Let’s talk about one of the lesser-known side effects of living with CPTSD, hyper-empathy. If you’ve ever walked into a room and instantly felt like you just downloaded everyone’s emotional data through some invisible trauma-powered Bluetooth, congratulations! You might be a hyper-empath. Or a sponge. Same difference. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Wait, so […]
Living with CPTSD: What It’s Really Like
I write a lot about CPTSD, the facts, the symptoms, the definitions, and how it shows up in everyday life. And all of that matters. But lately, I’ve been thinking about how that’s only half of the picture. It’s one thing to explain what CPTSD is, but it’s another thing entirely to talk about what […]
Direct Communication Is A Lifeline for Trauma Survivors
If you’ve ever told me something like, ‘We need to talk later,’ and then walked away, I can almost guarantee you’ve just activated my fight-or-flight system like it’s Black Friday at Best Buy. It’s not that I’m overreacting (though, okay, maybe a little); it’s just that, when you live with CPTSD, vague communication doesn’t merely […]
The Impact Of Leaving Survival Mode
For 40 years, I lived in constant survival mode, running on fear, stuck in fight-or-flight, exhausted but pushing forward anyway. I had no idea I was running myself into the ground. I thought I was just doing what I had to do to exist. Then, about a decade ago, I began therapy, and I started […]
I Can’t Fix Everything, And That’s Okay (Sort Of)
In my fifth decade on this earth, I’m only now beginning to accept that I can’t fix everything, no matter how badly I want to. And that truth? It’s brutal. Since I was a kid, I’ve carried this deep, unrelenting need to fix things. Not just the broken toy kind of fixing, but people, relationships, […]
Trauma Doesn’t Make You Stronger: A Journey of Healing
There is no truth to people saying that trauma makes you stronger. The fact is, it doesn’t. Trauma breaks you. It eats you alive and spits you back out in tiny pieces that you no longer recognize, and what is left are complex problems that you spend the next how many years trying to work […]