Dispatches from the front lines of trauma healing.
I’ve been writing about trauma healing, PTSD, CPTSD, and wellbeing for almost 15 years, exploring what it means to be a high-performer making impact in the world — without sacrificing health or happiness.
False Empowerment and Trauma Healing: 5 Patterns to Watch Out For
Here are five common ways that false empowerment shows up in the trauma healing journey — and what to do about them.
Managing CPTSD During Holiday Family Gatherings: 5 Essential Skills
As adults, it's our responsibility to calm ourselves, when our nervous systems are activated. When we change how we respond, we have a better chance of connecting to the people we love from a place of curiosity and care.
From Shame to Strength: Understanding Boundary Collapse in Relationships
Certain people strategically respond to boundary-setting as if we’re causing them harm. This catalyzes a boundary collapse pattern that is a hallmark of CPTSD.
Why We Freeze During Intimacy (And How to Feel Safe Again)
Freezing during sexual intimacy is a common but rarely discussed impact of sexual trauma. To heal, we need to focus not on the mind, but on the nervous system.
How to Feel Deeply Heard (When Trauma Makes it Hard)
Until we learn new relational skills, our communication styles are often at odds with our desires for relationships. These trauma patterns aren't our fault, but they are our responsibility to change.
The Two Types of Boundaries
I'm going to share how to create boundaries that work, so we no longer need to feel confused or ashamed for not knowing how to create them.
Safety Strategies (that Always Fail) in Relationships
All of us need physical and emotional safety as children and few of us get it. Instead, we fill in the gaps of neglectful or abusive caregiving by learning to take care of ourselves, one way or another.
Warning Signs of Antagonistic and Entitled (aka "Narcissistic") Relationships
Being on the receiving end of the antagonistic and entitled behavior of grandiosity takes a significant toll on our wellbeing and our self-esteem.
The Strongest Nervous System Wins
As the world around us becomes more and more uncertain — geopolitically, environmentally, economically, technologically, the list goes on — we need to learn how to manage our nervous systems if we want to lead.
Why Sexual Trauma Shows Up in Healthy Relationships
Trauma heals when we reprocess stuck memories held in our bodies and nervous systems. Once the nervous system knows we're safe, because we have solid support from our partner, the body brings up traumatic memories it’s ready to heal.
Knowing about DARVO Prevents Emotional Abuse
The reliable pattern that emotional abuse often takes is summarized by the acronym DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. Once you learn these simple steps, you'll be able to recognize when someone tries to manipulate you.
How to Self-Soothe (with CPTSD)
As adults, we need to learn how to receive soothing and pattern it into our bodies. We need others who able to self-soothe well enough that they aren’t knocked off center by our overly activated nervous systems.
What to Do About Shutdown and Sexual Trauma
Feeling shutdown is a completely normal sign of being "stuck off" from unresolved trauma. Around intimacy, it shows up as physical numbness, low or no arousal, emotional distance, and a lack of interest.
How to Support a Partner with Trauma
If you're a partner of someone with trauma, together you can plan for challenges and be equipped to transform trauma responses into opportunities for healing.
Maslow was Wrong
Understanding the importance of attachment needs has massive implications for people with developmental trauma, a type of complex trauma (CTPSD) that I work with a lot in my private practice.
When Guilt is Good
Those of us with complex trauma or developmental trauma from childhood may have crafted beliefs about ourselves, relationships, and the world from these experiences. We may have learned some version of, "I don't matter," "My needs don't matter," or "No one cares what I think."
Belonging and Self-Betrayal
When our sense of belonging is threatened, it's easier to give up our values and needs than risk abandonment. It's easier to sacrifice personal values and needs to remain connected, rather than face the terror of being cast out, alone.
What Most People Get Wrong about Boundaries
Shifting the responsibility for our boundaries onto other people keeps us from effectively using boundaries for our wellbeing. It’s no wonder that we end up in power struggles, trying valiantly to stand up for ourselves, only to feel frustrated, manipulated, or resentful of others.
Complex Trauma and Emotional Safety
Our attachment styles emerge from how our nervous systems patterned in response to our earliest caregiver dynamics. Far from being fixed traits, our attachment styles continue to shift and evolve.
How We Sabotage Relationships Without Knowing It
When we were made wrong and punished for actions, where we didn't have the psychological development or self-control to choose differently, we assumed a sense of wrongness as part of our identity. That shame distorts our development in several ways.