Thoughts and Musings - Sienna Forest • Somatic Ecotherapy

What if You Don’t Always Need to Calm Down?

In therapy, we often talk about emotional regulation–focusing on how to manage feelings in healthy, effective ways. We talk about dysregulation as though it’s something bad, something to be avoided or “fixed” with breathwork, mindfulness, or reframing our thoughts. As a therapist, I’ve fallen into this mindset too. When a client shows up dysregulated, my instinct is to help them calm down. There’s value in that, as sometimes soothing the nervous system is absolutely essential to [...]

Sienna Forest2025-10-13T00:59:03+00:00October 13, 2025|Tags: dysregulation, flight response, healing, rumination, sympathetic nervous system|

Breathing back to balance

Take a moment, notice your breath. Are you breathing into your chest or your belly? In through your nose or mouth? Is your breath shallow or deep? These sorts of questions used to annoy me. I often assumed that people who asked them were a bit stuck up, a bit too “granola” with the tendency to oversimplify things. As a somatic (body)-based therapist, I believed that the breath was important, but I thought of it as [...]

Sienna Forest2025-09-14T01:07:16+00:00September 13, 2025|Tags: anxiety, breathwork, connection, here and now, mental health, mindfulness, nervous system regulation, overwhelmed, somatic therapy|

The Inner Family You Didn’t Know You Had: A Guide to Internal Family Systems

In traditional psychology, we’re often taught to see the mind as singular—one unified voice that should “make up its mind” or “figure itself out.” This is known as the mono-mind perspective, the idea that we should have one clear, rational sense of self. When you, say, blow up at your partner during a conflict, the mono-mind perspective might say that you simply lost control, acted irrationally, or need to “do better” next time. It assumes that [...]

Sienna Forest2025-04-08T15:17:39+00:00April 8, 2025|Tags: authenticity, connection, Internal Family Systems, mental health, parts work, relationships|

Coming Home to Yourself: My Offerings for Authentic and Embodied Living

So many of us go through life out of sync with what we truly want and who we genuinely are. We say yes when we mean no. We strive to be easygoing, to not rock the boat, to keep things simple for others—even at the cost of our own needs. We show up in ways that feel inauthentic because we’re afraid of what might happen if we let our true selves be seen. And in [...]

Sienna Forest2025-03-14T14:32:18+00:00March 5, 2025|Tags: authenticity, breakups, connection, couples therapy, dating, relationships, somatic therapy, therapy, vulnerability|

Finding Home in Motion: A Story of Place and Purpose

When I moved back to my hometown for grad school, I told myself it was temporary—just a couple of years, then I’d be off to find my place in the world. But grad school came and went. I started dating someone. I settled into the everyday rhythms of Santa Cruz. I had my community, my family close by, a climbing gym I loved, the ocean at my doorstep. Life was good. And yet, something felt... [...]

Sienna Forest2025-03-07T20:44:03+00:00February 28, 2025|Tags: authenticity, community, connection, gratitude, here and now, mental health, mindfulness, vulnerability|

Finding Your Voice in Relationships: The Power of Differentiation

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how things shift when we’re in a romantic relationship. It’s fascinating how easily the lines between what I need and what they need get blurred. Differentiation—the ability to hold onto your own sense of self while staying connected to your partner—can get really tricky. It sounds simple, but it’s something that can quietly slip away without us even realizing. Take this for example: When I’m single, I feel so [...]

Sienna Forest2025-02-24T20:12:31+00:00October 18, 2024|Tags: accountability, boundary, communication, conflict, connection, couples therapy, dating, differentiation, Marthakauppi, needs, partnership, relationships, responsibility, trust, vulnerability|

Boundary Setting: It’s not you, it’s me (seriously)

Nature even likes to draw the line! These days, we hear the word “boundary” thrown around a lot. One might say “I set a boundary with my partner the other day and told her she needs to stop calling me so much”, or “I set a boundary and told them to not talk to me like that”. While these examples might feel good to say in the moment, they aren’t actually boundaries, because they [...]

Sienna Forest2024-10-05T01:07:30+00:00September 25, 2024|Tags: boundaries, boundary, communication, dysregulation, overwhelmed, therapy|

Trailblazing Therapy: Embracing Nature’s Healing Pathways

On February 5, 2024, the New York Times published an article titled “Therapists Trade the Couch for the Great Outdoors”. The impact of this article rippled through my life unexpectedly, with approximately seven friends reaching out to me about it, followed by a flood of inquiries from graduate students and fellow clinicians curious about my experiences with hiking therapy. It was evident that this article had struck a chord, whether due to its prominence in one [...]

Sienna Forest2024-09-25T21:33:08+00:00April 1, 2024|Tags: alternative therapy, authenticity, benefits of nature, hiking therapy, imposter syndrome, mental health, nontraditional therapy, outdoor therapy|

The Paradox of Choice: Swiping for a Soulmate

I have been thinking a lot recently about dating and relationships in my generation, about the challenges of finding lasting love in a world that tells us we should seek perfection. Dating apps give us so many options, and just like when we get overwhelmed at the supermarket trying to decide between 17 different types of toilet paper, having the ability to just swipe right or left on an infinite number of potential suitors is both [...]

admin2024-09-11T01:24:17+00:00February 2, 2024|Tags: conflict, cool girl, couples therapy, dating, dating apps, modern dating, paradox of choice, perfection, relationships, technology|

I am Seeing I am Healing

I found this burned tree while hiking. Hiking is so beneficial in helping me process emotions when I am going through a rough time. If you had told me last year at this time that I would experience one of the worst bouts of anxiety and depression of my life, I would have looked at you incredulously and laughed. I was in a happy partnership trying a new relationship style for the first [...]

admin2024-09-19T03:51:47+00:00October 2, 2023|Tags: anxiety, breakups, community, depression, hypervigilance, mental health, nervous system regulation, rumination, shame, stigma, suicidal ideation, support|