Tag Archives: recovery
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
Truth-Telling is Refusing to Let the Story End the Way They Wrote It
Trauma recovery doesn’t come from “getting over it.” It emerges from changing your relationship with what happened. There are many ways to do this: through story, compassionate witnessing, individual work, and collective work. But a key way to reclaim your … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability
Tagged abuse, ChristianaCare, painting, recovery, Rockford Center for Behavioral Health, speaking, survival, systemic abuse, truth, writing
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Trauma is a Symptom of Insufficient Support
We often talk about trauma like it lives in the event itself, the abuse, the violence, the accident, the betrayal. But from a relational and neurobiological perspective, trauma doesn’t come from the event alone. It comes from what was missing … Continue reading
How “Sit With Your Feelings” Can Harm Trauma Survivors
Warning! “Sitting with it” can be harmful for trauma survivors! Their nervous systems may be in a heightened state of dysregulation. Trauma often leads to an overactive stress response, where the body remains in a state of fight, flight, or … Continue reading
Posted in PTSD
Tagged feelings, integration, interpersonal neurobiology, IPNB, Mental Health, Psychology, recovery
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