https://www.be-comingtherapy.com/cozycorner daily 0.75 2026-02-22 https://www.be-comingtherapy.com/cozycorner/video-games monthly 0.5 2026-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/7bc46b8c-ea94-45bb-a3ad-73d025bcaa48/5.png Cozy Corner - A somatic Perspective on Video games: How certain games can offer regulation, agency & quiet companionship - When we talk about regulation, we usually frame it as something that happens through insight, through processing, naming what we feel, finally understanding why something affected us the way it did, and sometimes that really does help. From a somatic perspective, regulation is also about whether the body has access to the conditions that make steadiness possible in the first place, whether there is enough rhythm, enough agency, enough containment to stay present without tipping into overwhelm. In that sense, regulation is shaped by environment as much as it is by awareness. It is influenced by whether something lowers demand or quietly adds to it, whether you feel rushed or whether you are allowed to move at your own pace, whether there is something predictable to orient toward when everything else feels scattered or overstimulating. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/0b023307-06c0-45cf-ac72-d750257f2f28/4.png Cozy Corner - A somatic Perspective on Video games: How certain games can offer regulation, agency & quiet companionship - From a somatic and nervous-system-informed perspective, many of the games people experience as supportive have something important in common: they reduce pressure while increasing choice. Support doesn’t usually come from figuring things out or having the “right” insight at the right time. More often, it comes from feeling safe enough to move at your own pace, to stay oriented, and to have some sense of control over what happens next. Environments that offer structure without urgency, predictable cause and effect, and room to pause tend to make stress feel more workable. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/0b038a53-6b85-4331-8bfe-9f9e2273f3eb/images.jpeg Cozy Corner - A somatic Perspective on Video games: How certain games can offer regulation, agency & quiet companionship - Open exploration and restored agency An expansive open world built around wandering, curiosity, and self-directed movement, with no rush and no required order. Why this feels supportive: Breath of the Wild offers choice without pressure. You decide where to go, how long to stay, and what matters in the moment, with the freedom to move quickly or slowly, follow a path or abandon it, pause when you need to, or change direction entirely. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/35cfdea4-ea09-4ffe-8393-d134b26519f6/stv.jpeg Cozy Corner - A somatic Perspective on Video games: How certain games can offer regulation, agency & quiet companionship - Routine, rhythm, and steadiness A gentle farming and community game structured around repetition, predictability, and small daily tasks. Why this feels supportive: Stardew Valley leans into rhythm in a simple, consistent way. Days unfold predictably—wake up, tend crops, talk to familiar characters, rest—and progress happens through small, steady actions rather than big emotional pushes. That predictability can be especially supportive during times of stress or emotional overload. When the outside world feels chaotic or uncertain, having something reliable to return to can quiet the nervous system’s need to constantly anticipate what’s coming next. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/e0f00a4f-df7b-4dce-8fd5-e2f2f4b77f55/gris.jpg Cozy Corner - A somatic Perspective on Video games: How certain games can offer regulation, agency & quiet companionship - Companionship in grief, without words A wordless, visually soft journey through loss and change, told through color, movement, and music. Why this feels supportive: Gris doesn’t ask you to process, reframe, or move on. It doesn’t explain what you’re feeling or try to make it better. Instead, it stays. https://www.be-comingtherapy.com/cozycorner/complex-trauma monthly 0.5 2026-02-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/26bda9b4-964d-458a-b97a-9108f265ceab/5.png Cozy Corner - Complex Trauma: How CPTSD Forms + shapes the nervous system - Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) usually doesn’t come from one single event you can point to and say, that was it. For many people, it forms over time, through repeated experiences, often in childhood or close relationships, where safety, care, or belonging didn’t feel steady. Sometimes that includes overt harm. Other times it’s much quieter and harder to name, like growing up with caregivers who were emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, critical, controlling, or inconsistent, or being misunderstood again and again, having to grow up too fast, or learning early that being “easy,” “helpful,” or not needing much made things smoother, even if no one ever said that out loud. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/ea79c47a-b2ee-4874-a563-693c3e887716/4.png Cozy Corner - Complex Trauma: How CPTSD Forms + shapes the nervous system - When safety and care aren’t steady, the nervous system doesn’t just learn how to survive stressful moments. It also starts learning what to expect from closeness itself. Over time, the system becomes shaped not only by what happened, but by what was unpredictable, inconsistent, or missing. So even when things are objectively okay, your body might not fully settle. You might feel tense during moments that are supposed to feel calm, restless when things are quiet, or uneasy when someone shows care in a way you’re not used to. With repetition, certain patterns deepen. The system learns which grooves feel familiar and survivable, and it returns to them automatically, especially during stress, conflict, or intimacy. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/74bc1cf3-6306-401b-9f98-626d39f60953/6.png Cozy Corner - Complex Trauma: How CPTSD Forms + shapes the nervous system - How CTPSD forms + the nervous system CPTSD usually isn’t about one moment you can point to. It forms over time, through repeated experiences where safety, care, or belonging didn’t feel steady, and your system had to adapt to stay connected or get through. Those adaptations didn’t just live in memory. They shaped your nervous system, your expectations, and how closeness comes to feel now. The patterns that show up today aren’t random; they’re the result of learning that once made sense. The subtle ways CPTSD might show up For many people, CPTSD doesn’t show up as obvious memories or clear flashbacks. It shows up in relationships, in the body, and in moments of uncertainty where connection suddenly feels fragile. Things like hypervigilance, self-monitoring, people-pleasing, or pulling away aren’t overreactions. They’re nervous-system responses are shaped by earlier experiences of closeness and risk, and they often happen before there are words for them. https://www.be-comingtherapy.com/cozycorner/why-friendships-matter-rxj47-r9r6z monthly 0.5 2026-02-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/ed00dee5-4291-4435-8972-030ef8f1a134/2.png Cozy Corner - Mapping Your Nervous System: Polyvagal States, Attachment, and How Patterns Form - I often notice people finding their way to nervous system education because, despite being thoughtful and deeply self-aware, something inside still feels confusing or exhausting in a way that’s hard to name. They’re often very good at understanding why they feel the way they do, they’ve read the books, they can explain their patterns clearly, and yet there’s a familiar sense of, I know what’s happening… so why does my body still feel stuck? This comes up often for people living with CPTSD or long histories of stress, where the body learned how to survive long before there were words for what was happening, and where intellectualizing, staying aware, attuned, or “together” became part of how safety and connection were maintained. In those contexts, thinking, tracking, and anticipating weren’t preferences so much as protective ways of staying oriented in environments where emotional cost or unpredictability was part of daily life. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/09768565-0dd7-4e2b-8d63-d4ac0f3a3880/1.png Cozy Corner - Mapping Your Nervous System: Polyvagal States, Attachment, and How Patterns Form Most people move through three primary patterns of nervous system organization throughout the day, often without conscious awareness: Ventral vagal — top of the ladder This is the state where things feel steady enough. Breath may feel more accessible, thoughts a little clearer, and there’s more room to stay present with yourself and others, even while emotions move through. Connection feels possible, and support can land. Sympathetic — middle of the ladder In this state, energy rises in response to pressure or perceived threat. It can show up as anxiety, restlessness, racing thoughts, irritability, urgency, or a strong pull toward action, problem-solving, or escape. Dorsal vagal — bottom of the ladder Here, the system conserves energy to reduce overwhelm. For many people this feels like heaviness, fog, numbness, disconnection, shutdown, freeze, or wanting to disappear for a while. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/d157e89d-7dc2-49e6-857b-d69cfd08b88b/3.png Cozy Corner - Mapping Your Nervous System: Polyvagal States, Attachment, and How Patterns Form - What Polyvagal Theory Helps Us Make Sense Of Polyvagal Theory offers language for moments when the body reacts faster than thought. It helps name those shifts as responses shaped by safety, danger, and connection, rather than something irrational or wrong. Nervous System States Throughout the day, the nervous system moves between different states of organization, including times of connection, urgency, and slowing or withdrawal. These shifts aren’t identities or traits, but context-sensitive responses to what the system is sensing. Attachment and Nervous System Patterns Attachment reflects how the nervous system learned to navigate closeness over time. Push–pull patterns often make more sense when seen as layered responses shaped by what connection has required, rather than as contradictions. https://www.be-comingtherapy.com/cozycorner/why-friendships-matter-rxj47 monthly 0.5 2026-02-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/7c5aebfb-8684-40f0-a46c-1c262c9fea95/2.png Cozy Corner - Be.coming With Each Other, Part two: Being in Friendship Through Change - In Part One, we explored why friendships matter and how they support belonging, regulation, and emotional steadiness over time. In this part, we slow down into what it can look like to stay with friendships as they change. Friendships don’t stay static. They shift alongside our lives, our capacities, our health, our grief, our joy, and our seasons. Being in friendship through change isn’t about managing those shifts or getting them right. It’s about learning how to remain connected while allowing the relationship to move. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/6a9f9ff6-9215-46c1-89e7-89e33600c8dc/3.png Cozy Corner - Be.coming With Each Other, Part two: Being in Friendship Through Change - Orientation in friendship is less about defining the relationship and more about staying connected to how it’s being experienced. It’s a way of checking whether you’re still on the same page, even if that page says things feel different right now. When orientation is missing, people often fill in the gaps with assumptions. Distance can get personalized. Silence can feel loaded. Small changes can take on more meaning than they need to. Research on close relationships consistently shows that when people feel uncertain about how they’re being perceived or where they stand, stress and insecurity increase, even in relationships that still hold care and goodwill (Reis et al., 2017; Overall et al., 2022). Orientation helps reduce that ambiguity by creating shared understanding rather than leaving meaning to guesswork. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/76379127-7c3a-4fe3-b379-6852208b6f25/1.png Cozy Corner - Be.coming With Each Other, Part two: Being in Friendship Through Change - Friendship changes Friendships move through seasons, reflecting the realities of two lives unfolding. Change itself isn’t the problem. Uncertainty about what change means often is. Orientation over guessing Staying oriented to one another helps reduce assumption and supports trust. Shared understanding can bring relief, even when things feel different. Care and support Care lands best when it aligns with what actually feels supportive in the moment. Noticing how care is experienced helps friendships feel more sustainable. https://www.be-comingtherapy.com/cozycorner/strangerthings-friendship-attachment monthly 0.5 2026-01-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/cc342705-f617-490d-a357-76147522635b/Screenshot+2026-01-06+at+3.42.04%E2%80%AFPM.png Cozy Corner - Friendship + Attachment: what Stranger Things teaches us about how friendship shapes connection over time - Friendship plays a powerful role in how we experience belonging, safety, and connection over time. These relationships often hold shared history, emotional familiarity, and a sense of being known without needing to explain ourselves too much. They can feel grounding and playful, steady and spacious, offering comfort and presence alongside growth and change. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/61fc1c92-e21e-4234-b496-f00a3b65fc6f/qgc4cpq6e9n01.webp Cozy Corner - Friendship + Attachment: what Stranger Things teaches us about how friendship shapes connection over time - What tends to change over time isn’t our need for connection, but what our nervous systems come to expect from it. Attachment strategies begin to soften when care stays present, when people return after distance, and when repair happens more than once. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/c908b6db-f0b3-4c3e-9dc0-e8a2ece978b9/AAAAQdBJKQdtmpUvhV1uxc6NSfEHg99GIjXILKhpRvevY-7I3PZ7I0Nyf6St9-Kkf4XbC7MxpewgWGJaNNCY68V9EeQ1HedjvbrJUxCkgin8TL8pDGMvvuDBpI18PNcyqVqSK2DfEAlBJDQlZ0i9gTWf7pF71Z0.jpg Cozy Corner - Friendship + Attachment: what Stranger Things teaches us about how friendship shapes connection over time - Friendship + Attachment Friendships shape how we experience belonging, safety, and connection, often supporting regulation by helping us feel less alone. Attachment helps explain this by describing how our nervous systems learned to stay connected when closeness mattered and safety was uncertain. In long-term friendships, attachment isn’t static, it continues to shift in response to care, repair, distance, and return. https://www.be-comingtherapy.com/cozycorner/why-friendships-matter monthly 0.5 2026-01-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/43c8da6c-6ac6-470f-a2e0-31826c9a9936/1.png Cozy Corner - Be.coming With Each Other, Part One: Why Friendship Matters - As humans, we all seek connection and belonging. This drive is not just emotional or social, but biological. Humans are wired for connection, and feeling relationally connected plays a central role in wellbeing across the lifespan (Holt-Lunstad, 2018; Holt-Lunstad, 2024). Feeling connected helps us feel grounded, seen, and a little less alone as we move through the world. Romantic and family relationships tend to get the most screen time when we talk about connection. We’re encouraged to think about how to support them, how to deepen them, how to navigate repair, and how to expect them to shift across different seasons of life as circumstances change. Friendships play an equally powerful role in our sense of belonging, even if they’re not always talked about in the same way. They often hold shared history, emotional safety, and meaning. Friendships can be places where we feel most like ourselves, where connection feels more spacious, and where comfort and play live side by side. These relationships shape us, steady us, and often help regulate us more than we realize. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/98ea0b1c-fe05-4bcd-84e6-2792df99c482/2.png Cozy Corner - Be.coming With Each Other, Part One: Why Friendship Matters - Many adult friendships function as a kind of secure base. From an attachment-informed perspective, a secure base is a relationship that offers enough emotional safety and responsiveness to allow for both closeness and independence (Johnson, 2019; Overall et al., 2022). When friendships feel secure, people are often more able to be vulnerable rather than just honest, to show up imperfectly, and to trust that the relationship can hold change. This sense of safety creates room for laughter, play, shared enjoyment, and ease, while also making it more possible to lean on the relationship when difficult moments arise. This kind of safety supports co-regulation over time, allowing friendships to be places where people can settle, recover, and reconnect, rather than constantly bracing for disconnection. When appreciation and care are named over time, friendships often feel steadier, making it easier to trust that the relationship can hold both closeness and change. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/dc21163c-9ec3-4e34-9bb9-d56286bc1f1b/3.png Cozy Corner - Be.coming With Each Other, Part One: Why Friendship Matters - Why friendship matters Friendships play a vital role in how we experience connection and belonging. They shape how grounded, seen, and accompanied we feel as we move through everyday life, even if they’re not always talked about in the same way as other relationships. Belonging, support, and regulation Friendships often support emotional steadiness by helping us feel less alone inside what we’re carrying. Through presence, responsiveness, and attunement, these relationships can support co-regulation, allowing us to settle, breathe, and stay connected to ourselves and others during stress or uncertainty. Secure base Many friendships function as a secure base, offering enough safety to allow for closeness, independence, vulnerability, and play. This steadiness makes it easier for friendships to move and change over time without the bond feeling threatened. https://www.be-comingtherapy.com/cozycorner/the-wisdom-of-the-nervous-system monthly 0.5 2025-12-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/63aaa0ea-1d38-466e-8954-b23a0b28807a/Untitled+design.png Cozy Corner - Dysregulation Isn’t Wrong: Honoring the Wisdom of the Nervous System - As a therapist with a background in somatics and yoga, my approach is influenced by creating embodied practices and making space for both the mind and the body in sessions. This often looks like exploring the states of the nervous system, how they show up in the room, and how they ripple through a client’s daily life. With the growing popularity of nervous system education and approaches like Polyvagal Theory or other somatic-based practices, there is a lot of messaging around “regulation” and “dysregulation.” While learning tools to regulate is helpful, if we only focus on “getting back to calm,” we can miss the deeper truth: Dysregulation is not bad; it is information. Dysregulation tells us how our body has been shaped by past experiences, how it protects us in the present, and what it longs for in the future. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/2116e99a-1ee8-42a8-a41a-81dce43fb564/Polyvagal+Ladder.png Cozy Corner - Dysregulation Isn’t Wrong: Honoring the Wisdom of the Nervous System - Sympathetic (fight or flight): you might feel your heart racing, your words speeding up, or a restless urgency that makes it hard to think clearly. Reflection: What does mobilization look like for you, and where does it tend to take you? Dorsal vagal (shutdown or collapse): You might feel heavy, foggy, disconnected, or like you want to disappear. Reflection: What does immobilization look like for you, and where does it tend to take you? Ventral vagal (connection and steady enough): This is not a dysregulated state, but it is important to name as the baseline we move in and out of. Dysregulation shows up when we slide down the ladder into sympathetic or dorsal states. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/681d11b78703076074baeadb/078b2dfa-5974-48da-85f4-63a230becbef/Polyvagal+Ladder+%281%29.png Cozy Corner - Dysregulation Isn’t Wrong: Honoring the Wisdom of the Nervous System - Regulation: being with our feelings, noticing them, and finding steady ways to respond. 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