Instagram story viewer> @findflow.wellness> Posts

Catie Rossi, LCSW

@findflow.wellness

74

followers

108

following

LCSW + coach | nervous system nerd
Neurodivergent + queer | 3 horses
Therapy in CA | coaching anywhere
Burbank + high desert, CA
Free consultation ⬇️

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Her squid eye is always watching. by @findflow.wellness

9

1

2 months ago

Wanna know something silly?

During a recent mental health day at the beach, I spent more time than I care to admit ruminating about not doing a good enough job enjoying the beach with presence and gratitude.

Thoughts spun in circles about how I’d waste the mental health day - the work I postponed in vain - if I couldn’t appreciate the beach properly.

And then I noticed what was happening and had to laugh at myself.

My mind was stuck in a superiority complex again; forgetting that the whole time I spent in those thoughts, real medicine was being delivered beneath my awareness.

My senses were taking in sea air, sunlight, sparkling blue water, hazey mountain silhouettes, and the rhythmic percussion of the waves that traveled way further to meet me there than I did to meet them.

Presence and gratitude feel really good, and of course they help reduce stress, but my mind forgot that it’s not actually the admissions director for every benefit I receive.

That was the whole point of going to the beach. To go somewhere to be held and supported by something bigger, more eternal, and more powerful than me.

When I was done laughing at myself, I let go of needing to control my beach day.
I’m not going to tell you that it was all good vibes, presence and gratitude after that, but I can tell you that the rest of that day felt way less pressurized, and that’s all I really needed

I came home softer inside than I was when I left.

My mind - the adorable over-achiever though she is - didn’t need to manage that for me. Her job was honestly done the moment she assessed that it should be a mental health day, and where to put my body for the next few hours.

Sometimes all we need to figure out is how to get to a place where it’s safe not to try for a little while. The rest will work itself out. by @findflow.wellness

20

5

2 months ago

Wellbeing is not a solo project.

We talk about regulation, healing, growth, etc etc etc like they're things we can accomplish if we just try hard enough with our routine, therapy hour, or self care practice. The truth is most of the time those things happen in relationship. To people. To animals. To community. To whoever or whatever reminds us we're not going it alone in this life.

You need it, even and especially if it feels like you don’t. by @findflow.wellness

6

0

3 months ago

What wellness culture often gets wrong: calm and regulated are not the same thing.

Constant calm no matter what's happening is not regulation. It's dysregulation. It's a nervous system that has learned to override signal instead of respond to it.

Calm is a state. Regulation is what keeps us from getting stuck in any one state, calm included.

The goal was never to feel good all the time. It was never even to feel calm all the time. The goal is a system flexible enough to move with what's actually happening, and come back. by @findflow.wellness

5

2

3 months ago

Masi becomes seriously unserious when a big ball is around, and it's impossible not to get drawn into the fun.

This is a more illustrative moment than it may seem. A nervous system doesn't play when it's bracing for the next thing. Horses don't play when they're scared, distracted, or scanning for a threat. Play is one of the clearest signs a body has decided, for this moment, it doesn't have to be on guard.

It's also relational. Her play pulled something out of me, my voice, my attention, and that back and forth was doing something in both of our bodies. Co-regulation happens in easy moments too.

So, when's the last time you got to play? Not exercise. Not "self-care." Play. With no goal. Just because your body found something delightful and went with it.

If you can't remember, consider this a poke from Masi to find your way back to it. by @findflow.wellness

49

5

3 months ago

An attachment style is a prediction. When you were little, your nervous system ran a daily experiment using one question:

"When I need something, what happens?"

The answer at that time usually determines if you naturally lean in the direction of secure attachment, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, or disorganized attachment.

None of these are who you are. They're what you learned to expect, running quietly in the background of every relationship you're in now, including the one with yourself. The good news buried in that reframe is the same as the frustrating news. If it was learned, it can be updated. We can “earn” secure attachment. Just not by insight alone. New data about our needs must be experienced physiologically and emotionally too. The nervous system that made the prediction in the first place has to be the one that experiences new evidence. by @findflow.wellness

6

3

3 months ago

They say: you need to give space to your victimization in order to heal from trauma.

The nuance: You do. That part is not optional, and, that’s not where your process is supposed to end.

The parts of you that were harmed by your trauma need someone (and eventually you) to be present with the reality of how that felt for you, and validate that what happened to you wasn’t your fault, and it mattered.

Sometimes this experience feels cathartic, and can turn the page into a new chapter where repressed feelings about these past events, such as anger, resentment, or grief, can finally surface.

Sometimes we’ve been disconnected from those feelings for so long, they start showing up more often in your present day life, as if making up for lost time. Suddenly you might notice pain points in your present life with a new clarity and internal sense of validation and justice.

This chapter is important, and how long this chapter lasts can vary depending on the person, and their unique process in allowing those feelings and realities of the past to become part of who we are in the world.

Sometimes the catharsis of validating the pain can feel so relieving, that people get stuck there. That is not healing.

Healing does not stop at the acknowledgment. It requires integration. And integration means growing an adult self who can hold that history without living inside it every time our needs are unmet.

If every current conflict gets filtered through what was done to you, you’re no longer connected to the actual present day person in front of you. Your partner missing an emotional cue is not the same as the caregiver who could not see you when you depended on them for survival.

Treating them the same both keeps the old wound open in pain, and hurts the relationship you're actually in.

Healing does not mean choosing between honoring the pain or moving past it.

Healing is building the capacity to do both. Full presence with what happened. Full presence with who is actually in the room now. by @findflow.wellness

4

3

3 months ago

Masi and I have been working toward riding for years. We're still only very early into riding. Riding is great, but I’ve realized it isn’t the point.

The point is more quiet and unique than I knew. It’s in all the moments of silliness, adorableness, figuring out the answer to a problem together. It’s building a language to communicate with each other so subtle that no one knows from the outside how that communication got across.

I used to think horsemanship was about what you were building toward. The vision. The goal, the skill, the thing you'd eventually be able to do together. Turns out, for a while that framing was getting in the way, putting a pressure on me and us that made it harder to connect in what was happening in the present.

Relationship is what it’s really about. by @findflow.wellness

7

1

3 months ago

There is something deeply comforting about being with animals: They don’t ask us to perform or pretend. They simply invite us to be present and help us become a little more comfortable in our own skin.

Donkeys, especially, have a quiet way of changing the rhythm. They aren’t in a hurry, and they don’t respond to force. Instead, they reward authenticity, curiosity, and genuine connection. As we slow down to meet them where they are, we often discover a steadier place within ourselves.

Visit Us: https://silversaddlestables.com/

Join an animal-partnered wellness session with Gus Freckles and an expert facilitator @silversaddlestable and discover where comfort, connection, and curiosity can lead. #donkey #miniaturedonkey #minidonkey #equineassistedwellness #equineassistedlearning @myglendaleparks @myglendale @lahorserentals @burbankca @ashleyinburbank @visitburbank @girldragonjo @nonamelkoni @discoverla @losangelesbucketlist @secret.losangeles @girltrek @remedyplace taken in Glendale/Burbank by @findflow.wellness

39

0

3 months ago

The stereotype of an autistic or ADHD person was built almost entirely on research conducted on white boys.

That's not an exaggeration. It's the actual history of how we developed the diagnostic criteria.

This diagnostic gap has a huge impact for neurodivergent
women and AFAB people.

When a girl showed up in a classroom with the same struggles, but they looked differently, she wasn't identified as needing the same targeted support. She might have been called sensitive, spacey, dramatic, a daydreamer, too emotional, gifted but not living up to her potential.

She learned to compensate in ways that looked like coping but were actually just very convincing performance.

The compensation is part of why diagnosis comes late.

Women and AFAB people are more likely to internalize. To mask. To build elaborate systems for appearing fine.

When you're appearing fine, people tend to believe you. When even you believe you, diagnosis doesn't occur to anyone.

By the time many women get to an evaluation, they're coming in for anxiety or depression, not ADHD or autism.

This is because anxiety and depression are what happen when you spend twenty or thirty years trying to function in a way that doesn't match your brain, without knowing that's what you're doing.

Getting a diagnosis late doesn't mean you didn't have it. It means no one was looking for it in you.

And the grief that can follow a late diagnosis is real. Not just for the struggles, but for the fact that no one caught it, and for the years you lost to believing you were broken when the real explanation just wasn't available yet. by @findflow.wellness

5

4

3 months ago

The real skill isn't relaxation. It's knowing what’s happening, what your system is doing, what it needs, and whether you're in a specific moment of activation or a chronic baseline, so that you can make intentional choices that help your nervous system to become more elastic. by @findflow.wellness

4

2

3 months ago

Oakley has a threshold. It doesn't matter who's closing the distance, another horse, me. Doesn't matter if it was his idea in the first place. Once contact gets close enough, something in him flips from wanting it to managing it. His mouth gets busy. He'll mouth a hand, grab a sleeve, nibble at the horse standing next to him. Not aggression. More like control. Like he needs to be the one deciding how much closeness is happening, even in the middle of the closeness he asked for.

It usually doesn't read well to whoever's on the other end. Masi or Zen get bit and stop trusting him to stand close. A new person greets him with their hand and his mouth comes forward too fast, and the person quickly withdraws, wondering what they did wrong.

They didn't do anything wrong. Neither did Oakley. He wanted the connection. He just couldn't tolerate it once it arrived at the pace it arrived.

I think about this when I catch myself, or a client, doing the human version. Oversharing early. Saying the too-much thing in the first conversation because slow intimacy feels unbearable, so we force the fast kind instead. It feels like closeness. It often produces the opposite. The other person can pull back, not because they didn't want us, but because it happened faster than trust could keep up with.

Wanting connection and being able to tolerate it arriving are two different skills. Oakley's still working on the second one. by @findflow.wellness

5

3

3 months ago