Brooke Tomovich LPC

The Death of a Relationship

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 08:25:49 -0700

No One Talks About the Grief That Surrounds the Death of a Relationship.

No one talks about the grief that is involved when a friendship ends. Or any relationship, for that matter. Yet, I can guarantee each one of us has experienced this. If it wasn’t a friendship, it may have been a romantic or familial relationship that ended abruptly. You may have been left without answers; maybe you were ghosted. You then probably dissected all the possible reasons as to why this person vanished and how you could have changed the outcome. Or maybe, you feel you weren’t good enough…that there was something wrong with you or if ONLY you acted differently that one night or didn't say that ONE comment. Because, by blaming ourselves, we gain (a false sense) of control. The truth is, you will probably never find out, because sometimes the other person doesn’t know exactly why- they just reacted to a feeling they had without thinking it through…as many people do. Regardless, there are endless possibilities as to why this person left the relationship. In most cases, it had more to do with them than it had to do with you.

When someone does not have the ability to communicate to another person as to why they no longer want to be a part of a relationship, it gives great intel about them. When one person ghosts another, it typically means that that individual lacks the ability (and confidence) to be able to communicate how they feel and they fear the consequences of another’s emotional response. They are likely what us therapists classify as “avoidant." Somewhere in life they learned that others’ emotions are to be feared, or that their emotions were not valid or were met with anger, and therefore...Read More

Why We Avoid What Once Overwhelmed Us

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:11:07 -0700

“”Tell me what you fear and I will tell you what has happened to you.” ~D.W Winnicott

In the 1970’s, towards the end of his career, pediatrician turned psychoanalyst, D. W. Winnicott, published a paper addressing the idea that the thing you are most afraid of has already happened. He witnessed his patients go to great lengths to avoid certain feelings or situations and what he realized was that their fear was in fact not disproportionate to their past experiences; rather, it was how they adapted. Winnicott suggested that many of the things we avoid in the present are not random or irrational—they are often connected to experiences from our past that felt overwhelming, confusing, or emotionally unsafe at the time. When something was “too much” for us earlier in life, we didn’t have the resources to fully process it. So instead, we adapted. We learned to turn away, shut down, distract ourselves, or went to great lengths to stay in control.

Those patterns can stay with us.

According this, the very catastrophe or distressful feelings or experiences that we have organized our entire lives around avoiding- rejection, abandonment, loss of control, grief, chaos, fighting- actually occurred. Winnicott called the avoidance, “the fear of breakdown.” For example, something overwhelming happens to you in early childhood- a betrayal of familiarity, physical abandonment, psychic abandonment, grief, or a fracture in a relationship. When you are young, you do not have the emotional or intellectual maturity or awareness to process...Read More

Creatures of Context

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:09:10 -0700

One of the most important truths I’ve learned—both personally and professionally—is that human behavior rarely exists in isolation. We are all shaped by context.
The way we see ourselves, respond to stress, connect with others, and move through the world is influenced by the environments and experiences that formed us. Our families, cultures, relationships, losses, expectations, and even the messages we absorbed silently over time all become part of the lens through which we interpret life. None of us developed in a vacuum.
This is true not only for ourselves, but for others as well.
When someone reacts strongly, withdraws emotionally, struggles with trust, becomes defensive, avoids conflict, or seeks control, it can be easy to label the behavior without understanding the story underneath it. But behaviors often make sense when we view them within the context in which they developed.
One of the shifts that often happens in therapy is moving away from the belief that “something is wrong with me,” and toward the understanding that something happened to me.
The symptoms that often bring people into therapy—anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional numbing, people-pleasing, perfectionism, anger, avoidance, difficulty trusting, or feeling emotionally overwhelmed—are not random. Very often, these responses were adaptive to the environments or experiences a person...Read More

Moving Beyond Black and White Thinking

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:06:00 -0700

Both Can Be True: Moving Beyond Black-and-White Thinking
As humans, we naturally look for certainty. Our brains like clear answers, simple categories, and either/or thinking. It feels safer to believe that something is either good or bad, success or failure, strong or weak.
But true emotional growth often asks us to hold something much more complex.
It asks us to believe that both can be true.
You can love someone and recognize that the relationship isn't healthy.
You can feel grateful for your life and struggle with sadness.
You can make the right decision and still grieve what you left behind.
You can be healing and still have difficult days.
This is the opposite of dichotomous thinking, also known as all-or-nothing thinking—a common cognitive pattern where experiences are viewed in extremes. When we're stuck in this mindset, we often believe:
If I'm not perfect, I've failed.
If someone disappointed me, they're a bad person.
If I took two steps backwards, I must not be making...Read More

Radical Acceptance

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 19:23:42 -0700

Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance has been the topic of many of my conversations this week, in and out of the office. In short, it is a term that was created by Marsha Linehan and is defined by the ability to accept things as they are; Letting go of the illusion of control. However, it does not mean that we feel better about a situation or person. Rather, instead of marinating in the pain, frustration or other negative feelings connected to the circumstance, wishing that it wasn’t this way and thus exacerbating what already is, we are freeing ourselves of that spin cycle. By doing this, we are granting ourselves permission to find freedom from that emotional prison and heal.

Radical acceptance to me, looks like these pillars of which I created and structured my therapeutic approach around:

Life is random and unpredictable. There is no score keeping to make sure the unpredictability is evenly spread out amongst all of us. The sooner we can accept that for some things there is no reason, we can let go of the idea that we can somehow control every single outcome or make sense of it. In other words, we just need to stop fighting reality and rather, focus on how we are going to navigate it.
In most cases, it is never all good and it is never all bad. Are there times when the experience is lopsided? Yes, absolutely. But in the long run, typically it doesn’t stay that way. As humans with strong evolutionary roots in our psychology, we love to fit things into neat...Read More

Big T and Little T Trauma

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 19:21:59 -0700

Big T and Little T Trauma

I've been listening to a webinar on trauma hosted by Gabor Mate, Bessel Van Der Kolk and Tim Fletcher. I've written about Gabor before, but the other two are equally synonymous with the understanding and treatment of trauma. I wanted to share with you what I gleaned from Tim Fletcher’s presentation from Day 1, as there is always more information to know and more to share in the field of therapy and in the search for a deeper understanding of ourselves and those around us.

Two Types of Trauma: Fletcher delineated two different types of trauma: Big T trauma and Little T trauma. Big T is what we used to only think of trauma- a car accident, natural disaster, physical abuse- any negative event that happened to you. Little T trauma is the absence of something good happening to you. Some examples of this are a conditional or transactional parent where love is on a string; not being comforted, getting yelled at or being ignored when distressed or emotional as a child; a parent who was addicted; ; financial hardship; a chronic illness or a family member with a chronic illness; a critical caregiver; witnessing abuse; a dissociated/emotionally detached parent; having a family member who...Read More

Repetition Compulsion

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 19:20:45 -0700

Repetition Compulsion
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.arl Jung

Let’s talk about repetition compulsion. By definition, it is a psychoanalytic term that means people will reenact past traumas or difficult experiences in an unconscious attempt to resolve them. In the past, this was simplistically coined “daddy issues” or “mommy issues” when someone married a partner who was just like a parent or the partner became parentified, if there was parental abandonment. However, as clinicians, we know it extends well beyond partners having similarities to a parent and it is a common theme in so many of day to day interactions.

What repetition compulsion really is, is two different factors converging at once. The first, is the drive to attain the similar feeling we had from the past when there was trauma or a difficult experience or experiences, with the unconscious belief that was formed long ago: “The issue was me and when I finally get it right, I”m acceptable.” If you recall from my email on trauma, when there is a negative event that is out of someone’s control, most people will blame themselves to regain some form of control and stability. This pattern then follows them well past the event. Yet, the psychological phenomenon is in the fact that people keep repeating the same cycle that is going to yield the...Read More

The Disorientation of Healing

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 09:21:00 -0700

The Disorientation of Healing

There is a certain level of “weirdness” that happens when we are in the healing process. Our go to ways to cope no longer fit or work, but the new ways don’t quite fit yet either. Maybe we even feel a bit disconnected from the people in our lives as well, or they feel disconnected from us because interactions are different now. In short, the old self does not fit the new reality. Oftentimes the angst our past decisions or behaviors would bring would take so much focus and energy, it gave us a superficial purpose- the toxic relationship, the job hopping, the drinking or spending. We would become so wrapped up in the intensity of those behaviors that we didn’t have to sit with ourselves; they were smoke and mirrors. However, they were also our attempt to self soothe. They served a purpose, even if it wasn’t a healthy one.

Many of us have had to go down the path of pulling down the veil, pulling apart childhood or other age appropriate adaptations that served a purpose then, but no longer serve a purpose now. We chalked those decisions, behaviors or thoughts up to habit or reactions that we didn’t understand but we just did them anyway and dealt with the repercussions after. In reality, they were subconscious ways to cope that through therapy, we made them conscious, pulled them apart, and realized they no longer serve a purpose.

But then comes the “What do I do now…”

Paradox of Choice Hack:

Often, the brain is overwhelmed by too many options which leads to decision fatigue. If you are stuck, narrow the choices to two options.

Dopamine Anchoring:

Pair something you enjoy with a task you hate. Eventually, your brain will associate the unpleasant task with the pleasure and thus it will be easier to complete.
For example: coffee or your favorite snack while cleaning the house.
Expectation Effect:
The brain LOVES to prove itself right, so whatever you are telling yourself, your mind will find evidence to support it. I often use the blue jeep example in session: If you are looking for only blue jeeps on the road, that’s all you will see but there are hundreds of other cars and colors on the road.

You can do this in your own life by telling yourself something that is potentially anxiety provoking, will actually be fun and then your brain will actively filter out the bad for the things that make it true. This is called selective attention bias.

On the flip side, if we are chronically disappointed by someone or something in our lives, drop the expectations of how that person should act or what they should do or know....Read More

Stop Holding People Accountable

Wed, 28 May 2025 10:46:54 -0700

Stop holding people accountable.

There is an emotional need that most people try to meet by attempting to hold others accountable for their actions when they are hurtful. Now, if we are talking about our own children, then, yes. We must teach them accountability. If we are a boss, then yes it’s our job to attempt to do so -although, the outcome is 50/50. But for everyone else, it’s a never ending cycle of disappointment and frustration because we cannot change others.

When we try to hold people accountable for their actions, inactions or words in most cases we are actually setting ourselves up to be even more disappointed. Because when we attempt to do this, we are assuming they: 1. Are capable and willing to see where they were wrong 2. Will admit they were wrong and 3. Capable of changing (and wanting to do so). However, this is a HIGH expectation.

As I can often be heard saying, this therapeutic process is not about editing the other characters and situations in your story, but learning how to navigate them better. So here is what I want you to try the next time you are caught in the same spin cycle with a character in your life story. First, try dropping the expectations that they are going to finally be different. This is the hardest part but once you can do this, then you can move on to considering the possibility that maybe they are just not capableRead More