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. […]
CPTSD CPTSD Recovery Flashbacks & Triggers Mental Health Relationships & Attachment Self-Care Trauma Triggers
When Trauma Hits Again: Living With CPTSD
Feeling “Off” For a while now, I’ve been feeling “off.” My nervous system has been stuck on high alert, and it’s been bugging me because I couldn’t figure out why. Nothing in my day-to-day life should be making me feel like this. And no matter what I tried, my breathing techniques, grounding, distracting myself, nothing […]
Why Healing Still Hurts After All the Work
If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’ve put in the work. Not just little steps here and there, but years of therapy, really digging into the messy stuff, and a whole lot of uncomfortable growth. I’ve spent hours in therapy. Dug through emotional wreckage. Untangled beliefs that weren’t even mine. I faced parts […]
CPTSD Velcro: Why Feelings Stick and Stay
There’s a thing I call “CPTSD Velcro.” It’s not a clinical term, but maybe it should be. For now, we’ll just call it a Jackism. It’s that sticky emotional residue left behind by an offhand comment, a strange look, a friend’s delayed reply, or a breakup that happened last year or ten years ago. It’s […]
CPTSD CPTSD Recovery Flashbacks & Triggers Grounding Techniques Healing Tools Mental Health Trauma Recovery Triggers
Weird CPTSD Triggers That Still Annoy Me
Living with CPTSD means you kind of get used to expecting the unexpected when it comes to what sets you off. You’d think triggers are always these huge, obvious, scary things, like a loud bang, a harsh word, or someone who looks exactly like that person from your past. But nope. Sometimes, what sets you […]
Where Does the CPTSD End, and Where Do I Begin?
I came across a question today that got me thinking: “Where does the CPTSD end, and where do I begin?” At first, I gave the kind of answer that felt honest enough. I tried to untangle trauma from truth, to draw a clean line between what’s mine and what got wired into me through fear, […]