There’s a kind of shame that wraps itself around trauma survivors like smoke after a fire. Invisible and suffocating. If you’ve lived through abuse and now live with CPTSD, you know exactly what I mean. It’s not the shame of doing something wrong. It’s the shame of having survived something that never should have happened […]
Coping Strategies CPTSD Recovery Mental Health Relationships & Attachment Self-Care Therapy & Healing Trauma Recovery
Post-Therapy Fog? How to Beat the Therapy Hangover
It’s wild how, surprisingly, no one really talks about therapy hangovers. Sure, everyone says “therapy’s great,” but almost nobody warns you that right after your session, your brain and body might throw a full-on tantrum. But you know what? you’re not broken or doing it wrong. Rather, your nervous system is just throwing a little […]
How IFS Therapy Helped Me Heal from CPTSD
For those of us who’ve been diagnosed with CPTSD, real healing often begins the moment we stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?” And start asking, “What happened to me, and how did I adapt to survive it?” That shift is everything. It changes the whole lens through which we see ourselves. However, knowing the right […]
Stop Misusing Attachment Theory in Relationships
I have a bone to pick with how we’re misusing one of the most powerful tools for emotional healing and turning it into feel-good slideshows and “this-is-why-you’re-toxic” infographics. Attachment theory is one of the most powerful frameworks I’ve found for understanding how we connect, disconnect, and survive emotionally. It’s helped me unpack decades of complex […]
Why Trauma-Informed Therapy Matters for Healing
When I first started therapy to deal with my CPTSD and the trauma from years of childhood sexual abuse, I honestly thought I was ready to heal. I’d done the research, found the courage, and showed up. What I wasn’t prepared for was how often I’d end up feeling like the problem, misunderstood, rushed, or […]
Hypervigilance and CPTSD: Why I Face the Door
There is something that I do, and have done for as long as I can remember, and that is, I don’t sit with my back to the room. Ever. It’s not about being dramatic or antisocial. It’s because somewhere deep in my bones, my nervous system never really got the memo that the emergency ended. […]