You Don’t Have to Relive Your Past to Change Your Relationship With It One of the questions I sometimes ask someone sitting across from me sounds a little strange at first. “When did this response make sense?” Not: What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you over this? Why are you still letting this bother you? Why can’t you just move on? When did this response make sense? Because sometimes the thing causing problems in your life today started as a perfectly understandable response to something that happened yesterday. Maybe yesterday was last year. Maybe it was twenty years ago. Maybe…
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Understanding Your Internal Alarm System A smoke detector has one job. Detect smoke. That’s it. It doesn’t know whether your house is on fire or you left the toast in the toaster thirty seconds too long. It detects something that might indicate danger and sounds the alarm. Loudly. Which is exactly what you want when there’s a fire. It’s considerably less helpful when you’re standing underneath it waving a dish towel because breakfast got a little crispy. But here’s the interesting part. The smoke detector isn’t necessarily broken. It’s trying to protect you. It’s just responding to something that isn’t…
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Understanding the Automatic Patterns That Keep Us Stuck “I know better.” I have heard some version of those three words more times than I could possibly count. I know I shouldn’t worry about this. I know I need to say no. I know I don’t need everybody’s approval. I know this person isn’t the person who hurt me. I know cigarettes are bad for me. I know I’m safe. Usually, the person saying those words isn’t confused about what they should do. That’s what makes the problem so frustrating. They already understand it. They’ve thought about it. They’ve probably talked…
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The Work That Finally Lets Your Nervous System Breathe Again People toss the word trauma around like it is a trend. A buzzword. A diagnosis. A label you slap on your chest when life feels heavy. But trauma is not a label. Trauma is not the event. Trauma is the imprint the event leaves behind in the nervous system. It is the unfinished survival response your body never got to complete. And that is the part most people misunderstand.Trauma is not stored in your memory.It is stored in your physiology. You do not relive trauma because you forgot something.You relive…
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