Trauma
What is it like to do PC?
After a sexual assault or trauma, our brain doesn’t simply “move on” like it does after other events. When you think about what happened, it feels on some level like it’s still happening – your brain hasn’t moved it into long-term memory storage. When triggered, that memory pops right up and our thoughts, body, and…
< Read More >9 Things Your Trauma Therapist Wants You to Know
It’s possible to heal. There may always be a scar but there isn’t always a pain. If you’re experiencing it, then other people do too. You are not alone. Shame often develops after trauma. It is an emotion – the feeling or sense of being “bad”. Shame can feel intense but that doesn’t make it…
< Read More >What’s Love Got to Do with It? The challenging nature of intimacy after trauma
Many people who reach out to me wanting to do trauma therapy do so because a partner is urging them to, their relationship is falling apart, intimacy is triggering, or feeling connected to others feels inexplicably difficult. Let’s explore why relationships can feel so challenging for people who have experienced sexual assault or other forms…
< Read More >Below the Words: Working with the Body in Trauma Therapy
My colleague, Jackson Ravenscroft, does such an amazing job explaining why we work with the body in trauma processing. I am excited to share their most recent article here on why “just talking about it” doesn’t work when it comes to healing from trauma. Jackson is a psychotherapist in Boston, MA specializing in the treatment…
< Read More >7 Tips for Friends and Lovers of Sexual Assault Survivors
Some people when they hear your story, contract. Others upon hearing your story, expand. And this is how you know. -Nayyirah Waheed A client of mine recently relayed a devastating story. After much pushing from her boyfriend to tell him more about her she told him about an experience of sexual assault. And then he…
< Read More >Trauma Impostor Syndrome: Everyone has it worse than me
I was recently listening to a client invalidate her experience of emotional abuse in childhood by the “other people had it worse than me” sentiment and it dawned on me what we were dealing with here was not a passing thought but a full-blown strategy – one with gnarly roots and gangly, thorned branches. And…
< Read More >Why didn’t I fight back? The myth of fight or flight responses to trauma
Shame is a common and especially pernicious response to experiencing a traumatic event. Not only has something terrible just happened, you also might be looking to assign what your role in it was or trying to suss out how much you are to blame. In some ways this is actually a handy trick our brain…
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