Amanda Osowski, Rockwall Christian Counseling

About Amanda Osowski

If you’re searching for a therapist to guide you through processing trauma, navigating challenging relationships, overcoming symptoms of depression or anxiety, working through abandonment issues, or coping with other concerns, I would be happy to help. Using a compassionate, collaborative approach, I will partner with you to take steps toward your overall physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Clients will also benefit from my practice being supervised by Robin Ford, LPC-S. One of my goals is to create space for the Lord to provide the lasting healing and renewed perspective that can only come from His presence at work in your life.

When Borderline Traits Go Unnoticed: The Hidden Patterns That Shape Daily Life

When Borderline Traits Go Unnoticed: The Hidden Patterns That Shape Daily Life

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-09-18T06:39:32+00:00September 18th, 2026|Featured, Individual Counseling, Women’s Issues|

We often think of mental health challenges as being a clear diagnosis with obvious symptoms. However, there are times when the signs are subtle. Borderline traits are one of those challenges that can exist beneath the surface, shaping relationships, emotions, and decision-making without ever being recognized for what they are. Borderline traits are often dismissed as personality, quirks, or emotional sensitivity. The person experiencing them may feel like something is off, but they don’t know how to name it. These traits don’t always meet the threshold for a formal diagnosis, so they remain in the background, affecting daily life in ways that feel confusing and isolating. Understanding these hidden patterns begins with asking what lies beneath them that feels familiar and frustrating. It’s a journey of curiosity and not judgment. In faith, you can come to God and ask for help: Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! – Psalm 139:23, ESV Borderline Traits and Emotional Intensity The most common appearance of borderline traits is in the intensity of emotional responses. A minor disagreement can feel like a complete rupture, and a moment of perceived rejection can trigger overwhelming shame or anger. These involuntary reactions arise with a force that feels beyond control. After experiencing these reactions, individuals often wonder why they responded so strongly. Friends and family often describe them as overly sensitive or dramatic, unaware that what they are witnessing is a nervous system that processes emotions at a heightened level. The intensity goes beyond negative feelings. Joy can feel explosive, and excitement can quickly turn into anxiety. It is as if the individual experiences emotions without a dimmer switch, and everything is at full volume. The result is exhaustion for the person experiencing it and for those around them. [...]

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How to Soothe the Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn Response

How to Soothe the Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn Response

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-09-08T07:29:28+00:00September 8th, 2026|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Trauma|

Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are commonly known as stress responses. The nervous system activates this response to protect you from danger. Unfortunately, due to daily stressors, our minds and bodies now assume danger in anything that causes worry or stress. We no longer fear apex predators; we are anxious about mortgages or rent, utilities, car payments, medical bills, student loans, work, and relationships. The body responds to these stimuli by activating the sympathetic nervous system, eliciting one or more of these responses. Understanding the responses Understanding the responses can lead to better managing the experience when activated. While the fight, flight, and freeze responses have been known for some time, the fawn response is newer and comes from the study of nervous system responses. Each response is the body’s way of trying to protect itself and presents differently for everyone. However, each response has common experiences. The fight response does not always mean fight in a physical sense. It can look like being irritable, defensive, feeling anger, and/or aggression. The flight response can look like avoiding, panicking, chronic worry, and/or wanting to run away or flee. The freeze response can look like depression, feeling stuck, dissociation, feeling like your mind “goes blank,” feeling confused, and/or being passive. The fawn response can look like avoiding conflict, people-pleasing (or codependency), and/or difficulty with setting healthy boundaries. All of these responses are not necessarily unhealthy. Most of them can be helpful when the situation requires it. When there is continuous or constant activation, it can lead to unhelpful or unhealthy experiences. Why the Sympathetic Nervous System Cannot Stay Stuck in Overdrive The sympathetic nervous system can get stuck due to chronic stress or severe trauma. When the stress response kicks into overdrive, you can experience physical, emotional, and mental issues. Chronic stress can cause the following symptoms and conditions (and is not exhaustive): Chronic high blood pressure Increased risk of heart disease Rapid heart rate or palpitations Tension headaches Unexplained aches and pains Digestive problems, like Irritable Bowel Syndrome Heartburn and acid reflux Dizziness [...]

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What Is Avoidance Anxiety and How Do I Overcome It?

What Is Avoidance Anxiety and How Do I Overcome It?

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-08-13T07:39:19+00:00August 13th, 2026|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues, Women’s Issues|

It is in our nature to want to gravitate to the things that we enjoy, and to steer clear of those that we do not. We typically do not go out of our way to put ourselves in situations where we feel embarrassed, out of place, and not having a good time. The question is, when we experience these adverse situations, what do we do about them? Sometimes, rather than face situations head-on or enter difficult situations more than once, we retreat from them and begin to avoid them. When a situation induces symptoms of anxiety, we can experience sweaty palms, increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and trouble concentrating, to name a few. We can choose to go through whatever is causing us feelings of anxiety, or we can shrink back from it. When we retreat from these situations, we are engaging in avoidance. When we use that as a coping mechanism to deal with anxiety, it can often lead to anxiety feelings growing over time. What Is Avoidance? Avoidance is a term often used to describe a way of coping to protect us from real or perceived harm, and it is an effective survival mechanism. When something makes us feel anxious, we tend to avoid that thing. At first, we might feel less anxious as a result. The issue is that after a while, the thing we are anxiously avoiding can seem harder to approach, and the problem seems much larger than before. Avoiding fearful situations seems to make rational sense, but in truth, it actually increases and fortifies our fears. While this is the most common result of avoidance, there are some benefits to avoidance. Not all avoidance is unnecessary. The nervous system does a good job of helping us avoid things that can truly harm us. It is when we associate harm with things that are not harmful that we experience difficulties. For instance, if you eat at a particular restaurant and get food [...]

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Worry in the Bible: Moving from Fear toward Trust

Worry in the Bible: Moving from Fear toward Trust

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-06-27T08:27:20+00:00June 29th, 2026|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Spiritual Development, Women’s Issues|

Have you ever found yourself thinking about what could go wrong or what is going wrong right now? Maybe you are thinking about it repeatedly. You may find yourself feeling uneasy or being overly concerned about a situation or problem you are facing, but you find that all that thinking does not help you find peace or resolution. Instead, you end up feeling anxious and apprehensive, with the problem looming larger in your mind. That is what worry does to us. Our lives are full of situations and circumstances that are out of our control. Try as we might to make our lives predictable and safe, it is hardly possible to buffer ourselves from the challenges that inevitably come our way. All of us worry to some extent, even if we find ourselves worrying about different things. We can try to deal with our problems in many ways, but one thing is certain: worrying generally leaves us feeling anxious. We do not find peace that way. Even though we know this, when a bill comes in the mail, you start feeling poorly, when you are due for a checkup, or before an important event or deadline, you find yourself hopping onto that hamster wheel of worry. Why do people worry? Jesus said of worry, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27, NIV) Worry is counterproductive because, instead of benefiting us, it negatively affects our mental and emotional health. Anxiety and worry also affect our bodies. But if worry is so counterproductive, why do we do it? Worrying feels like we are doing something. If you’re confronted by a problem, even if there is no immediate or obvious solution, we feel that by thinking about it repeatedly, we are at least doing something. The alternative seems like being passive, or it just feels uncomfortable. As Americans, we have a can-do [...]

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The Unexpected Effects of Trauma in Relationships

The Unexpected Effects of Trauma in Relationships

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-05-22T05:16:54+00:00May 22nd, 2026|Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues, Trauma|

Many of us grew up playing the game of tag, where someone is ”It,” and everyone else must run from them to avoid being tagged. There is usually a safe zone in the game, where the kids can go to rest when they are tired of running. This simple childhood game is also a profound picture of how many of us are running from the effects of trauma. A common experience of people who experienced childhood trauma is believing that adulthood will be a ”safe zone” where we can rest safely from the trauma that chased us in childhood. We hope that if we can put enough time and distance between us and our past, we will have an easy, uncomplicated life. That we can leave it there and move on. Unfortunately, when we start developing meaningful relationships and friendships, we see a different reality. We begin to realize that somewhere along the way, trauma must have ”tagged” us. Life and relationships are a lot more complicated than we realized. We carry our past inside of us in the form of buried memories, lurking emotional responses, ignored physical sensations, or a combination of all the above. It sometimes takes a person or a memory from our past to remind us of who we are and what we went through. It sounds like a contradiction, but often the only way to move forward in life is for us first to confront our past. The Unexpected Effects of Trauma in Relationships Many of us have gaslit ourselves and our loved ones into believing that we are ”fine.” It is our automatic response to anyone who asks how we are doing. Most of the time, it is all we have allowed ourselves to say due to the truth being too hard to [...]

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Finding Rest in God’s Presence When Job Burnout Threatens Your Peace

Finding Rest in God’s Presence When Job Burnout Threatens Your Peace

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-04-21T14:23:58+00:00April 21st, 2026|Featured, Individual Counseling, Men’s Issues, Professional Development, Spiritual Development, Women’s Issues|

Job burnout does not come with a big announcement of its arrival. It simply creeps in and shows up in the morning when you cannot find a reason to care about the work that once excited you. It lives in the tension between what you know you should feel and the emptiness that has taken its place. When you realize you cannot keep going at your current pace, heaviness could start to settle within you, and you find yourself experiencing job burnout. Societal pressure surrounding work often creates an impossible standard. This standard dictates that you should be passionate and driven, but also maintain balance and be present. Society defines success as climbing the ladder and staying grounded. You are expected to pour everything into your career and still have meaningful relationships. This is a fast pathway to a destructive form of stress. When you lean on your faith during this time, it can offer you something different. It will help you understand who you are so that you do not become defined by what you do. It is a perspective that helps you reframe the demands of work. It opens your eyes to see the big picture about what it is to be human and how God has designed us to live. The Weight of Constant Performance and Job Burnout The modern workplace operates with the idea that more is always better. The more hours, output, and availability you give, the better your work performance appears. You might be considered high-achieving or an example of what “hard work” should look like. It is a system that treats human beings like machines that can be fine-tuned for maximum productivity, rather than the intelligent humans God has created. Exhaustion is often deeper than physical tiredness. You may feel like there’s a weariness that comes from constantly performing to prove your value. You question whether you are producing enough high-quality work. Job burnout stems [...]

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Leaning on Scripture Throughout the Grief Process

Leaning on Scripture Throughout the Grief Process

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-03-18T06:33:38+00:00March 18th, 2026|Featured, Grief Counseling, Individual Counseling|

As much as one might want to rush past grief after loss, it’s important to go through the process of grieving. The grief process is as complex and hard to pin down as our emotions often are. Various people have tried to break it down into numbered steps, as if the ordering of the process will bring structure to our chaotic and overwhelming grief experiences. Different Understandings of the Grief Process One model breaks down grief into five stages a grieving person may experience: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Another identifies seven steps, adding shock, and processing or testing into the mix. Still, other lists combine things like shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, reflection and loneliness, the upward turn, reconstruction and working through, then acceptance and hope. Adding to the complexity of the grief process, any professional will tell you that grief does not follow these stages in a rigid or linear order. There is also no definitive timeline for grieving, and your symptoms can vary in their intensity and duration. Since people grieve in their own ways, you may not even experience every one of these stages, or you may find yourself cycling around through certain stages repeatedly. Scripture and the Grief Process Grieving a significant loss can completely uproot your sense of security and joy. It can feel necessary to regain control by understanding and working through the process to get through it and to the other side. But does the Bible add anything to our understanding of these different aspects of the grief process? While these various breakdowns of the different phases of grief help us understand the kinds of emotions you may experience, the Bible doesn’t specifically address the different stages and phases of grieving. However, the Bible remains relevant to our human condition, adding helpful ideas to our understanding of grief in this world. [...]

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How to Stem Codependency in Friendships

How to Stem Codependency in Friendships

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-02-06T06:21:51+00:00February 6th, 2026|Codependency, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” Our lives are made richer by our friendships, and they are sources of growth, joy, and mutual respect. These "unnecessary" relationships provide us with the support we need, making life a more beautiful venture. While recognizing the value of friendships and how they nurture us, it’s also important to understand that things can and do go wrong in friendships. Boundaries can become blurred in those relationships, and emotional reliance on one another can become excessive. This has the potential to lead a relationship into codependency, which can strain and damage the relationship in the short and long term. Understanding Codependency in Friendships Friends rely on each other for a lot of things, including emotional support, encouragement, wisdom when making challenging decisions, and just enjoying life together. Through the many ups and downs that life presents, your friends are the people who go with you on that journey. This is how friendship works Mutual dependence between friends is one thing, but codependency goes over the line in a few significant ways. So, what does codependency between friends look like? Codependency is an unhealthy emotional reliance on another person. This can look like one or both friends feeling like they are ultimately responsible for the other’s decisions, happiness, or sense of self-worth. No one can be responsible for another in the way a codependent relationship function. What happens in a codependent relationship is that the boundaries are blurred, and the two people become enmeshed in each other. They aren’t operating out of their sense of identity and individuality; instead, who they are becomes too closely tied to each other. They become too reliant on each other, being unable to function [...]

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What to Do with Childhood Emotional Neglect as an Adult

What to Do with Childhood Emotional Neglect as an Adult

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2026-01-02T07:27:04+00:00January 2nd, 2026|Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues, Trauma|

A common misconception is that the things we experienced as children can affect us as adults. However, that is exactly the case for so many. From a child’s perspective, neglect does not always feel harmful when it is happening, and they might not show signs of being affected by their environment. Neglect does not leave literal scars, but it shapes our belief systems. It is only decades later that childhood emotional neglect begins affecting us, leaving us unsure of what to do about it. Latchkey Love In the 1970s and ’80s, a new term emerged to describe many children of the generation. “Latchkey kids” were children as young as eight or nine, whose hard-working parents entrusted them with the front door key on a chain around their necks. The parents would often leave for work before their children started school and return from work late in the evening. Latchkey kids would sometimes make their breakfast, go to school alone or with siblings, and return to an empty house after school. This lifestyle might have been by necessity rather than choice, but the key around each little neck was a symbol of both independence and possible emotional neglect. The times might have changed, and schools might require a lot more involvement from parents now, but that does not mean kids born in later generations did not experience emotional neglect. Latchkey kids are, in a way, the perfect example of emotional neglect because of how normalized neglect often is. When you are a child, you have a limited frame of reference for what is normal. We grow up believing that our family system is common to those around us, and we typically do not question it. It is only as you age that you start to realize that other families did or do things differently, and that maybe things at home are not quite right. Where abuse [...]

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Getting Therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Getting Therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Amanda Osowski, Kate Motaung2025-12-04T07:07:16+00:00December 4th, 2025|Featured, Individual Counseling, Trauma|

Our bodies are designed and function in an amazing way. They help us to adapt to a wide range of situations and experiences, and we can operate even under hostile conditions. This means that we are quite resilient and can cope with enormous pressures. However, being resilient is not the same thing as being invincible. Our bodies and minds do take strain and can be overwhelmed in their ability to cope well. Many life circumstances can affect a person’s well-being, and some of these can significantly diminish a person’s enjoyment of life. Not only that, but their ability to perform daily functions can be significantly hampered by these experiences. One way that this happens is the result of post-traumatic stress disorder. What is post-traumatic stress disorder? It may not be a given in every situation, but after a person has witnessed or experienced a traumatic event, they could find themselves struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Post-traumatic stress disorder is a type of anxiety disorder that can occur after a deeply threatening or scary event. Even if you didn’t directly experience it, the shock of what happened can make it hard for you to continue living a normal life. PTSD is a mental health condition that can affect a person’s mental, physical, social, and spiritual well-being, and if it is severe enough, it can interfere with their ability to function well in daily life. PTSD can affect anyone, regardless of their age, gender, or cultural background. The good news is that it can be treated with psychotherapy and medications. It is not always the case that when a person experiences a traumatic event, they will develop PTSD. Experiencing war, a natural disaster, a motor vehicle accident, terrorism, violent crime, or other similar events may lead to PTSD, but it is [...]

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