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 You Love Someone Who Never Feels Good Enough: Understanding the Lasting Effects of Chronic Parental Criticism, Part 2
Loving an emotionally healthy partner Here is Part 1 of this series. If the adult child finds an emotionally healthy partner, they might feel uncomfortable because this person can challenge...
When Safety Feels Like a Trap
For some trauma survivors, calm does not feel peaceful at first. It can feel suspicious, temporary, or unsafe because the nervous system learned to prepare for what came next.
“Can’t You Take A Joke?” How Small Things Can Lead to Existential Humiliation
Have you ever found yourself suddenly humiliated, yet forced to pretend otherwise in front of people? How covert narcissists intentionally do this to their targets while appearing perfectly...
8 Things Survivors Need to Stop Apologizing For | Part 4 | Changing
Healing changes your tolerance, relationships, and what you're willing to accept. Growth is not betrayal. How have you changed through healing? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o6xtEihUySA Photo...
Why do you lose yourself in relationships? What is codependency?
Do you feel like you’ve lost yourself in a relationship? Codependency happens when your identity, worth, and happiness become centered on another person. For many people with CPTSD, this pattern develops as a survival response to childhood trauma, emotional neglect, or unhealthy family dynamics. Understanding codependency is the first step toward reclaiming your voice, boundaries, and sense of self.
The Child Who Could Never Do Enough: Understanding the Lasting Effects of Chronic Parental Criticism, Part 1
The invisible wound When people think about childhood trauma, they might imagine bruises from physical abuse, scars on skin that remain red and thick, stories of children left alone to fend for...
The paradoxes of flourishing
I once dated a man with borderline personality disorder. At one point, he told me that it broke his heart to see what I was not, what I hadn’t become, how small my life was, how I had squandered my...
Menopausal Psychosis or a Call to Healing
It all started one night back in mid-July 2005 when I woke up to use the bathroom. Within minutes I began shaking so badly that I could hardly hold a glass of water. I was so terrified that I...
Before the Lions Eat Us
Sometimes, the best that someone can do is attack someone vulnerable. Sometimes, we were the vulnerable target. Sometimes, my mom, when she felt low, went after me. It started the same way every...
The Part of Healing We Don’t Talk About Enough
There’s a moment many people on a healing path quietly come to - often after years of trying, pushing, and doing all the “right” things. It’s the moment they realize:“I thought I had moved on…so why...
Whose Grave Was It Anyways?
My father died on June 6, 1998. My mother died on June 8, 2025, at the age of 89, 27 years after her husband almost to the day. On the day my father passed away, my mother, Gretchen, began digging a...
Shattered Reflections: How Truth Demolishes Family Illusions
Summer is coming, and the county fair will be a highlight as always. As a child, I enjoyed the Ferris wheel, the smell of kettle corn, and cinnamon buns. The Fun Zone delivered excitement with...
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”.
