The Labyrinth of Healing: What Complex Trauma Taught Me About Becoming Whole (Part 2)
The Paradox of Post-Traumatic Growth If you haven’t read Part I of this article, you can read it here. I used to resist the language of post-traumatic growth. It felt like another demand—another way my healing was being measured and found wanting. How could I...
How Meditation Can Help Your Busy Mind to Unwind
We’re all busy and juggle work with our personal lives. Some manage this better than others and float through the every day. Other people don’t have it all figured out 24/7. Everyone has bad days. When our lives get busy, we need a reboot. “Well, I don’t have time for...
Stuck Points in Healing from Complex Trauma
Whether you are struggling to contain painful rumination, finding it difficult to cope in the present, or feeling apprehensive about the future, there is a good chance that stuck points are influencing your experience. Stuck points are rigid, distressing thoughts and...
When “Calm Down” is Contempt
In my first mental health job in the early 1990s, I learned a rule that still holds under pressure. Never tell an upset client to “calm down.” It backfires. The person does not feel heard, seen, or validated. They feel managed. The phrase sounds helpful to the one...
Are You a Positive Thinker? The Benefits of a Positive Mind
Hey, how are you doing today? Can you remember your first thoughts this morning? Was it a positive thought about your day ahead? Our world is full of negativity right now. It can be hard to tune everything out that’s going on in the news and in our cities. Did you...
When Being “Good” Hurts: The Doormat Syndrome
Setting Boundaries and Protecting Your Peace of Mind: Yes, because of my CPTSD, I was a people-pleaser. This was like a survival-mode I learned as a child. And that doormat syndrome was often painful for me, for many years. Until one day, I had had enough and decided...
“The Channel is Right but the Volume is Too High”: Understanding Emotional Triggers
In a scene from one of my favorite films, The Iron Giant, a boy named Hogarth plays in a junk yard with his new friend, a giant metal man fallen from space. In the midst of their game, Hogarth pulls out a toy gun and aims it at the giant. Instantly, and without his...
The Labyrinth of Healing: What Complex Trauma Taught Me About Becoming Whole (Part 1)
For a long time, I believed my healing would announce itself with a clear endpoint—a day when the pain would finally stop, when the hypervigilance would dissolve, when I would wake up and simply feel whole. I waited for that day for years. Decades, even. It never...