Dancing and Connection

For people who say they don't like to dance... I don't comprehend. "Dancing" can incite fear in folks and I don't understand why. Maybe it's preconceived notions about what dancing actually is. Movement, of any kind, can be considered dancing. Pretty much everyone moves... swaying to a song or even to the wind I consider [...]

Grieving and CPTSD Healing

Even though I've intuitively known this... going through it my self has made it that much more real, and interesting. To heal from relational trauma, you have to grieve. May seem like, well, d'uh. But you might not realize all you have to grieve. It's not just a recent relationship. It's what you didn't get [...]

Trauma Fawn Response

Maybe staying home and recharging for four days will give me the reset I need. We'll see. I just have no energy for anything and don't feel like leaving the house. I'm just grading final projects for my students. I've been trying to read and write and do things at home. I've been reading more [...]

CPTSD reframe

When emotionally activated I feel shame because my parents rained disgust on me for being me. I say no to these toxic parental curses, and I am proud and right to see how they tried to murder my soul. I give them their shame back as disgust - the disgust any healthy adult feels when [...]

CPTSD and catastrophizing

I’m working through some readings on CPTSD for myself and for the next iteration of the trauma counseling class I teach. And it has often occurred to me that the gold standard for therapy is often CBT. But CBT alone often isn’t sufficient for addressing trauma because thought distortions manifest for good reason. Maybe the [...]

CPTSD

Robs you of time You might have connected But were cowering In fear for your life When the monsters Crippled with age Could no longer torment you

Complex Trauma

Being sick on and off this spring/summer has forced me to look at the ways in which trauma and stress manifest in my body. I've been working through a lot and my body has been forcing me to slow down. I hope I can carry that with me through the semester. In some ways, I [...]

A Memory

A memory popped up on my facebook today from 2016. I took a selfie in a bathroom mirror at a university after presenting at a conference. I drove from Pittsburgh to southern Illinois to present on my thesis by myself. It's been interesting reflecting on just how close I was to dropping out of undergrad [...]

Quote of the day

What breaks our hearts is also what connects us: the exquisite impermanence of the phenomenal world; our longing to keep what we love the same forever; and our desire for that which we can’t stand to go away and never come back. Mirabai Starr It’s interesting to contemplate this. Everyone does want to feel good, [...]

Chronic Trauma Validation

After starting my career in counseling and psychology I’ve really had it solidified for me that I had spend most of my earlier years in a near constant state of activation. There’s a lot of grief associated with that—The things I might have done if I had my cognitive brain fully online instead of being [...]