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…
-
-
Why Trauma Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind
You are driving along fine until you pass a certain exit, and your chest tightens before you even register where you are. Or a stranger in the grocery store wears…
-
Big T Trauma, Little t Trauma, and Why Comparing Keeps You Stuck
“Other people had it worse.” If I had a dollar for every time somebody said that on my couch, I could pave my driveway with the dollars. It usually comes…
-
Trauma Is Not What Happened, It Is What Happened Inside You
I have lost count of how many people have opened a first session with some version of the same sentence. “I don’t even know why I’m here. Nothing that bad…
-
Forgiving Someone You Still Have to See
Most forgiveness advice has a quiet assumption baked into it, and once you spot it, you can’t unsee it. It assumes you can leave. Block the number, move the membership,…
-
When the Person Who Hurt You Never Says Sorry
Somebody reading this has an empty chair at the table. The conversation you were owed, the one where they finally look you in the eye and name what they did,…
-
What Forgiveness Looks Like on the Other Side of Betrayal
A client asked me once, near the end of a long stretch of work, how she would know when she had actually forgiven him. Not the churchy version. The real…
-
Forgiveness That Protects You
We’ve reached the last stretch of this series, and I want to open it with a picture from every Southern porch I’ve ever loved. The screen door. A screen door…
-
Learning to Speak Kindly to Yourself Again
Try something for me. For one day, just listen to how you talk to yourself. Write down the actual sentences. “Stupid.” “You always do this.” “No wonder.” Then look at…
-
Shame Is Not the Same as Responsibility
There’s a sorting job that has to happen in this stage of healing, and most of us were never taught how to do it. Somewhere in the pile of everything…
-
Releasing the Version of You Who Didn’t Know Then
There’s a woman you keep going back to visit, and every visit is the same. It’s the you from before, the one who said yes, who stayed, who believed him,…
-
When You Ignored Red Flags to Survive
The cruelest part of hindsight is how loud the signs get after the fact. Now that you know, you can’t unsee them, and the question starts circling: the flags were…
-
Forgiving Yourself for Trusting
Somewhere along the way, you started treating your trust like it was the crime. Like the open heart was the mistake, and the deceit was just what open hearts have…
-
The Hidden Self-Blame After Betrayal
We’ve spent eighteen posts on the betrayal and the person who did it. Now we turn to a courtroom nobody else can see, the one running inside you, where court’s…
-
Making Space for Healing at Your Own Pace
Somebody has probably already asked you the question, maybe kindly, maybe not. “Shouldn’t you be over this by now?” And maybe you’ve started asking yourself the same thing, holding your…
-
Faith After Betrayal
There’s a question you may be carrying that feels too dangerous to say in Sunday school. You prayed over that marriage. Then, you trusted God with that friendship, that church,…
-
When Forgiveness Is Delayed by Fear
I want to offer you a different way to look at the thing you’ve been calling your unforgiveness. What if it isn’t stubbornness at all? What if it’s fear, standing…
-
Letting Yourself Feel Without Being Consumed
“If I start crying, I’ll never stop.” I’ve heard that sentence in my office more times than I can count, and I understand why it feels true. The grief behind…
-
Hypervigilance, Anxiety, and the Aftermath of Hurt
You check the phone and read the room. Then, you notice the pause before an answer, the tone shift, the door that closed a little differently than usual. And at…
-
When Shame Isn’t Yours to Carry
Let me point out something odd, and see if it sounds familiar. They did the lying. They did the breaking. And somehow you’re the one who ducks out of conversations,…