Kristen Hornung, PhD, LPCC

📞 (619) 202-1481 ✉️ kristen@kristenhornung.com

Welcome to a Space for Healing, Growth, and Connection

Category: Coping Skills

  • A Healing Light Visualization for Grounding and Release

    Today I’d like to share one of my favorite guided visualizations. This practice can be helpful if you’re wanting to feel more grounded, or if you’re noticing that you’re holding a lot of tension or emotional activation in your body. It’s a visualization I often return to myself, and one that I regularly adapt in…

  • An Invitation to Regulate

    Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation One of the best ways I know how to talk about regulation and containment is to invite you to experience it, rather than just explain it. So this is your invitation, if you’d like, to practice a brief regulation exercise with me. What I’m sharing here are a few simple things that…

  • Containment Strategies

    Containment, Embodiment, Structure, and Expression Today I want to talk a little about containment along with embodiment, structure, and expression, and how these ideas can sometimes support us when we feel stuck or overwhelmed. I’m holding a literal container as I write this: a small recipe box. When I’m ruminating or caught in a thought…

  • Holiday Self-Care: A Trauma-Informed Perspective

    Navigating Holiday Stress with Trauma-Informed Self-Care The holidays and family gatherings can be meaningful and joyful…and they can also feel like being trapped in a pressure cooker. For many people, family events activate nervous system responses shaped by earlier experiences. Impactful memories could include conflict, emotional or physical abuse, addiction, or unpredictable family dynamics. Add…

  • Practical & Compassionate Self-Care

    Rethinking Self-Care When people think about self-care, they often imagine things like massages, pedicures, or shopping trips. While those can be enjoyable, they aren’t the whole picture, and for many people, they aren’t what’s most helpful in moments of stress. Today, I want to offer a different way of thinking about self-care; one that’s more…