Silvi Saxena, MSW, LSW

10/26/2026

Had a great time at the Evanescent Lit Mag release party at Thomas Jefferson University and hearing from and reading my piece on Joy. Thank you for accepting my piece in this year’s publication and thank you to Dr. Danielle Snyderman for these candid photos. I hope my piece brought some comedic relief to everyone.

09/30/2026

September is su***de awareness month. There are a lot of misconceptions and judgments about su***de, however those who contemplate su***de are not wanting to end their life, they want their pain to stop. Take a minute to consider the overwhelming weight someone must be carrying before judging them. Help people want to stay.

• More than 720,000 people die by su***de globally each year.
• In the United States, there were roughly 48,800 su***de-related deaths recorded recently.
• Su***de is the second leading cause of death for young people and adults aged 15 to 34.
• Males die by su***de at a rate roughly four times higher than females, though females make more su***de attempts.
• Fi****ms are the most common method used in U.S. su***de deaths, accounting for over half of the total.

Stop the stigma.

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***deawarenessprevention

08/28/2026

07/20/2026

Thrilled to read with Ryan Teitman again on his last leg of his book tour at Celia Bookshop on August 25th! Come check us out! Link for tickets in the comments.

06/30/2026

Being emotionally available again after trauma and abuse has a very significant learning curve. When vulnerability is weaponized in families and/or intimate relationships, trusting becomes harder and the steps to overcome that become steeper. The recurring nature of this dynamic in families especially is what contributes to CPTSD.

Becoming aware of this challenge is one of the first indicators of growth. Recognizing where the cracks were in the past and repairing them as you move forward is a path toward post traumatic growth.

We hear a lot about relational trauma, but relational healing is equally, if not more, relevant in the growth process. We cannot heal this type of trauma in isolation. Choosing to do the risky thing—be vulnerable, trust, try—inspite of our painful past experiences is what post traumatic growth looks like.

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02/19/2026

📝 Be gentle with yourselves. The manufactured chaos in the news cycle is no accident. By overwhelming the public with all the crises combined with the rise of AI generated content and billionaire owned media, it’s difficult to focus in on and cover just one issue clearly and objectively. This is the best time to support independent journalism where money cannot sway language and integrity in reporting.

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02/08/2026

What a fun night of women supporting women 🩷

02/06/2026

So often we find ourselves in situations where we might be afraid or anxious about what comes next. A date, a job interview, navigating a new life circumstance or anything else—but when we feel that, it’s our body remembering what happened before, not a premonition.

What happened before doesn’t mean it will happen again. When we feel that in our body, it’s hard to ignore that feeling and “stay positive” but it’s less about staying positive and more about knowing that you will be ok even if it did happen again.

When we feel that in our body, our job is to remind ourself that we are safe and the present is not the past, because that is an objective fact.

If you can list 5 things that are different, that can help you in your present moment and remind you that just because the fear is loud, it doesn’t make it a fact.

Heal so you can enjoy the present, not be suspicious of it.

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01/30/2026

This really applies to everything, but in the context of relationships, behaviors of hidden communication with others is a breach of trust.

There are a lot of reasons why people may do this. They may be carrying an affair of a physical or emotional nature, they may mean no harm by it but don’t mention it (omission) knowing it may be bothersome to their partner, the communication may be platonic but you want to avoid a potentially emotional conversation so you down play it or lie, etc.

None of these reasons make it respectable to your partner to not be truthful and transparent. It doesn’t really matter what the communication is, it’s a breach of trust. Some may deal with a partner hiding conversations with friends because of financial issues a partner doesn’t know about. Some may deal with a partner only communicating with a certain person on social media like snapchat. Some may delete messages frequently and offer to browse through their phone.

These are all micro-cheating behaviors. You have to respect your partner enough to have hard conversations with them even if it makes you both uneasy. Healthy couples have uncomfortable conversations instead of avoiding them, because the avoidance of these feeling-driven conversations is where relationships often struggle. There is no way to build emotional intimacy and security if you avoid the emotion-heavy conversations needed for the relationship to grow into a partnership.

So instead of hiding behaviors, begin to learn about your own feelings and communicate them to your partner before you find yourself feeling the need to cover your tracks. A big barrier of this for many is shame, and without addressing the root causes, hiding, omitting and lying will always continue.

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01/21/2026

This is an epidemic.

What is often labeled “anxious attachment” in one partner is frequently a reactive response to the inconsistent emotional availability and “vulnerable presence” of the other. When a partner is sometimes present, warm, and vulnerable, but at other times distant, closed off, or emotionally unpredictable, it creates a “hot and cold” dynamic that triggers anxiety, confusion, and a frantic need for reassurance, mimicking a deeply rooted anxious attachment style.

It’s not always a true anxious attachment, but rather anticipatory attachment anxiety which is totally different. Anxious attachment is characterized by behaviors or impulses coming from fear even if no fear is present. This can include hyper vigilance, jealousy, codependency, a frequent need for reassurance (every day), mood changes depending on a partners and struggles with trust.

Secure people can react in anxious ways and often can be dubbed “anxiously attached” in counseling scenarios and this oversight comes into play often when the other partner can explain themselves but are not connecting emotionally and vulnerably.

It’s then very easy to mistake the anxious tendencies as irrational, but even those who are secure can develop anxious attachment as a result of emotionally inconsistent or unavailable partner. Often it’s not out of malice, rather the avoidant tends to struggle with emotional presence and feelings, so they often talk around them, distance themselves, shut down or intellectualize their emotions.

This leaves all the emotional weight on one partner and this imbalance long term is what breaks relationships. It dismantled trust and interdependence which healthy relationships need. Relationships where one partner (or both) avoid feelings, shut down during emotional conversations and show up physically but not mentally starves the relationship of the nurture it needs. You cannot have and build a healthy relationship without mutual vulnerability, emotional safety, presence and attunement, especially in harder conversations and tougher times.

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