When Your Partner Cannot or Refuses to Understand Trauma

Posted on January 5, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

One of the most destabilizing dynamics for a trauma-impacted nervous system is not the original harm. It is ongoing misattunement inside an intimate relationship.

When a partner cannot or refuses to understand trauma, the problem is not a lack of information. It is a relational failure.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, trauma is not a story someone tells. It is a state the body organizes around when safety has been repeatedly violated. That organization shapes perception, reactivity, capacity for trust, and tolerance for closeness. It is not optional. It is not a mindset issue. It is not something a partner can override by insisting on normalcy.

When a partner dismisses, minimizes, intellectualizes, or reframes trauma as overreaction, they are not neutral. They are introducing threat into the relationship. And nervous systems track threat far more reliably than words.

What Is Actually Happening
A partner who refuses to understand trauma often does one or more of the following:  prioritize their comfort over your safety, demand explanations instead of offering curiosity, frame your responses as character flaws or bad habits, interpret your limits as rejection, or expect you to self-regulate in conditions that remain unsafe. These are dominance moves, conscious or not.

From an IPNB lens, connection requires mutual regulation. That means both people adjust in response to impact. When only one person is expected to adapt, the relationship becomes hierarchical. Hierarchy drives stress. Stress drives symptoms. The system stays overloaded.

You cannot heal in an environment that keeps asking your nervous system to perform against its own survival cues.

Stop Trying to Make Them Understand
This is hard to acknowledge, but it is important. If someone has been given clear information about trauma and continues to dismiss its impact, more explaining will not create safety. It will create further exposure.

Education only works when curiosity exists. Without curiosity, education becomes self-betrayal. Your nervous system does not need their agreement to be valid. It needs predictability, responsiveness, and respect for limits.

What You Can Do Instead
First, orient to reality. Ask yourself one clear question, “Does my partner change their behavior when I name impact?” Not their words, or intentions, but behavior.

If the answer is no, then your task shifts. It is no longer about being understood. It is about reducing harm. That may look like naming boundaries without debate, reducing emotional exposure, stopping attempts to co-regulate with someone who escalates you, building external sources of safety and resonance, or letting go of the fantasy that love alone creates capacity. This is not punitive, but protective.

IPNB is clear on this point. Regulation emerges in conditions of safety. Safety is not created by insisting someone tolerate what hurts them. It is created by adjusting the environment.

About Staying or Leaving
People often ask whether they should stay with a partner who cannot understand trauma. That is not an abstract moral question, but a physiological one.

If your body is chronically bracing, collapsing, or mobilizing around your partner, then the relationship itself is adding load. Over time, systems under load degrade. That includes immune function, digestion, sleep, and relational capacity.

Staying requires real change. Not promises. Not insight. Change you can feel. Leaving is not failure. It is sometimes the first act of regulation a person has ever been allowed to make.

The Bottom Line
Trauma recovery does not happen through persuasion, but through safety. A partner does not need to fully understand trauma theory to be safe. They need to respect the impact, adjust their behavior, and relinquish dominance.

If they cannot or will not do that, the work becomes yours. Not to fix yourself or the relationship, but to protect your nervous system from further harm. That is not selfish, but biology.

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The Egregious Falsehood of “Post-Traumatic Growth”

Posted on January 2, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

What people call “post-traumatic growth” is actually recovery after the allostatic load is reduced.

People sometimes tell me I am experiencing “post-traumatic growth.” They say it like it’s a compliment, and I should feel encouraged. As if this is the gold at the end of seven years of fighting for my life. That’s a falsehood.

In reality, I can finally function a little better after years of severe trauma followed by even more severe trauma at the hands of people and systems that claimed to help. And now that I’m not actively drowning every second, people want to rebrand that as growth.

NO.

I am trying to recover what I once was. I am working doggedly to reclaim capacities I had before I asked for help and paid for it with my body, relationships, sense of safety, and my future. I am still a fraction of who I was. I have recovered only a fraction of the range, stamina, and level of well-being I once had.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, trauma does not create growth, but narrows life. It forces survival and strips choice. It demands constant threat detection at the expense of connection, creativity, learning, and rest. Nothing about that produces expansion.

What people call post-traumatic growth usually shows up only after the threat finally decreases and some safety is restored. After connection becomes possible again. When the relentless demands on the system ease just enough that life can start to re-enter the picture.

That’s not trauma making someone better. That’s recovery: capacity slowly coming back online once it is no longer being crushed.

When I hear “look how much you’ve grown,” I’m reminded that my massive losses are still invisible: years I didn’t get to live, work I couldn’t do, relationships I couldn’t sustain, and capacities that vanished when survival took over. The person I was before asking for help, before being harmed again and again for being honest about the egregious harms done to me throughout my life by people in positions of power.

Calling this growth skips over the brutal truth. It smooths the story into something palatable. It lets people avoid grappling with how much damage was done, how preventable it was, and how long recovery takes when harm is chronic and institutional.

It also quietly puts the burden back on the person who was harmed. If trauma leads to growth, then suffering is reframed as meaningful. Necessary, even. The abusive systems don’t have to change if the injury becomes the teacher. It lands like being met with what pain specialists call “the C6 salute.” Middle finger up!

But what I’ve learned did not come from trauma. It came from surviving it without adequate support. I had to see clearly because denial was no longer an option, because I experienced what happens to human beings when hierarchy, cruelty, and neglect are built into the structures that claim authority over our lives.

From an IPNB lens, humans grow in environments that support safety, dignity, and mutual care. Trauma disrupts that process. Prolonged threat reshapes what is possible in the moment because survival demands it. When the pressure finally eases, the nervous system does what it has always tried to do: return toward life. Toward homeostasis. 

That return can look dramatic from the outside:  insight, boundaries, refusal to tolerate harm, and clearer values. But none of that requires trauma as a prerequisite. Those capacities flourish in supportive environments, too. The difference is that trauma makes naming the cost vital.

I don’t celebrate “post-traumatic growth.” I present recovery as what it is: slow, uneven, incomplete, and hard-won. I share the truth that I am still rebuilding after years of being pushed past human limits. I present the loss alongside the persistence.

The only thing that deserves recognition is the relentless drive toward life that keeps showing up even after everything that tries to shut it down. That, and the rage and determination that kept me fighting a “healthcare” system and domination culture that drove me excruciatingly close to death. 

Calling this “post-traumatic growth” is an egregious falsehood, and I won’t stand for it. It erases loss, launders harm, and turns recovery into a feel-good story so no one has to look too closely at what was done or why it keeps happening. Trauma did not give me anything. It stole from me, repeatedly, and what you see now is me fighting to reclaim ground I already had, under conditions that should never have existed. I will not let language be used to soften cruelty, excuse systems that overload human beings, or rewrite survival as transformation. Recovery deserves honesty. Anything less is just another way of treating harm as acceptable.

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Why I Am Skeptical of EMDR For Trauma Recovery

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology perspective, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) isn’t about eye movements or “reprogramming.” It’s a relational, neurophysiological process that uses bilateral stimulation as a way to engage both hemispheres of the brain while the person accesses distressing material in a context of safety and attunement.

The core mechanism isn’t the tapping or the eye movement itself, but the combination of dual attention and relational safety. The client holds one foot in the past (the traumatic memory) and one foot in the present (the attuned connection with the therapist and sensory awareness of being safe now). That state of simultaneous activation allows the nervous system to integrate experiences that were previously fragmented or frozen in survival mode.

When traumatic experiences happen without adequate relational support, the nervous system stores them as unprocessed threat responses–images, sensations, emotions, and impulses–rather than as coherent memories. EMDR can reopen those stored fragments within a safe enough window of tolerance, so they can finally link up with other neural and relational networks associated with calm, competence, and connection.

So, through an IPNB lens, EMDR is a co-regulated integration process. The eye movements are a gentle rhythm that supports regulation, but the true healing comes from:

The relationship (attuned, safe, co-regulating)

The activation (accessing the memory without being overwhelmed)

The integration (linking the traumatic memory with present safety and broader networks of meaning).

EMDR works when the nervous system learns, within a relational field, that it no longer has to live in the time of threat. The body gets to update its story.

Unfortunately, many EMDR practitioners are trained in the protocol but not in the underlying neurobiological and relational mechanisms that make it work. They’re taught to “follow the script,” but not how to track their own regulation or the client’s shifting state moment to moment. Without that understanding, they often mistake compliance for safety and procedure for healing.

From an IPNB standpoint, it’s the relational synchrony–the living, reciprocal connection–that allows the brain to integrate traumatic material. The therapist’s attunement regulates the client’s nervous system enough to tolerate activation. If that attunement is missing, the process becomes mechanical, disconnected, and sometimes harmful.

Many practitioners were trained in models that separate “technique” from “relationship,” as if the latter is secondary. But in truth, EMDR without deep interpersonal awareness is like trying to dance with someone who’s not actually in the room. The moves might look right, but nothing alive is happening between them.

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Trauma and the Anti-Human System: Why Psychiatric ‘Care’ Fails

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

A pain specialist referred me to the Johns Hopkins Hospital Pain Treatment Program (PTP) because it is supposed to be one of the top hospitals in the country for pain. When you’re living inside a body that’s been pushed past its limits by trauma, medical harm, and years of fighting just to survive, you follow the path you’re told will lead to real help. I went in expecting support from people who understood pain. What I found was a system that had no interest in my lived experience and no understanding of what a lifetime of trauma actually does to a person’s capacity to function.

The head of their pain treatment program, Dr. Glenn Jordan Treisman, told me my nervous system “believes it’s being dive-bombed by lions.” That part was accurate. A lifetime of threat, trauma, and the constant grind of trying to stay alive inside systems that don’t give a damn will do that. But his idea of treatment was nonsense. He wanted to lock me in a secure psychiatric ward for at least three weeks and pump me full of chemicals. Then he’d send me straight back into the same unsafe environment I’d come from, the environment that pushed me to ask for help in the first place. That isn’t medicine. That’s adding more threat to a system already drowning.

If I’d been able to in that moment, I would have asked him what he thought happens to a human being when you take them out of the few spaces where they still feel a shred of safety, strip away their relationships, isolate them in a locked unit run on rules designed for control instead of healing, take away the one medicine that actually helps them, flood them with heavy psychiatric drugs for weeks, then release them back into the same unsafe world with even fewer connections than before. From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) lens, the outcome is obvious. You push them deeper into survival mode. You erode their capacity for connection. You damage the very conditions required for recovery.

But Treisman never even considered that. He bypassed the reality of trauma completely and tried to pin everything on me. He dismissed the lifetime of harm that shaped my nervous system and told me I was born with familial dysautonomia. That was nonsense. I would never have survived into adulthood with that. I didn’t show symptoms of dysautonomia until recent years, until after the mental illness industry piled on more threat, dismissal, and load.

This is what these systems do. They pull vulnerable people into environments that mirror captivity, then call it care. They ignore the inherent hierarchy and domination of their own institutions. They pretend that social forces, cultural forces, and medical violence have nothing to do with a person’s suffering. And when people collapse under that weight, they say it’s our fault.

The setup is so anti-human that it’s amazing the suicide rate isn’t even higher. We all know why it spikes after people are released from psychiatric hospitals. They go in seeking help and get harmed by the very institutions they turned to. They come out with less safety in their bodies and their lives. They’re isolated, overloaded, stripped of connection, and then handed more pills and told they’re not trying hard enough.

From an IPNB perspective, the pattern is clear. Humans come back to life through connection, safety, and community. You can’t restore a person’s capacity to regulate by subjecting them to domination, isolation, and contempt. You can’t heal someone by removing everything that keeps them even a little anchored. And you sure as hell can’t tell someone living with a lifetime of trauma that they’re the problem and call that care.

They disable us, deny they’ve disabled us, then blame us for sinking.

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The Gilded Age Values of the Modern Mental Illness Industry

Posted on December 26, 2025 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

The dominant culture continues to enforce many of the values of the Gilded Age, especially those related to economic inequality, individual responsibility, and the criminalization of marginalized groups. While there have been some advances in social justice, the structures of wealth and power that were solidified during the Gilded Age remain, and they continue to shape modern society and policy. In many ways, the individualization of societal problems, punitive social control, and the focus on charity over systemic change are still being used to maintain the status quo and protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful, much as they were in the late 19th century.

The mental illness industry upholds, promotes, and aligns with Gilded Age values in several ways that reinforce individualism, blame-the-victim attitudes, and the social control of marginalized populations. These values, deeply embedded in the historical context of the Gilded Age, continue to shape how the mental illness industry functions today.

Individualization of Social Problems

   – Gilded Age Value: The Gilded Age promoted the idea that social inequality and suffering were the result of personal failings, not systemic oppression. This view reinforced a hierarchy in which those who succeeded were deemed more deserving, while those who struggled were blamed for their own misfortune.

   – Mental Illness Industry: In the modern mental illness industry, mental illness and psychological distress are often framed as individual issues. The emphasis is on diagnosis, treatment, and behavioral change at the personal level, rather than addressing the structural causes of distress, such as poverty, discrimination, or economic inequality. 

     – This individualization places the responsibility for mental health on the person, rather than on broader societal issues. For example, trauma-informed care is often still not fully integrated into mainstream practices, leaving many people without the context that helps them understand their struggles as responses to external pressures, not just personal failures.

 Blame-the-Victim Mentality

   – Gilded Age Value: The poor and marginalized were often blamed for their own conditions, seen as deserving of their hardship because of perceived laziness, moral failure, or lack of self-discipline. Wealth and success were framed as a result of hard work, while poverty was attributed to personal shortcomings.

   – Mental Illness Industry: The mental illness industry often upholds this blame-the-victim mentality. Mental illness or addiction is frequently portrayed as something that individuals are responsible for overcoming, rather than as a response to environmental or societal factors. This becomes especially evident in the focus on self-help, resilience, and personal responsibility, without giving equal weight to the external pressures that individuals face, such as systemic violence, racial discrimination, and the impact of economic inequality.

   – For instance, individuals struggling with mental health challenges are often encouraged to “fix themselves” through therapy, medications, or behavioral changes, without sufficient attention to how they are affected by cultural, institutional, or structural forces that perpetuate mental suffering.

Pathologizing the Poor and Marginalized

   – Gilded Age Value: The Gilded Age saw the emergence of institutions like asylums, which often medicalized and pathologized the poor and those considered “deviant,” especially immigrants, the mentally ill, and women. These individuals were labeled as abnormal and were often subjected to involuntary treatment or control.

   – Mental Illness Industry: Similarly, the mental illness industry has a history of pathologizing behaviors and experiences that arise from oppression and trauma. Issues like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and addiction are often treated as personal pathologies, without sufficient recognition of the social and historical forces that contribute to them. This can lead to the medicalization of social problems, making individuals feel responsible for their condition and further marginalizing them.

     – Diagnostic labels often fail to acknowledge the role of external, structural forces (e.g., poverty, violence, systemic racism) and instead place the focus solely on the individual’s behavioral or psychological responses.

 Emphasis on Charity and Control Over Systemic Change

   – Gilded Age Value: The wealthy industrialists of the Gilded Age engaged in philanthropy, but often to maintain social control. They believed that charity would alleviate the suffering of the poor, but they saw little need to address the systems of inequality that perpetuated poverty and suffering.

   – Mental Illness Industry: The mental illness field often treats distress as something to be fixed through individual efforts (e.g., therapy, medications, personal resilience), rather than through social reforms or addressing broader systems of inequality. This echoes the charitable but paternalistic approach of Gilded Age philanthropists, who provided aid but were unwilling to challenge the societal structures that created inequality.

     – For example, mental health funding and services are often framed as “helping” individuals by addressing their psychological needs. This overlooks the underlying social determinants of health, such as poverty, racism, lack of access to education, or housing instability, that directly contribute to mental health issues.

Focus on Social Control and Discipline

   – Gilded Age Value: During the Gilded Age, institutions like the prison system, mental hospitals, and workhouses were designed to control and discipline populations seen as deviant or undesirable. The poor, immigrants, women, and minorities were often subjected to these institutions as a way to maintain the status quo and reinforce the existing power structures.

   – Mental Illness Industry: In the modern mental illness industry, there is often a focus on behavioral modification and the normalization of individuals to fit into the existing social structure. Therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), too often focus on helping individuals “manage” or “modify” their behaviors to fit into the dominant culture, rather than challenging the systemic oppression that causes mental health struggles in the first place.

     – In many ways, the mental illness industry mirrors the social control functions of the Gilded Age institutions, where marginalized people are often subjected to therapeutic interventions that aim to normalize them, rather than questioning the systems that created their suffering.

 Sustaining the Status Quo

   – Gilded Age Value: The Gilded Age promoted the idea of a natural social order in which those at the top were seen as inherently deserving of their wealth and power, while those at the bottom were seen as inferior or lazy. This reinforced a status quo that protected the interests of the wealthy and powerful.

   – Mental Illness Industry: The mental illness industry continues to maintain the status quo by focusing on the individual and pathologizing behaviors or emotional states that arise from structural inequality, instead of addressing those structural factors themselves. This dynamic helps to preserve the social order, as it diverts attention away from the larger systems of power that are responsible for inequality and social suffering, keeping focus on individual self-improvement rather than systemic change.

The mental illness industry upholds many of the Gilded Age values, including the individualization of social problems, the blame-the-victim mentality, the pathologizing of the marginalized, and social control through medicalization and therapy. While the individual focus in therapy may be useful in some cases, it fails to address the systemic factors that shape mental health and perpetuate inequality. This aligns with the historical forces of the Gilded Age, where wealthy elites used charity and philanthropy to control and regulate the lower classes, while simultaneously upholding a social system that kept the status quo intact. Ultimately, these dynamics prevent meaningful change from occurring at the societal level and maintain the dominance of existing power structures.

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The Madness I Lived, the Meaning I Made: A Cohesive Narrative For an Extreme Life

Posted on December 22, 2025 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Creating a cohesive narrative of one’s life is one of the most powerful ways to make sense of what we’ve been through. It allows us to see patterns, understand our survival strategies, and reclaim a sense of agency in a world that often felt chaotic or unsafe. It can be especially challenging when the childhood you need to integrate is fragmented or partially lost. Memories are patchy, experiences feel disconnected, and the pieces of yourself that should fit together can feel like they belong to someone else entirely. Building a narrative in the face of that challenge is hard work, but it’s also a lifeline: a way to gather the scattered parts of yourself, honor your survival, and finally see the meaning you’ve made from a life that was anything but easy. The following is my cohesive narrative:

I came into this world in a neurophysiological storm. My early environments were not the kind where a child learns they’re safe, or wanted, or worthy just because they exist. They were largely places in which safety was conditional and could vanish any moment. Connection was unlikely, and too many times, the people I needed most were the ones I had to protect myself from, because nobody else would. That was my normal.

Even as a kid, my nervous system never got to rest. Every interaction was a calculation of how to avoid someone else’s temper, disappear in plain sight, and keep my body and mind intact enough to get through the next hour or even a minute of severe abuse. I learned that survival meant I had to pay close attention, read people down to the microexpression, and store the information. I also learned not to expect rescue. Because nobody even wanted to know about it.

And yet, I was never the kind to fold. I pushed back. Even as a child, I stood up to people much bigger and more dangerous than me. Sometimes the only thing worse than the risk of retaliation is the cost of staying silent. I learned early that there are moments where you choose: be broken down, or stand your ground. I stood my ground even when it meant I paid for it later.

Adulthood didn’t bring relief; it just raised the stakes. I entered medical, legal, and institutional systems that claimed to exist for protection and care, only to find they ran on the same rules I grew up with: protect the powerful, discredit the harmed, and keep the machine running. When I was harmed in a way that shattered my body and altered my entire life, the worst injury came in the years of neglect, dismissal, and outright obstruction from the people whose job was to help me recover.

For years, I begged for the care I needed. I wasn’t asking for miracles, just for people to do their jobs without hurting me more. Every delay, every missed opportunity for treatment, every arrogant refusal to listen carved deeper into my health. That’s how I ended up with multiple chronic conditions that are largely iatrogenic. That’s how my world became smaller, my pain sharper, and my survival far harder.

And still, I’ve kept building circles of safe people, moments of connection, and art that pulls the trauma out of my body and into the world where it can be seen. I’ve learned how to track what my system needs and to fight like hell to get it. I’ve learned that homeostasis isn’t just a biological concept. It is also the ground for joy, creativity, and love. I’ve learned that it’s not enough to survive; you have to keep your humanity intact, even when you’re frequently dehumanized.

Somewhere along the way, I came to understand what Arthur Miller meant in “After the Fall” about kissing one’s life and taking it into one’s arms. It doesn’t mean I approve of or even accept what happened, but claiming it as mine, all of it, without pretending or cutting pieces away. And even as I hold it, I know I’m not doing this alone. There is hope for me outside myself. It’s in the humanity of the people around me, especially as I help create the conditions for that humanity to emerge more freely. Every time someone meets me with care, listens without defense, or stands beside me in this fight, that hope becomes real.

Now, the fight for justice is the fight of my life. It will not fix what happened, but it’s the one chance I have to stop them from doing it to someone else. It’s the culmination of every survival adaptation I’ve ever made: reading the terrain, holding the line, refusing to disappear. I know powerful forces don’t want this story told. But I’ve lived my entire life in environments that tried to silence me, and I’m still here, still speaking.

I am who I am because of every environment I was given, and because I refused to let them define the limits of what I could do. I’ve carried harm that never should have been, and I’ve carried it with my head up. The same patterns that once kept me alive in danger now fuel the work I do to build safety for myself, others, and the communities I touch.

That’s my story, my cohesive narrative, how I make sense of my life. It’s not tidy, it’s not over, and it’s not one I would wish on anyone. But it’s mine. And as long as I have breath, I will use it to make sure the systems that failed me can’t pretend they didn’t know.

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When Healthcare Feels Dangerous: How Practitioners Shape Our Capacity to Heal

Posted on December 19, 2025 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

When I tell a practitioner that I’m not doing well, and they dismiss or minimize what I say–what I share of my lived experience–it makes everything worse. It increases my sense of unsafety. It pushes me even further onto Red Alert. When you’re in survival mode, you can’t focus on the things that make life worth living, the things that spark delight, joy, and pleasure. That’s a luxury you simply can’t afford.

The vast majority of the many healthcare practitioners I’ve met have no clue how to attune or connect. They don’t understand that compassionate witnessing, empathy, and recognition of strengths actively support the nervous system’s ability to function properly and maintain balance. They don’t grasp that their own state–how safe, grounded, and embodied they are–has a greater effect on our nervous systems than the influence of most other people in our lives. Their position gives them a sacred privilege, a greatly enhanced capacity to support or undermine someone else’s well-being.

The effect does not come from mere good intentions. It emerges from their authenticity, embodiment, and sense of safety in themselves and in the environment. But most of them are working in unsafe conditions: rushed, pressured, and full of cues that signal threat. Yet, we are expected to turn to these people, who themselves feel unsafe, for reassurance that we are safe. That’s insane.

From a neurobiological perspective, when someone in a caregiving role fails to provide a safe, attuned presence, it triggers the body’s survival systems. Energy goes to vigilance, hyperarousal, and self-protection, leaving almost nothing available for engagement, learning, joy, or connection. Safety is the foundation for all growth and repair, and when that foundation is missing, recovery and well-being are undermined at their core.

It is critical that healthcare practitioners understand the real, physiological impact of being seen, or not seen, by someone in a position of power and trust. Until healthcare acknowledges and addresses this dynamic, too many people, including healthcare practitioners, will continue to suffer unnecessarily.

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An Open Letter to ChristianaCare Patient and Family Relations

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

To Denise, Charlie, Kellie, Manasi, and Jennifer of ChristianaCare Patient and Family Relations:

Since ChristianaCare banned me from contacting any of its employees because I won’t stop talking about the gynecologist who performed medicalized Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) on me, I thought I would write an open letter to you.

You may not remember me, but I remember you. I remember the soft voices, the courteous language, the practiced expressions. I remember the calm professionalism and even the artificial warmth that cloaked the quiet violence of your role.

Because that’s what it was, violence served up as caring. I came to you carrying harm: deep, life-altering harm caused by someone in your institution. I came seeking recognition, repair, and basic human dignity, based on the hospital’s declaration that

“Patient relations specialists can:

  •  Serve as your advocate.
  •  Encourage communication between you and your treatment team.
  •  Address your concerns.
  •  Assist in resolving conflicts or disagreements.
  •  Keep you informed of your rights and responsibilities.
  •  Ensure that your rights as well as the rights of all patients and staff are respected.”

What I encountered instead was a protracted performance intended to convince me to hush up and go away. That performance is a betrayal.

When a person harmed by an institution turns to that institution for help and meets containment rather than compassion, it compounds the harm. The nervous system doesn’t recognize bureaucratic gestures as safety. It recognizes attunement, responsiveness, and acknowledgment. And when it doesn’t get those, especially after trauma, it goes into shutdown, despair, and collapse.

You may think you have done your job. But your work reinforced the original wound: my experience didn’t matter, the pain your institution caused wasn’t real enough to change anything, and my suffering was an inconvenience to be managed. You became the mouthpiece of the system that harmed me.

This is institutional betrayal, and it doesn’t fade. It lands in the body. It disrupts the natural recovery process and locks the injury in place. It keeps people stuck in survival mode. It cuts off access to hope. And it often does more damage than the initial event.

What are we supposed to believe when the people whose title is “Patient and Family Relations” treat us as public relations problems? When we come to you injured and aggrieved, and are told to stop making trouble? That is not care. That is erasure.

While you might not recognize it, I want you to know what you are part of. You aren’t protecting people; you are protecting power. You protected the doctor who hurt me. You protect a hospital’s image. And in doing so, you help ensure that no one will be held accountable, no one will change, and others will likely be hurt again.

You closed the door on every person who might come after. And the worst part is, you closed something off in yourselves. There is no way to do your job without disconnecting from your humanity, learning to numb the part of you that wants to care, and slowly forgetting that real healing requires risk and that empathy is not a script, but a relationship.

If you went into this work because you wanted to help people, I’m writing to say that’s still possible. But not like this. Not by playing defense for a system that rewards silence and punishes truth. Not by gaslighting the people who are already bleeding and calling it “resolution.”

You still have a choice. And so do I.

The culture of disconnection from empathy, accountability, and the real impact on human lives protects predators and other abusers in power. Healing systems would require connection: to one another, to truth, and the shared responsibility of safety and integrity. Without that, the same patterns repeat, no matter who holds what title.

I’m choosing to speak, write, paint, and reclaim what your institution tried to strip from me: my voice, my value, and my story.

You can keep doing what the system asks of you. Or you can remember who you are and why you chose to sit in that seat across from people like me. The people who are hurting. The people who need you to be more than polite. The people who need you to be real.

Sincerely,

Shay Seaborne
Someone your institution deeply harmed and tried to silence

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Doubly Cursed: The Cultural Victimization of Victims

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

My painting that depicts the culture simultaneously shaming, pinning, and burning a trauma survivor–who has been flattened, toasted, and bitten repeatedly–for being unable to stand up and produce.

I’ve experienced being dismissed, blamed, and pathologized for being harmed. Caregivers minimized my distress, family members judged me for expressing it, and acquaintances labeled me oversensitive when I tried to speak about what happened. The world treated me not as a human being responding to trauma, but as someone holding onto it unnecessarily, as though my nervous system’s attempts to survive were a moral failing.

This is how mainstream culture responds to victimhood. It doesn’t want to acknowledge the cruelty, neglect, or contempt that shapes human lives. Instead, it frames being harmed as a character flaw, as a “victim mentality,” or worse, as a manipulation. When people recognize that you were hurt, the default response is skepticism or contempt. This is a defense of hierarchy. If acknowledging suffering required accountability or change, it would disrupt the systems that keep some people in power and others undergoing harm.

The mental illness industry is deeply implicated. By turning distress into a diagnosis or a set of symptoms, it moves attention away from the relational and systemic sources of harm. It allows institutions and professionals to treat survival adaptations as problems, rather than signals of unmet needs. What was done to me, and how I responded, became something to manage or correct, not something to understand or honor.

When culture labels survivors as manipulative, self-centered, or “trapped in victimhood,” it dismisses real pain. The “victim mentality” is a tool for disregarding suffering, a way to keep the narrative comfortable for those who benefit from hierarchy and denial. Being harmed is already isolating; being doubly judged for that harm compounds the trauma.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, these responses are predictable. Human beings respond to threat and betrayal in relational and systemic contexts. Denying or pathologizing those responses perpetuates suffering and blocks the possibility of real care, connection, and repair. Support recognizes that survivors are not the problem. The problem is the harm done and the culture that refuses to acknowledge it.

I know what it feels like to live under that shaming gaze. I know how isolating it is to have your suffering interpreted as a moral or personal failing. And I know that naming it, speaking it, and refusing to let the world dismiss it is the only path toward accountability and repair.

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Why I Won’t Call Pain “Banana”

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

There is a chronic pain community that discourages people from using the word “pain.” Instead, they encourage members to use the word “banana.” The idea is that replacing a threatening word with something neutral or even silly can help the nervous system relax, reduce fear, and support healing.

For me, this was an immediate turn-off. I understand what they’re trying to do, but it doesn’t land right. I’ve spent years fighting to have my reality named and recognized. Pain is pain. Calling it something else feels like erasure. It feels like the same cultural habit that has harmed me so deeply, minimizing suffering, softening it, or pretending it’s not there.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, integration depends on coherence. Our brains and bodies need language that matches lived experience. If my body is screaming with pain but I’m told to call it “banana,” there’s a gap between what I feel and what I’m allowed to say. That mismatch creates more disconnection. Safety comes from being able to name the truth of experience and still be met with attunement, support, and respect.

This approach bothers me because it mirrors the dismissals I’ve already endured in medical settings, where symptoms were brushed off, renamed, or reframed instead of being taken seriously. I will not step into a community that repeats that same harm. I want to be in spaces where pain can be spoken plainly, where the words we use honor the reality of the body, and where naming what’s true is the foundation for connection.

That’s why I won’t join communities that rename pain. My body deserves coherence. My truth deserves language. My healing depends on it.

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