Bystander Complicity: An IPNB View

Posted on July 10, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, the nervous system operates relationally, meaning that safety, trust, and connection are deeply shaped by social environments and relationships. Bystanders who witness abuse but fail to intervene may experience internal conflicts between their own safety and the moral imperative to act. Their nervous systems might prioritize self-preservation over the risk of confronting someone with more power, thus inhibiting action.

This dynamic can be explained through the lens of differentiation and integration:

Lack of Differentiation: Many bystanders fail to differentiate themselves from the social or power structures they are part of, such as the entertainment industry. Instead of acknowledging their own responsibility or agency, they become fused with the status quo. The inability to differentiate oneself from the corrupt system leads to passivity or compliance, as their actions are shaped by the norms of the group rather than individual moral integrity.

Impaired Integration: Integration involves linking differentiated parts—acknowledging both one’s individuality and the relational aspects of being part of a larger society. In the case of these bystanders, the failure to integrate their awareness of the abuse with the need for moral action leads to emotional dissonance. They may suppress their discomfort by rationalizing their silence or convincing themselves they have no choice but to remain passive. This lack of integration stifles any potential action to protect victims.

Fear and Immobilization: The nervous system’s response to danger, especially when the danger comes from a powerful individual or institution, often leads to immobilization. Bystanders may experience a fight-flight-freeze response, and in many cases, freeze becomes the default option. They may feel helpless to act against the influence of someone like Diddy, whose power could have social, financial, or personal consequences for them.

Compromised Agency: For those who are aware of the abuse but do nothing, their own agency becomes compromised by external pressures. They may feel trapped by a culture that rewards silence and punishes those who speak out. Their autonomy is overshadowed by the fear of social or professional repercussions, which ultimately reinforces the cycle of abuse.

Neurobiological Shame and Cognitive Dissonance: Over time, bystanders who remain silent may experience shame, as their inaction contradicts their internal moral values. This cognitive dissonance can create internal stress, leading to psychological and emotional consequences. However, to avoid facing this discomfort, many may engage in further denial, distancing themselves emotionally from the victims and reinforcing their complicity.

Relational Trauma: For the victims, the betrayal by these bystanders adds layers of relational trauma. It’s not just the abuse itself but the fact that others—who could have intervened—stood by and let it happen. This lack of support disrupts the victim’s sense of safety, belonging, and connection, deepening their trauma.

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Noticing Safety in the Small Moments We Overlook

Posted on July 8, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Walking home from the community garden, I saw a young man coming toward me on my street. It was Independence Day weekend and there was a local event happening nearby, so there were more people around than usual, including people who don’t normally move through this area.

While we were still several yards away he asked, “Hi, how are you?” in a tone that rang with authenticity.

I said, “Fine thanks, and you?”

He said, “ I’m fine thank you.”

I asked, “Are you going to the festivities?”

He said, “Yes. It’s a really nice weekend.”

I said, “It is. Have a good time!”

He said, “Thank you. Enjoy your weekend!”

It was a brief, predictable, social interaction. Two people passing on the street, exchanging basic recognition and orientation. But my nervous system shifted. I felt a surge of activation, a kind of sudden relief that showed up so strongly it brought me to tears after he walked on.

The strong feeling was due to what the interaction represented in the context of the last eight years of my life, where so many relational experiences have involved threat, disruption, lack of protection, inconsistency, or being left to manage things alone.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) lens, what happened in the street was simple and very important. The nervous system constantly recognizes cues of safety and cues of danger in relationship. It notes tone, timing, predictability, recognition, and whether another person responds in a way that is coherent and non-threatening.

In this case there was recognition and reciprocity. There was also no demand, intrusion, unpredictability, or evaluation. Just an ordinary human exchange. And because those kinds of exchanges have been limited and often overshadowed by more harmful relational experiences over time, my system did not treat it as “small.” It treated it as meaningful.

This is where a lot of cultural misunderstanding happens. We are taught to look for safety in large narratives: one safe person, one secure relationship, one stable place that will finally make everything okay. That story is everywhere. It is also incomplete.

I have learned that, as this moment made very clear, connection is often built in much smaller increments. It is built in everyday interactions that signal: you are seen, you are not in danger with me, you can move through this moment without having to defend yourself.

Those signals accumulate. They do not replace deeper relationships, but they create the conditions where deeper relationships become possible without overwhelming the system.

From an IPNB perspective, the concepts of titration and pendulation are important. The nervous system does not shift through force or insight alone. It shifts through small doses of experience that move between activation and settling, between contact and return, between engagement and rest. When the dose is too large, the system can be flooded. When it is too absent, it can stay isolated. The middle range allows change to integrate.

This does not only happen in rare moments. It can happen repeatedly if you are in environments where these kinds of exchanges are possible: walking where people are present, acknowledging others in passing, brief respectful contact, small mutual recognition. It can also happen online in conversation that feels coherent and non-threatening. The form is less important than the quality of the interaction.

The important part is learning to notice what your own system does with these moments. Some people feel nothing. Some people feel a small softening. Some people feel a wave of relief or grief or release. None of those responses are wrong. They are information about how much relational safety has been available and how the system has adapted to what it has had to work with.

And it is also important to go at nervous system speed. Not forcing more contact than your system can hold. Not interpreting activation as failure. Not assuming that bigger is better. The changes that last tend to come in small steps that can actually be integrated, repeated, and built on over time.

Like I did, you can use the principles of IPNB to guide you. These two Trauma Aware America articles are made to help:

“IPNB-Informed Recovery Plan for Stress or Trauma”

IPNB-Informed Recovery Plan for Stress or Trauma

“Cultivating Safe Relationships When You Have No Support”

Cultivating Safe Relationships When You Have No Support

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The Mental Illness industry: It Ain’t About Health or Care

Posted on July 6, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

The mental illness industry does not exist to heal people. It was largely built by Gilded Age industrialists to control the population, keep people functioning as workers, and pathologize suffering caused by systemic conditions. Instead of recognizing distress as a natural response to unmet needs, exploitation, and trauma, the industry reframes it as a personal defect: something wrong inside the individual that must be corrected. This shifts attention away from the real sources of harm and instead places blame on the person who is struggling.

The dominant model of mental health care bypasses our core biological needs. Human beings need connection, safety, and a sense of meaning to thrive. When these are missing, distress is inevitable. But instead of addressing the conditions that create suffering—poverty, isolation, trauma, oppression—the system offers medications and behavioral interventions that suppress symptoms rather than resolve their underlying causes. The idea is to get people back to work, back to being “functional,” without ever questioning why so many people are breaking down.

This approach not only fails to help but often causes harm. Psychiatric medications, for example, are prescribed as if they are correcting an imbalance, but no such imbalance has ever been proven. Many of these drugs numb emotions, blunt motivation, and create long-term dependence. Withdrawal can be horrific, sometimes worse than the original distress. Meanwhile, therapy models rooted in behavior control reinforce the idea that people just need to think differently or try harder, ignoring the deep physiological effects of trauma and chronic stress.

None of this is an accident. The modern mental health industry was shaped by people like Rockefeller and Carnegie, who were more interested in social control than actual well-being. They funded institutions that framed distress as an individual problem, one that could be managed through medical and psychological intervention rather than systemic change. Over time, this narrative became deeply embedded in our culture, making it difficult for people to even consider alternatives.

And when the harm is outright criminal, such as sexualized violence by doctors and therapists, the system protects its own. Licensing boards are a joke. They exist to create the illusion of oversight while doing nothing to hold abusers accountable. Administrators and board members look the other way, allowing perpetrators to keep practicing for years, sometimes decades. The result is that victims are dismissed, retraumatized, and left without justice, while predators continue their careers with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, if that.

Real healing does not come from suppressing symptoms or forcing compliance. It comes from understanding how our nervous systems work, how distress is an adaptive response to unmet needs, and how creating safety and connection allows for genuine recovery. This is not something the mental illness industry will provide because its entire foundation depends on keeping people disconnected from their power.

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Resilience Isn’t Solo: The Neurobiology of Support

Posted on July 3, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

A recent visit with a new healthcare practitioner had a significantly negative impact. She was so out of sorts that she could not appropriately connect. That meant she could not take in what I said or understand what I needed. Instead, she spewed a torrent of of information that was inappropriate and triggering. Therefore, it was harmful.

It was also harmful that I was unheard and unseen. That’s the condition that allows for abuse. Even though this practitioner wasn’t abusive, her behavior was harmful. Because it evoked the same conditions under which prior abuse occurred again and again.

When safety, resonance, or connection are missing, the nervous system adapts by fragmenting or narrowing its flow. This looks like “The Distortions of the Life Force” NARM chart. In IPNB language, the system becomes less flexible, less coherent, less energized, and less stable.

Encounters like that land in the nervous system as a threat. Without support, the body can stay stuck in survival states like fight, flight, or freeze.

I integrate a lot on my own, but I also need the kind of relational support I get from my practitioners to fully come back into balance.

Understanding Interpersonal Neurobiology helps me recognize what happens between me and my practitioners. When someone meets me with compassionate witnessing and attunement, they are offering what Dr. Dan Siegel calls resonance. Their nervous system is sending out cues of safety, like a steady tone of voice, calm presence, and facial expressions that say “I see you and I believe you.” My nervous system detects these signals and begins to downshift the defensive response. It’s not just emotional comfort; it’s biological regulation.

Two days later, I was able to process the experience with my NARM therapist. A day after that, I talked with my craniosacral practitioner, who is especially attuned. Each of those conversations wasn’t about fixing or erasing what happened, but about helping my body metabolize the impact. Each moment of connection gave my system what it needed to integrate and restore resilience.

Without this support framework, I’d be in real trouble after a visit like that. With it, I can return to balance and even deepen my trust in the way safe connection restores us. This is the neurobiology of resilience in action: we aren’t meant to recover in isolation; our systems are designed to heal in connection.

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Medical Sabbaticals: Reducing Exposure as Harm Reduction in Healthcare

Posted on July 1, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

It’s awful to be disbelieved, unseen, minimized, and dismissed, particularly by the people we turn to for support and help. It’s also really bad for the nervous system.

This is part of why I cut way back on seeing healthcare practitioners. It kept hurting. So, twice in the last 3 or 4 years I went on 3-month healthcare sabbaticals. Each time, I took a break from all but the most supportive and necessary appointments. So, basically, whatever it took to get the nerve blocks I needed, plus chiropractor and craniosacral practitioner.

Sometimes I also saw a physical therapist, but, due to cumulative load of negative interactions and becoming weary of having to teach every single freaking practitioner. Especially because I still encountered misattunement and poor care. So, I don’t see a physical therapist anymore.

Those periods of reduced medical stressors gave my system a break from the most negatively impactful experiences. It was a real boost!

These days I’m working to reduce medical exposure as much as possible. Even though I really appreciate and get along with my pain specialists, each visit includes medicalized experiences that are not good for me. Most importantly, if they have a new assistant I have to teach them about IPNB, can accurately expect they will do something harmful within the first two visits.

I’m not refusing care, but figuring out what is truly supportive of my core biological needs at this time and what isn’t. A standard process or common treatment is not necessarily harmless for me. Too often it is harmful, and harm reduction has to be a priority. It’s simply too hard to recover when the harm keeps happening on repeat.

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Rest as a Missing Practice

Posted on June 29, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Last week, I drove from Wilmington, DE to Baltimore, MD, a distance made challenging by multiple chronic pain conditions, including bodywide myalgia and quadrilateral Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. A fellow tall ship sailor, visiting from far away, had suggested we go to Charm City to see some of the tall ships celebrating Sail 250. I was up for it, made the drive without too much pain, and greatly enjoyed seeing ships I hadn’t seen before, and touring the largest I’d ever been aboard, the Peruvian BAP UNION. We walked all over the city’s Inner Harbor, and by the time we returned to my car, my feet were in near agony. I knew that was just the beginning of the price I would pay for a day like that. Otherwise, I would have had to cancel any plans I made for the following two days.

But I had learned over the years that I must plan rest days around high-activity days. So, the day after seeing the ships, I stayed in my jammies and hardly got out of bed. Because that’s what my body said it needed.

For a long time, rest was not something I could access without conflict. When I first started working with my Alexander Technique teacher Imogen Ragone, I could not tolerate rest. It felt unsafe in a way that was hard to name at the time. I resisted it because I could not settle into it. My system did not know how to feel safe while resting.

Seven and a half years later, rest is now part of my daily pattern. Thanks to the influence of Imogen’s Construcive Rest sessions, I rest for at least twenty minutes most days. Sometimes it becomes much longer. There are days when I take a two-hour nap.

Still, the day after the Baltiomre visit, there was still a small familiar thought in the background questioning whether this was laziness. That is common in a culture that treats constant output as the default measure of value. But my experience has also given me a more important reference. My body makes it clear when rest is needed. When exhaustion is present, rest is not optional, even if it is still negotiable in story.

Mainstream culture tends to treat rest as something that has to be earned or justified. It is often framed as recovery from overwork rather than as a basic condition for functioning. There is a strong emphasis on pushing through, optimizing output, and finding ways to override signals of fatigue in order to continue producing. The underlying assumption is that capacity should be extended regardless of internal state.

From a Relational Neuroscience perspective, this misses how closely regulation is tied to experience over time. The ability to rest is not just a decision. It is shaped through repeated experiences of safety, attunement, and permission to pause without consequence. When those conditions are not present earlier in life, rest can initially feel unfamiliar or even threatening, because the body has learned patterns of continuity under strain.

Over time, those patterns can shift when new experiences consistently contradict older expectations. Through small, safe, frequently repeated experiences, rest becomes something that can be entered and left without losing stability. It becomes part of the body’s rhythm rather than an interruption.

I now recognize that rest is one part of how function is maintained. When it is absent, everything becomes more effortful. When it is present in sufficient amounts, there is more clarity and less strain in ordinary activity.

The idea that people should continuously override their own signals does not account for how much those signals are already shaped by history and environment. It assumes that persistence is always the solution, when persistence without restoration leads to reduced capacity over time.

Rest is not a reward for productivity, but one of the conditions that make sustained living possible. When those conditions are recognized, the question shifts from how to do more to what actually supports continuation without depletion.

For me, that shift came gradually. I learned it through experience rather than instruction. And it has changed my experience of daily life, measurable in my own body in the difference between strain and steadiness.

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Practitioner Certainty Blindness: The Problem with Wrongful Reassurance

Posted on June 26, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

“Hypercritical Allostatic Load,” by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD. Watercolors, ink, psychiatric hospital pencil. 12×9″

Six years ago, I was dying from hypercritical allostatic load: far too much stress with far too  insufficient support for far too long. My body was shutting down. I spent much of my 60th year in bed. The strain had been building for decades through developmental trauma, repeated adversity, loss, chronic stress, and, most absurdly, a growing accumulation of medical harm in response to my requests for help.

Instead of finding real help, I encountered certainty, over and over. Practitioners were certain that they knew better than my lived experience in this body. They could not believe what I said.

The more my condition deteriorated due to lack of appropriat care, the more confidence I encountered.  That pattern revealed something important about healthcare. Certainty blindness occurs when a practitioner is more attached to their explanation than they are interested in the information in front of them.

Once that happens, contradictory evidence often stops registering. The patient says they are getting worse. The practitioner says they are not. The patient reports increasing functional impairment.The practitioner focuses on reassurance. The patient keeps returning because the problem is not resolved. The practitioner sees repeated help-seeking as evidence that the original conclusion was correct.

From a Relational Neuroscience perspective, human beings make sense of reality together. We rely on one another to help us understand what we are experiencing. Healthcare relationships carry particular weight because practitioners hold specialized knowledge and institutional authority. When a practitioner repeatedly dismisses a patient’s observations, they give their own interpretation more weight than the patient’s lived experience.

In practice, certainty blindness often looks like reassurance. It sounds kind, calming, and reasonable. But reassurance based on an inaccurate assessment is not protective.It delays investigation, treatment, appropriate support, and shifts attention away from what is actually happening.

In my case, nobody needed to know exactly what was wrong. They simply needed to recognize that something serious was happening. “I don’t know” would have been far more useful than misplaced confidence. Curiosity would have been more useful than certainty. A willingness to observe what was unfolding would have been more helpful than explaining it away.

One of the most damaging assumptions in healthcare is that access equals care. It does not. I had access, appointments, practitioners, and their opinions. I did not have appropriate care. Care that listened.

Many people assume that if someone is suffering for years, they must not have sought help. Often the opposite is true. They sought help repeatedly, but were trapped in systems where certainty was valued more highly than observation. 

When people repeatedly bring forward accurate observations about themselves, and those are dismissed, important information is overlooked. Opportunities for intervention are lost. Trust in healthcare relationships is ruptured. The practitioner leaves the appointment believing they have reassured the patient, while the patient leaves carrying the consequences of being wrongfully reassured: feeling unseen, unheard, disbelieved, and unhelped.

Effective care requires a practitioner to hold space for the unknown rather than closing it with premature answers. The responsibility remains with them to value observation over their own internal narrative. By choosing curiosity over conviction, they create the necessary room to truly hear what a patient is communicating, ensuring that clinical certainty does not override clinical evidence.

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The Question Psychiatry Cannot Answer: If Depression Is a Chemical Imbalance, What Threw It Off?

Posted on June 24, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Psychiatry long claimed there’s a “chemical imbalance,” in mental illness, but it never answers the obvious questions: if it’s chemical, what threw it off? Why now? Why not at birth? And why does it so often follow trauma, neglect, chronic stress, or loss?

Looking at the facts, the assertion falls apart. The “chemical imbalance” idea was simply an effective marketing slogan, not science. It gave doctors something to say, patients something to believe, and pharmaceutical companies something to sell. But it ignores what Interpersonal Neurobiology shows clearly: that our emotional states emerge from our lived experiences, our relationships, and the safety or danger our nervous system perceives over time.

When someone’s life becomes too unsafe, too demanding, too isolating, the system adapts. The so-called “depression” is not a broken brain, but the body’s way of reducing output to survive unrelenting overwhelm. It’s a survival adaptation to chronic threat or depletion.

So what disturbed the balance? The same thing that disturbs any living system: too much demand, too little support, too much fear, or not enough care. When life becomes something to endure instead of something that feels safe to inhabit, the body protects itself the only way it can. And psychiatry, instead of asking why, numbs the messenger and calls it treatment.

But it makes sense when we understand that 💊💊🟰💲💲‼️

 

 

 

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Not Feeling: A Survival Adaptation

Posted on June 22, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Not feeling emotions can be a survival adaptation that develops when your nervous system has been overwhelmed by chronic stress or trauma. It’s a way of protecting yourself from feelings that once felt too intense or unbearable. Reconnecting with your emotions takes time, safety, and consistent gentle practice.

Start with cultivating a sense of safety in your body and environment. This might involve grounding practices like focusing on your breath, noticing physical sensations, or engaging in activities that feel calming or soothing. The goal is to let your system know it’s okay to feel again, even just a little bit at a time.

Engaging in relationships or safe connections can also help. Being with people who are empathetic, non-judgmental, and present can create a space where you feel supported to explore your emotions. Sometimes it’s easier to start by sharing your thoughts or experiences with someone else and allowing feelings to emerge gradually in that context.

Creative expression can also be a gentle way to reconnect with emotions. Writing, drawing, or even listening to music can open a pathway for feelings to surface in a way that feels less direct or overwhelming.

Most importantly, be patient and kind to yourself. Emotions are part of your system’s natural way of processing the world, and reconnecting with them is a gradual process. It’s okay to take small steps and to seek support from trusted individuals who understand trauma and can help you feel safe in this journey.

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No Justice With the Midwife But What I Create

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

“The Midwife Who Couldn’t Stop Talking,” which expresses my experience with a highly dysregulated practitioner. The only “accountability” was that, after my complaint letter, the practice withdrew its efforts to bill me for this visit.

I keep talking about what happened to me because the lack of justice makes it impossible to “let it go,” as if that is even a thing. The forced FGM surgery didn’t just happen; it continues to resonate in my mind and body every time I feel the impact of what was done, which is countless times a day. Every time I try to move past it, the system reminds me I can’t: none of the doctors who harmed me are held accountable and are allowed to continue harming others, the institutions protecting them are silent, and the world at large doesn’t see the ongoing cost.

The failure of justice is the reason I create justice where I can, through my own expression, which carries its own undeniable power and transforms my experience into something real, seen, and felt.

“Confronting the Predatory Gynecologist,” which shows how it felt to calmly inform him that informed consent should have been a thing, and for him to puff up like an angry genie in reaction. There has been no institutional accountability, and no justice that I haven’t made with my watercolors, words, and wits.

The non-consensual surgery was years ago, and while it was by far the worst violation, I’ve had many healthcare practitioner attempts to invalidate. Very unfortunately, the most recent was with a midwife, the kind of practitioner I trusted with both of my pregnancies and births. The midwife’s inability to attune and meet me where I was caused me significant harm. As in too many prior encounters, responsibility is denied, and there is no attempt to make a repair. The midwife answered my email with excuses instead of an authentic apology. The director is silent. I’m left with no choice but to integrate this betrayal myself. My nervous system feels it, my body carries it, and I have to respond.

The process involves ongoing integration in small bits. Each begins when I notice the signals, the emotional and physical echoes, and I do something supportive with them. I write. I post on social. I sketch. I begin to paint a watercolor. I illustrate my lived experience so people can understand it, because otherwise it is invisible and impossible to explain.

Our nervous systems are built for connection. They need compassionate witnessing to integrate experience. When that witnessing isn’t available from the people who caused harm, or the systems that should protect us, the nervous system remains unsettled, frozen in a loop of stress, alertness, and planning. Expressing my experience through words and watercolors is how I give my own nervous system what it needs: acknowledgment, validation, and release. It’s how I repair a relational rupture with myself when relational repair from others isn’t possible.

“A Lion at My Neck,” which expresses how it felt when a Coast Guardsman sexually assaulted me after our vessel needed a tow. There has been no accountability, no justice.

Every sketch, watercolor, or blog post expresses what happened and what I need now. It is me giving form to the pain, anger, and betrayal. It’s me showing my experience to the world because otherwise it disappears into isolation. This is what it means to create accountability when no one else will: to be your own witness, to find your own compassion, and to offer your story so others can witness it, too.

Sharing my watercolors with my healthcare practitioners is especially powerful because it gives them access to the reality of my experience in a way words alone can’t. These images carry the emotional and physical impact of what I’ve lived through, and they appeal for acknowledgment where there is often avoidance or denial. When I show them my work, I’m not asking for permission or pity, but offering a direct, undeniable witness to my truth. It shifts the dynamic from one of passive reporting to active recognition, and in doing so, it creates a space where my nervous system can feel seen and validated, even within the healthcare system that most often fails to provide it.

I don’t have the justice I want from the institutions that failed me. But I do have the ability to respond to what my body, nervous system, and mind need. That’s how I survive, keep being me despite the pressure to shut up and go away, and that, in its own way, is a kind of justice, too.

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