Storied Souls Blog
Mental Health Music Mondays: June & July 2026
Over on Instagram and Facebook, I’ve been sharing mental health music recommendations each Monday. Music has an incredible way of expressing the thoughts and emotions that we don’t always know how to put into words. Here’s a compilation of my musical picks for June and July 2026. Which song was your favorite? Do you have any recommendations for me to check out?
“I Sat With My Body” Poem
As a lifelong reader and writer, I’ve always loved the written word. The feelings it could evoke. The way it could help me process through thoughts, emotions, and experiences that I couldn’t quite say aloud. In this poem, I share a personal look at my journey towards self-love and developing a healthier body image. I explore the pressure of perfectionism that women are so often under in our society, and how I learned to see my body as a resilient ally instead of another enemy.
Summer Survival Strategies for Perfectionists: Moving from Performance to Real Rest
The transition to an unstructured summer schedule can trigger high-functioning anxiety, perfectionism, and deep exhaustion in high-achieving and highly sensitive women and teen girls. If you find yourself trying to turn summer into a new project to manage, you aren't doing summer wrong—your nervous system is just looking for safety. Read on to see why your body suddenly crashes the moment you finally try to relax, and learn a simple, guilt-free way to plan your days around your actual energy so you can finally stop performing and find real rest this season.
When Faith Feels Like a Performance: Navigating Christian Perfectionism
You’re the first to volunteer and the last to leave, yet you’re terrified that if the world saw the real you, the performance would fall apart. This exhaustion is the hallmark of Christian perfectionism—a cycle where high-functioning anxiety and spiritual burnout overlap. This guide helps women and teen girls dismantle the pressure to be perfect by using evidence-based tools like CBT and somatic grounding to find genuine anxiety relief. Discover how to bridge the gap between your faith and your mental health so you can finally move from a put-together performance to soul-deep rest.
Why Rest Feels Like a Threat: Overcoming Burnout in Medical Professionals
Are you struggling with physician burnout or high-functioning anxiety? For many healthcare professionals, the transition from the clinic to home is marred by chronic stress and a physiological inability to relax. This state of cortisol hyper-vigilance often makes rest feel like professional negligence.
In this article, learn evidence-based stress management strategies, including CBT reframes and nervous system regulation. Discover how to break the cycle of overfunctioning and implement grounding techniques that promote long-term physician wellness and mental health.
Fixer-Upper Fatigue: The High Cost of People Pleasing and Managing Everyone Else
For codependents and people pleasers, relational burnout is the inevitable result of chronic over-functioning. If you feel like your relationships only stay stable because you are managing everyone's moods, you are likely trapped in a survival blueprint that ties your worth to your usefulness. This post explores why you act as a "detective" for other people's needs and how the white-knuckle grip of enmeshment leads to total emotional exhaustion. Learn how to recognize the signs of burnout and why you must retire the role of the martyr to find true recovery.
How to Heal from the Anxiety You’ve Learned to Hide Behind
High-Functioning Anxiety (HFA) often manifests as a relentless cycle of burnout and perfectionism. You look like the "reliable one" who has it all together, but you’re living in constant fear that one minor mistake will cause your entire life to collapse. In this post, we explore how to stop running 24/7 internal damage control and start building genuine steadiness. Learn how to use Cognitive Reframing to challenge catastrophic thinking and the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Method to calm your nervous system. I specialize in helping women and teen girls in Texas, Arizona, and Montana move out of anxiety and into a life that doesn't require a mask.
Too Much, Too Loud, Too Fast: Navigating Sensory Overwhelm as an HSP
You aren’t being difficult, and you aren’t just too sensitive. For the 20% of the population born as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), the world doesn’t just feel loud—it feels like a physical assault. From the bone-weary exhaustion of the HSP Hangover to the paralyzing weight of decision fatigue, navigating a high-stimulus world with a sensitive nervous system requires more than just toughening up. In this post, we explore the science behind Sensory Processing Sensitivity, Dr. Elaine Aron’s D.O.E.S. framework, and the evidence-based Sensory Decompression tools you need to trade constant survival for a life of quiet steadiness and ease.
The Productivity Trap: Why Your Success Feels Like a Burden
You are winning at a game that is quietly breaking you. You lie in bed at midnight, exhausted but wired, as your mind loops through an endless scroll of tomorrow’s to-do list. On the surface, you are successful and together—but privately, you are running internal damage control just to keep the mask from slipping. When your self-worth is tied to your output, your brain acts like a Stop Sign, physically blocking the road to rest. Discover why your nervous system won't let you shut down and how to finally separate who you are from what you produce.
The information provided on this website, including blog posts and resources, is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Use of this site does not create a therapist-client relationship. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, please call 988 or go to the nearest emergency room.