There was a time when every flashback felt like a fire drill. My body would light up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, bright, loud, impossible to ignore. The moment something triggered, I’d bolt straight into survival mode: cancel plans, cancel people, cancel myself. No questions asked. It didn’t matter if the memory was […]
When Therapy Turns into an Emotional Excavation
When I started therapy, I thought I just needed a tune-up. I knew there were things inside me I needed to work on. What I got instead was an emotional excavation. Turns out, growing up in chaos teaches your brain some pretty creative survival strategies, hypervigilance, dissociation, people-pleasing, and the uncanny ability to anticipate everyone’s […]
Loving Someone with CPTSD: A Survival Guide
Loving someone with CPTSD means, first and foremost, loving someone with a complicated past. We might not always say it, but we crave connection, deeply. Sometimes more than we know what to do with. And yet, every so often, we flinch. We pull back. We get quiet when things get too close. It’s not because […]
Recognizing Trauma Dysregulation as It Happens
(aka: Is This a Red Flag, or Am I Just Spiraling?) When CPTSD turns relationships into a weather system, dysregulation is exactly when your internal forecast suddenly calls for a hurricane… all because of a missed text. Meanwhile, everyone else is just seeing a light drizzle, and you’re busy grabbing sandbags. Suddenly, you’re frozen, flooded, […]
Is CPTSD Considered Neurodivergent? Here’s What I Found
The other day, I fell into one of those classic spirals: trauma vs. identity crisis vs. internet rabbit hole. You know the ones. It started innocently enough, I was trying to figure out if CPTSD counts as neurodivergent. Before I knew it, I was eight tabs deep, reading about brain scans, childhood trauma, and how […]
Healing from CPTSD: When Hurt People Hurt People
There’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot: hurt people hurt people. Sometimes it’s said with compassion, sometimes as a defense, and sometimes as a throwaway line. But for me, it’s a truth I’ve had to look directly in the eye. Because I was hurting. And I hurt people. I was one of them. […]