The Granddaddy Effect: Honoring Raxley Leonard Obarr on His 140th Birthday and the Neuroscience of a Life-Saving Connection

Posted on March 13, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Today, March 13th, marks the 140th birthday of my maternal great-grandfather, Raxley Leonard Obarr, my Granddaddy. He was the only grandfather figure I knew. He was also a Knight Templar, a master of bird magic, a juggler, and the kindler of my light. On this day, I honor the man who gave me the most magnificent gift: the light of pure love, which enabled me to survive a highly adverse life.

The Seed of Safety in a Few Precious Weeks

Though I only had a short time with my Granddaddy—a few weeks when my mother and siblings lived with him and my great-grandmother—that brief encounter provided an enormous, enduring gift. It gave me an early, if transient, sense of safety because my primary abuser was on the other side of the country.

Granddaddy gave me pure love and acceptance, which I could literally feel in my body. I felt it when we held hands, palm to palm—the tender skin of age and youth pressed together in a communion of heart and spirit. He changed my life by showing me safety and connection through his touch, the wrinkles around his eyes, the softness of his hands, and the firmness of his fingers around my own. Being with him made everything okay. His heartfelt kindness gave me a tiny spark of hope, love, and comfort to hang onto in my darkest hours.

My memories of this time anchor me. I recall him, dressed in his suit, walking out onto the front lawn, calling for his birds. They would land on his hands, arms, shoulders, and head to take seed, a truly magical sight. He taught me how to juggle, and I would practice with three rubber balls he bought me from his pharmacy. These few hours shaped my life in countless invisible ways that sustained me through unspeakable cruelty and contempt.

An Adult Legacy: Rage into Resistance

Granddaddy was the one adult who gave me tenderness, love, protection, and a reflection of my true worth. Without this, I would not have survived childhood or late adulthood. His love and steadiness became a powerful resource that confirmed my instincts: that life couldn’t just be hell; there had to be some safety and love in it.

This foundational gift continues to inform my life and purpose today. He is the one who told me I was worthy of fighting for, and helped me be stronger than all the abuse put together. He helped me turn intergenerational rage into resistance—the drive to reclaim humanity from the power structure that destroys us.

Years later, this legacy manifested when I sought to retrieve his Knight Templar sword, a ceremonial object made by the Cincinnati Regalia Company. After enduring a near-fatal bowel resection during the beginning of the pandemic, I knew I had to bring the sword to me. I applied intention, using “watercolors, words, and wits,” and painted an image of my hands holding the sword. Within weeks, the sword was in my hands, sent by the family of my late mother’s late partner. They honored my relationship with Granddaddy, even with no legal obligation. When I held the ceremonial sword, I remembered his putting it into my hands when I was a nine-year-old child. Today, the sword represents using my limited resources—watercolors, words, and wits—to do damage to the exploiters he despised, fulfilling my destiny.

Relational Neuroscience: The Imprint that Saved My Life

The true power of this connection lies in what Relational Neuroscience describes: the building of neural networks. It wasn’t just the time spent, it was the depth of connection—the acceptance and love at a heart level—that built lasting neural pathways in my brain and body.

  • Mirror Neuron Exchange: Granddaddy gave me a sense of love and safety, and my mirror neurons read and internalized it. This feeling was diametrically opposite to what my parents gave me, whose intention was for me to die. He showed me I deserve to be here.

  • The Granddaddy Effect: These brief, caring interactions created a “neuronal imprint” in my nervous system that waited dormant, but was never erased. Today, I can call up the neural memory of my Granddaddy, and just thinking his name or looking at his face makes me feel goodness inside: calmer, clearer, and more open to possibility. He is my “zero,” the place of supreme safety.

  • The Magnitude of the Gift: The gift of his pure love and the new neural pathways it created is so enormous in magnitude that it “out sizes the magnitude of harm” I experienced. This imprint, created by a mirror neuron exchange, is the wellspring of my survival and the ability to go forward.

Raxley Leonard Obarr, Knight Templar, master of bird magic, and kindler of my light, gave me life. On his 140th birthday, I stand as his legacy, my nervous system still connected with the beautiful, pure love he instilled. I am worth fighting for, and Grandaddy’s kindness, courage, and spirit continue to drive my fight for life and justice.

Posted in co-regulation, Family | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Putting Our Lived Experience on the Record Can Help Build a Sense of Safety

Posted on March 13, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

I started bringing a printed page to my pain specialist appointments because I needed a way to communicate that worked for my nervous system and his. Each page bears the date and his name, plus brief status updates on regional pain, symptom intensity, setbacks, social support, and positive shifts. I highlight what feels most important for that visit. The rest is context. Not everything needs to be discussed that day, but it matters that it exists.

I hand the paper to his assistant so my doctor can read it in advance of our meeting. That alone changes the tone of the visit. He walks into the room already oriented. He has a picture of what he is stepping into. We have shared reference points. Sometimes we talk through the highlights. Sometimes we don’t. Either way, the information is there.

I also ask my doctor’s assistant to scan the document into the medical record. I don’t know that they always do it, but I reinforce why I ask. Knowing that my lived experience is in the record matters to my system. It means what I am living with is not just carried privately in my body or relayed imperfectly in a rushed conversation. It is official. It exists outside of me. Even if we never talk about it, it is there.

This has a regulatory effect. When experience is witnessed and recorded, my nervous system does not have to work as hard to hold it together. There is less pressure to remember everything, to perform coherence on demand, or to compress complexity into a few sentences. The record holds continuity when the body is already doing a lot of work.

I work to make the handout succinct. A busy doctor does not need an essay. He needs clarity. That structure helps both of us. It also creates natural talking points. My pain specialist wants to learn, and this is one way he can build his understanding of Relational Neuroscience. The papers contain no identifying information, so he can share them, use them in study groups, or post them in forums if they are useful. I don’t know how often that happens, but I notice that he keeps the papers I offer.

This is important because care is relational. Every interaction teaches the nervous system something about safety, predictability, and repair. When a clinician engages with material like this seriously, it signals respect for lived experience. That signal reduces threat. It also reduces the need for vigilance during the appointment itself.

Our visits are intentionally at the end of the day. No one is waiting for him while he talks with me. I don’t mind waiting for him. He is worth it. That arrangement makes the interaction workable for both of us. Not every clinician can or will do this, but everyone living with chronic illness needs at least one practitioner with whom this kind of continuity is possible.

This support did not happen by luck. I had to figure out what I needed and build toward it, slowly and deliberately. I paid attention to what helped my nervous system feel steadier and what made things worse. I made a plan and kept trying. Over time, I found practitioners who could be safe for me.

I share practices like this so others don’t have to learn them the hard way. No one should have to spend years figuring out how to make care tolerable. Relational Neuroscience/IPNB principles can be implemented gradually, repeatedly, and with respect for current limits. When lived experience is held in a reliable place, the nervous system does less work just to get through the day. That alone can change one’s life trajectory.

Posted in Healthcare | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why So Many People Can’t Believe and Support Trauma Survivors

Posted on March 11, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Recently, I encountered significant opposition after I posted about the sexual assault committed against me by a member of the US Coast Guard (USCG). The attack had clearly been set up, and it was obvious to me that it was the perpetrator’s pattern. But the USCG declined accountability, allowing the perpetrator to continue assaulting vulnerable civilians.

The backlash against my truth-telling was shocking. A few Facebook randos told me things like I should be sued for defamation, that wasn’t a sexual assault, I was exaggerating, among other awfully inappropriate comments..

But one of the worst was the denial from a shipmate. They offered a perfunctory drop of cognitive empathy and went on to invalidate my experience by accusing me of labeling all coast guardsmen as predators. This was a person with whom I had shared voyages, watches, meals, bunking quarters, and who had put me up in their guest room for a few nights during my 2-½ years as an itinerant sailor. Given that history, I tried to talk to them, but each reply only doubled down. They even brought up their own experience of sexualized violence in a different realm as a reason I shouldn’t talk about the systemic and structural elements that protect abusers. They said I was ungrateful for how the USCG protects my rights, even though the violation of my right to bodily integrity was the issue. When egged on by a Facebook rando, they tried to prove that I was faking the whole thing. I ended up deleting the nasty comments and blocking the nasty commenters, including the shipmate. 

That level of disbelief and cognitive dissonance is a physiological self-protection response: the listener’s nervous system, facing overload from the trauma account, shifts into a defensive state to distance itself and protect the listener from discomfort, rather than accurately perceiving the survivor’s experience.

When we understand they’re not doing this by choice, but out of self-protection, it helps us take their stance less personally. The problem isn’t us or our story, or that we revealed it, but that they don’t have the inner and outer resources to recognize our truth. They simply cannot hold space for the idea that something so awful could happen to us, that the systems and structures we’ve been taught will protect us, do not.

Human beings interpret others’ experiences through their prior learning, social conditioning, and physiological tolerance for distress. When a person describes traumatic experiences, especially violations involving the body, power, or institutional betrayal, the listener must be able to remain present while exposed to information that signals threat, injustice, or loss of control. Many people lack the capacity to remain regulated in the presence of those signals. Their bodies shift toward defensive states that narrow perception and reduce the ability to stay curious, receptive, and empathic. Attention moves toward protecting the listener from discomfort rather than toward accurately perceiving the other person’s experience.

Social systems reinforce this narrowing. Most cultures teach people to maintain a sense that institutions such as medicine, the military, education, law enforcement, and courts are fundamentally trustworthy. When someone reports harm by those institutions, the listener faces a conflict between two competing realities: the cultural narrative of institutional safety and the lived account of institutional violence. Many resolve this conflict by preserving the existing narrative and questioning the person who reported the harm. This response stabilizes the listener’s sense of order and predictability. It reduces cognitive and physiological strain in the moment.

Belief is also shaped by familiarity. Experiences that fall outside common social scripts are harder for observers to process. Sexualized violence within medical care, non-consensual procedures, or violations carried out under professional authority disrupt widely held assumptions about safety and consent. When an event does not match the listener’s mental categories, the information is often minimized, reframed, or rejected. The nervous system favors coherence with prior expectations over rapid revision of deeply held assumptions.

Empathy depends on relational experience across the lifespan. People who have repeatedly encountered environments where distress was ignored, dismissed, or punished tend to develop protective habits of attention that limit their engagement with others’ suffering. Turning away, questioning the report, or shifting the topic becomes a learned social strategy that prevents the listener from entering states associated with vulnerability or helplessness. These habits are often reinforced by family systems, workplaces, and professional training environments that reward emotional distance and penalize open acknowledgment of harm.

Professional hierarchies intensify these dynamics. Fields such as medicine and psychiatry, law enforcement, education, and the military organize authority around status, credentials, and chain of command. Within these systems, the testimony of a patient, civilian, or lower-status member carries less weight than the reputation of the professional or institution. People learn to defer to authority signals such as titles, uniforms, and institutional affiliation. When accusations challenge those signals, many observers default to defending the authority structure rather than examining the reported harm.

Physiological overload also affects perception. Hearing detailed accounts of trauma can evoke sensations associated with danger or loss of control. When this occurs, the body moves toward self-protection. In that state, attention narrows, memory becomes less flexible, and complex perspective-taking declines. The listener may interrupt, redirect the conversation, offer premature explanations, or question the account’s accuracy or impact. These actions restore distance from the distressing material.

Group dynamics further shape belief. Within communities, people monitor each other’s reactions to determine what responses are socially acceptable. If influential members of the group dismiss or minimize a survivor’s account, others often follow suit to preserve belonging. Disbelief spreads through social reinforcement rather than through direct examination of the evidence.

Empathy requires the capacity to stay present with another person’s account while holding uncertainty, discomfort, and moral disruption. That depends on relational safety, cultural norms that value truth over hierarchy, and bodies that can remain regulated while encountering painful information. When those conditions are absent, disbelief and distancing become the dominant responses, often adding layers of harm to the original traumatic experience. 

Knowing this reveals the listener’s disbelief as a failure of their own capacity, not a failure of the survivor’s truth. This relieves survivor self-blame and helps them understand the listener’s capacities and priorities.

It re-frames the listener’s negative response—disbelief and distancing—not as a judgment on the survivor’s truth or the impact of their account, but as the listener’s own physiological self-protection response to signals of threat, injustice, or loss of control.

The survivor gains clarity that the subsequent harm is due to the listener’s lack of capacity to remain regulated and empathic when they encounter distressing information. The disbelief is a defensive state in which the listener’s attention narrows to focus on protecting themselves from discomfort.

We can take it less personally when we recognize that the listener’s reaction is often an effort to preserve their own sense of order, predictability, and safety by maintaining cultural narratives (such as institutional trustworthiness) or preserving belonging within professional hierarchies.

When you encounter disbelief, remember this fundamental truth: the negative reaction you receive is never a reflection of the validity of your experience or your integrity. It is not your fault. The person who dismissed you simply lacked the necessary capacity. They were not equipped to offer the attunement, compassionate witnessing, empathy, and validation that your lived experience deserves. Instead of carrying the burden of their discomfort, let their disbelief re-frame the situation: you simply shared a profound truth with someone whose internal resources were too limited to hold it. You deserve better. Trust your clarity, protect your peace, and move on to find a person or communitywho has the capacity to hold space for your truth.

Posted in Abuse, IPNB of Hierarchy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The God Shot”: Magical Thinking for a Culture That Refuses to Change

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Dr. Eugene Lipov, who helped develop the use of Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB) for PTSD, announced the release of his new book, “The God Shot.” The title also refers to a medical procedure he calls a “Dual Sympathetic Reset (DSR).” It is a bi-level SGB. His message is that trauma can be “fixed” medically, and that understanding the science can heal its legacy. 

But this is the problem: he doesn’t really understand the science of trauma, not the way Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) sees it, or the way complex trauma actually works, and not the way environments keep people unsafe. If he did understand it, he wouldn’t say that he and his mother “caught PTSD” from his father, and he would look beyond the limited treatments his clinics offer and espouse. 

His first book calls the human nervous system “The Invisible Machine.” That’s a metaphor, not actual science. Still, in that volume, he quotes a December 2020 Report on Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics that discusses “Allostatic load,” the cumulative burden of chronic stress and life events. He conveniently overlooks this essential context in his promotional materials, and he overlooked it during a video interview with me for his podcast

The doctor says these shots “reset” the nervous system, but there is no “reset” switch in our bodies. SGBs can’t fix the nervous system, and they don’t erase survival adaptations, history, or the environment that keeps the system on edge. Over 5-½ years, I’ve had 28 SGBs, including four of the DSRs. For someone like me, living with decades of severe trauma, abuse, neglect, and chronic nervous system stress, these shots give a break, a temporary relief. 

Dr. Lipov also claims the SGB lowers norepinephrine in about 20 minutes, and the person feels relief. For me–and for others who have shared their experience in PTSD forums–it takes days, sometimes up to two weeks, for the full effect to appear. When I told him that during the video meeting, he said, “Interesting.” He exhibited no curiosity or attempt to understand my experience. They did not align with his message, and my experience threatened the structure to which his identity and privileges are tied.  When someone’s nervous system and identity are fused with rank, any exposure of that structure feels like danger. That explains the rapid response with control and silencing. Such dismissal is consistent with the worldview he promotes: bodies as machines, trauma as something you can fix with a procedure, patients as objects to be optimized rather than humans embedded in relational histories.

From an IPNB perspective, what’s happening in my body makes perfect sense. Years of extreme trauma and ongoing stress leave a system deeply stuck in survival mode. The SGB can downregulate sympathetic arousal for a while, but the whole network of adaptations across my body and relationships has to catch up slowly. The relief doesn’t appear instantly because my system is still sorting through years of hypervigilance, chronic threat, and lack of safety. This is the depth of my survival adaptations, signaling that they need more time, consistency, and supportive environments.

Like any nerve block, “The God Shot” can’t fix the environment. It can’t change toxic family dynamics, lack of attunement, empathy, compassionate witnessing, or verification of strengths and lived experience. I noted this during the interview, and Dr. Lipov agreed, “It’s just a little bit of anesthetic.” But those relational and environmental supports are what actually allow a complex PTSD system to heal. I told him that the environment is the problem, that hierarchy drives our distress. That’s when he shut it down. Interview over, never aired. Reality doesn’t fit his model. By taking control of the conversation and maintaining his control over me, he was protecting the hierarchy on which he depends for his status. 

For me, the effects of the shot have lasted between 12 days and 90 days. Only recently have I had relief that lasts up to 90 days. That is because my environment continues to be unsafe. When there is no accountability for my abusers, including some who caused extreme, egregious harm under the guise of “standard treatments,” there is no way to feel safe.

This is why the books, Stella clinics, and the procedures are self-promotional tools. They sell the idea that trauma can be fixed medically, in a clinic, with a shot. His shot, “The God Shot.” The commercial model depends on people believing that, because the real work–changing the conditions under which people struggle–can’t be marketed. That’s what he didn’t want to talk about, and why he ended the interview when I showed him my painting that depicts the oppressive effects of hierarchy. By controlling the conversation, cutting me off, and disengaging when my reality didn’t match his story, he protected himself and the hierarchy that gives him power, authority, and status. That structural power differential lets him be “the expert,” run clinics, build his brand, and be shown deference.

A Stellate Ganglion Block may reduce acute sympathetic intensity for some people, and that can bring relief. But relief is not the same as healing. Without changes in environment, relationships, power dynamics, and ongoing stress, the body often returns to the same protective state. Framing SGB as a breakthrough cure risks repeating the same reductionism on which the mental illness industry relies. 

SGBs are useful. They give the system a break, and for me, each has been one rung on the ladder out of severe dysregulation hell. But nerve blocks don’t touch the domination hierarchy, the chronic stress of the culture, the abuse, or the structural oppression that keeps people unsafe. And they don’t offer the relational experiences that allow a complex PTSD system to heal. The critical work lies in changing those conditions. But there is no profit or glory in that.

Posted in IPNB of Hierarchy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

IPNB: A Superior Theoretical Model of Trauma, Chronic Pain, and Complex Stress

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) serves as a theoretical model in a very different way than most biomedical models, and that difference is the point.

IPNB does not try to explain outcomes by isolating a single structure, pathway, or intervention and assigning it causal primacy. Instead, it offers a coherence model. It explains how patterns of experience emerge from the interaction of nervous system state, relational context, developmental history, and current conditions. It is less about mechanism in the narrow sense and more about organization over time.

Where many theoretical models ask, “What did this intervention do to the system?”, IPNB asks, “What conditions allowed this system to shift?” That changes what counts as evidence and what counts as explanation.

In IPNB, change happens when conditions reduce threat and increase integration. Those conditions include predictability, attunement, continuity, choice, pacing, and repair. When those are present, systems often reorganize. When they are absent, even technically correct interventions can destabilize or fail. This explains why the same intervention can produce wildly different outcomes across people without requiring a new diagnosis or a new pathology to explain the difference.

As a theoretical model, IPNB accounts for variability without blaming the individual or overstating the power of a technique. It can explain why a single medical procedure, a relational rupture, a documentation practice, or a long-term therapeutic relationship can have disproportionate effects on physiology, perception, and function. They alter the overall load the system is carrying.

This is where IPNB differs from models often criticized for speculative mechanisms. It does not claim that a specific input directly produces a specific output. It claims that systems reorganize when conditions change, and that those conditions are relational, developmental, and contextual as much as they are biological.

That makes IPNB especially useful in areas like trauma, chronic pain, and complex stress, where linear cause-and-effect models repeatedly fail. It also means IPNB is harder to reduce to a single study or intervention. It is a framework for understanding patterns across time, not a claim about a particular treatment’s power.

IPNB is a theoretical model, but not in the reductionist sense. Unlike narrower models, it explains why outcomes depend on fit, timing, context, and relationship, and why no single intervention can be universally effective. 

Posted in Neurobiology | Leave a comment

Symbols as Mirrors: Building Coherence Through Tarot

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

I pulled three cards from a tarot deck without looking: the Knight of Swords, the Six of Swords, and the Five of Wands. At first glance, they are just symbols: energetic, chaotic, transitional. But when I looked at them together, the story they told was my story, or at least a reflection of it. And it struck me: these cards, because they are archetypal and symbolic, can be a tool to help us build a cohesive narrative of our own lives.

The Knight of Swords is all energy and motion. Charging forward, eyes fixed on a destination, braving the wind. This is the kind of forward motion I’ve lived. There was no waiting, no pause. When systems fail, when people hurt, when the hierarchy demands silence in exchange for safety, the only option is to move. Urgently, decisively, and visibly. That is survival.

The Six of Swords speaks to the cost of that motion. It’s not escape, but a necessary departure. Moving from turbulent environments toward calmer ground, from systems that amplify threat to spaces that allow for repair, even quietly. Healing is not glamorous. Healing is choosing distance from chaos and being willing to leave behind what cannot change. That card mirrors every step I’ve taken to remove myself from institutions, relationships, and environments that carried more harm than care.

The Five of Wands reflects the world around us. Not a life-or-death struggle, but constant friction, competition, and the clash of hierarchies. Posturing, rivalry, and arguments that drain rather than clarify. I know this energy well. I’ve been immersed in it. And it shapes us, even when we refuse to let it define us.

So how can these cards help us, from a Relational Neuroscience perspective, to build a cohesive narrative? They give form to experience. Our lives are often fragmented. Our survival adaptations, grief, rage, and courage are scattered across time and circumstance. The cards do not heal these fragments themselves. But they can act as prompts, mirrors, or anchors. They allow us to externalize patterns, to see trajectories in our own stories that were otherwise invisible.

When we engage with them honestly, the nervous system has a chance to integrate. Seeing the connection between urgency, departure, and conflict can reduce the constant background tension of fragmented experience. It is not divination, but noticing. It creates coherence that is the foundation for resilience, for clarity, for reclaiming agency in a life that has often demanded survival before selfhood.

The cards do not tell the future or judge. They simply give us a language to hold our story in one place long enough to see it, name it, and, sometimes, to step out of it with understanding rather than reaction.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Smile for the Camera: The Coast Guard Trophy Photo as a Setup For Coasties to Sexually Assault Civilians

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD
The "trophy" photo lineup is a perfect set-up for a sexual assault.

This is what a sexual assault looks like when it’s disguised as camaraderie.
Just before the photo was taken, the Coastguardsman slammed against me, simultaneously kicking my boot. He held his position, forcing physical contact. The BM2’s stance is firm, squared, claiming space that wasn’t his. Mine is defensive: angled away, hands in pockets, a body refusing while a face is forced to smile
This was a deliberate, dominant message: a sexual assault meant to override me and my sense of safety.
This moment was captured in plain sight at Sector Hampton Roads, U.S. Coast Guard.

Sailing was the only place my nervous system could reliably settle. Having experienced severe childhood sexual abuse, I was not suited to the conventional structure of work and a conventional life. Sailing provided me with regulation, purpose, and survival. I had quit everything to live the sailor’s life I had worked toward for years, at real cost. 

At sea, risk was real, but it was honest. Weather, navigation, equipment, and judgment are dangers that do not lie. They do not pretend to protect you while plotting to violate you.

At the end of a 1,500-mile voyage from St. Thomas to Hampton Roads, Virginia, our vessel was disabled in five to six-foot seas with thirty-knot winds. We spent the night spinning in the busy harbor, struggling to avoid other vessels in the dark. It was frigid, wet, dangerous, and exhausting. At dawn, the United States Coast Guard finally arrived and towed our Lagoon 42 catamaran to a dock. Up to that point, their role was what it should have been.

Afterwards, we were asked to line up for a photo on the deck of our vessel. A trophy photo. We were positioned and told where to stand: alternating Coastie, crew member, Coastie, crew member. During that lineup, the boatswain’s mate, second class (BM2), sexually assaulted me. He did it twice. This was deliberate, targeted, and confident. He knew what he was doing. He also knew he would get away with it. 

A Coast Guard photographer took the picture. The image shows the BM2, Geoffrey Wells, pressed up against me. It shows my foot turned where he had kicked it as he moved in to terrify me. He was like a lion at my neck.

The assault was documented by the institution itself. I filed a complaint, which put me through an arduous and triggering process. Not only did I need to write about the event and its impact on me, but I also had to go to Philadelphia. There, I had to speak to a male investigator, who, without a heads-up, brought another male investigator into the small, windowless room. The two of them sat between me and the door. The meeting could have been hstfly less trauma-informed.

No action was taken. The complaint was dismissed.  The assailant had posted a photo of a sexual assault on the Coast Guard website. I had to fight just to get the photograph taken down. The article is still up. I have tried repeatedly to get it removed. I have been given the runaround for years.

This is not a single story with one bad actor. This is a structure that provides opportunity, protection, and impunity. The lineup itself was a setup. There was no operational reason for it. It served no safety function. It was a moment of power and display, and it created the conditions for assault. The confidence with which he acted made it clear this was not his first time. People who fear consequences do not behave that way.

It is worth asking whether the traditional post-assistance photo functions as a setup rather than a harmless ritual. Lining civilians up, telling them where to stand, directing their bodies, and framing the moment as celebratory or routine creates forced proximity under authority. It lowers vigilance, introduces confusion, and produces a moment of compliance rather than consent. An assault in that situation would be sudden, unexpected, and difficult to interrupt. The shock alone would immobilize many people. That is how surprise attacks work, and why someone intent on assault would choose that moment. I froze, which was the predictable outcome of how the situation was structured.

What this took from me cannot be overstated. The Coast Guard is the federal military agency to which sailors answer. As a sailor, my sense of safety with them was important. That sense of safety was permanently damaged. Everything connected to them was tainted after that, including visits to bases I had made with my Sea Scouts. An institution that was supposed to represent rescue and protection became associated with threat.

There was no justice, no accountability. The system closed ranks, protected itself, and left me to carry the consequences.

So this is where watercolors, words, and wits come in. When formal channels fail, truth-telling becomes the only remaining leverage. Every year, on the anniversary of that assault, I mark it publicly. I write about what happened, how it happened, and why it was allowed to happen. I will name the systems and structures that allow predators to operate among them, assault civilians, and walk away untouched.

I’m not seeking revenge, but refusing erasure by making a record. This assures that what was done in daylight, and documented by their own camera, does not disappear into institutional silence that protects the hierarchy and the abusers it fosters and rewards. Sharing the truth of my lived experience is the only justice I have known.

Posted in Predators | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Accumulated Harm: The Hidden Toll of Healthcare Encounters

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Every time we turn to a practitioner for help, we engage in a deeply vulnerable act. We reach out not just for solutions, but for connection, support, and some kind of shared human understanding.

From a Relational Neuroscience perspective, the nervous system registers this as a bid for safety. It’s a moment when we open ourselves with the hope that another person will meet us with attunement, presence, and care. When that doesn’t happen, the cost includes a physiological setback. The system that was seeking regulation through connection instead becomes dysregulated by misattunement.

The impact isn’t just in the session. The aftermath can be just as grueling. Trying to make sense of what happened, trying to regulate alone what should have been a co-regulated experience, adds to our load.

These repeated ruptures become part of our body’s history. They don’t vanish after the appointment ends. They accumulate. Each one can deepen our sense that it’s not safe to ask for help, that turning to others results in harm instead of relief.

This is what allostatic load looks like: not just stress from life events, but the toll taken by unmet needs, unresolved ruptures, and the constant work of adapting to a world that fails to meet us in our humanity. It is exhausting. And yet the dominant systems of “care” often ignore this reality. They frame distress as a flaw within the individual rather than a signal of unmet relational and physiological needs.

This is the conundrum. We seek care to reduce the burden on our systems, and too often that “care” adds to it. The places we turn to for relief can become sources of harm. It shouldn’t be this way. Attunement should not be a rare luxury in healthcare; it should be foundational. Our nervous systems are built for connection, and without it, no amount of expertise or intervention will fully support healing.  This is why I insist that my practitioners can attune, witness with compassion, offer empathy, and validate my lived experience in this body. If they cannot, they will cause harm, so they are disqualified from my care team.

Posted in Healthcare | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Announcing My First Book!

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Of all the things I could have predicted for my life, becoming a watercolor graphic medicine artist who uses cartoon ladybugs to teach Relational Neuroscience was not one of them. But here I am. My “Della the IPNB Ladybug™” books distill complex ideas into accessible, disarming, and emotionally resonant works. I use the simplicity and whimsy not to dilute the science but to deliver it in a form that meets people where they are, especially those who’ve been excluded, overlooked, or harmed by the systems that claim to help.

My work bridges the gap between neurobiological truth and lived, relational experience, which the clinical world often misses entirely. And in that sense, these books are not just educational, but reparative.

“Healing Happens in Connection: The Basics of Interpersonal Neurobiology for Healthcare”
Transform Healthcare. Discover the Power of Connection and IPNB

This book offers a lighthearted, picture-book-style introduction to Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) for healthcare practitioners and those who access care. It highlights how improved relationships between doctors and patients can lead to better outcomes. It also makes a great gift for your healthcare practitioners! Order online here.

“Della the IPNB Ladybug™” books offer a gentle, visually engaging journey into well-being, exploring how our brains work, finding balance, and navigating complex truths through simple language and warm illustrations.

Every short, focused book is a portable regulator, distilling vital truths about healing, connection, and how we affect each other, creating a field guide for humanity. Discover the expanding series and unlock a living library of regulation and relationship.

Each 24-page Della book is 5.5 x 8.5 in (140 x 216 mm), with a paperback saddle stitch binding.

You can find this and the upcoming series of Della the IPNB Ladybug™ books at https://traumaawareamerica.org/della-books/

Posted in Neurobiology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

When Pleasure Opens the Door to Grief: Why Some Trauma Survivors Cry After Orgasm

Posted on February 27, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Some trauma survivors are surprised or confused when they cry after an orgasm. This response is often misunderstood or pathologized, but from an Interpersonal Neurobiology perspective, it makes sense.

Orgasm involves a temporary drop in control and vigilance. The body allows intensity, sensation, and vulnerability to move through without the usual guarding. For people who have lived with chronic threat, that moment of openness can release more than pleasure. It can also release grief, fear, or long-held sorrow that has been contained for survival.

Early trauma, especially sexual or relational trauma, can pair bodily arousal with danger, loss of agency, or betrayal. Even later, in safe or self-directed sexual experiences, the nervous system may still associate sexual release with those earlier conditions. Tears are not a sign of failure or harm. They are a sign that something unfinished is moving.

Crying after orgasm can also reflect mourning. Many survivors grieve what intimacy could have been or should have been. When pleasure occurs without the relational safety that was missing for so long, the contrast can bring that grief to the surface.

Importantly, this response is not about being “too emotional” or “unable to enjoy pleasure.” It reflects a system that learned to survive under extreme conditions and is now encountering moments of release it did not previously have permission to feel.

With time, safety, agency, and non-coercive experiences, this response often eases. The body learns that pleasure does not have to be followed by threat. Until then, tears are not something to suppress or judge. They are information, expression, and, for many, a form of integration.

Crying after orgasm in trauma survivors is not pathology, but coherence.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment