Lauren Auer LCPC

Lauren Auer LCPC Therapy should be one of the best parts of your week. Illinois based therapist

When two nervous systems are consistently in contact they start to influence each other. Your ventral vagal system respo...
06/11/2026

When two nervous systems are consistently in contact they start to influence each other. Your ventral vagal system responds to the regulation of the people around you. a consistently safe, attuned relationship doesn’t just feel good. it literally expands your capacity to tolerate your own emotional experience.

What that can mean is the safer the relationship, the more you can hold. and the more you can hold, the more comes up. This is why people are blindsided by how much surfaces in a healthy relationship. It’s not a sign something is wrong. It’s a sign your nervous system is finally doing what it never had the resources to do before.

The goal was never to find someone who doesn’t trigger you. the goal is to find someone safe enough to be triggered with.

Save this and share it with someone who needs permission to stay.

06/09/2026

When people close to you take your growth or change personally, chances are that you didn’t do anything wrong. More likely your growth asks them a question about themselves that they aren’t ready to answer yet.

When you stop shrinking yourself in a setting that was built on you being smaller, the whole structure shifts. Some people can’t handle that. Some might call it selfish, or cold.

What they are really saying is that they were more comfortable when you weren’t. That’s not a reason to stop growing.

Leave it to me to have a clinical epiphany about the loneliness epidemic in the middle of a crowded sports bar on a Satu...
06/08/2026

Leave it to me to have a clinical epiphany about the loneliness epidemic in the middle of a crowded sports bar on a Saturday afternoon while drinking a PBR 🤷🏻‍♀️ I can’t help it.

We’re not all lonely in the way we picture loneliness. We’re busy. We’re technically around people all the time, but there’s a difference between being around people and actually being WITH other people. A lot of modern life is proximity without connection.

This week’s Substack is about what fandom is actually doing in our nervous systems, and why I think we’re starving for more of what that sports bar had.

It’s a free week, so it goes straight to your inbox if you are a subscriber. If not, the link is in my bio. And if you’ve been reading and finding value in it, the paid tier is what keeps it going. Either way, I’m glad you’re here.

And the thing that makes it so brutal is that you have inside information. You know exactly where it hurts. You know the...
06/04/2026

And the thing that makes it so brutal is that you have inside information. You know exactly where it hurts. You know the thing you are most ashamed of, the moment you can’t stop replaying, the fear you have never said out loud. You know all of it.

So when you turn on yourself, you don’t guess. You don’t fumble around looking for a soft spot.
You go straight there.

An outside critic has to work to wound you. They have to find the gap in the armor. But you built the armor. You know every gap by heart.

It’s hard to be happy when someone is being mean to you all the time. Don’t let that person be you.

If you know me, you might know that I am fascinated about dreams and the science behind our subconscious world. My wonde...
06/02/2026

If you know me, you might know that I am fascinated about dreams and the science behind our subconscious world. My wonder around this topic is what initially led me into studying psychology, which sparked my passion for studying trauma.

Check it out on my Substack and consider subscribing to support my work. Link in bio 🤍

06/01/2026

What is happening to LGBTQ+ youth in this country is not just a policy conversation. It is a human rights crisis unfolding in therapists’ offices, courtrooms, and healthcare systems all at once. The legal ground shifted two months ago. Our ethics didn’t. If you are a clinician or an advocate, this is the moment to be loud in your professional spaces. Not next month. Now.

If you or someone you love needs support right now, these organizations are still here:

The Trevor Project: thetrevorproject.org (24/7 crisis support for LGBTQ+ youth)

Trans Lifeline: translifeline.org (peer support run by and for trans people)

LGBT National Help Center: lgbthotline.org (peer support, community connection, and resources for youth and adults)

BlackLine: 1-800-604-5841 (24/7 crisis support centering BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities)

Research and sources linked in bio. Share this if someone needs to hear it.

05/28/2026

Getting stuck in a spiral is not a willpower problem. It’s actually just biology. Cognitive reframing requires your prefrontal cortex to be online and it requires directed attention, which is the ability to evaluate a thought way against evidence and consciously choose a different perspective.

This is a really high order executive function and it’s also what becomes unavailable when you’re regulated. what most people don’t know is that the default mode network, which is the part of the brain running in the spiral, is actually suppressed during goal directed tasks. So they have an inverse relationship. That’s why making arbitrary lists can really work, or why making something with your hands or doing something that requires active attention works. You’re not distracting yourself, but you’re using a competing neural network to manually suppress the one running the loop.

Overthinking doesn’t mean you’re weak. your default mode network evolved to rehearse threat so you could survive them. The problem is, it can’t tell the difference between a predator or an unanswered text so it treats both like your life depends on figuring it out

Regulate first. The thinking can wait.

05/26/2026

Most people don’t avoid hard conversations because they don’t care. They avoid them because they care too much and they have no idea how it’s going to go… so they wait. And then the thing that would have been 10 minutes of discomfort, becomes 6 months of distance and a hollowed out version of themselves they start to not recognize anymore.

Avoidance isn’t the absence of conflict. It’s conflict without resolution.

It’s about time that I finally wrote out my most used metaphor in full. I go back to this metaphor all the time with cli...
05/20/2026

It’s about time that I finally wrote out my most used metaphor in full. I go back to this metaphor all the time with clients because it just makes so much sense to why it’s not so easy to just switch our habits when our brain knows better.

if you’ve ever looked at yourself mid pattern and thought “I know exactly what I’m doing and I can’t stop.” this one’s for you. It’s not a willpower problem. It’s a brain event and there’s a huge difference.

New post on the Substack 🔗 link bio.

05/17/2026

I went on a drive yesterday and ended up at a cemetery. I’ve never just ended up somewhere like that before.

I needed to cry and I just couldn’t get there. My own stuff felt too slippery to grab onto. So I walked around and started looking at the graves and thinking about the stories of those strangers. The little plastic flowers someone thought to bring. A photo laminated and zip-tied to a headstone. Fresh mulch around a stone that means somebody was just here, somebody who still comes, somebody who hasn’t stopped.

You start feeling for them. And then suddenly you’re feeling for yourself too. And then you’re ugly crying in a cemetery and nobody says a word or bats an eye because it’s a cemetery.

I felt so much better after.

If you’re someone who has a hard time feeling your own feelings, you are not alone in that. I am you. And apparently I end up at cemeteries now.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ (sad music helps too)

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204 C. 6035 N Knoxville Avenue
Peoria, IL
61614

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