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.
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.
How to Create Secure Relationships (With Trauma in the Mix)
Attachment styles are dynamic and can shift over time. They offer a potent place to focus when we're looking to heal trauma within the container of a loving, committed relationship.
Mapping Our Attachment Style
Even if we have had difficulty forming and sustaining rewarding relationships in the past, we can train ourselves to relate in healthier ways. When we do, we enjoy all the benefits of supportive, secure connections — advantages like improved mental wellbeing and physical health, increased resilience, and a stronger support system.
Escaping the Trap of Performativity
Performativity is when you align with sexual stereotypes or how you think you’re “supposed to” act, rather than exploring and expressing your own way. It happens when we subconsciously copy what appears desirable in our culture and try it on for ourselves.
Why to Plan for Aggression (in Trauma Healing)
When we’re healing from shutdown, we naturally move through momentary aggression on our way to feeling safe with others again. That’s because activation from the original stress response (that caused the shutdown) is still locked in the body. The stress response needs to release and complete before we return to our natural state of wellbeing.
Trauma and Self-Loyalty
Those of us with unresolved trauma tend to orient outwards to get safety, rather than learning how to generate inner safety. It might feel safer to betray our boundaries and needs, in favor of what others want, but doing so does not create real safety.
The Path of Healing in Relationship
Trauma tends to take away our sense of agency and choice. It's overwhelming and exhausting, putting us on an endless cycle of over-activation and collapse that makes us feel we’ve lost our power. I want us to step out of the powerlessness of the trauma response and onto the path of healing.