Tag Archives: recovery
Not Feeling: A Survival Adaptation
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged emotional blunting, emotions, feelings, numbness, recovery
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Beyond the Mental Illness Industry: Healing Trauma with NARM and Interpersonal Neurobiology
After the psychiatric abuse of a “standard treatment” nearly killed me 8 years ago, I found the tools that made survival possible. This was at the intersection of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) and Interpersonal Neurobiology. Unlike the mental illness … Continue reading
Signs of Recovery, an IPNB Perspective
The mainstream mental illness industry offers a symptom–management and pathology-reduction framework that reflects the incomplete biomedical model of mental health. That narrow framework treats progress as a set of isolated symptom-based milestones, focusing on controlling or managing parts of experience … Continue reading
Posted in Mental Health
Tagged Behavioral Health, IPNB, Mental Health, PTSD recovery, recovery, Relational Neuroscience, symptoms
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Why One Safe Connection Affects Everything
In the past few months, I have enjoyed a noticeably improved quality of life. I don’t have to spend so much focus desperately trying to build connections. I have more energy for other things, like working in the garden and … Continue reading
Posted in PTSD, Uncategorized
Tagged connection, integrated relationships, integration, mutuality, recovery, relationships, support
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When the Body Sets the Pace: Trauma Integration Through Agency and Relationship
I had a remarkably powerful experience with my craniosacral practitioner after I had realized that my Moro Reflex flashbacks were also connected to the suffocation torture. It was the same posture–prone face up, arms wide, head back–and inability to breathe. … Continue reading
Posted in Relationships, Trauma
Tagged craniosacral, craniosacral practitioner, holding space, implicit memory, recovery, safety, torture, trauma recovery, witnessing
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Complex PTSD From An IPNB Perspective: Survival Adaptations and the Roots of Symptoms
When people talk about Complex PTSD or other trauma-related conditions, they often focus on the symptoms. They make lists of patterns, put them into clusters, and give them names. That sounds organized, but it hides the bigger picture. It puts … Continue reading
Posted in PTSD
Tagged Complex PTSD, CPTSD, IPNB, labels, Medicine, Nervous System, psychiatry, recovery, relationships, survival, survival adaptations
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Stuck on Red Alert: The Hidden Harm of Seeking Help
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. … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Healthcare
Tagged abuse, awe, emotions, healthcare, hypervigilance, joy, Medicine, peace, recovery, Red Alert, wonder
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Creating My Own Justice: Art, Words, and the Nervous System
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 psychiatric abuse and forced FGM surgery didn’t just happen; they continue to … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability
Tagged abuse, art, expression, failure of justice, integration, interpersonal neurobiology, IPNB, justice, justice making, medical abuse, medical harm, painting, process, recovery, watercolors, witnessing
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The DSM Misses the Mark: IPNB Offers a Humane and Scientific Understanding of Mental Health
Some trauma experts have said that if the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) acknowledged trauma, it would be a very thin volume because virtually everything else would fall beneath it. But from an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) … Continue reading
Posted in Mental Health, Psychiatry
Tagged Behavioral Health, DSM, illness, IPNB, Mental Health, mental illness industry, Nervous System, pathologizing, psychiatry, Psychology, recovery, Trauma, wellbeing
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When Your Partner Cannot or Refuses to Understand Trauma
One of the most destabilizing dynamics for a trauma-impacted nervous system is not the original harm. It is ongoing misattunement inside an intimate relationship. When a partner cannot or refuses to understand trauma, the problem is not a lack of … Continue reading