Sarah Newman
PsychCentral
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Past articles by Sarah:
Putting Aside Our Differences at the Holiday Table
What can a person do when the thought of another family argument at the holiday table overshadows an otherwise joyous time of year? → Read More
Boundaries: Reasons You Say Yes When You Really Mean No
Somebody asks you to do something and you almost immediately agree, even though it's not something you want to do. You take on extra responsibilities at work → Read More
A Holiday Guide for Abuse Survivors
Hardly anyone would claim to be a stranger to holiday stress. From money woes to holiday travel, traditions, and family tension, at some point everyone has struggled to make it to January. But the holidays can be a particularly tough time of year for... → Read More
You Have Permission to Cut Off Your Abuser
I know that other abuse survivors go searching for confirmation that it’s righteous and acceptable to cut their abuser out of their life forever. But when you’ve been abused by your parent, sibling, or other family members, it’s rare that anyone... → Read More
Tell Your Therapist About the Abuse
“Unresolved emotional pain is the great contagion of our time -- of all time.” ~ Marc Ian Barasch Imagine you are seeing a therapist and have an abuse history. → Read More
Trauma Survivors Aren’t Disgusting
Something I hear all too often from other abuse survivors is that they feel disgusting. Having been sexually abused makes us feel repulsive. People of all ages from every stage of healing have encountered this feeling at some point, and it may very well... → Read More
Memory Isn’t Important to Recover from Trauma
Memory comprises all the ins and outs of our lives. We go looking into it for everything from survival to simply making a joke. We use memory every day and sometimes it’s hard to separate the things we’ve done or experienced from our very identity. For... → Read More
Trusting Your Gut When It Goes Against Everything You’ve Been Taught
How do you make judgments? Are you a more rational person who likes to compile factual evidence and remove feelings from the decision-making process, or are you the kind of person who says, “I go with my gut”? The most powerful people in the world... → Read More
Seeing More Clearly After Trauma and Denial
Have you ever been surprised by watching a movie or television show a decade after you first watched it and saw it in a whole new light? You’re older, you’re in a different place and so the experience of watching that film or show again is different.... → Read More
It’s Okay to Be Angry, Unless You’re a Woman
During the recent Democratic presidential debate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders swiped a question originally directed at Hillary Clinton, saying, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” Imagine if Hillary had said... → Read More
Suicide and the Werther Effect: A Message from the Edge
At the close of September, which is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, I learned that suicide rates peak when a celebrity commits suicide. Reviewing posts on social media researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found “increased... → Read More
Healing Trauma: Victimization Has No Grey Area
“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” — Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter An important step in healing from sexual, physical, and emotional abuse is accepting that it is in fact abuse. There is... → Read More
When Abuse Becomes Denial
“The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.” — James Baldwin I used to think that abuse victims who lived in denial of their situations had to know they were in... → Read More
Affirmations for Reducing Negativity
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” — Mahatma Gandhi Do you cringe a little when you hear affirmations? There’s nothing wrong with them, they just seem to be missing substance. You hear a cliche instead of something meaningful. “You... → Read More
Why Anyone Would Want to Control You
The need to control others may not make a lot of sense to you. If you’re a live-and-let-live person, you’d never want to control someone else. Even if you’re a perfectionist, you stay on your own case all day, not necessarily someone else’s. But... → Read More
I Am More Than the Sum of My Trauma
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” — Abraham Lincoln Sometimes the trouble with a self-help book is that it makes me feel like a predictable sum, a product of what’s happened... → Read More
Weeds in the Garden: Trauma and Guilt
“It’s time to start dealing with your childhood trauma.” That’s what I tell myself, but what does that mean? I deal with it every day. I get myself out of bed each morning and most of the time I’m not thinking about what... → Read More
10 Years After Hurricane Katrina: Depression, Anxiety, and Schizophrenia
The first time my older brother Pat told me about something that wasn’t real was less than two months after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A large number of Hispanic construction workers came to New Orleans from Texas to fix storm-ravaged homes. Pat believed... → Read More
Happy Sadness: How Mixed Emotions Fuel Creativity
For a long time scientists believed that happiness sustained creativity and that negative emotions were detrimental to it. But a review of emerging research on the subject shows it’s mixed emotions that fuel creativity. Generally speaking, the... → Read More
Hookup Culture: Dating Apps Don’t Change Who You Are
Every week there’s a new article published about how dating apps, specifically Tinder, are “tearing society apart” and fueling a “Dating Apocalypse” in America. → Read More