Faith, Safety, and the Nervous System
Refuge. Fortress. Strong tower. Hiding place. Shelter under His wings. A very present help in trouble. Line those words up and notice what they have in common. When the writers…
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Co-Regulation: Healing Happens Around Safe People
Watch a mama with a crying baby and you will see the oldest medicine on earth. She does not explain to the baby that the situation is manageable. She picks…
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Learning to Feel Safe in Your Body Again
Every so often a client shows up ready to charge straight at the worst memory on the first visit. They come at it with machete out and a “let’s go”….
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How Trauma Survivors Can Strengthen Their Minds and Build Lasting Resilience
This is a guest post from a contributing writer. The words and views here are the author’s own. I read every guest submission before it runs. However, publishing is not…
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Fawn Mode: When You Lose Yourself to Keep the Peace
I asked her what she wanted, and I meant it as a small question. What do you want to see change in your marriage, your week, your life? She laughed…
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Freeze Mode: When Your Body Shuts Down
Remember the man from earlier in this series, the one who goes completely blank when his wife raises her voice? We owe him a whole post, because freeze is the…
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Flight Mode: When You Can’t Slow Down
She showed me her calendar like it was evidence, and honestly, it was. Three months, not one white square. Work, church committee, kids’ ball, the extra project she volunteered for,…
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Fight Mode: When Anger Is Armor
Everybody in his life calls him a hothead, and nobody says it to his face. His wife measures her words at supper. His kids read the sound of the truck…
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Generational Trauma: What Gets Passed Down Quietly
Every family hands down a recipe box. Some of the cards are pure treasure. The cornbread dressing, the way your people tell stories on the porch, the hymns everybody knows…
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The Trauma of Loving Somebody Through Addiction
You can read a driveway like scripture when you love an addict. Which way the tires crunch the gravel, how long the truck sits before the door opens, what the…
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When Grief Is Also Trauma
I keep a snow globe in my mind for every grieving person I have ever sat with. Early on, the snow never settles. The globe stays shaken, whiteout conditions, and…
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Sexual Trauma and the Long Road Back to Feeling Safe
I am going to write this one carefully. I will tell you up front what I tell clients: nothing here will be graphic. Some of you need this post. Then…
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Emotional Abuse and Domestic Violence: The Wounds Nobody Can See
“He never hit me. So why do I feel like this?” She asked me that with her hands twisted in her lap, apologizing for taking up an appointment somebody with…
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Religious Trauma: When Faith Got Used as a Weapon
“I can’t open my Bible without my chest getting tight.” The woman who said that to me loved God. That was the part tearing her up. She was not an…
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Medical Trauma: When the Place That Saves You Also Scares You
I can still tell you what the monitor sounded like. Anybody who has spent real time in a children’s hospital can. The particular chirp of the pulse ox. That alarm…
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Betrayal Trauma: When the Wound Came From Somebody You Loved
A wreck never claimed to love you. The tornado did not sit across the supper table for eleven years. Whatever else those storms take, they do not take your history…
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Complex Trauma: When the Harm Never Let Up
When I ask some clients to tell me about the worst thing that ever happened to them, they go quiet, and not because the answer is too painful to say….
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Childhood Trauma and the Wounds Nobody Saw
“But they fed me. I always had a roof over my head.” Grown adults say that to me all the time, usually while trying to talk themselves out of the…
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God Is Near the Broken, Not Disappointed in Them
“I thought I was a bad Christian because I still flinch.” A woman said that in my office years into her healing, and she said it the way people confess…
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Trauma Responses Are Survival Skills, Not Flaws
“What is wrong with me?” A grown man asked me that in my office, ashamed to his shoes, after describing how he goes completely blank when his wife raises her…