How childhood trauma changes our idea of “normal” — Being raised by narcissistic caregivers or growing up in a toxic environment affects us much deeper than we may realize and can affect our mind, emotions, and body more than we may be consciously aware of. Kids who experience constant stress, traumatic events, or chronic abuse develop difficulties in managing…

What to be aware of when it comes to trauma and relationships. — If we have experienced a traumatic event, we can respond to it in one of four common ways: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Of course, there are many variables that influence the intensity, duration, or quantity of a traumatic response including our age, how many traumatic events we’ve experienced, the…

Learning compassion for those suffering from complex trauma — “Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort.” Bessel van der Kolk Let me start by saying that this may be a trigger warning for some, and I apologize to anyone who may find this emotionally disturbing, but I…

#1 is the most important. — Most of us aren’t overthinking the red flags we see in our partners as reflections of our earliest pain. We’re dismissing the red flags while shaming ourselves for having seen them in the first place. We probably aren’t putting two-and-two together on why we’re in the habit of attracting backstabbing…

Unlearning these can help you gain clarity in your healing. — We’ve heard it all before: healing is messy. It’s complicated. It feels counterintuitive to reflect and go within when it’s just “easier” to keep running and avoiding our pain. Yet, while we’re stuck hitting the replay button, we’re also stuck reliving our attachment trauma from one situation to the next…

Unpacking the damage from emotionally immature parents. — The perfect childhood doesn’t exist. Instead, many people experience their childhood along a continuum — with most memories hovering somewhere around the middle, and a few that stir up emotional pain. Then, there are those of us whose childhoods were anything but “normal” or “typical”. We were the silenced kids…

The reality of trauma re-enactment and how finger-pointing does little to support healing — Trigger Warning: This article is not meant to disrespect anyone who has survived trauma or has been victimized by a “narcissist”. As with all my articles, they are meant to educate, empower, and provide information from a trauma perspective. The fact that trauma can perpetuate and repeat is not a…

Understanding the prolonged effects of early trauma — No one gets out of childhood completely unscathed. Believing we can enter adulthood totally unaffected by our earliest experiences suggests little more than naiveté and toxic positivity. It also minimizes the “little t’s” and “Big T’s” that many of us have experienced throughout the course of our childhood. I’m not…

The trick is knowing whether the cause is situational or complex — It’s not hard to spot someone who is emotionally unavailable, especially if you’re in a relationship with them. Sure, more subtle behaviors may initially fly under our radar, but obvious red flags of emotional unavailability are hard to ignore. …