Trauma-Informed Blog
New content weekly! Survivor Stories, Research Articles, Poetry, and more written by clinicians, coaches, survivors, and mental health professionals.
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When Being “Good” Hurts: The Doormat Syndrome
This piece reflects on people-pleasing, boundary struggles, and how learning to protect your inner peace can support long-term emotional health for those living with trauma.
“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...
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...
How Trauma Turns Us Into Controllers—and How We Finally Learn to Let Go
This article examines how trauma turns control into a survival reflex, wiring the brain to predict disaster and interpret ordinary setbacks as threats. It offers a grounded path back to peace by reclaiming responsibility for mindset, rather than relying on others to regulate emotional storms.
Complex PTSD - The Damage from Abuse and Trauma
The Damage of Abuse Trigger Warning: This post contains personal accounts and detailed discussions of childhood abuse. If you are currently feeling vulnerable or find these topics...
When Emotional Distance is not Narcissism: Understanding the Quiet Adult Child
A forensic, trauma-informed examination of why emotionally distant children are often mislabeled as narcissistic adults, and how avoidant attachment forms inside CPTSD-shaped families.
Not Driving Home for Holidays
Christmas, or other types of family reunions, can be tricky in the best of families. For survivors of childhood abuse, trekking home for the holidays is nothing short of a draining and...
15 Things To Do When Facing Uncertainty
Hey, how are you doing today? Are you having a good day or a “not so great day?” Do you feel valued right now? In a world where everything is falling apart around us, it’s hard to feel valued....
Tips for Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) Survivors on Social Media
It’s not a great habit. Every morning, I grab my phone and do a quick scan of social media. One of the first images I saw yesterday shook me to the core. A small girl, face redacted, is being...
I Feel so Empty in the Moment
I have spent years struggling in Schools, from elementary to middle school, high school, and finally, many, far too many years at two-year colleges. I have several degrees from those junior...
When Dysregulation is not what First Appears: Differentiating BPD, CPTSD with Attachment Dysregulation, Trauma-Bonded Anxious Attachment, Chronic Pain Identity, and Long-Term Instability
A structured clinical analysis distinguishing BPD, CPTSD with attachment dysregulation, trauma-bonded anxious attachment, chronic pain identity, and long-term instability using differential pattern recognition.
I Do… A Wedding Story: How I started my wedding day alone - and gained a new family.
Say “I do…” Three little letters, two little words. It’s the simplest part of the day. But there’s nothing simple about the things that will remain unsaid. I do means I do know I could be...
What is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
“Complex PTSD comes in response to chronic traumatization over the course of months or, more often, years. This can include emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuses, domestic violence, living in a war zone, being held captive, human trafficking, and other organized rings of abuse, and more. While there are exceptional circumstances where adults develop C-PTSD, it is most often seen in those whose trauma occurred in childhood”.
