You’re not necessarily an angry person. You’re likely a person whose anger is trying to tell you something. The question isn’t how to stop being angry — it’s what your anger is protecting. Here’s something that often surprises people: anger is almost never the primary emotion. It’s a protector. Underneath almost every anger response is something softer and more vulnerable — hurt, fear, grief, the feeling of being unseen, dismissed, or like you simply don’t matter. So the nervous system reaches for anger first. But that raises a bigger question — why did yours learn to do that? And what is it actually trying to say? [ Continue reading ]

  Something brought you here. Maybe it’s the anxiety that won’t quit, the relationships that keep going sideways, or the feeling that no matter how hard you try, something keeps pulling you back. You’ve probably wondered — at least once — if something is fundamentally wrong with you. It isn’t. Here’s what’s actually happening →

Did you know that more than 80% of people whose symptoms meet full criteria for PTSD also meet the criteria for at least one other diagnosis — most commonly depression, anxiety, or a substance use disorder? That's not four separate problems. It's often one nervous system response, given several different diagnoses. My Own Blind Spot I didn't have a diagnosis of depression or anxiety. But what I did have was ADHD and an autoimmune disease — Multiple Sclerosis. The ADHD was likely my nervous system on high alert, because it’s difficult to focus when you are in flight or flight. The MS resulted from decades of elevated cortisol and stress hormones running unchecked, that resulted in physical inflammation and immune system dysfunction.   I'd been in therapy for most of my adult life. I was doing the work. I thought I understood my own trauma fairly well. I figured I didn’t have any PTSD anymore, because I wasn’t having flashbacks or nightmares about the trauma anymore.  The...

"That person totally triggered me." We hear it everywhere. Someone cuts us off in traffic — triggered. A coworker says something irritating — triggered. A comment on social media gets under our skin — triggered. What most people mean is: I'm annoyed. Bothered. Irritated. But for someone with a trauma history, being triggered is something profoundly different. And when we use this word interchangeably with annoyance, something damaging happens — not just to the language, but to the people who need it most. Continue Reading

  If you've ever wondered why it's so hard to leave a painful relationship, or why you kept returning to someone who hurt you — this is for you. Not because something is wrong with you. Not because you are weak or broken. But because what happened to you has a name, and understanding it may be one of the most important steps you take toward healing. When Words Get Misused, Real Suffering Gets Minimized Lately, the phrase "trauma bonding" has been showing up everywhere — in TikTok videos, casual conversation, even as a lighthearted way to describe friendships forged over shared struggles. "Trauma-bonded besties." "We trauma-bonded instead of going to therapy." Continue reading

  Do you ever notice that you have a hard time letting go of your mistakes? Maybe your mind goes on autopilot with all the what ifs . Or you replay a situation over and over, beating yourself up for missteps you wish you could undo. Maybe you compare yourself to others—sometimes favorably, sometimes not. Or you get triggered and traumatic memories surface, pulling you into rumination. However it shows up, the loop is the same: round and round you go, full of angst. If you’re a social person, this rumination may show up as talking things through repeatedly. Each time, it feels like just one more conversation will bring relief—yet it never quite does. If you’re not social, it may all happen silently in your head. Either way, it’s exhausting—especially because it’s rarely the thoughts that build you up that get revisited. It’s the ones that tear you down. Continue reading