Trauma Aware America

Here’s a list of common sayings that can be weaponized against Complex PTSD survivors and others in distress, often invalidating their experiences or reinforcing harmful narratives:

1. “Everything happens for a reason.”
Implies suffering has a predetermined purpose, disregarding systemic failures and personal violations.

2. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Minimizes trauma and its lasting effects.

3. “It’s all in your head.”
Dismisses the real, physiological impacts of trauma.

4. “You attract what you put out into the universe.”
Blames survivors for their suffering.

5. “Just let it go.”
Oversimplifies healing and disregards the complexity of trauma recovery.

6. “Karma will take care of it.”
Suggests justice is inevitable when reality often proves otherwise.

7. “If you dwell on it, you’ll never heal.”
Pressures survivors to suppress their pain rather than process it.

8. “Other people have it worse.”
Invalidates individual suffering by forcing comparison.

9. “God/the universe doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”
Suggests trauma is a test rather than unjust harm.

10. “You need to forgive to move on.”
Pressures survivors into premature or forced forgiveness.

11. “You’re only hurting yourself by holding onto anger.”
Frames justifiable anger as self-destructive.

12. “No one can hurt you unless you let them.”
Blames the survivor rather than the perpetrator.

13. “You just need to be more positive.”
Dismisses the deep neurophysiological impacts of trauma.

14. “Don’t be a victim.”
Weaponizes self-reliance against those seeking accountability.

15. “You should be grateful it wasn’t worse.”
Forces toxic gratitude rather than allowing space for grief and rage.

16. “That’s just the way the world works.”
Normalizes injustice and discourages action against it.

17. “Time heals all wounds.”
Implies that trauma naturally resolves without active support.

18. “You just need to try harder.”
Suggests that struggling with trauma is a failure of effort rather than a legitimate condition.

19. “You should be over it by now.”
Imposes an arbitrary timeline on healing.

20. “It could’ve been a lot worse.”
Minimizes suffering and invalidates the severity of trauma.

These sayings are dismissive and reinforce shame, self-doubt, and isolation. Trauma survivors need understanding, not clichés that’ll undermine their reality.

As part of my first solo art exhibition, I was asked to present a talk of about 10 minutes. I used my lived experience to illustrate how hierarchical systems and structures are key drivers of human distress. Here are the words I spoke:

Over the past 8 years, I’ve painted around 500 watercolors, about ⅕ of which are in this exhibit, mostly in albums and LapBook Galleries. I began each with a stubby psychiatric hospital pencil. Here’s why.

About 20 years ago, a politician in Virginia asked, “Would you rather run a campaign or run for office?” I heard myself say, “Neither! I want to jump aboard a wooden ship, sail around the world, ride my bike through every port, and get paid to write about it.” That was my heart’s desire.

Instead, I became a single parent. After 17 years as a primary caregiver, I had to leap back into the workforce during the Great Recession. I ended up spending three years in an extremely abusive workplace run by the Greek Mafia. I learned abusive employers are shielded by hierarchy, and their victims are left to drown. 

The abuse and insanity were killing me. I had applied to almost 400 jobs to no avail. So, 10 years after blurting out my dream, I got rid of nearly everything and came to Delaware to live my lifelong dream: to sail tall ships.

I joined the Kalmar Nyckel liveaboard crew, where my nervous system had rhythm, connection, and purpose. In 2‑½ years, I sailed over 7,000 miles and never felt more alive. Then I settled in an apartment in a place called Arden, and I knew I wanted to be part of this special community. 

But I made a big mistake that decimated my ability to participate in any community. I asked for mental health care. Having coverage for the first time, I thought I would finally receive the support I needed to recover from a lifetime of trauma.

Instead of help, I got hell! Toxic medication. Psychiatric hospitalization. Forced drugging. Warehousing. Threats. A week at Rockford Center nuked my nervous system back to preschool. I couldn’t hold a brush. I could only smear, smash, blow, and stomp the pigments. My study of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) helped me understand that I had to rebuild my neural pathways.

The hospital, insurer, and licensing board excused the psychiatric abuse as “standard treatment.” I learned there are no protections for trauma survivors, only for abusers and the hierarchy. Structural and systemic harm is standard in the “mental health system.”

Seven months later, a gynecologist performed non-consensual surgery. The licensing board, insurance, and the Department of “Justice” dismissed it as “standard treatment.” I learned that predators are common in medicine, where access to vulnerable people is high, and accountability is rare. Structural protections safeguard abusers in white coats. 

Not long after, an inappropriate partial bowel resection put me into a year-long death spiral. I was bedbound 20 hours a day, had frequent seizures, numerous violent flashbacks, and multiple intense muscle spasms. I also developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, worse pain than finger amputation. My whole body roared like a jet engine on fire. For many days, I lay in bed and wondered how a body could be in such constant and intense pain and still live. 

Through my study of IPNB, I understood that cumulative stress had extremely overloaded my body and nervous system. But my doctor and psychologist dismissed my concerns. Social Security denied my disability claim. I learned there are structural and systemic barriers to disability claims for trauma survivors. It shows us abuse, neglect, and abandonment when our nervous systems need kindness, compassion, empathy, and attunement instead. 

Each day, my body screamed, “Stop torturing me and let me die.” I did almost die. It would have been easy. But at the crucial point, rage rose inside me, teeth and claws bared, determined to stay and fight the systems and structures that hurt countless others. I was too pissed off to die.

Abandoned by virtually everyone, I began to build an Interpersonal Neurobiology-based recovery plan that saved my life. I started small: drink water, eat toast, walk to the end of the driveway. I taught my doctors to avoid causing more harm. I joined my Alexander Technique teacher, Imogen Ragone, to present IPNB-informed courses. I created the TraumaAwareAmerica.org website with over 300 posts, and the Trauma Aware America Facebook page, now with over 28,000 followers. 

I also built LapBook Galleries to express my life story and IPNB principles. My nervous system had to speak truth about the people who abused me and the systems that produced, protected, encouraged, and rewarded them. That was vital for survival and recovery.

But most people cannot take that in directly. It overwhelms them, and I didn’t just want to survive, but to liberate others. To reach people before they end up where I did, or before they become those who cause harm. 

I discovered cartoon ladybugs could translate lived experience and Relational Neuroscience into something people can receive. They bypass shame, hierarchy, and intimidation. They invite recognition instead of defensiveness. They teach nervous system truth to doctors, children, and everyone in between. I’m creating a library of IPNB Ladybug books to make this vital science accessible to everyone. 

The panels in this exhibition—holding 16 fresh paintings—depict the neurobiology of chronic stress and trauma. They tell the story of mental illness and recovery through an Interpersonal Neurobiology lens. The rest of the work spans eight years of struggle: albums and LapBook Galleries that show the brutality I endured, and the structural and systemic protections for abusers. The exhibit emerged from my lived experience: what I suffered, how I survived, and what I’ve learned.

My art comes from a nervous system that’s endured insane amounts of cruelty and contempt, and lots of experience resisting oppression and seeking care in adverse environments. Every mark reflects survival, healing, and connection. These works invite viewers to witness the human cost of harmful systems and the power of relational repair.

This exhibition explores how nervous systems are shaped and reshaped by the people and culture around us. It is part of my process to show that the problem is oppressive systems and structures. It also helps others recognize they are not the problem and unite against the structures that harm us all for the profit and impunity of a few at the top.

My whole life, I’ve repeatedly built something beautiful out of almost nothing. But this time the starting point was devastation. Before, I still had my health. Now, a series of abusers in “healthcare” has left me with multiple chronic, painful conditions. It permanently disabled me from sailing and most of what I was and loved. I had to radically accept that I now have only fractions of my prior life and self. What remained were the most durable parts. 

What I do now is proof that something in me cannot be erased. I reclaim my life by refusing to be silenced and by exposing abusive systems. Drawing with psychiatric pencils is part of how I take this broken life into my arms and kiss it, a radical act playwright Arthur Miller named in After the Fall.

What’s left of me is sharp and furious. It paints, writes, and causes good trouble. Abusers in power took almost everything, but they could not take my watercolors, words, and wits. These survived and speak honestly here.

If you leave this room unchanged, abusive systems stay intact. If you leave willing to notice where hierarchy harms, where contempt hides behind credentials, and where silence protects cruelty, then this work keeps living outside these walls.

Reduce hierarchy. Increase care. Choose connection over control. That’s how we lower stress in bodies and in communities.

If my nervous system can rebuild after what it’s endured, then change is realistic. The question is whether we are willing to dismantle the systems that make people sick.

Everything here was made by hands that once couldn’t hold a brush and a body that had begged to die. It exists because connection repaired what cruelty tried to obliterate.

So take this with you: nervous systems are shaped by how we treat each other. Culture lives in our tone, our timing, our touch, and our choices. If we change those, we build a culture of caring, the kind that supports human thriving. Thank you.