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

Posted on February 20, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

The painting I shared with Dr. Lipov illustrates why reality/hierarchy is the problem. That’s when he stopped the conversation, lectured me about hope, and ended the interview. The podcast never aired.

Dr. Eugene Lipov, who helped develop the use of Stellate Ganglion Blocks (SGB) for PTSD, announced the release of his new book, “The God Shot.” The title refers to a medical procedure he also 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. I had read Dr. Lipov’s glowing reports and had high hopes for regaining function and quality of life from one procedure. But 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. Discovering this the hard way was such a huge disappointment it felt like a kind of betrayal.

Dr. Lipov also claims the SGB lowers norepinephrine in about 20 minutes, and the person feels relief. That may be true, but 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. 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. This kind of 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 challenged him on 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 this: that the environment is the problem, that hierarchy drives our distress, and that’s when he shut it down. Interview over. The podcast never aired. Reality doesn’t fit into the doctor’s model. By taking control of the conversation and maintaining his control over me, he protected 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 sense of safety. 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 sold. 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 replicates 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.

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Top 10 Bad Things Therapists Say to Trauma Survivors 

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Having fired 13 mental illness industry workers in 6.5 years, I experienced a lot of indifference and harm. These are not isolated events; they are endemic in an industry that denies the reality of trauma.

 

  1. Dismissing or Minimizing the Trauma

“That was a long time ago. Why does it still affect you?”

“Other people have been through worse.”

“It’s time to move on.”

“You’re letting this define you.”

“You’re stuck in a victim mentality.”


  1.  Gaslighting or Invalidating Experiences

“Are you sure that really happened?”

“Maybe you’re misremembering.”

“Your perception might be distorted.”

“It probably wasn’t as bad as you think.”

 

  1. Pathologizing Normal Trauma Responses

“You’re overreacting.”

“You’re being too sensitive.”

“That’s just your anxiety talking.”

“You have to change your thinking.”

 

  1. Blaming or Implying Personal Responsibility

“What did you do to attract this?”

“You have to take responsibility for your part.”

“If you keep focusing on it, you’re choosing to suffer.”

“Forgiveness is for you, not them.”

 

  1. Over-Reliance on Cognitive Techniques

“Let’s reframe that thought.”

“Just challenge the belief.”

“Your feelings aren’t facts.”

“Let’s do some CBT worksheets.”

 

  1. Forcing Exposure or Emotional Overload

“You need to talk about it to heal.”

“Reliving it will help you process it.”

“Just sit with the discomfort.”

“You have to push through it.”

 

  1. Toxic Positivity or Oversimplified Solutions

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“Just practice gratitude.”

“You’re strong, you’ll get through this.”

“Focus on the positive.”

 

  1. Ignoring the Nervous System & Somatic Experience

“It’s all in your head.”

“Your body is reacting for no reason.”

“Just breathe through it.”

“Have you tried meditation?”

 

  1. Dismissing Systemic or Institutional Harm

“Maybe they didn’t mean it that way.”

“You have to work within the system.”

“The legal process is what it is.”

“Not all doctors/therapists/police are like that.”

 

  1. Using Therapy Jargon to Avoid Accountability

“You’re resistant to treatment.”

“You have trust issues.”

“Maybe you just aren’t ready to heal.”

“You need to work on your attachment wounds.”

 

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Artist Talk, “Afternoon With the Artist,” February 8, 2026

Posted on February 16, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

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.

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Engineered for Fake Relief: Why You Crave Junk Food in a Junk Culture

Posted on February 13, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

The junk food industry is not in the business of feeding people, but extracting money from stressed nervous systems. Instead of nourishment, it sells stimulation, sedation, and distraction in edible form.

Human bodies evolved in environments where taste and texture were important. Sweet meant ripe fruit and quick energy. Crunch meant fresh, living plants full of water. Fat meant survival in times of scarcity. These signals helped guide us toward what supported life. Our bodies learned to trust them.

The junk food industry learned how to copy those signals without delivering what they evolved to mean. They engineer food so it lights up the same sensory and relational pathways that once guided us to real nourishment. The snap of a chip, the melt of sugar on the tongue, and the way fat carries flavor are tuned to trigger “this is good for me” without actually being good for you. Your system receives the message of safety and pleasure, but your body does not receive the resources that message is supposed to mean.

With sweet foods, the effect is especially powerful. Sugar gives a brief internal settling. In a body living under chronic stress, that feels like care. Their systems are overloaded and looking for regulation. The relief is short, then comes the drop that feels like lack. So the system reaches again.

That is how you end up in the sweet, salty, sweet loop. Sugar soothes. Salt wakes things back up and keeps appetite open. Fat carries everything and makes it linger. Each bite almost closes the door, then the next one kicks it open again. Your system never lands. It keeps cycling. This is not a personal failure. It is a design feature.

Now add chronic stress to the picture. When a body lives under pressure, fear, isolation, time scarcity, and constant demand, it spends more time in threat detection. When a system is focused on threat, it loses access to connection and real rest. It starts looking for fast ways to feel better. Junk food becomes emergency regulation. Not good regulation, but quick.

So people do not crave garbage. They crave steadiness, relief, and something that feels like being cared for. The industry has learned how to imitate those signals without giving what the body asks.

This suits inside a domination hierarchy that overloads people and then profits from their overload: long work hours, low wages, social isolation, and constant pressure. Then industries step in and sell fake relief. Food, substances, screens, and shopping don’t fix the conditions. They just keep people functioning inside them.

Economic factors are involved. Most junk food is made of sugar, fat, flour, and starch. These are some of the cheapest raw materials on the planet, thanks in part to government subsidies. The real expenses are in the processing, chemical flavoring, shelf-stabilizing, branding, and packaging. You are not paying for food, but engineering and marketing.

The packaging matters more than people realize. Bright colors, bold fonts, cartoon shapes, and nostalgic imagery affect your nervous system as familiar, safe, playful, and non-threatening. It is the same part of you that responds to old storybooks and childhood cues. The bag is talking to your body long before your mind gets a vote. When you reach for it, it is not just hunger. It is pattern recognition, memory, sensory pull, and a system that has been trained by stress to grab whatever offers fast relief.

You are human inside a structure that exploits human biology. The way out is not discipline, but understanding and support. When people start to get real nourishment, rest, connection, and pleasure, the grip of junk loosens. Bodies that feel safer do not need as much artificial soothing. Less overloaded systems do not need as many emergency exits.

There are ways to satisfy what your body is actually asking for without going down the junk food route. Crunch can come from real vegetables, nuts, apples, carrots, and cucumbers. Sweet can come from fruit, dates, honey in small amounts, foods that bring energy without the crash. Fat can come from things that actually build the body instead of inflaming it. Warm meals can bring settling in a way cold packaged snacks never will. Eating with other people does more for regulation than any product ever could.

And sometimes what your body wants is not food at all. It wants rest, touch, to feel seen, and to stop bracing for the next demand.

The more people understand this, the less shame they carry. And shame is one of the tools that keeps the hierarchical system running. If you think the problem is you, you will keep buying solutions. If you see the problem is the structure, you start looking for real alternatives.

You are not failing at eating. You are living inside a hierarchy that profits from dysregulated bodies.

And the more we expose that, the harder it is for the system to keep pretending this is about “personal choice” instead of organized exploitation of our most basic biological needs.

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Bill Gates Is “Giving It All Away” While Keeping the Power

Posted on February 13, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Bill Gates announced he plans to give away “virtually all” of his wealth–around $200 billion–over the next 20 years in “the “largest philanthropic commitment in modern history.” He says the Gates Foundation will shut its doors on December 31, 2045.

To most people, that sounds like extraordinary generosity. But this isn’t about giving. It’s about control. Gates retains control of narratives, systems, and people.

The money will flow, but who decides what gets funded? Who decides what “health” means? Or how “resilience” is defined? Not the communities being served. Not the people directly affected. Until the very last dollar is gone and the foundation is shuttered, twenty years from now, Bill Gates still gets to decide.

Power Disguised as Benevolence

This is how the domination hierarchy keeps itself alive: concentrate unimaginable wealth through monopolies and exploitation, call it innovation; rebrand it as humanitarian, and receive praise for “generosity,” as it shapes global systems from a boardroom. All with a vast fortune that never should have been concentrated in the first place.

Gates’ philanthropy is just a continuation of the same logic that made him a billionaire: centralize control, engineer solutions from the top down, and ignore the people at the bottom, except as metrics.

Public health isn’t democratic when one man funds it. Food sovereignty doesn’t exist when billionaires decide what farmers grow. Education isn’t liberating when it’s designed to fit the elites’ worldview. This is colonialism as a TED Talk.

We Don’t Need a Savior. We Need a System Change.

The real issue is the structure that allows someone to hoard $200 billion while millions suffer, and then frame it as generosity when he starts handing it out. We don’t need billionaires to “give it all away” on their timeline.

We need:

  • To tax that wealth before it accumulates. No 20-year PR runway.
  • To fund public goods publicly, through systems that reflect collective needs and democratic values.
  • To dismantle concentrated wealth and power, not celebrate it for deciding to self-destruct.
  • To return decision-making to the people living the realities that philanthropy claims to fix.
  • As long as billionaires get to decide what counts as “progress,” we will never have justice.

Bill Gates may be giving away his money. But he’s keeping the most important thing: the power to decide how the world works, until the very end. That’s not generosity. That’s end-stage domination disguised as legacy. Let’s stop applauding it.

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Stuck on Red Alert: The Hidden Harm of Seeking Help

Posted on February 11, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

For most of the last seven years, I haven’t been able to feel the normal range of human emotions. Joy, peace, gratitude, awe, and beauty have been mostly absent. Most of the time, I can only think about these things. The ability to *feel* them has been taken from me by the systems I turned to for help.

Nearly every medical appointment did something to keep my body on red alert, or turn the volume up even higher! That constant red alert is the real problem. It’s not just stress or fatigue. It’s my nervous system saying, “Danger! Protect yourself!” The so-called healthcare system has actively blocked my recovery, over and over. That’s not healthcare. That’s exploitation.

For the last five years, what has kept me alive is rage, determination, and my commitment to my cause. I’ve relied on those feelings because almost nothing else was accessible. My nervous system has been in survival mode, constantly on edge, making it impossible to feel calm, safe, or connected.

Here’s the thing: when you’re stuck in red alert, your system can’t rest. Thinking clearly, regulating emotions, and even just feeling life fully, becomes blocked. Healing can’t happen. Growth can’t happen. And yet, almost every interaction with mainstream healthcare has dialed UP my alarm instead of down. Even when I tried to explain what I needed, to guide the doctor with neurobiology, the system’s routines and lack of attunement made my body feel unsafe. Every appointment used up energy I needed for recovery.

I’ve tried alternatives. I’ve spent tens of thousands on out-of-mainstream therapy, on practitioners who understand trauma and chronic pain. But the level of care I need–coordinated, trauma-informed, fully attuned care–is mostly inaccessible unless one can pay for boutique practices. That’s a privilege most people don’t have.

The real problem isn’t just symptoms or behaviors, but being stuck in red alert. And the mainstream system often makes it worse. To relieve this, healthcare practitioners must understand this: patients’ bodies and nervous systems are always present in the room. Safety, attunement, and responsiveness aren’t extras. They’re the foundation. Without them, “care” can do more harm than good.

Recovery doesn’t come from a set of treatments. It emerges through creating conditions where the nervous system can relax, where survival mode can ease, and where life–joy, peace, and connection–can start to return. Anything less keeps people stuck in red alert, fighting to survive instead of living, which is what we get from “healthcare.”

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I  Can’t Trust a Doctor Who Doesn’t Trust Me

Posted on February 9, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Over the past eight years, the biggest barrier to my health has been my practitioner’s refusal to trust me. They don’t believe what I say about my body, my experience, my reality. They can’t take in what I need, what I know, or what I’ve been through. It’s exhausting.

I can’t trust them if they won’t trust me, if they dismiss my observations, ignore my data, belittle my efforts, or treat me like a problem to manage instead of a person to collaborate with. If they can’t see, hear, and empathize with me, I can trust this: they will harm me.

In an honest, integrated doctor-patient relationship–one based on mutual respect and interpersonal neurobiology–trust has to go both ways. When it doesn’t, when they refuse to meet me with curiosity and attunement, it makes it impossible for me to trust them.

When my provider disbelieves me, my nervous system reacts. It knows the rupture. It says: “This is not safe.” Suddenly, I can’t receive care, tolerate guidance, or co-regulate with them. Not because I’m resisting, but because my body is protecting me.

Everything I bring–my charts, my studies, my self-awareness–is aimed at deep collaboration. I’m showing up fully. Are they?

I’m not being difficult or controlling. I’m doing the hard work of making healing possible. If they can’t meet me there–if they insist on staying in power-over rather than relationship–I can trust one thing: disconnection in medicine is harm. Maybe not malicious, but real, measurable, damaging harm.

I see it clearly. That clarity is hard-won. It’s part of my power, and it increases my ability to protect myself from practitioners who mistrust the people who turn to them for help.

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Why Conversations End When You Expose the Hierarchy 

Posted on February 6, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

A few months ago, I agreed to a podcast interview with a prominent pain specialist, someone widely known for using Stellate Ganglion Blocks (SGBs) to treat people diagnosed with PTSD. He states that the shot works fast, with people often “feeling like themselves again” within 30 minutes. At the time of the interview, I had undergone 27 SGBs for severe Complex PTSD (CPTSD) and quadrilateral Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). That means I was not talking about a single reaction or an outlier experience. I was speaking from repeated exposure over time, with ample opportunity to notice patterns, shifts, and delays in how my body responds.

I went in willing to speak plainly about my experience, not as a testimonial or a success story, but as a person living in a body shaped by prolonged threat, repeated violations, and layered loss.

At one point, I told him something simple and ordinary. For me, it usually takes about two weeks to notice the full effect of a stellate ganglion block. Not hours. Not days. Weeks.

His response was a single word. “Interesting.” He showed no interest in how change unfolds over time in a human nervous system that has been carrying load for decades. Just a pause and a quiet closing of the door.

What makes this especially telling is that my experience is not unusual. In PTSD forums, other people share how they have similar experiences. The shift is gradual. Sleep may change first. Vigilance softens later. Pain, digestion, and social tolerance often follow more slowly. This is common, particularly for people with complex trauma histories. Two weeks is not strange. Pretending there is one clean timeline is.

Later in the interview, I showed the doctor a painting I made about the neurobiological effects of hierarchy. It came directly from lived experience and from years of studying Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). His response was to sarcastically accuse me of having a negative view. Then he changed the subject. Soon after, he cut the interview short. That told me a great deal about him.

Sarcasm is often a way to assert dominance without engaging. Painting my view as negative, he avoided the actual subject, which was how hierarchy shapes stress, safety, and human capacity. It also made clear that this was not a shared inquiry. He controlled the frame, the tone, and the ending.

From an IPNB perspective, this is an example of how hierarchy behaves when it is exposed. When lived experience disrupts a tidy intervention narrative, or when someone points to power itself as a source of suffering, control tightens. The conversation narrows. The person with institutional authority decides what is acceptable to discuss and when the discussion is over.

This specialist is well-versed in SGB for PTSD as a diagnosis. But he did not want to engage with CPTSD, where threat has been chronic, relational, and embedded in systems. In those bodies, change is rarely immediate. It unfolds over time, in interaction with daily life, with safety, and depending on whether the person is still living under domination and contempt. Bodies adapt to conditions. They do not obey scripts.

The physician’s behavior told me he is comfortable with his place in the hierarchy. Comfortable enough to deflect, dismiss, and shut down the podcast recording once the hierarchy itself was made visible. Such comfort depends on hierarchy remaining unexamined.

When people talk about healing without talking about power, something essential is missing. When clinicians center interventions but refuse to look at the structures that keep bodies in prolonged threat, they protect their position, which does not support recovery. And when lived experience is treated as an inconvenience rather than a source of knowledge, hierarchy is doing exactly what it is designed to do.

I considered sending the specialist a follow-up email, but quickly recognized that I am not interested in conversations that require silence about this, or narratives that flatten complex human recovery into neat timelines. And I am not willing to participate in spaces where control matters more than truth.

Hierarchy shows up in bodies and conversations. And when you make it visible, the conversation often ends. But I will keep sharing my lived experience, including with the podcasting doctor, to ensure the conversation about the harms of hierarchy continues. 

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What Are Our Core Biological Needs?

Posted on February 4, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology perspective, the core biological needs that are chronically unmet in people with severe CPTSD involve safety, connection, and regulation. These needs are not abstract, but embodied.

1. Co-regulation. Human nervous systems are designed to settle in the presence of steady, attuned others. Without this, our systems remain in a constant state of alert, scanning for threat, unable to rest. Chronic CPTSD usually develops in contexts where this stabilizing presence was inconsistent, unavailable, or harmful.
2. Predictable, non-threatening environments. When threat is constant—whether from caregivers, institutions, or social hierarchies—the body’s stress response stays elevated. This overload prevents natural homeostasis, and every sensation, sound, or touch can trigger survival reactions.
3. To have one’s bodily and emotional experiences witnessed and mirrored. Being seen and understood in our states—without judgment or contempt—provides the feedback the nervous system relies on to learn it is safe. In severe CPTSD, this validation has been repeatedly denied, leaving the nervous system dysregulated and hypervigilant.
4. Autonomy and agency over one’s own body and life. When that is systematically violated, the nervous system experiences chronic threat signals, reinforcing patterns of hyperarousal, shutdown, or dissociation.

In a nutshell, what is unmet is steady human presence, safety, attuned validation, and the ability to influence one’s environment. When these core needs are denied over time, the nervous system is left in a prolonged state of survival rather than life.

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The Great Misdiagnosis: Why Medical Trauma Requires a Different Lens

Posted on February 2, 2026 by Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

The standard treatment for PTSD is the problem. It nearly killed me. And then the standard treatment for that was even worse. It locked me into psychiatric hospitalization for 8 days and nights. There, my rights were violated, I received no individual therapy, and I was threatened with commitment if I tried to leave before my insurance benefits ran out. That combination of mistreatment left me in far worse condition than when I asked for help just 5 weeks earlier.

PTSD is not a single, uniform condition just because the mental illness industry gives it the same diagnostic label. The source, context, and ongoing nature of the threat matter enormously for how it shows up and what actually helps. 

Medical trauma is real, and for many of us, it is distinct because the threat comes from the place that is supposed to provide care, safety, and relief. When harm is repeated, sanctioned, and denied inside medical systems, the nervous system learns something very different than what it does from a one-time event.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) lens, recovery depends on whether the environment stops re-exposing the person to threat and whether their lived experience is accurately named and responded to. A generic “tailored treatment plan with a licensed therapist” fails when the therapist does not understand medical power dynamics, bodily violation, betrayal by authority, or the way ongoing medical needs keep the threat active. Coping strategies do not restore regulation when the harm is relentless.

I worked with therapists for 6.5 years and fired 13 of them. None could help me with Medical PTSD. They did not understand the physiology, relational betrayal, or cumulative harm. They defaulted to techniques designed for discrete past events, not ongoing medical exposure. They had no clue. No clue.

The current standard of care is insufficient for many people with medical trauma. If it worked, people like me would not have to build our own recovery plans from scratch just to survive.

When treatment ignores power, embodiment, and the ongoing nature of medical harm, it fails. That failure belongs to the system, not the person living with the trauma.

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