In the Thick of Learning Who I Am There is something that I am feeling to be in the thick of at the moment on my healing journey, and that is learning who I am. This stage of healing feels heavy. Because for so long trauma has shaped my identity. How I saw myself. How […]
Making Peace with a Trauma-Stamped Brain
The brain is this wild mix of wiring, chemistry, and memory, running everything from your heartbeat to your deepest thoughts, all while somehow letting you remember the lyrics to songs you haven’t heard in twenty years. Beautifully magnificent… and sometimes, frustratingly mysterious. It’s a powerhouse of possibility and also a paradox. It keeps us alive. […]
7 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Therapy
When I walked into my first therapy session, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I honestly thought it’d be like the movies, me lying on a leather couch while some therapist with glasses scribbles notes and gently asks about my childhood, in a soothing voice that would have me opening up like […]
Healing Hurts Before It Heals
The Truth No One Tells You at the Beginning In my most recent Healing Out Loud episode, I talk about something no one warns you about: healing hurts before it heals. Most people picture recovery as a peaceful climb into some serene place. But the truth? It feels more like tearing up the old floorboards […]
Breaking Free from Emotional Control
Thinking Instead of Feeling: My Lifelong Habit There’s something I’ve always done, and frustratingly still do, even with all the tools I’ve learned in therapy: I tend to think my way through emotions instead of fully feeling them. Allow me to explain. I do feel things, yes. But I have a hard time actually releasing […]
CPTSD and the Struggle for True Acceptance
Why Acceptance Feels Like Everything There are many things CPTSD makes harder than they should be. For me, one of the big ones is my need to be accepted, not necessarily liked. I get that people will either like me or not. What I really want is to be accepted for who I am, and […]