One hard thing about my work is — I get hate mail sometimes. Maybe you do too — or you just get exposed to other people’s hurtful messages, and feel “punched in the gut” or outraged when you’re just going about your business reading articles online or scrolling through your social media feed — in …
If you grew up with abuse and neglect in your childhood, chances are good that you’ve suffered more than your share of broken relationships. Sometimes the break is caused by the other person, but today I want to talk about broken relationships where we played a role in hurting our connection with someone we care …
Happy Valentines Day to all you good people out there! I talk a lot about breaking isolation and forming relationships, but a topic many of you have asked me to cover is, how to be in a relationship with another person who has Childhood PTSD. This is such an important question, about something that can …
Is Your Partner’s CPTSD Hurting Your Relationship? Read More »
For many of us who grew up with abuse or neglect during childhood, there’s this steep learning curve around PERCEPTION — and by that I mean being able to discern what is true and not true, what is my responsibility and what is not my fault, when I’m in danger and when, maybe I’m just …
Did CPTSD from Childhood Trauma Damage Your PERCEPTION? Read More »
For me, one of the biggest burdens of my past was in my relationship to anger. When I was a kid, the adults in my life went WAY out of control with their anger. I grew up watching my dad rage at my mom, and my mom berate my dad. The two of them would …
Childhood PTSD and ANGER: Is it Ever a GOOD Thing? Read More »
When we’re talking about abuse and neglect in childhood, there’s no way to avoid placing blame on the parents who perpetrated the abuse or neglect. On some level, even if they had mental health problems or addictions that clouded their awareness, they had to know that what they were doing was wrong. This early …
Abuse and neglect in childhood can leave a lifelong residue of guilt for things that were never our fault. This same fuzzy thinking can ALSO make us numb to the awareness that we HAVE actually hurt someone. This can make it painful to decide whether to stay connected — or cut off contact — with …
Childhood PTSD and The Guilty Feeling: When Is It Real? Read More »
Do you ever get STUCK in thoughts of the trauma you endured in your childhood — and of all the hardships that hindered you as a result? It’s almost like being hypnotized… the dark thoughts cast a spell that makes it almost impossible to imagine feeling better. But there is a way to break the …
How to Get Your Hope Back After The Hardships of Childhood PTSD Read More »
For a lot of people with Childhood PTSD, the work we do to HEAL traumatic memories can become so consuming that we come to think of ourselves — to the exclusion of other parts of our identity — as traumatized people. This can be depressing and limiting, and it doesn’t have to be this way. …
Now that we know adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can cause neurological changes, the old, mostly psychological approaches to treating CPTSD are making way for newer, brain-based treatments that hold promise for millions of survivors. In this video I talk about four discoveries that transformed our old understanding of the problem. I describe more effective strategies …
CPTSD: Four Discoveries That Revolutionized Treatment Read More »
