of other circumstances. When you feel anxious, your body reacts by activating your fight-flight-freeze response. This is one of the ways your body prepares you to act in ways that protect you and your well-being. Anxiety doesn’t feel pleasant. It includes signs such as a rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, racing thoughts and restlessness, and even feelings of dread. When you’re anxious, it can feel [...]

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ADHD and Communication: How One Impacts the Other

ADHD and Communication: How One Impacts the Other

McCartney Paul, Kate Motaung2025-05-08T06:18:42+00:00May 8th, 2025|ADHD/ADD, Featured, Individual Counseling|

Almost all friendships and relationships these days are maintained and enriched by digital communication. With our busy lives, we tend to rely on text messaging and video calls to make plans, check in with each other, share news, and spend casual time together when we can’t meet in person. Digital communication fills a gap in almost all modern friendships. This especially affects those with ADHD. For those with ADHD, though, this aspect of communication can be complicated. Where most people find digital communication to be easy and sometimes even preferable, those with ADHD generally hate it. Their friends and partners will probably attest to this fact. For many, those with ADHD seem to blow hot and cold because they are friendly, focused, and connected in person but silent and seemingly cold in the times between hangouts. The ADHD Pattern From the perspective of friends, those with ADHD have a pattern of communication that looks something like this: You spend time together and enjoy yourselves with your ADHD friend, making you feel like you’re the center of their attention and the only person in the room. However, you don’t hear from them in the days and weeks that pass. Text messages don’t receive replies, and phone calls are unanswered; they seem to be ghosting you. What gives? If you have experienced rejection or abandonment trauma in your life, this kind of unpredictable communication often feels triggering. It’s hard to trust someone who makes you feel seen and heard when you’re face to face, only to disappear completely in the time between. Communication is as much about the words that are spoken as much as the words that go unspoken. Silence speaks volumes, too. Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind One of the harsher realities about ADHD is that it often [...]

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Different Attachment Styles and How They Impact Your Relationships

Different Attachment Styles and How They Impact Your Relationships

Tammy Varghese, Kate Motaung2025-04-25T12:25:19+00:00April 25th, 2025|Abandonment and Neglect, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

One of the great things about good stories is how they can surprise you. You may have thought that a story was going to go one way, and then things take a surprising turn into new territory, sweeping you along with it. Our lives are often like that – where your story is now and has been in the past doesn’t mean there aren’t still surprises ahead. It means that when all is said and done, our story may look vastly different than it does now. This can be incredible news, especially if your story up till now isn’t what you want or wanted for yourself. If you’re struggling in your relationships with others and find yourself falling into the same unhealthy patterns of relating to them, that doesn’t have to be a permanent situation. By learning your own patterns, where they come from, and how they affect you, you can begin growing and developing new ways of doing things. Attachment Styles – What Are Those? You may or may not have encountered the term ‘attachment style’ before. It refers to how we form and maintain our relationships with other people. Each person has a distinct and predominant style regarding how they relate to others. That’s one reason you can often see patterns across different relationships – one of the common denominators in those scenarios is you and how you do things. A person’s attachment style is usually based on or develops according to the pattern of our earliest interactions with the people in our lives. These people include parents or caregivers, who have the most to do with a child and their well-being in their early years. How you and your caregiver interact can influence you immensely because that is where you first learn how things work, and [...]

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How to Begin Dealing with Abandonment Wounds

How to Begin Dealing with Abandonment Wounds

Ashlynn Barnette, Kate Motaung2025-04-23T08:07:00+00:00April 22nd, 2025|Abandonment and Neglect, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Abandonment wounds are difficult to deal with because we often don’t realize we have them. We sustain these wounds from childhood, and they remain with us as adults. They affect many different parts of our lives and relationships, shaping the way we feel about ourselves and the things we believe about others. It is possible to identify where our abandonment wound is and how it’s affecting us. As we begin to confront our beliefs and behaviors connected to our wounds, we will find ways to overcome them and free ourselves from fear and mistrust. Where It All Begins Sometimes, it helps to relive our past and talk about our childhood experiences. Certain events that we go through as children leave us feeling unsafe and uncertain. Adults, and our parents especially, are supposed to make us feel seen, heard, understood, and safe, but sadly, not every parent manages to do this. There could be many ways that we felt neglected, abandoned, or even betrayed by our parents, whether they were aware of their behavior or not. Plano Christian Counseling offers compassionate, faith-based support to help individuals process childhood wounds and move toward healing and restoration. The relationships we have with our parents in childhood affect the connections we make as adults. If we feel unsafe and uncertain as children, the chances are we are going to struggle with trusting others in our adult friendships and relationships. If we were left yearning for a stronger bond with our parents or wished they had been more constant in their care of us, we might be clingy and insecure in our adult connections. We might never have framed our parents’ actions as neglectful or damaging, but we still find ourselves triggered by certain things as adults. Sometimes, these triggers are small, like an [...]

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5 Trauma-Informed Beliefs That Can Cause Anxiety

5 Trauma-Informed Beliefs That Can Cause Anxiety

Sarah Harris, Kate Motaung2025-04-23T08:11:39+00:00April 21st, 2025|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Trauma|

Many people experience anxiety without knowing where it comes from. While anxiety can be linked to external events or part of a disorder, more often than not, anxiety is connected to the way we see the world and the beliefs we carry. It is possible to gain control over certain types of anxiety. It might require that we face past experiences and rewire our limiting beliefs that are connected to unresolved trauma. In this article, we’ll consider some trauma-informed beliefs that can lead to anxiety. Inside Out: The Way We See the World Our childhood experiences shape the way we see ourselves, others, and the world around us. Some of the things we faced growing up were traumatic, even though it might have felt normal or common. For example, some parents have a rule not to lock doors in the home. They regularly snoop and inspect their children’s rooms. A child who grew up without being afforded trust or privacy will likely struggle with boundaries as an adult and may be anxious as they try to enforce them. Their underlying belief might be that personal boundaries are wrong, dangerous, or only afforded to others, but not themselves. Plano Christian Counseling can help individuals unlearn harmful patterns, establish healthy boundaries, and embrace their worth through faith-based guidance and support. We don’t always frame certain experiences as being traumatic because we were exposed to them as a norm. It is only as we grow and get close to people that they become mirrors that we can look into and see ourselves. A friend, loved one, coworker, or counselor might question a belief that we didn’t even realize was abnormal. This causes us to see ourselves or our beliefs in a new light. Unresolved trauma is at the root of a lot [...]

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Don’t Tough it Out Alone: Thoughts on Grief Counseling

Don’t Tough it Out Alone: Thoughts on Grief Counseling

Rhonda Gist, Kate Motaung2025-04-23T08:16:27+00:00April 21st, 2025|Featured, Grief Counseling, Individual Counseling|

One of the worst challenges one can face is adjusting to life after the death of someone we love. Even though most of us will experience this at some point in our lives, we are never prepared for it and unfortunately, our society does not generally understand grief and doesn’t have a space for it. You may have heard of the stages of grief, but what does that look like in real life, and is it really that simple? Christian grief counseling can help. Grief is Personal Grief shakes our world and is personal, confusing, exhausting, and may cause you to wonder if you are going crazy, if it will ever end, if you are “doing it right” or if anyone cares. There is no timeline for grief, no formula for how to grieve. There is no right way to grieve, but there is a right way for you, and a counselor can help you with this. You are not crazy. Whatever you are experiencing is normal. Grief may not end but it can get easier. How long will you miss the person you love? You will miss them for the rest of your life, but it will be less painful and become a manageable part of your life. The intensity of your grief will reflect the love of the person. You may feel alone in your grief, but remember that God cares deeply, as Psalm 34:18 (NASB) says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Plano Christian Counseling offers faith-based grief support to walk alongside you as you navigate loss and begin to find hope and healing. Because others around you may also be grieving and your usual support system is weakened or shaken, seeing a counselor to help during [...]

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