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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Voice & Choice in the Workplace
Several people contacted me last week in response to my last email (“My Boss Triggers Me”). I love it when readers email me to share their stories with me because it lets me know that what I’m...
Trauma & Shame: The Struggle is Real
How does toxic shame start? How does it become internalized and pervasive? My clients find me because they are looking for help with their childhood trauma, and many don’t realize the depth of the...
Unburdening the Heart: The Impact of Guilt on the Nervous System in CPTSD Recovery
Introduction: Living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) can feel like navigating a stormy sea, with waves of past traumas crashing against the shores of the present. Among the many...
The Freeze and Fawn Responses
Often, people who live with complex post-traumatic stress disorder experience emotional pain caused by traumatic events. By now, most of you have heard of the four trauma responses: fight, flight,...
Grounded & Centered: Mastering Flashbacks with Grounding Techniques
Trauma survivors may face various challenges in the workplace due to the lasting effects of their traumatic experiences. One of the more disturbing and common challenges is flashbacks. Flashbacks...
Feelings are Real…Right?
I grew up like many of us believing that emotions are not essential to human functioning. My understanding as a young man was that emotions only would make me “weak” if I associated myself with...
Setting New Year’s Resolutions
Every year around this time, we all contemplate what our lives will be like in the new year. We set our expectations for ourselves with resolutions that may or may not be kept and hope for the best...
Clean Up on Aisle 9
How to recover from the aftermath of a flashback Last week, I wrote about how to manage flashbacks utilizing grounding techniques. While it is important to have the tools to help you work through a...
The Misdiagnosis and Ignorance of Complex PTSD
Misdiagnosis of CPTSD is common. The lack of knowledge and understanding of CPTSD is huge. Worst of all, the unwillingness to help and support, within our Healthcare Systems, is heartbreaking....
Healing The Bonds of Betrayal
True story… I was living in a different country, and had one friend, and no family around me when I fully accepted that my marriage had gone past the point of rescue. I was deeply entrenched in the...
Prioritizing Your Mental Health During the Holidays
Christmas and other holidays are upon us. However, with all the holiday cheer and purchasing of presents, there also comes, for many people, a sense of dread. Some people have families of origin...
A Dangerous Idea: “Bury Bad Thoughts to Boost Mental Health”
An article caught my eye, the other week, from The German Press Agency (GPA)," one of the world’s leading independent news agencies." The headline reads: "Bury bad thoughts to boost mental health,...
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”.
