I’m not asking for a subscription. What I would love more than adding another $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

This is it. The end of this project where, every month for a year, I tried a different recommendation to lessen the effects of my Complex-PTSD. Or, as I put it in my first post, taming the little T-Rex in my brain who is always on high alert like that colleague texting at 6:45 AM on a holiday. (Admittedly, I’ve written those texts before but had the sense to never send them.)

As I was reflecting on the close of this project, a Daily Calm meditation by Tamara Levitt (which of course I can’t find now) arrived like she’d been reading my mind. It was on the paradox of seeking. When we strive for enlightenment, we get so hyper-fixated on the endpoint that we miss the actual present moment we’re supposedly trying to heal into. As I know all too well, the obsession with the future outcome defeats the whole purpose of many mindfulness practices.

Her words affirmed it was the right time for this project to come to a close. I need to shift the focus now from striving, which is my version of Friday fun, to integration.

Looking back on the past year, I’m so glad I did this, even though at times it was messy, complicated, and a bit too time-consuming for everything else going on in my life. Ironically, I was just in Nashville visiting my mom and some friends, which is exactly where I was one year ago when this whole thing started, mid-move from Mobile to Texas. (Yes, driving north to reach Texas is an objectively unhinged route. While our stuff groaned its way down the highway in a moving truck gloriously driven by someone else, we had some time to kill.) During this limbo week last summer, some part of me knew that I needed to see my stepfather, who had Alzheimer’s. I wanted to tell him I loved him while he still remembered me. I brought a couple of photo albums, one from a trip we all took to France years ago, which he remembered. Honestly, he seemed like he was doing well. I didn’t think of it as goodbye at the time. He died two months later.

I don’t say that to end on a gut-punch. This whole project was built for exactly that kind of moment: learning to listen to the quiet, insistent thing in my body before my brain has time to counter it with an “oh, you’re overacting.”

For me, the best methods to ease my anxiety and C-PTSD have been things I do with my body: breathwork, movement, shaking, tapping, the whole unglamorous toolbox. It’s helped because the T-Rex doesn’t read. No nuance, no timelines. He reacts to sensation, a held breath, a tensed shoulder, a shift he clocked as a threat a full sixty seconds before my conscious brain caught up. Talk therapy is genuinely great for understanding the story, but honestly, it only got me so far. So much of this lives in the body, in a thousand small moments when safety wasn’t guaranteed, moments I never turned into a story, just filed away as reflex. I can’t talk a reflex out of firing. I’m starting to understand that my body has to feel, over and over, that the threat’s actually passed and that I’m in a safe place now.

What’s Next

As I mentioned in my last post, my favorite tools from this year were EMDR, DBT, therapeutic journaling, and somatic work, all of which I’ll continue to do. If you’ve got a favorite resource in any of those categories, drop it in the comments. I’d love to know about it! As I move on from the monthly accountability structure, here’s what I’ve already integrated into my daily life, which I feel pleased about.

• Daily yoga in the morning. I’ve done this for years, just a few sun salutations, but now I’m actually there for it, not “let-me-power-through-this-because-I-know-it’s-good-for-me” yoga. Actual breath. Actual body. Actual presence. That’s a big deal for me.

• Physically discharging stress throughout the day, not just at the end of it, through a shake-out between emails, a few deep breaths in my office chair when my brain starts doing that static-on-a-TV thing. And if no one is looking, a quick dance to signal it’s time to relax. (“Shake It Off” is perfect for this. Happy Wedding Day, Taylor!)

• And talk less, breathe more. When I’m upset now, I work with the body first. The talking-it-out comes later, if it needs to come at all. (Anyone else hear Aaron Burr’s voice from Hamilton? “Talk less, smile more...”)

Love Me Some Therapy in a Nutshell

To that end, a new video from Therapy in a Nutshell landed in my inbox a few weeks ago and felt like it was meant just for me. Emma McAdam’s video on releasing trauma from the body. Emma McAdam runs Therapy in a Nutshell and is an actual licensed therapist, not a wellness “expert” with a ring light and an essential oil affiliate code.

In this post, which I love, love, love, she explains why each step listed below works. Here’s a tape-it-inside-you-cabinet-door version for your own reference that I made for myself with the help of Canva

Thank You to These Substacks

When I started this project, I was both new to many of these practices I’ve since tried, and I was also new to Substack, which I still find a little confusing, to be honest. I wanted to give a shout out to a few Substacks in particular that have helped guide me this past year.

• Dr. Bronce Rice, whose Substack on wellbeing and balance has been a steady, re-assuring read.

• Complex PTSD Warrior, for more practical advice.

• Midstack, which is helping me (notice I’m using present tense here) figure out how Substack works. I wish I’d found this group sooner!

Future Plans

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what’s next for this Substack. And that’s okay. (I think…. Yes, that’s okay.) In January, I might repost some of this project’s core entries for anyone new who wants the full arc. Beyond that, I expect I’ll write more from my other obsessions: nonfiction, poetry, whatever a creative writing professor’s brain gets up to when nobody’s grading it.

For now, I’m genuinely looking forward to sitting back with a cup of tea, reading what the rest of you are writing, and petting my T-Rex. I think I’ll get him a bandana so he can fit in with the other Austin dogs. And I’m going to call him Al.

I’m not asking for a subscription. What I would love more than adding another $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

We’re coming to the end of this year-long project, which is hard to believe. It feels like I just started it—and yet, looking back at everything that’s happened (a move to Austin, a new job that’s wonderful but came with a steep learning curve, a house sale that fell apart not once but twice, my stepfather’s passing), it feels more like five years.

The month of June is a Chili’s appetizer platter of my favorite activities I’ve tried this past year to help ease my Complex PTSD. The past two weeks I’ve focused on yoga and meditation, and the next two weeks will be exercises from The DBT Skills Workbook for PTSD by Kirby Reutter, which is a self-directed workbook that bridges DBT skills with trauma. And then I’ll close out with some therapeutic journaling, which helped me immensely and offered a serious reframe. I love where I am today, so the questions I worked through helped me see how resilient I am and gave me real insight into my patterns and triggers.

If I have to make a swooping declaration of this past year, it would be that my predisposition to analysis and words (I am an English professor after all) has had to take a back seat for this project. Like someone being dragged to a group fitness class by a well-meaning friend, I’m learning I need less talk and more action: deep breaths, shaking out a stressful moment, humming to activate the vagus nerve, or doing a little jig at the end of the day to tell my brain: We’re done. We are safe. You can stand down.

I’ve also had to find my own way with meditation and yoga. Meditation can be brutal for people with C-PTSD. When your nervous system has spent years on high alert, “just sit quietly with your thoughts” can feel less like relaxation and more like being locked in a small room with your T-Rex brain, which, it turns out, has zero chill. So, I’ve found shorter sits are the best sits for me. And yoga... same. Shorter sessions are better. I get antsy and feel like the time is being stolen from “real” exercise. I know, I know, I know. Everyone will tell you yoga is exercise, efficient and restorative and good for the soul. Sure. Fine. Accurate. I also need, though, that sweat-dripping, heart-pounding, Spotify-on-shuffle, kind of cardio exercise. To fit it all into the limited time I have, I like doing about 15 minutes of yoga to start the day and then a class with others once during the weekend. There’s something about doing the awkward breathing and the weird humming next to other people who are also doing the awkward breathing and weird humming that makes it feel quite lovely. And a necessary reset.

These past two weeks I’ve had the ideal place to meditate and do yoga. We’ve been on vacation at the beach and then drove straight from the glories of the Gulf Coast to the glories of Texas Hill Country for a friend’s wedding. With a little help from Yoga with Adrienne, I did a couple of excellent sessions on my balcony hearing the seagulls squawk, the waves crash. Up on the 18th floor, one of the highlights was being buzzed by pelicans as serious as a construction crew clocking in for the day.

The real healing crystal in the yoga crown, though, was the cacao ceremony, sound bath, and yoga session at my friend’s wedding at this cute little hill country resort that looked less like Hilton gild and more like ironic adult-camp gold (string lights, air stream trailers, 50s red metal porch furniture, communal fire pits—and to top it all off, or to top off the tree branches: peacocks.) We took the warm cacao to our lips, sipped with intention, holding mugs like communion, and just...let it all land. We lingered silently on why we were there: to support our friends’ love, and to reflect on our own sources of love. After the cacao and yoga, came the sound bath with gongs, bowls, and chimes washing over us. There’s something to the science behind it, too. The vibrations can shift your brainwaves toward the slower theta and delta states associated with deep relaxation and sleep, which is maybe why twenty minutes of lying on the ground listening to a gong left me feeling as if I’d woken up from the perfect nap, yet never fell asleep.

Something else happened that was as restorative as that whole hour and half session. The moment was this: between two cars in a gravel parking lot. A dear new friend who deeply understands the necessity of working with the body, stopped my husband and me on our way to the hot tub. “You want to do some lion’s breaths? We need to do some lion’s breaths.” She locked her arms around either of us, had us swing toward the ground, stick out our tongues, and breathe like we were on fire. Up and down, swing and roar. Honestly? Three of those lion’s breaths washed off the entire 10-hour road trip we’d just survived. And that was the reminder again: the body. Work with the body. Even when the body’s request is “please make a ridiculous noise in a gravel parking lot in front of strangers.”

The next morning, lying on my yoga mat, the tree limbs looking like the veins in my body, sun sprinkling through, a thought arrived out of nowhere: I am home. It’s been almost a year since the move, which cost me routines, comfort, a sense of community—normal for any move, but especially rough for those of us with C-PTSD. But looking up into the trees, the thought was simple: I am home. In this body. On this earth. I am home.

As Maya Angelou famously said, “This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.”

I’m not asking for a subscription. What I would love more than adding another $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

Success! Or maybe the word is…. Growth?

For those who haven’t read the last couple of posts, I wanted my May’s focus to be on less reactivity with my family. Or as I called it, the hardest room. (Harder than any meditation cushion. Harder than any cold plunge. Harder than the weird hums I make while meditating and hoping my neighbors don’t hear.) We are coming to the end of this twelve-month project, and every other month has been something separate from the realities of stressful daily living. Something done over my morning cup of tea or outside on my porch like therapeutic journaling, meditation, somatic exercises, etc.

So for May, I wanted to focus on the thing that brings me the most intense, specific, 3a.m.-staring-at-the-ceiling regret: overreacting with my own family. As I mentioned in my other post:

“For those of us with Complex PTSD, what looks like “overreacting” is frequently a trauma response in the form of hyperreactivity, emotional flashbacks, and nervous system dysregulation. It is not, and I repeat, not “just a bad habit”.

Which is both helpful and deeply annoying, because I can’t unknow it and I can’t always stop it either. With C-PTSD, especially when family of origin is where the trauma happened, close relationships can activate things that strangers and colleagues simply don’t. The people closest to us get under our skin in ways no one else can. That’s not a character flaw. That’s a nervous system doing its job—but just with outdated information.”

So, this month I worked through excellent exercises in The DBT Skills Workbook for PTSD by Kirby Reutter and have been preparing for the big kahuna: the visit from both my mother-in-law and mother—and, yes, I mean at the same time—for my daughter’s 8^th grade graduation that was this past weekend.

How did it go? Very well. Now, I don’t mean that the two women, as lovely as they are, didn’t cause a bit of internal screaming into the void. But I remembered to breathe. I remembered the exercises. I remembered the feeling of regret I was trying to avoid. Reader, I breathed through it like a person who has been in therapy and has the receipts to prove it.

I’m especially proud of one specific moment: letting my mom know, calmly and gently, that she had hurt my feelings. Here’s the backstory. About 3 weeks ago I had MOHS surgery on a little pencil-eraser spot on the top of my head, right where the hair whirlpools. What I thought would be a quick dermatology scrape turned into multiple layers of stitches, fourteen staples, and an eight-inch incision. Let me repeat that. Fourteen. Staples. On my head. I have frankly never felt more like a Frankenstein, albeit a Frankenstein typing out a lot of end-of-the-semester emails. The worst part was the headache from having everything pulled tight. I couldn’t even walk the dog around the block for about 2 weeks because every movement felt like, and probably was, reopening the incision.

She hadn’t checked in on me once, and I let her know I could have used at least a text. She agreed. We moved on. It was, somehow, lovely. Here’s the thing: I am historically terrible at this. I usually wait to make sure I won’t yell or cry or shaky-voice it out, and by then I so thoroughly don’t care that I don’t even bother bringing it up. Which sounds evolved, except that the wound doesn’t actually disappear. It just goes underground and starts leaving passive-aggressive notes like a seventh grade kid who just got dumped. But this time, I noticed I was being a little short with her, recognized why, and decided to actually say the thing. Out loud. With words. To her face. And it worked.

A bit of context on this behavior of not letting others know when they have hurt us…. If you have CPTSD and you’ve ever swallowed your hurt feelings like a human garbage disposal rather than just telling someone they upset you, congratulations. You’re not broken. You’re just exhaustively well-trained. Our nervous system spent years learning that expressing pain led to bad outcomes. So now when someone hurts our feelings, we get a full internal threat assessment: “If I open my mouth, will I completely lose it? Will they think I’m too much? Is this even real or am I being dramatic again?” And by the end of it we can convince ourselves we’re fine. But…. Our emotions are valid. Our hurt is real, and the only reason we’re not saying so is because somewhere along the way, silence got hardwired as survival. The good news: that’s a learned pattern, not a personality. The less good news: unlearning it is a whole thing.

And I did it. At least for weekend. Two mothers, one graduation, zero meltdowns. Honestly, I felt deserving of a little medal. Or at least a nap.

Next and Last Focus

A few of you have asked what has worked well during this project. For my final month of June, I want to revisit all of my favorite activities from this past year—the ones that actually moved the needle, not just the ones that felt productive while I was procrastinating on other things. So, here they are. (Cue the drum roll. Or a gentle bowl chime.)

June 1-June 7: Daily meditation

June 8-June 14: Daily yoga

June 15-June 21: More exercises from The DBT Skills Workbook for PTSD by Kirby Reutter, which is a self-directed workbook that bridges DBT skills with trauma.

June 22-June 30: Therapeutic journaling

I’m honestly looking forward to this trip down therapy lane.

Thank you for being here. Truly. Following along for eleven months of something this personal is its own kind of generosity, and I don’t take it lightly. See you for the finale.

I’m not asking for a subscription. What I would love more than adding another $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

“Our brains tend to favor false alarms over no alarms,” Kirby Reutter writes in The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for PTSD.

Resonate, Anyone?

Summer break just began, which many would instantly associate with less stress. And it is—oh my, it is. But I also noticed long ago how my brain tends to ruminate more when things get quiet. I remember one June years ago standing in my garden when I lived in Knoxville, thinking: Why am I thinking about this rude thing so-and-so said six months ago? It was one of my first realizations that my mind, like most minds with C-PTSD, will find something to worry about, especially when times are good.

My mind can feel like the guard in a watchtower: all barbed wire and roving searchlights. But then the quieter part of myself reminds me: Notice what is actually around. Grass. A looping butterfly. The tomato that smells like the color green. I’m safe. I am. But that doesn’t mean it always feels that way.

So, why are no alarms so scary for those of us with C-PTSD?

To help me with my goal this month, which is less reactivity with my family, I’ve been reading and doing the exercises in Kirby Reutter’s The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for PTSD. And I love it. Capital L, koala-bear-hugs, seventh-grade infatuation love. The book feels like a comforting friend who truly understands this head of mine.

Reutter calls distorted, overly-negative automatic thoughts “ANTs” (Automatic Negative Thoughts) and explains that they’re driven by something called the negativity bias: the brain’s hardwired tendency to favor false alarms over no alarms. It kept our ancestors alive. It keeps us anxious. The logic goes like this: one ancestor sees a stick but thinks it’s a snake. That ancestor experiences anxiety but survives. Another ancestor sees a snake but thinks it’s a stick. That ancestor does not experience anxiety, and, does not live long to tell people: “Red touch yellow, kill a fellow. Red touch black, friend of Jack.” So, the brain learned: when in doubt, alarm.

For those of us with C-PTSD, the negativity bias runs hotter than average. Trauma survivors tend to experience what Reutter calls the three P’s: we take things more personally, assume they’re more permanent, and feel them more pervasively. That’s why one complaint at dinner can suddenly feel like proof that nothing is ever okay and it never will be. Add what he calls the hindsight bias, the way we beat ourselves up over everything that could have or should have been done differently, and you have a very familiar loop. This is me to a “P.”

As I said in my last post, for those of us with Complex PTSD, what looks like “overreacting” is frequently a trauma response in the form of hyperreactivity, emotional flashbacks, and nervous system dysregulation. It is not, and I repeat, not “just a bad habit.”

Which brings me to chicken piccata.

I wonder now if part of why I overreact with my family is because it happens when things are calm. When we’re ordering pizza and settling in for a movie, for example. When I’ve done something nice for them, in particular. Is that likely?

One of my goals this month has been tracking the moments when I feel that prickly sensation—the one in my veins that signals something is rising. I noticed it twice this week. Once when I asked the family to help me finish unpacking the house from our recent move (insert chorus of whines akin to a dog kennel here) and another one that was a bit more instructive for me.

I made my daughter chicken piccata from scratch. She’s at the stage where she’s “not hungry” if the offering is a vegetable curry, but absolutely starving if it involves processed cheesy goo on white bread puff. She still likes chicken, as of yesterday, so I planned my whole day around making it before a 6:00 work event.

When it was ready, she took her plate and started eating before we’d sat down. I asked her to wait. She said: “Why? That makes no sense.”

I felt the prickle, but said, calmly: “It’s just that the person cooking has spent a lot of time doing something nice for others, so it’s polite to wait until everyone can join the table.”

I should have known better than to expect logic and empathy to land on a 14-year-old brain. She doubled down, said something along the lines of that’s stupid, I’m eating anyway, and took a bite. Oh piccata.

Instead of saying something I’d regret, I said nothing. I sat. Eventually I asked my conflict-avoidant husband, who had been doing his darndest to avoid eye contact with either of us and stared into the middle distance as though watching the sunset, for a bit of help. He blinked, came in, and said to her: “I’d be quiet on this one. You don’t really have a leg to stand on here.”

I was grateful for the support. But more so, I was grateful I hadn’t ratcheted up. We moved on. Dinner continued. That was that.

What I’m learning about my triggers:

When I’ve done something for my family and they complain, that really gets to me. And it tends to happen when I’m relaxed, which is not a coincidence.

Here’s what I’ve read about this. When you’re in a genuinely threatening environment, your nervous system is occupied. It has a real job to do. (I’m the cool and collected one when there is a real problem.) But when things are calm, that same hypervigilant system still needs something to monitor. So, it scans harder, notices more, and amplifies small things it might otherwise let pass. I found that here’s even a name for it: relaxation-induced anxiety! Letting your guard down can itself feel dangerous for people with trauma histories. For me, calm starts to feel like the moment before something goes wrong—or when my mind starts thinking about everything that is “wrong.” Essentially, the nervous system preemptively fires.

And when I’ve worked hard to create something nice, such as a from-scratch piccata, a pleasant evening, a moment of normalcy, I’m also more emotionally invested. The gap between what I hoped for and what happens lands harder. Add to it that I dislike the fact that I have a hard time relaxing unless I’m working, and we have some excellent ingredients for a kitchen fire.

So, when something goes sideways in a pleasant moment, it hits on two levels: the complaint itself, and the way it feels like proof of something. I never can just relax. I need to anticipate future problems better. There is always a problem I need to fix.

Those are the ANTs in my pants. And that’s the negativity bias doing its thing: turning one teenager’s eye-roll into a permanent, pervasive, deeply personal verdict on my life.

Knowing that doesn’t make the prickle go away. But it does give me a half-second more of space between the feeling and the reaction. And this week, that half-second was enough.

Week 4 is coming, and so are my mom and mother-in-law because of my daughter’s eighth grade graduation. To add to my concern, my mom keeps saying how she doesn’t want to make the weekend all about her, which has me worried that she’s going to make the weekend all about her. So, if Week 3 was the practice round, Week 4 is the championship. I’ll report back.

The goal was never perfect emotional control. It’s understanding my nervous system well enough to be a little gentler with it, and with the people on the other side of the table, when it fires up.

So far, so (cautiously) good.

Most of what I share here grows out of the ongoing, sometimes messy work of healing from CPTSD. But all of it, in some way, traces back to a larger story I’ve been trying to tell.

Panhandler Books interviewed me about my memoir I’m working on and ran an excerpt along with an interview. I thought some of you might want to read the origin story behind much of what I write here on Substack.

Here’s the link: A Memoir Excert and Interview with Charlotte Pence

I’d love to know what lands for you, what questions it raises, or what it stirs up. Drop a note in the comments!

I’m not asking for a subscription. What I would love more than adding another $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

Ten months in. I’ve journaled, I’ve stretched, I’ve om’d, I’ve stared at sunsets to feel awe. I’ve declined the wine. I have done Some Work, people. And honestly, I’m pretty pleased. Except for one thing…. I don’t like how my emotional regulation is worse with my own family than anyone else. Now, I don’t want to get anyone nervous here and imagine me as some green cruel monster once inside my home. I’m talking like once a month, I’ll do something (or usually say something) and think: “That was an overreaction.”

So, this is what I want to focus on for May. How to better manage the flare-ups with my family. But how?

Here’s what I’ve come to understand: every other focus this year (which has been 10 months now!) has been something I do alone. Journaling, meditation, somatic work… All internal, all on my own terms. This one is different. This one happens in real time, with real people, who are not following my healing schedule and do not care that I’ve been working on myself for ten months.

And for those of us with Complex PTSD, what looks like “overreacting” is frequently a trauma response in the form of hyperreactivity, emotional flashbacks, and nervous system dysregulation. It is not, and I repeat, not “just a bad habit”.

Which is both helpful and annoying, because I can’t unknow it, and I can’t always stop it either. With C-PTSD, especially when family of origin is where the trauma happened, close relationships can activate things that strangers and colleagues simply don’t. The people closest to us get under our skin in ways no one else can. That’s not a character flaw. That’s a nervous system doing its job—but just with outdated information.

The upside? All those solo practices over the last ten months have been building something. Body awareness from the somatic work. The ability to pause from meditation. A slightly less chaotic nervous system from skipping the wine. May is where I try a transfer into real life. Into the hardest room. The kitchen of my life, so to speak, with all the hopes of magazine gleam and all the reality of daily grime.

My specific goal this month is simple and measurable: I overreact at my family roughly once a month. I’d like that to be less. I’m not aiming for sainthood but a little more space between the feeling and the reaction.

Here’s the plan, week by week:

Week 1: Notice (This past week)

This week I have just been paying attention. When do I get activated? What does it feel like in my body before I react? No fixing yet—just watching myself like a slightly judgmental nature documentary.

Week 2: Understand (Upcoming week)

Asking the harder question: is this a present-day annoyance, or a trauma response in a costume? Those require very different responses, and I’ve been treating them the same way for decades.

Week 3: Practice (May 17-23)

Actually trying the tools. Pausing before I respond. Taking a slow breath out. Leaving the room before I hit my limit rather than after. (I think this might work well for me.) Seeing what works and what feels like nonsense.

Week 4: Reflect (May 24-31)

What shifted? What didn’t? Where did I surprise myself, in either direction? What do I want to carry into the final month of this project? This will be an especially interesting week as both my mom and mother-in-law are coming to visit for my daughter’s eighth grade graduation. Talk about final test at the end of the semester….

A Tool to Help

The tool I’m bringing in is The DBT Skills Workbook for PTSD by Kirby Reutter, which is a self-directed workbook that bridges DBT skills with trauma. Practical, skill-based, and specifically designed for the kind of emotional reactivity that comes with complex trauma.

I’ll be tracking what triggers me, what works, what absolutely does not work, and what I’m learning about the difference between a present-day annoyance and a trauma response wearing an annoyance costume.

It won’t all be pretty. But it’ll be honest.

The goal isn’t perfect emotional control. It’s understanding my nervous system better and being a little gentler with myself when it fires up.

The CPTSD Project is a year-long project in which I undertake a recommended method each month to lessen the effects of CPTSD (Complex PTSD). I check in weekly (sort of) to let you know how the project is going. And you can see if anything here might benefit you as well. Long-term personal goals like this one are difficult, but it’s easier knowing I have some community—and accountability.

I’m not asking for a subscription. What I would love more than adding another $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

For the month of April, I focused on yoga. Not in a “I’ve found my purpose and my Lululemon” way. More as in everyone keeps saying “somatic work helps”. And I agree that I need to do something with my body other than just bracing for impact.

Here’s the thing about CPTSD that I wish were otherwise: it’s not a cognitive problem that I can rationalize my way out of. It lives in the body. The nervous system has been running a very long, very exhausting background program called “something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong.”

So, how can yoga help with Complex-PTSD?

Talk therapy is great, but you can’t always talk your way out of a nervous system that’s been in survival mode for years. Which is, apparently, where yoga comes in.

Researchers have been building a solid case for it for a while now: a 2024 meta-analysis found yoga significantly reduced PTSD symptoms and improved emotional regulation. A 2023 JAMA study compared trauma-sensitive yoga to Cognitive Processing Therapy and found similar results—but yoga had a 42% higher completion rate. Sometimes the body just needs a different door in.

I often wonder, though, with these studies, whether what’s found for PTSD translates to Complex-PTSD. They’re related but not identical. PTSD typically stems from a single traumatic event; C-PTSD develops from prolonged, repeated trauma—the kind that reshapes how you relate to yourself, other people, and the concept of safety. The nervous system dysregulation tends to be very entrenched and resistant to the usual tools. So “yoga helps PTSD” is promising, but it’s not a clean translation.

That said, the mechanism yoga is thought to work through is particularly relevant to C-PTSD. The theory, largely shaped by researcher Bessel van der Kolk, is that trauma gets stored somatically—in the body, not just the mind. Yoga works not by processing memories but by interrupting the body’s chronic stress response: slow it down, breathe deliberately, notice sensation without fleeing it.

For people with C-PTSD, who have often spent years dissociating from their bodies as a survival strategy, that practice of gentle re-inhabitation is the point. When doing yoga, you’re not stretching. You’re practicing the radical act of being present in your own skin without bracing for what comes next. What’s so interesting is when I write that, I believe it. I know it. Yet to be honest, I still have trouble when I do yoga. I feel myself thinking: “Oh you really should get on with….” Whatever “it” is. Doing feels safe to me. Being in the body…. Not so much.

What I Tried

To be clear, yoga is familiar to me. Each day when I wake, I do a few sun salutations while listening to the morning meditation on Calm. And I’ve done a lot of yoga before, learning when I was a foreign exchange student in Argentina, which gave me a wide, and non-useful Spanish vocabulary. (There aren’t many reasons to use “solar plexus” in casual conversation.) For April, I wanted to do more yoga, at least three one-hour sessions a week.

So, what all did I try?

Hot yoga with infrared heat: Being new to Austin, I thought I should take advantage of the various yoga offerings and wanted to try the infrared heat that is supposedly more of a calorie burner and helpful for aching joints, neither of which is an area of concern for me. Still: everyone’s talking about it, so I signed up for the free one-time class and volunteered myself to moving in 125-degree heat.

Result? No thanks.

It wasn’t an issue with the heat as much as the set-up. The “class” was a video of a yoga teacher, who was more like a peppy used car salesman with a penchant for calling body parts “team members.” “Get your team balanced!” “Come on, Team!” “All team members above the waist moving?” I don’t do team sports for a reason, and I found the coach-like talk a distraction. (What’s more, she only mentioned breath once.) Plus, the “room” was a small box where my fingertips grazed the ceiling.

The main result is that it made me want a real class, which is what I did next.

Going to an actual studio: This was the one. Something about being in a room with other people quietly trying to exist in their bodies made my nervous system go, oh, okay, we’re doing this. No profound insight descended upon me. No spiritual awakening. Just: this is better. The research supports my experience. Co-regulation is real, and being around calm, regulated bodies genuinely helps a dysregulated nervous system settle. Your body is basically borrowing the vibe of the room. And I’ll take any help I can get.

At-home yoga: As much as I loved the in-studio vibe, my wallet didn’t. So, I ended up going to the studio once a week and turning on Adrienne with Yoga. Lovely. Easy. And somehow her vibe radiated out of the computer screen. I did it in my pajamas, which felt right. The problem with doing healing work in your pajamas is that it’s very easy to not fully engage and just rest in my pajamas. Which, to be fair, is also healing.

Overall Result

I still get restless. My brain wants to file yoga under “wasted time” and “not real exercise”, which I know is incorrect. But as I mentioned in the beginning, C-PTSD is more of the body than of the mind. It’s hard for me to turn off the gnawing feeling that the yoga hour could have been better spent being productive—or at least productively anxious. : )

But here’s what I kept coming back to: the hypervigilance that makes me want to fill every hour isn’t a personality trait. It’s a symptom. The constant scanning for threats, the inability to fully rest, the compulsion to stay useful so nothing bad sneaks up on me—that’s the nervous system doing what it learned to do. Yoga, at its most basic, is a practice in proving it wrong.

I decided I needed to stop framing yoga as exercise I was failing to maximize, and start framing it as what it actually is for me: practiced safety. A small, repeated experiment in letting my body exist without being managed or braced or optimized. That reframe helped. It won’t fix anything on its own. But then, nothing does this on its own. That’s the whole project.

No poses were mastered. Several were attempted. The nervous system survived.

Good enough.

May’s Focus?

I have something planned for May that I’m equal parts excited and terrified about. I’ll share on Saturday. In the meantime, the semester is ending and we’ve finally moved into our permanent Austin home, which means I have more time to devote to Substack. It’s hard to believe I only have two more months of this project! Thank you for reading and supporting me.

The CPTSD Project is a year-long project in which I undertake a recommended method each month to lessen the effects of CPTSD (Complex PTSD). I check in weekly (sort of) to let you know how the project is going. And you can see if anything here might benefit you as well. Long-term personal goals like this one are difficult, but it’s easier knowing I have some community—and accountability.

I’m not asking for any subscription. What I would love more than adding another $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

Something interesting is happening…. Dare I say it? Perhaps I am just feeling positive because the roses outside my window are in full we’re-going-out-and-wearing-our-fancy-skirts mode? Perhaps because our house finally sold? Perhaps because the grief from my stepfather’s passing has shifted from that urgent squirrel-in-the-attic-of-my-mind feeling, distracting and unsettling, to more like a friend who needs me to sit with her every now and then.

Whatever is the case, I’m honestly starting to experience some positive changes from this project. The last two months have been so helpful, particularly March’s focus on somatic practices.

For those of you new to this approach, somatic therapy is body-based work centered on the idea that trauma isn’t just stored in our thoughts and memories, but in our nervous systems and physical selves. Instead of talking your way through it, you work with the body directly: movement, breath, sensation. Frankly, as a writer who loves talking, writing, and reflecting, it’s the opposite of what my brain wanted to do.

The Workbook and My Extremely Resistant Type-A Brain

In my last post, I was struggling with understanding somatic theory—and with moving through the workbook I bought in a systematic way that promised one exercise per day. Here’s the thing about that workbook: it is not well constructed. One exercise might take five minutes. Another, inexplicably, two hours. The explanations were written for someone who fully believes in gold at the end of rainbows—abstract, glittery, heavy on promises of healing, light on actual information.

I am a person who likes to complete tasks. And do them well. I still, I kid you not, have my sticker book from grade school where I meticulously peeled off the stickers my spelling tests earned so I could admire them later. So, this workbook was not something I could do as a I had hoped.

Eventually I gave myself permission to be the bad pupil. Cherry pick. Skip the two-hour exercises. Do the easy ones. Let go of doing it correctly and just...try things.

This, as it turns out, was the right move.

What Actually Worked

I ended up loving a number of the techniques! Some of my favorites:

Progressive muscle relaxation—tensing and slowly releasing muscle groups one at a time—works best for me at the end of the workday when I’ve been hunched over a keyboard for eight hours. Five minutes of that and my shoulders remember they’re not supposed to be earrings.

I’ve also made some up. About once a day, to shake out some tension, I’ll dance like a golden retriever who just heard the word “walk”. Just for a few seconds. And where no one can see me. It turns out this is not just unhinged behavior. Rhythmic movement actually helps regulate the nervous system by activating the parasympathetic response. The body calms down. Science said so. I’m vindicated.

Other things I’ve been doing: box breathing (inhale four counts, hold four, exhale four, hold four—resets the nervous system like a little ctrl+alt+delete for your anxiety), and a body scan at the end of the day has been helping. Not the elaborate 45-minute kind, just a quick where am I carrying this? It’s almost always my stomach. Or those shoulders.

The Thing That’s Actually Sinking In

Here’s the shift I didn’t expect: I’ve started to internalize the core idea.

Words—and you know I love words: recalibrate, reframe, redirect, reassure, reroute—are not always the tool. This has been hard for me as a writer to understand. Sometimes my brain does not need more information. It needs my body to stand down first.

I cannot logic myself out of a nervous system response. I cannot explain anxiety into submission. I have tried this approximately ten thousand times and I want to report that it does not work.

What’s more: I’ve been looking up from my desk, noticing tension, and moving into a few slow breaths before my brain has even started its whole presentation. It’s still not a reflex. But I am choosing this option more over my old habits, which usually involved to continue working and trying to talk the feeling away.

That’s new. That’s genuinely new.

I’m also catching my negative thoughts and worries and saying: “Ah hah! That’s an old pattern of thinking that no longer serves me.” And then I do a quick grounding exercise like name 5 things I see, 4 things I hear, etc.

Y’all…. I feel like I am honestly changing some very old, very rutted, habits that, in all fairness, I had to do at one point in my life to protect myself. I’m starting to have access to a different gear: something slower, something that isn’t my first response but is increasingly becoming it.

The squirrel is still in the attic. But she’s sitting down more and enjoying her stash of acorns.

April’s Focus

Given how well the somatic work is going, I wanted to continue with something that is of the body. At the same time, April is a grueling month for college professors. And I’m moving into a new house that has a beautiful back yard (complete with a little koi pond). So, realistically, I don’t have time for anything super time consuming.

For April, I’ve decided on yoga! At least twice in a studio, and another time or two with a good class online. It will encourage me to venture out and explore Austin more. So, if anyone has a favorite online yoga teacher, feel free to put that in the comments below. (I definitely love me some Yoga with Adrienne.)

As always, thanks for reading!

I’m not asking for any subscription. What I would love more than adding another annoying $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

New state, new therapist. I cannot tell you how much I resisted the new therapist, largely because I had such a deeply positive relationship with my last therapist. But also because starting over? Telling the same stories to a stranger who doesn’t know my shorthand yet? Ugh. No. Thank. You.

I almost canceled on our first visit. Then I went on a run, purposely/not purposely close to the appointment, choosing to drive to a beloved park instead of running in my neighborhood so I could make it on time. Then I almost didn’t stop the run because it was going well. Then I bargained with myself: fine, end the run early and just sit in the car. I showed up to that first session like a grumpy 16-year-old in the back row of health class: arms crossed, completely prepared to be unimpressed.

I answered her questions for about five minutes, privately deciding they were dull, when she paused and said: “So, you’ve done a lot of the intellectual work. But not the grounding work.”

Record scratch. Full stop. I sat up.

She was right.

Before I get into this month’s focus, which is somatic therapy, I want to say something about trauma because I think we still get it wrong.

Trauma is not an abstract notion living somewhere in my past. It is not a story I retell until it loses its teeth. Trauma is present in my body, and it speaks in my body’s language.

Trauma is the backache that feels like a ladder cracked clean across my spine. Trauma is my stomach churning like the eye of a hurricane: restless, relentless, with a terrifying calm at the center. Trauma is my body feeling the need to move as if a panther is in pursuit. Trauma is a bird beating its wings against the golden cage of my chest, frantic and insistent and trying so hard to be heard.

It is my body. Telling me. Something.

Here’s the thing nobody told me about being a self-aware, therapy-going, personal-growth-obsessed person: I could have exceptional insight into my trauma and the work still not be integrated into my nervous system.

I know. Rude.

I have spent years getting fluent in my own psychology. I can trace my anxious attachment back three generations. I have the vocabulary, the frameworks, the emotional intelligence. And yet, same churn in my stomach every day, especially around 4:00. (Haven’t done enough, never enough.) Same freeze response in certain conversations. Same 3 a.m. heart palpitations like my body is running a drill nobody scheduled.

Turns out, insight is not the same as healing. And my body had been screaming that at me for years. I just thought that was normal.

It’s not normal. It’s also not my fault. But it is my responsibility.

BUT WHAT IS IT?

Enter somatic therapy, my focus for this month. No, it’s not a yoga class with a co-pay. It’s not crystals (unless that’s your thing, no judgment). It is, however, what my therapist thinks I should do next, which is the focus for this month.

So, I’m a couple of weeks in and bought this workbook and listened to equally dreamy-voiced podcasters recording from Costa Rica (why always Costa Rica?). And I’m honestly still confused on what it is.

I know the definitions…. Somatic therapy is any therapeutic approach that brings the body into the healing process, working with sensation, breath, movement, posture, and the nervous system rather than just thoughts and memories.

I think I need a new workbook because this one is way too wordy, even for me. To do the exercises, I have to stop and read and remember to stop and read again. And what I have done feels a lot like what I do when I do a sun salutation.

Hive mind: Does anyone have a suggestion for guided exercises online?

Here’s the thing about being a lifelong student: I don’t actually resist learning. I resist not knowing where the classroom is.

And right now? I genuinely don’t know where the classroom is. I have a workbook that’s too wordy, a therapist who’s pointed me in a direction, and a body that has been loudly requesting I pay attention for years. What I don’t have is a guided, structured way in, something that feels less like reading about swimming and more like getting in the water.

So I’m asking. If you’ve done somatic work—a course, a program, a practitioner, a resource that actually clicked—I want to know. Drop it in the comments. I’m that kid in the front row who actually wants to read your syllabus.

I’m not asking for any subscription. What I would love more than adding another annoying $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

Okay, so. Remember my grand very structured plan to tackle my worry problem this month? Weekly themes. Daily logs. Scheduled worry windows. Body scans. The whole thing.

Here’s how it actually went.

Week One: The Worry Log (Or: A Study in Meta-Worry)

The plan was simple: every time I caught myself worrying, I’d log it. Time, trigger, duration, intensity on a scale of 1-10. Very scientific. Very organized. Very me.

What actually happened: I immediately started worrying about the worry log.

Would it take too long? Would I have to stop mid-conversation at my husband’s and my weekend getaway to take notes on my phone? Would tracking my worries make me worry more? (Spoiler: briefly, yes.) For those of you who are fellow worriers, you already knew this was coming.

But here’s where it got interesting.

Once I got past the initial chaos of watching my little worry ants line up in my log, I noticed something that stopped me cold: I wasn’t actually worrying. I was delivering verdicts.

These weren’t fears with questions attached like what if this goes wrong, what if I can’t handle it. They were flat, confident pronouncements about my future. Negative ones. Stated as fact. My brain wasn’t wringing its hands; it was banging a gavel.

If the mind is running that kind of commentary 24/7, no wonder it’s hard to feel okay.

Once I saw it for what it was—negativity, not worry— I could actually do something about it. I landed on a phrase that’s embarrassingly simple and genuinely effective: You’ve always managed. You’ll figure it out.

And the thing is, it’s true. My childhood was, to put it charitably, wack-a-doodle. But my adulthood has been full of adventure, love, and things I’m genuinely proud of. The C-PTSD just is resisting that memo. It’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is convinced, at all times, that I am only as good as what I accomplished today. (This is also why, when I’m sick, I do not rest. I do not even acknowledge being sick. I must do.)

Classic C-PTSD, as it turns out.

Here’s the thing about a brain shaped by trauma: it’s not broken. It’s actually just doing its job extremely well, except now it’s for a situation that no longer exists. When I was a kid and things were genuinely threatening, hypervigilance was genius-level survival strategy. Expect the worst. Stay alert. Never let your guard down. Maybe you won’t be blindsided.

My brain got really, really good at that job. It just never clocked out.

So now, even though I love my new city and my new job, my brain is still hovering anxiously going BUT WHAT IF EVERYTHING FALLS APART?! It’s exhausting. But when I reframe it, when I realize my brain has been running a 24/7 threat assessment program because it was genuinely trying to keep you safe, it’s also kind of touching? Like a helicopter parent who still packs your lunch with all five food groups even though you’re forty.

Sweet. But also: please stop.

Week Two: Scheduled Worry Time (And a Surprise from the Calm App)

The plan for week two was to contain the worry: give it a 15-minute window each day, write it all out, and then tell it to sit down until its scheduled time. I’ve tried this before and it didn’t work because my brain got stuck in the loop. So I was, naturally, worried that would happen again.

What I found instead was that I still wasn’t saving up worries. I was saving up negative thoughts. Same discovery, new context. My brain wasn’t bringing me unresolved fears during worry time — it was bringing receipts for all the ways things might be bad.

Then, on February 19th, the universe decided to be a little on-the-nose about it: my Calm meditation that morning was about exactly negativity bias, and how deeply ingrained it is in all of us. (Love me some Calm. Truly.)

It made me wonder: are people with C-PTSD even more vulnerable to negative thought patterns than the average person? So, I asked my therapist.

She said: Yup.

And then, being a therapist, she elaborated. People with C-PTSD often develop pervasive negative thinking as a direct result of their trauma history. But it’s not as a character flaw; it’s a logical outcome of what the brain learned. I feel like I need to underline and bold this. Prolonged trauma, especially in childhood, trains the brain to scan constantly for danger, which naturally skews perception toward the negative because that’s what kept you safe. Repeated harm from caregivers or trusted people tends to produce core beliefs like I am bad, people can’t be trusted, the world is unsafe — and those beliefs color how everything gets interpreted. For me, the core belief is that only I will be able to keep me safe. I’m doing all this, whatever the “all” is, alone.

The good news, she said, is that these patterns are deeply ingrained, but not permanent.

Which brings me to my favorite part.

The Final Days and the Thing That Actually Worked: Notice, Challenge, Redirect

Here’s what’s ironic: I present as a positive, even joyful person. People who know me would probably be surprised by this post. But the internal weather? Negative charge. Negative space. Negative feedback. Negative returns. Negative Nancy. False negative. Photo negative. Negative, negative, negative. It’s a whole atmosphere in there.

My therapist (and the Calm app, and honestly most of cognitive behavioral therapy) landed on the same three-step approach, and I have to tell you that it’s been one of the most effective things I’ve tried all year.

Step one: Notice. Catch the thought as it’s happening and name it. That’s a negative thought. My brain is doing that thing again. This sounds almost insultingly simple, but it creates a small and genuinely important distance between you and the thought. You’re observing it instead of being consumed by it.

Step two: Challenge. Is this actually true? Would I say this to a friend? Is there evidence that contradicts it? This isn’t toxic positivity. It’s not think happy thoughts! It’s honest interrogation. Does this thought hold up under scrutiny? (Spoiler: mine usually don’t.)

Step three: Redirect. Consciously shift your attention. A more balanced thought. A physical sensation. A task. Something you’re grateful for. Anything that isn’t the spiral.

With repetition, this actually starts to rewire the brain’s default patterns, which is essentially what CBT is built around. And paired with my mantra (you’ve always managed, you’ll figure it out) and the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique when things start to spin, I have a little toolkit now that I actually use.

So How Did the Month Go?

This has genuinely been one of the best months I’ve had since the move.

Not because nothing was hard. Work stress is real, and my brain did not magically stop generating material. But because I finally have language for what’s happening. I’m not a worrier. I’m someone whose brain defaults to negative verdicts because for a long time, that’s what kept her safe. That reframe matters more than I can explain.

What I’m Keeping Long After February

• The mantra. You’ve always managed. You’ll figure it out. Simple, true, mine.

• Notice, challenge, redirect. Every time. It gets faster.

• Self-compassion when I catch myself mid-spiral—responding to it the way I would to a friend, not a defendant.

• 5-4-3-2-1 when things start escalating physically. Name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste. It works.

If you’ve ever thought of yourself as “a worrier,” it might be worth asking whether you’re actually worrying, or whether you’re just living inside a very convincing negative narrative your brain wrote a long time ago to keep you safe.

Because those are different problems. And one of them, it turns out, you can talk back to.

As always, thank you for reading along. And next month’s focus will be on somatic theory. I’m using a 15-minute a day workbook, which pleases my want-everything-organized-on-the-book-shelf heart so much.

The CPTSD Project is a year-long project in which I undertake a recommended method each month to help those with CPTSD (Complex PTSD) rewire the brain. I check in weekly to let you know how the project is going. And you can see if anything here might benefit you as well. Long-term personal goals like this one are difficult, but it’s easier knowing I have some community—and accountability.

I’m not asking for any paid subscription from anyone. So, what I would love more than adding another annoying $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

Valentine’s Day. Oh boy. That thorny “holiday” has morphed into another consumerist cesspool when it could be a lovely way to share with one another. So, for this Valentine’s Day, I want to propose something different: exchanging vulnerability. Sharing what we need from our partners, even when—especially when—saying what we need makes us squirm a little.

I think one reason I’m here in this space—this very public, out-in-public-in-my-pjs kind of space—is because I want to connect with others who get it. My husband is very dear to me and supportive, but in my worst moments, I fear that CPTSD are just letters to him. Maybe even an excuse I use. I love Dana Hartman’s article “When You Love Someone with CPTSD” that offers sage advice on how to support a partner who suffers from CPTSD. I say ditto to all of her suggestions for how to be there for your partner, but I wanted to add a few of my own—things that might help you if you’re loving someone with CPTSD.

💏 Celebrate Small Wins

Notice the little things. When we open up about something difficult. When we try something new. Even just when we seem a bit lighter than usual. A simple “Hey, I noticed you seemed more like yourself today” or “I’m really glad you told me about that” can mean a lot. It shows you see our effort without making a big deal out of it or putting pressure on us to keep improving at some predetermined pace.

💕 Be Consistent and Patient

Just keep showing up. Healing from this stuff isn’t a straight line. Some weeks will be better than others, and that’s normal. If we’re pulling away or seem closed off, try not to take it personally. What really helps is knowing you’ll still be there tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.

💗 Respect Boundaries (Even the Confusing Ones)

We might want you close one day and need space the next. It can feel like whiplash, but it’s not about you. (Sorry about that!) Our nervous system is just trying to figure out what feels safe. Instead of guessing, ask us what we need. And don’t be surprised if the answer changes day to day, or even hour to hour.

💘 Avoid Being the Fixer

The truth is, you can’t fix our trauma, and honestly, trying to will wear you out. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just be there. A simple “That sounds really hard” often lands better than a whole list of suggestions about what we should do next.

💝 But Do Be a Partner in the Healing Process

While I appreciate that my husband has never played the savior role, I don’t want to feel alone in this healing process. That’s why I put “celebrate small wins” first. But there’s more that can be done. I would appreciate it if partners would sometimes initiate a conversation and ask what we’re working on. And then, if you see us going off track, asking kindly how we think we’re doing. We’re usually quite aware of our own failings. Too aware, actually. And this can be a good conversation to have.

But more importantly, I would love being asked: How can I help make this easier for you? I don’t know if this is a therapist-approved tactic, but I can tell you, it means a lot to me.

💞 Learn Our Triggers (Without Walking on Eggshells)

Pay attention to what’s difficult for us, but don’t twist yourself into knots trying to prevent every reaction. It’s about being aware and considerate, not about controlling everything you say and do. You can’t—and shouldn’t—bubble-wrap the world for us.

💖 Encourage Professional Help Gently

Therapy—especially trauma-focused approaches like EMDR or somatic work—can make a huge difference. But pushing too hard usually backfires. I appreciate something like this: “I’ve noticed things have been tough lately. Would it help to talk to someone?” And then let it rest. Plant the seed, but don’t water it obsessively.

💓 Take Care of Yourself

This is crucial. You can’t support someone else if you’re running on empty. Keep your own boundaries, lean on your own friends, and don’t make our healing the center of your entire world. Burning out doesn’t help anyone, least of all the person you’re trying to support.

So this Valentine’s Day, instead of (or in addition to) the chocolate and roses, maybe we exchange some of this: honesty about what we need, patience with what’s hard, and the vulnerability it takes to show up for each other—messy bits and all.

I’m not asking for any paid subscription from anyone. So, what I would love more than adding another annoying $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

As some of you might know, this past August my family and I moved from Mobile, Alabama to Austin, Texas for a new job. I’m thrilled to be part of a thriving MFA program—directing it, in fact. One would think my 13-year-old would have struggled, but she’s thriving. My husband loves it, too. Now, my terrier does seem a bit sad. There are simply not as many critters to chase in Austin as there are in the swamp (and I say that with love) of Mobile. But I’m not going to lie: the move has been challenging for me.

The stress has been the typical: learning a new job, learning the personalities that come with it, unpacking, finding all the doctors, hairdressers—and selling the darn house in Mobile. The guy who was going to buy it backed out the day of closing back in July. So, we’ve been double-fisting house payments ever since.

Paying two mortgages has been rough. I grew up in a household where financial worries ran deep and being unhoused was a real threat. In fact, my dad’s paranoid schizophrenia left him unhoused the last twenty years of his life. Bankruptcy wasn’t just a thing in the game of Monopoly for me. So, this has been frightening. My worry has been downright obsessive. I’m playing Uno with my kiddo, and I’m oh-so-aware I’m not present. The churning in my stomach is exactly as Sheldon Cooper explained it when talking about throwing things away: “My ears start to ring, and I get butterflies in my stomach. And then it feels like the butterflies get eaten by rats, and then the rats get eaten by... It ends with dinosaurs.”

It always ends with dinosaurs to us catastrophizers.

I’m thrilled to say that last Friday we sold the house. Finally! And yes, I DID feel better. But guess what happened next? Some of you with GAD and CPTSD know the answer to this: I’m still worried. This past week I’ve noticed the intense worry has just shifted to new things. Now, work things.

I’ve always been someone who worries. A lot. But I feel like the intensive eight months of moving stress carved even deeper worry grooves in my brain. Neuroscientists say “neurons that fire together, wire together”—I’ve been running the same worry circuit so many times that my brain now defaults to it like a worn path through the woods.

February Focus

Given all of this, my focus for February will be on worry. Well, not on worrying, but on being mindful of the fact that I’m repeating patterns rather than protecting myself—which is the evolutionary reason for worry. It’s meant to help us. But some of us (and I’m raising my hand high here) overdo it to make sure nothing bad happens, not even the toppling of that second scoop of ice cream.

But can I actually fix this? Here’s the good news: neuroplasticity works both ways. The exact same mechanism that carved those worry grooves can carve new, healthier pathways. Research shows that the brain changes based on what you practice. So, I need to literally practice different patterns and change it back. Interventions like mindfulness, CBT, and self-compassion have been shown to reduce activity in those rumination networks, and people see measurable changes in brain connectivity after consistent practice. If 8 months of stress carved these pathways, then deliberate practice in the other direction can carve new ones. (I hope!)

That’s what makes this month-long experiment so powerful: I’m not just “trying to worry less.” I’m actively going to try building new neural infrastructure. Every time I catch a worry spiral and redirect it with self-compassion or a grounding technique, I’m literally weakening the old pathway and strengthening a new one.

That’s the goal at least.

But how? Well, we do have this thing called AI now. So, I asked Claude to help me come up with a structured plan. After a few revisions, here is what we came up with.

My Game Plan

Week 0: Notice

This past week I noticed the pattern. First step with anything. Big checkmark there. Onward!

Week 1 (Feb 6-12): Identify & Track

Goal: Understand my worry patterns without judgment

Daily practices:

• Worry log: Note each time I catch myself worrying (time, trigger, duration, intensity 1-10)

• Body scan: Where does worry live in my body? Tight chest? Clenched jaw? Stomach knot?

• End-of-day reflection: What were my top 3 worry themes today?

Key insight to gather: When does worry spike? What triggers it? How long does it last?

Week 2 (Feb 13-19): Scheduled Worry Time + Cognitive Techniques

Goal: Contain and manage worry

Daily practices:

• 15-minute worry window: Set a specific time each day to deliberately worry. Write it all out. Outside this window, tell myself “I’ll think about that at 3pm.”

• Productive vs. unproductive worry sorting: Can I control this? If yes, make a plan. If no, practice letting it go.

• Grounding technique when spirals start: 5-4-3-2-1 sensory check-in or box breathing

Key insight to gather: What happened when I tried to postpone worry? Did the scheduled time help?

Week 3 (Feb 20-26): Self-Compassion Integration

Goal: Respond to worry with kindness instead of criticism

Daily practices:

• Self-compassion break when worrying:

  1. “This is a moment of suffering” (acknowledge it)

  2. “Worry is part of being human” (common humanity)

  3. Place hand on heart: “May I be kind to myself in this moment”

• Reframe the inner critic: When I notice harsh self-talk about worrying (“Why can’t I just stop?”), respond like I would to a friend

• Worry journal with compassion: Instead of just logging worry, add: “What would I say to a friend feeling this way?”

Key insight to gather: Notice the difference between trying to eliminate worry vs. responding to it with kindness

Week 4 (Feb 27-28): Integration & Reflection

Goal: Build my personal worry-management toolkit

Reflection questions:

• Which techniques interrupted worry spirals?

• Did self-compassion make worry easier to sit with?

• What’s my go-to strategy now when worry starts?

• What will I keep doing after February ends?

Daily Tracking (All 3 Weeks):

• Worry frequency (how many times I caught myself worrying)

• Worry duration (how long each episode lasted)

• Self-compassion moments (when I responded kindly vs. critically)

• Energy level / sleep quality (does managing worry better affect these?)

All right. Let’s see how this goes. As always, thank you for reading along with me!

I’m not asking for any subscription, which goes against the Substack algorithm. What I would love more than adding another annoying $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

This month’s experiment is Dry January.

Dry.
Desiccated.
Crisp.
Astringent.

And I’m almost done with it—thank the gods.

I guess it has been helpful. Or maybe not, if I’m being honest. I’ve noticed no change in my sleep (still bad), my weight (fine to begin with), or my moods (still me!). In fact, I went to the dentist last week and had high blood pressure for the first time in my life. I’m usually on the low side, so that was…new.

Maybe I don’t drink enough for this to have registered as a meaningful change. But I’m not convinced that’s the whole story. I’ve had no problem not drinking in group settings like parties and one-on-one conversations with friends at bars. What I have missed is that glass of wine once or twice a week after a particularly long day. That’s where I’ve really felt it.

Last week, I started thinking that maybe that beloved glass of wine at the end of a long workday wasn’t really a problem. In fact, maybe it was good for me. (Did I mention the high blood pressure anomaly?)

Could it be…?

Well, not even a sycophant AI would agree. I asked. The response was firm: even small amounts of alcohol increase cancer risk, especially breast cancer.

Sigh.

So, as I often do when my argument starts to wobble, I gesture vaguely toward Europe.

Is Dry January Partly an American Protestant Temperance Thing?

Kinda. It started in the UK in 2013, launched by a charity called Alcohol Change UK. Since then, it’s caught on mostly in English-speaking countries: the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland. But it hasn’t really taken root in places like France, Italy, or Spain, where—so I’m told—the drinking culture is different. Binge drinking isn’t as central. Wine with meals is normal. Unremarkable.

Truth is, Americans do have a complicated relationship with alcohol. It’s fun. It’s social. And yet there’s this persistent sense that we’re probably doing it wrong. Or too much. Or shouldn’t be doing it at all.

The idea of abstinence as cleansing or virtuous resonates deeply in the Stars and Stripes. So does the New Year reset. Anglo cultures love a self-improvement project, a clean slate, a chance to optimize. (My hand is fully raised.) January becomes the perfect container for moral renewal.

I do see Dry January as helpful and healthy. But I’m starting to suspect it’s solving the wrong problem for me personally.

The Real Issue

At first, I thought my attachment to that end-of-day glass was just a weird quirk of mine. I could abstain easily in social settings but craved it at home alone? What was that about?

Before I learned what Complex-PTSD was, I thought a lot of my behaviors were just quirks. (People-pleasing. Perfectionism. Constant planning.) It was revelatory to learn how these could be trauma responses—adaptive strategies that made sense once, even if they didn’t serve me anymore.

So, I had to ask: could this be related to CPTSD, too?

I brought it up with my therapist, and she explained it in a way that made everything click. One of the quieter features of CPTSD is how hard it can be to shift out of “on” mode. The day doesn’t just end automatically for people like me. It must be marked. Clearly. Deliberately.

Not because I need alcohol to function, but because the wine was a ritual. A signal. A way to tell my nervous system: You’re done now. You can rest.

And let’s be honest: the alcohol helped slow me down. I am, after all, the person who wakes up and does push-ups immediately.

What I’m Learning

It turns out that glass of wine has been an efficient way to mark the transition from work mode to rest mode for me.

And without it? I don’t have another reliable way to wind myself down. I just keep going. Or I reach for something else—sugar, scrolling, whatever is quickest—that doesn’t really help me settle either.

I’ve tried hot tea with a book. Raspberry-swirl cheesecake. Meditation. During winter break, I did a movie-with-popcorn night, and that worked beautifully. It was a very clear “you are done now” signal. But now that I’m back to work and often going until 8:30 at night, that’s not a realistic option.

So, here’s what Dry January has taught me: the problem for me isn’t abstaining necessarily. The problem is that I haven’t built other rituals that help me transition out of hypervigilance. The wine was doing emotional labor I didn’t even realize needed doing.

I don’t have all the answers yet. But at least now I’m asking the right questions.

What does it mean to have a nervous system that won’t turn off without help? How do I create transitions that work for me? And what does it say about our culture that we’re so focused on abstinence challenges when many of us are just trying to survive our own dysregulated nervous systems?

Dry January ends in a week. I’ll have that glass of wine again, for sure. But this time, I’ll know what it’s really for—and I’ll keep working on finding other ways to tell myself: You’re safe now. You can rest.

I’m not asking for any paid subscriptions. But what I would love more than adding another $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

Guest Writer Alert! We’re halfway through January, and maybe you’re thinking about the year ahead—not in a resolution kind of way, but wondering about a difficult anniversary on the horizon. A date you usually just try to get through. What if this year, though, you handled one differently?

That’s exactly what Mariah Price, the current Katherine Anne Porter Writer-in-Residence, did last November. When the ten-year anniversary of her assault came up, she hiked the Grand Canyon.

I love these stories. Not just survival stories, but the ones where people write a new narrative. There’s actual science behind why they work: they give our brains a template for possibility when we’re stuck. I’m so grateful to Mariah for her brave and honest words here. It takes real courage to share not just what happened, but the ongoing work of living with it and through it. Plus, she’s just so durn eloquent. Thank you, Mariah! 🍒

So, let’s get to it.

Content warning: Mariah’s story involves domestic violence, stalking, assault, and kidnapping. While the focus is on her journey toward reclaiming power and post-traumatic growth, the interview does reference these traumatic events.

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. Can you share a little about what your camping trip to the Grand Canyon was about and why you decided to do it?

Ten years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I broke up with an abusive partner. After I left him, he began to stalk me and eventually broke into my home, assaulted me, and kidnapped me for several days. All of this took place over the Thanksgiving holiday, and that experience, paired with its aftermath, made me want to avoid the holiday altogether.

Although I was grateful that I survived, Thanksgiving became something I endured rather than celebrated. I often turned down invitations or volunteered to work to avoid it. Sometimes, though, I would go if I thought the person who invited me would be happier than I would be miserable. I’d make a dish, show up, and smile through questions about my future life plans.

It wasn’t until Thanksgiving 2024 that I thought, what if I did my own thing this year? I Googled the Grand Canyon and what it would take to get a backcountry permit, but quickly learned that the trip required planning more than six months in advance, involved a lottery, and had several other steps. At the time, it didn’t feel feasible, so I kept it in the back of my mind as a someday plan.

That summer, when I realized I’d still be in Texas for Thanksgiving, the idea came back. I decided that if I could plan and execute an expert-level backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon, I’d be proud of myself, not for enduring something, but for choosing it. When I realized it also coincided with the ten-year anniversary of the assault, it felt right. I entered the lottery, researched routes, and booked the trip when I could. For the first time in a decade, Thanksgiving felt like something I could claim on my terms.

What was the experience like for you during that week?

There’s a lot I could say, but what stands out most is how different the trip was from what I imagined. Standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, I couldn’t quite fathom it. It was so enormous that my brain almost shut down, like it couldn’t process the scale of it yet. I expected to feel overwhelmed, but instead I felt oddly distant.

I’d gone into the trip thinking my friend Randy was prepared, but once we started hiking, it became clear he was more underprepared than I realized. On the last day, he told me his training had mostly consisted of walking to the mailbox. That led to some funny moments, but it also meant I had to slow down and be thoughtful. I paid close attention to how he was doing, and once I knew we could move safely and still enjoy ourselves, I adjusted my expectations. I let go of the idea of crushing miles or proving anything and focused on having a good, manageable experience for both of us.

That shift changed everything. Once we were down inside the canyon, listening to the water and moving through it together, I felt present in a way I hadn’t at the rim. By the time we were walking along the Colorado River, or when I was crawling out of the tent at night to pee, sore-legged and half-asleep, tripping over gear and Randy, I was completely in awe. My goal had been to spend a few nights below the rim, and I did. So what if we didn’t make it to the Confluence? We had a great time and experienced the canyon in a way that many people never do.

How did you move from being in a state of what trauma therapists might call ‘anniversary reactions’ to actively engaging in post-traumatic growth?

I want to start by saying that I did have anniversary reactions going into this trip. Even ten years later, I know November can bring up a lot for me. This year, I cried often in the days leading up to it and felt unprepared, afraid that I could die. At times, I spiraled into self-doubt and fear, despite all the preparation I had done through exercise, research, and experience from past camping and backpacking trips.

Eventually, I began to realize that this, too, was an anniversary reaction in its own way. At the end of that relationship, I doubted my ability to leave. And the night he broke into my house, I thought I would die. I talked through all of this with my therapist, and we came to the conclusion that this Grand Canyon trip was something I had chosen. The other experience wasn’t my choice and couldn’t be prepared for. I kept reminding myself of that distinction, and even though I was still nervous, I pushed through.

It wasn’t until my boots hit the trail and I smelled the pine trees that I realized I would be fine. Nature has always made sense to me in a way that abuse never has. In noticing that, I moved beyond fear and self-doubt into something else. I realized that this was something I could do, and more than that, something I could enjoy, even on the anniversary of that event.

In trauma recovery, we often talk about moving from a victim narrative to a survivor narrative, and eventually to a thriver narrative. Where were you in that progression when you decided to take this hike?

So I wrote these answers, discussed them with my therapist, and now am revising them—and I’ve participated in domestic violence support groups, and I’ve also worked in a domestic violence shelter, where we were taught to use the word survivor rather than victim. Because of that, I’ve long thought of myself as a survivor, without spending much time examining the victim part or imagining what thriving might look like.

When I decided to take this hike, I would have said I was surviving and aspiring to thrive. I wanted to accomplish something that was just for me, something I could plan for, train for, enjoy, and complete on my own terms, even if it meant nothing to anyone else.

Looking back, though, I think I did this trip for the version of me that still lived inside a victim narrative. Since the assault, I experienced significant mental health lows and was hospitalized at one point. During that time, I wrote in a composition notebook using the inside of a pen, imagining a morning where I woke up on a backpacking trip and prioritized writing. Being stripped of nearly everything clarified what I wanted from my life: to write, to pursue my MFA, and eventually to take a trip like this one.

So the honest answer is that I move between all three narratives. But when I chose this hike, I was holding them together, acknowledging where I’d been, recognizing what I’d survived, and choosing something that allowed me to move forward.

Psychologists talk about moving from an external to an internal focus of control. How did this act of choosing represent a shift in your sense of agency over your own life narrative?

I tend to look for logic in things, and as a survivor, I know intellectually that I’m capable and resilient. Even so, I can still feel small at times or doubt the choices I make in my life. Choosing this trip challenged that pattern. The physicality of it—the driving, the planning, the decisions on the trail—reconnected me to a version of myself that felt capable and steady, not just in theory but in practice.

Navigating the map and making sound choices reminded me that while I can’t control the terrain or the world around me, I do have agency in how I respond to it. Experiencing that in my body, rather than just understanding it logically, marked a real shift in how I see my role in shaping my own life.

Did you notice any changes in your relationship to hypervigilance, anxiety, or other trauma responses during or after the hike?

When I first read this question, I wondered whether I’d been more hypervigilant or anxious since the Grand Canyon. The fact that I had to think about it made me realize that while those responses are still present, they’ve felt less overwhelming (or at least more manageable) since the trip.

In nature, hypervigilance can actually be useful. Being alert and aware allows me to observe more, spot animals, and make quick, thoughtful decisions. That reframing helped me see some of these responses as adaptations rather than failures. As for anxiety, I don’t know if it’s ever entirely positive, but when I shared my worries about the trip with an old friend, he said, “I think you’re just excited.”

That comment stuck with me. It helped me recognize that hypervigilance and anxiety can exist alongside observance and anticipation. I may still feel all of it, but I’m better able to trust that these are moments. They ebb and flow, and they pass.

What would you say to someone who’s struggling with the concept that healing isn’t linear, especially when they’re trying to reclaim their own power?

I’d say I still struggle with that myself, and probably always will. Right now, I’m on a bit of a high note, but life happens. Old memories surface, and I can still feel frozen, afraid, hurt, or hopeless.

What I’m learning, though, is that those moments are temporary, even when they feel overwhelming. I can be safe in my present life and still feel unsafe at times because I’m continuing to process what happened. Trauma carries grief with it, and by acknowledging that grief and moving with it rather than against it, I’ve found it becomes a little easier to live with myself.

On the hike, the terrain of the Grand Canyon changed constantly from switchbacks, flat stretches, and steep drop-offs I didn’t see coming. Sometimes I couldn’t see very far ahead on the trail at all. I just had to keep stepping forward and trust that the path would reveal itself. Healing feels like that to me. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like healing at all, but when I look back, I can see that simply continuing and moving through each day, step by step, was its own kind of progress.

How do you hold space for both—honoring the reality of what was lost while also celebrating what you’re building?

This is still something I’m working on, but I do think I’m getting better at it. I can be sad for the person who went through what I did, whether that was trauma that happened at ten years old or at twenty-three. A lot of what happened to me when I was younger was ugly, and of course, I still think about who I might have been without it.

At the same time, I look at my life now and the things I’m building, like my writing, my health, and my close relationships. And I honestly think those younger versions of me would be proud of who I’m becoming. If you had told me ten years ago, when I was pretty dazed and just trying to get through the day, that I’d someday backpack through the Grand Canyon, I don’t think I would’ve believed it. I wouldn’t have believed it three years ago either.

For me, holding both looks like letting myself mourn what was lost while also noticing what has grown in its place. My life didn’t turn out the way I once imagined, but I’m grateful for who I’m becoming, and that is reason enough to celebrate. The other versions of me would want that.

How has this experience shaped your understanding of resilience—not as bouncing back, but as what some call ‘resilient reintegration’ or even ‘post-traumatic growth’?

Growing up in rural Wyoming, resilience meant grit, self-reliance, and not lingering too long on what hurt. If something was hard, people pushed through it and kept going. I carried that understanding of resilience with me for years, and in many ways it worked. I know how to push through a difficult moment and land on my own two feet. That part of me still exists.

What this experience, along with therapy, has helped me see is that pushing through isn’t the same as healing. I can muscle my way past almost anything, but if I don’t slow down enough to process it, grieve it, and learn from it, it doesn’t actually go anywhere. It just stays with me. Resilience now looks less like endurance and more like integration. It’s allowing what I’ve been through to change me, rather than trying to outrun it.

I still value that toughness I grew up with, but I’m learning that real resilience isn’t just about surviving or proving I can handle things. It’s about finding a way to live more honestly and more peacefully.

Anything cool you want to share about your week—or pictures?

People often ask me about the wildlife I saw, and the honest answer is not much. Aside from crows and a quick flash of what I’m pretty sure was a mouse darting across the trail near the river, the Grand Canyon itself was pretty quiet on that front.

We did see elk at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico on our way back, which felt like a nice bonus. Even though we didn’t see a ton of wildlife overall, that was fine with me. I’m sure there’s plenty out there. I just didn’t have that kind of luck on this trip. Next time.

I’m not asking for any subscription, which goes against the Substack algorithm. If my posts don’t earn the company money, my posts are not as likely to be pushed out. But I believe in this being open and accessible, especially since this is a new topic for a lot of people. So, what I would love more than adding another annoying $5 charge to your automatic payments that you’ll want off in a year but never get around to deleting, is connection. Click the heart if this resonates. Share it with someone who needs it. Restack if you’re moved to. Just let me know this is landing somewhere with someone.

Maybe I shouldn’t write this. Or what I really mean is maybe I shouldn’t post this.

But I believe in writing and its therapeutic properties, even if therapy isn’t the goal. Writing can make a person feel more alive and connected and—I’m digressing. Or really, I’m avoiding.

So, what is it I’m afraid to share? My husband said the other day that what I write here seems esoteric to him. Too removed. He couldn’t really tell what my goals were. Of course, what he said bothered me, but it did get me thinking.

I have avoided being too transparent with this Substack. When I first started it, a friend said, “Aren’t you afraid to post about this publicly? I mean, you are starting a new job and all.” She was right. I was afraid. And I almost gutted the whole project because of it. But the next day another friend who I had shared my idea with wrote to tell me that she didn’t know what CPTSD was and had to think about it. She ended up Googling it and realized she might have it, too.

And that was the catalyst I needed to actually go through with this particular year-long project. So many of us have CPTSD and don’t even know it. And if we know we have CPTSD, it can feel overwhelming to do anything about it. So that has been my aim: to help others while helping myself.

But the truth is, I’m still afraid. And I haven’t been as open as I could be. I don’t want to trigger anyone. And I don’t want to seem fucked up or broken, especially online (and with that new job), so I have not been delving too deeply into the specifics of what my CPTSD looks like or how I got it.

But now I think I need to be more open about my CPTSD looks like. It feels like an essential part of the project.

This feels so freakin’ scary right now. My eyes are even watering.

Okay, no more digressing or avoiding.

It was my Dad. Good ol’ Dad. He was a paranoid schizophrenic and physically and sexually abusive. I don’t need to share any of those stories here. I think it’s easy to extrapolate how day after day, hypervigilance to threat can alter a person.

And that’s the next thing I’ve been avoiding. How has it really affected me? I touched on some of this in my first post, but here’s the fuller picture.

How Complex-PTSD Manifests with Me:

Emotional Flashbacks and Triggers: Sometimes I’m hit with emotions that feel way too big for what’s actually happening. Someone makes a small criticism at work, and I’m spiraling for days. A certain tone of voice and suddenly my heart is racing like I’m in actual danger, even though I know, logically, that I’m safe.

Relationship Struggles: Getting close to people feels both terrifying and desperately necessary. I push people away right when things start feeling good, or I find myself clinging to relationships that aren’t even healthy. And trusting someone? Truly trusting. Nope. Not gonna do it.

Sense of Self: To survive what I did, I had to bend to every situation. Find an angle that kept me safe. A friend with a stable family. A teacher willing to give me extra time. A subject where I could excel and feel strong. And with each action I did to help me, I had to morph a bit to the point when I was in my 20s, I didn’t know who I was. I do now, thank the gods. But there‘s still this deep feeling that I’m fundamentally broken or worthless if I’m not achieving something.

Hypervigilance: My nervous system is stuck on high alert. I’m constantly scanning for danger, reading between the facial lines of every encounter, unable to relax even when I’m in a situation other would consider safe. Sleep is hard because letting my guard down feels dangerous—and plus I think of all that I need to do to keep that sense of self-worth going. If someone walks in a room and I didn’t hear the person coming, I scream or jump. I hate it. It’s embarrassing. And, honestly, I’m sad this is still happening six months into this project.

Emotional Dysregulation: My feelings swing wildly. I’m happy one moment and then extremely irritated the next. A lot of people with CPTSD reportedly feel numb, but I’m a slinky of emotions going down the steps. Overwhelmed to calm to suspicious to happy to pissed…. When my child used to do something annoying, I used to yell instead of using a measured voice. Most of the time, I correct without the tone now. I’m very proud of that change. Same with the husband who can make even more messes than the kid. (He says I still could use a nicer tone with him when he messes up.) It’s very important to me that I don’t hurt people with my anger like my dad hurt me, so I have to say this is the one area I’d like to see the most improvement with myself.

Physical Symptoms: Our bodies keep the score indeed. Chronic tension, digestive issues, and mystery pains that doctors can’t quite explain are all common symptoms of those with CPTSD. Any food that is white, contains gluten, dairy, or sugar will give me cramps. Legumes aren’t much better. I’d love to be a vegetarian, but if I did, I honestly don’t know what I could eat without getting a stomachache. Our bodies remember what our minds are trying to forget.

Finally, the damn fawn response: People with CPTSD often develop what’s called a “fawn response”—one of the trauma responses alongside fight, flight, and freeze. Fawning means appeasing others, prioritizing their needs and emotions, and trying to keep the peace at all costs. It’s a survival mechanism that develops when keeping others happy or calm was literally necessary for safety. And I can tell you, I was excellent at it. It comes out now as people pleasing, but I am getting better at this one. No is such a beautiful word—and I can use it in three different languages!

So, that brings me here. To this yearly project. To trying one thing a month in an effort to reduce all that I just mentioned above. My intention has been to keep things non-triggering and positive. I like pragmatic steps, and so I’ve tried to focus on that. I’m not sure, though, if I’ve been too positive. The project’s pragmatism might be serving as a shield to the darker struggle. Or maybe it’s the right balance. With the world on fire, there’s only so much darkness we can process. And I hate, hate sounding like a whiner, which I’m sure relates somehow to CPTSD, too, like trying to deny my feelings because they make me (or others) uncomfortable. Is that more of the fawn response?

I’m not sure what the next six months of posts will look like and if they will be different or not. I need to think on that some more. But I will keep on keeping on with my monthly focus to lessen the effects of what I just mentioned above, which for the record, really sucks.

There. I said it.

Onward!

My Focus This Month: Abstaining from Alcohol

I’ve known this would be January’s focus for a while now. No drinking. ACK! I love my wine (red in winter, rose in summer). My cocktails (gin martini, please!). I especially love ending my day with a glass of something and a good book, puzzle, or a show. And I do keep it to one drink unless I’m out with others because of that previously mentioned sleep issue. But we all know what “they” say. A month off will help the liver, improve moods, boost energy, blah blah blah.

And for those with CPTSD? I think it’s more complicated because we can use alcohol to self-medicate.

So, I’m giving it a try. Not the most exciting thing to do, but worthwhile. I want to see what this month reveals, specifically if I’ve been using alcohol to manage symptoms. It might open the door to finding healthier coping strategies. So, cheers to that!

Thank you for reading all the way through this intense post. Do let me know your thoughts. I could use some encouragement today.

Would he have suspected the truth: I’m trying to create for my child something I did not have as a child? That this urge to have a beautiful home is because my own childhood home was a yard-sale, sticky mess?

I remember my own mother’s attempt. This year as I was putting up my grandmother’s little tree—the only decoration she used, which could be an essay in and of itself on capitalism’s hooks, I thought of the odd relationship I had with my grandmother.

My grandmother wanted little to do with us, even though she lived in our back yard—or rather a trailer in our back yard. We needed, my mother thought, to spend more time together to create a deeper bond. So, Mom suggested a matinee and said she’d drop us off. (Gram had never mastered the art of steering--or rather, braking—so Mom had to drive her everywhere.)

Gram arrived outfitted in a huge straw hat and equally large straw bag as if we were picnicking. Soon as we sat down in the dark cool hum, that wonderful celestial feeling that theaters give, I heard the crack of pull tab and the soft roosh of liquid. “Damn,” Gram said as she rushed to slurp the foam, the rabbit-piss odor of beer reaching my nose.

Just when I was about to say “I don’t think you can do that,” she nudged me in the side: “Chicken leg?”

“Um, sure,” I said.

As the show wore on, Cinderella’s blue dress seemed to glow, her perfect blonde conch-shell of hair, mesmerizing. Gram began to start commenting on the show, a little too loudly. The comments were at first simple observations: “Clean apron,” she snorted. But then they turned a bit more sailor-like with each beer: “Bitch of a step-mom.” “Ooh boy, those titties popping out of that dress. Need to keep those girls under control.”

Again, I was about to tell her to hush when she said: “Want some candy?”

To my surprise, she didn’t reach down into her bag from where the beer and chicken had come from, but up. Yes, up. She started pulling out the hat pins, one by one, and miraculously, there under that hat, enmeshed with her strawberry-blonde hair, was a huge bag of marshmallow circus peanuts.

“They never check the hat,” she said. “Remember that.”

Suddenly, I had a whole new affection for this woman and then Gram belched right when the prince arrived. “She’s a whore!” she called out.

We were escorted out around that time.

I’m not sure what the moral is here—other than don’t slut-shame Cinderella, who for the record seems perfectly chaste.

Maybe it’s this: we parent against our own childhoods, don’t we? We string lights to chase away tired ghosts. We create traditions to fill the spaces where traditions should have been. And sometimes, in trying so hard to give our children what we didn’t have, we forget that what we did have—messy, imperfect, occasionally escorted out of movie theaters—also counts as something.

The lights are beautiful either way.

When my daughter was young, we’d eat dinner at 5:00 at the latest—and feel weird about it. Like, senior-citizen-early-bird-special weird. But with the witching hour that hit at 5:30 and the nighttime rituals to appease said witching hour, we wanted to eat that spaghetti sitting down rather than while doing the stand-and-jiggle-screaming-baby dance.

Once she was about four, we thought those 5:00 dinners were over. We’d graduated! We could eat at reasonable hours! But now, they’re back. Our thirteen-year-old daughter swims each night, which means she’s out of the house from 5:30-8:00. And we can’t forsake dinner—more specifically, we can’t forsake this one tradition my husband started doing a few years ago.

Rose, Rose, Thorn, Bud

Somewhere along the way, my husband heard about this simple dinner ritual: everyone shares two good things from their day (the roses), one hard thing (the thorn), and one thing they’re looking forward to (the bud).

We’ve been doing it ever since. Through moves and job changes and a global pandemic. Through dinners where everyone was chatty and dinners where pulling answers felt like dental work.

Some nights the roses are complicated: “I helped a friend who was struggling today.” Some nights they’re wonderfully mundane: “The vending machine gave me two bags of chips instead of one.” The thorns range from “I failed my math test” to “My sock felt weird all day.” The buds? Everything from “Beach trip!” to “Leftover pizza for lunch tomorrow.”

Then I Wrote About Gratitude Neuroscience

Last month, my focus was on gratitude as a way to help with my CPTSD (Complex PTSD). What’s interesting is that I didn’t even consider what we were doing as a gratitude practice, but it very much is that. In my last post, I dove into the science of gratitude practices inspired by “Gratitude and Neuroscience: How a Mason Jar Is Changing Lives” by Aditi Subramaniam published March 2025 online in Psychology Today. From that, I learned something that made me see our dinner tradition in a completely new light. Shared gratitude rituals aren’t just nice family moments; they’re actually building neural pathways associated with empathy, well-being, and resilience especially in kids.

In my focus during November on gratitude, I had missed that I’d been accidentally brain-training this whole time.

As I kept reading last month, the most powerful gratitude practices involve either receiving genuine gratitude from others or deeply experiencing someone else’s story. It’s not about making lists in your head. It’s about connection and narrative. It’s about hearing your kid describe the funny thing that happened at lunch, or your partner talk about the small victory at work.

Our rose-rose-thorn-bud hits every single neuroscience checkbox I’d just written about.

It’s social. We’re not writing gratitude notes in isolation. We’re sharing stories face-to-face, which activates brain circuits linked to empathy and reward way more powerfully than solo practices.

It’s specific and story-driven. Detailed, emotionally specific reflections engage the brain’s emotional centers more effectively than generic “I’m grateful for my family” statements. “The vending machine gave me two bags of chips” is a moment, a story, something that happened.

It includes the hard stuff. This might be the most important part. Genuine gratitude works best when it balances appreciation with honesty about challenges, rather than forcing toxic positivity. The thorn gives us permission to name what sucked. Nobody has to pretend their day was perfect. We can hold both the good and the difficult at the same table.

It’s forward-looking. The bud adds something most gratitude practices don’t have—anticipation, hope, something to look forward to. It’s not just about appreciating the past; it’s about staying connected to possibility.

Why We Can’t Give It Up

So yes, we’re eating dinner at 5:00 PM again. Yes, it feels absurd. Yes, we’re rushing through it so our daughter can get to swim practice on time.

But we’re not giving up this ritual. Because in those 15 rushed minutes, something important happens. We check in. We listen. We make space for each other’s roses and thorns. We remember that even on hard days, there’s always at least one thing that made us smile, and one thing to look forward to.

I was thinking I needed a gratitude jar (though those are lovely). Or a journal. Or prompts. But I didn’t. Two roses, one thorn, one bud. Give it a try if you’re curious. Fair warning: once you start, it becomes the thing you can’t give up. Even when it means eating dinner at 4:45. Even when someone’s rose is just ‘double chips from the vending machine.’ Especially then.

It’s that time of year: way too much pumpkin spice—and now Thanksgiving is just a few days away, which means green bean casserole, political arguments—and ‘Be Thankful’ plastered on every paper product along with a cartoonish turkey who is unaware of its fate.

This brief focus on gratitude in American culture is one of the reasons I wanted to focus on it for this month. Although I love the Thanksgiving reminder about gratitude, it turns out most of us aren’t doing it effectively.

We’ve been told to make a gratitude list. Maybe you dutifully scribble “my family, my health, my job” in a journal every morning while your coffee gets cold. At noon every day, I pause and list out five things I’m grateful for that have happened so far that day. And that little practice is lovely. But is it really effective?

Turns out, not all gratitude practices are created equal, and the neuroscience nerds have figured out why some people get that warm-fuzzy brain boost while others are just going through the motions.

So, what are considered the wrong and right ways to gratitude according to this super helpful article in Psychology Today by Aditi Subramanium?

The Wrong Way: Gratitude Theater

Simply listing things you’re thankful for in your head? That’s what I’ve been doing every day. But according to “Gratitude and Neuroscience: How a Mason Jar Is Changing Lives,” the result is mixed. Better than nothing, for sure. But if it’s not specific enough, it’s not that effective. It’s like the participation trophy of wellness practices. Sure, I showed up, but my medial prefrontal cortex (the brain region that handles all the good emotional stuff) is barely paying attention.

Even worse? “Toxic gratitude”—using thankfulness to minimize your problems or shame yourself into staying stuck. You know the vibe: “I shouldn’t complain about my terrible job because at least I HAVE a job!” That’s not gratitude, friend. That’s emotional gaslighting with a gratitude-shaped hat on.

The Right Way: Get Specific, Get Story-Driven, Get Social

Here’s where it gets interesting. The most powerful gratitude practices involve either receiving “genuine gratitude from others or deeply empathize with someone else’s story of being helped”. Your brain lights up like the Griswolds’ house at Christmas when gratitude involves actual human connection and narrative.

Instead of “I’m grateful for my family” (yawn), try “I’m grateful that my daughter gave me an unprompted hug today.” See the difference? One’s a grocery list item. The other’s a moment you can feel.

Genuine gratitude means balancing appreciation with honesty about what’s actually going on in your life, not forcing toxic positivity while your house is metaphorically on fire.

The Mason Jar Method: It’s Not Just Pinterest-Core

The article describes the author and her daughter decorating a jar and dropping in daily gratitude notes. One day’s entry? “The funny monkey video we watched.” Not exactly Oprah-level profound, but here’s the reality of it: shared gratitude rituals like this actually strengthen neural pathways associated with empathy and resilience, especially in kids.

The secret sauce? It’s shared. It’s specific. It creates a reason to notice good things throughout the day because you know you’ll be reflecting on them later.

How Long Before Your Brain Gets the Memo?

One caveat to all of this that I keep reading is to not expect miracles after a three-day Instagram challenge. Research shows you need about a month of sustained practice before you see meaningful benefits.

So yeah, grab a jar (or don’t—rebel against the mason jar industrial complex if you want). Just remember: gratitude that actually works involves story, specificity, and social connection. Your brain doesn’t want a quick, bulleted list. It wants the funny monkey video, the unprompted hug, the moment that made you feel something real. And if possible, share this with others.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go share with my mom something I’m grateful for, which is that she made me a tray of stuffing to eat before Thanksgiving. Why wait until Thursday for the best side dish of the holiday?

WORK CITED

“Gratitude and Neuroscience: How a Mason Jar Is Changing Lives” by Aditi Subramaniam, Ph.D. published March 2025 online in Pychology Today.

For my final October “awe date,” I decided to try something way outside my comfort zone: moving in unison with a group. Moving in synchrony with others can trigger what scientists call “collective effervescence”—a phenomenon that releases feel-good hormones in the brain and creates feelings of awe, belonging, and euphoric unity that bind people together. Some examples are doing the wave at a football game, line dancing, or marching in a band.

So, when I saw the free Zumba class at my daughter’s school I thought, “Perfect.” There’s just one hitch. I’m horrible at this type of thing. Any class where we are supposed to follow the teacher’s lead leaves me frozen like squirrel in the middle of the road, terrorized about which way to go before the tire wheels have their way.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of my CPTSD project, I decided I needed to do it. So, I arrived at the gym (early in fact) and met the teacher. She told me that she was the school librarian and had recently had surgery. She mentioned how her doctor told her to go easy and this was her first class since she’d be back, so she couldn’t push it.

Perfect, I thought. A fellow book-worm. Surely we’re kindred spirits in the coordination department.

“Let’s start with something slow,” she said, conjuring images of deep breaths and long arm reaches. But what came out of the speaker was a hip hop meringue mix—and then this woman transformed. Her body became all rhythm and grace. Hips swiveling, feet scissoring, shoulders shimmying with a casualness that suggested this was as natural for her as breathing. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out which foot to start with. (And how exactly were her knees bending while mine felt like they’d been installed backwards?)

After about thirty minutes of flailing, the truth became undeniable: I would never move in unison with the group. My body had its own ideas, none of which involved rhythm. So, I made a decision. I gave up trying to follow along and just...danced. I let myself become that terrorized squirrel meets Elaine from Seinfeld hybrid. And you know what? It was joyful.

I didn’t get the awe I came for—that transcendent feeling of synchronized movement. But I got something else: awe for the teacher, whose body moved like water, and for everyone around me who made it look effortless. Sometimes awe isn’t about what you can do. It’s about witnessing what others can do. I’m so glad I gave it a try—and I think I’ll actually return to experience the sense of community that I felt from my short, off-beat hour.

How Did October’s Focus on Awe Help Me Overall?

So far, the therapeutic journaling is still my favorite activity to help with my CPTSD, with EMDR a close second. But the focus on awe has been so joyful that it is something I’ll continue. I’m not sure if it is the best for CPTSD but more so just wise for overall well-being.

We spend so much of our lives cataloging deficits—tallying what we lack, measuring the distance between where we are and where we think we should be. This scarcity mentality keeps us trapped in a relentless audit of inadequacy. But awe does something remarkable: it shrinks the self, not through diminishment but through perspective. In the presence of something vast—whether nature, art, or synchronized movement—our small anxieties lose their grip. We become smaller, yes, but in becoming smaller, we also become lighter, freed from the limitations of our own narrow concerns.

In the end, awe doesn’t diminish us; it simply reminds us we were never meant to carry the weight of everything.

Next Month’s Focus?

I’m a sucker for fall: gourds, bittersweet vine, dried flowers…. My husband calls it “decorating with compost.” I call it ambiance. So, this month’s focus felt obvious to me: gratitude.

Gratitude feels both fitting for the season and slightly daunting given what research tells us about gratitude and complex trauma. Gratitude can be challenging for trauma survivors because our hyperactive nervous systems keep us in constant reactivity, while gratitude requires engagement from the more conceptual, proactive parts of the brain. The very wiring that kept us safe now makes simple thankfulness feel suspect.

Still, the research offers hope. In studies of disaster survivors—from Israeli teens enduring missile attacks to Indonesians recovering from devastating earthquakes—gratitude emerged as a significant factor in reducing post-traumatic stress and increasing life satisfaction. Researchers have found that gratitude can be conceptualized as a protective mechanism that promotes positive outcomes following trauma, not just preventing bad outcomes but actively creating good ones. The catch? The positive effects of gratitude increase over time and with practice. Simply put, it needs time to help us heal. So this month becomes an experiment: Can I practice gratitude without forcing it? Can I be grateful for small things while still honoring the difficulty of the larger journey?

How I’m Going to Approach Gratitude Given the Difficulties with It

☕ Start incredibly small. This is what I keep reading. Focus on tiny, present-moment things (a warm cup of coffee, sunlight through a window) rather than big-picture gratitude (God, Family, etc.). Simply listing out small things from the day can change my mood and make me see what has gone well instead what else I need to do or should have done.

🌱 Don’t force it. If you can’t feel grateful, practice self-compassion instead. It’s okay to just notice good things without requiring yourself to feel a certain way about them.

🤝 Use “and” instead of “but.” Hold both gratitude and difficulty together (e.g., “This is hard AND I’m grateful for my therapist for helping me through it.”)

🧘 Try gentle body-based practices. Mindful breathing or body scans with gratitude thoughts. (I’ve never done this before, so I want to give this a try this month.)

✍️ Write it down. Gratitude journaling or letters are popular—if the focus is on simple things.

⏳ Be patient. The research shows gratitude’s benefits increase over time with practice, not immediately. (Given my tendency to want too much too fast, I’ll have trouble with this one.)

🌤️ Focus on today, not the past. Notice what’s good in current relationships and situations, not trying to manufacture gratitude for past trauma.

⏰ Find a certain time to make it part of your routine. I’m going to try to simply think about 5 things I’m grateful for at lunchtime. That’s usually when I take my first long break in the day, so reflecting on what has gone well is best.

We’ll see how it goes! Thank you for following along with me.

To end, I’ll share this quote from Alice Walker: “Thank you is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.”

DISCLAIMER

I am not a licensed healthcare professional. The information I provide is based on personal experience, research, or general knowledge and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, be it pharmacological, behavioral, or a combination of the two. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or health concern.

WORKS CITED:

https://ggie.berkeley.edu/practice/the-beauty-of-collective-effervescence/#tab__3

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/expressive-trauma-integration/202001/the-neuroscience-gratitude-and-trauma

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_giving_thanks_help_heal_from_trauma

Last week, I was driving to a reading, thinking of everything I hadn’t completed that day, and listening to Awe: The New Science on Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life on Audible, which was having the opposite intended effect. Instead of calm, I was feeling like I wasn’t doing enough to bring awe in. And then I felt conflicted about that—as if I were trying to commodify or force awe into being, like walking up to a bartender and ordering a martini of transcendence.

At that moment, Dacher Keltner, the author of Awe, started sharing about vocal bursts—those spontaneous sounds we make that aren’t words: “whoa,” “ooh,” “ahh.” Bursts that are millions of years old, that existed before language. As a writer who has attended a lot of readings, including way too many with that awful poet voice that ends each line with a question mark, I thought about how often the crowd responds with vocal bursts. Those sounds, Keltner pointed out, are an expression of awe. A communal one.

Those simple sounds we make after hearing a good poem or story are not so simple, it turns out. Vocal bursts, Keltner explains, were our first language. Before humans had words—some 200,000 years ago perhaps—we communicated through these brief, emotionally charged sounds. They’re not uniquely human either. Many social mammals—great apes, elephants, horses, even bats—have their own repertoires of vocal bursts to signal threat, comfort, play, or connection. But what makes the human version remarkable is that these sounds transcend culture. Research shows people across different cultures can reliably recognize the emotions behind vocal bursts, even when they don’t share a language.

That sharp intake of breath, that collective “ohhh” at a reading when a line lands just right? That’s not learned behavior. That’s ancient circuitry. We’ve been expressing awe this way for longer than we’ve had the word for it. I love the idea that vocal bursts were our first language—which means the need for awe and wonder is hardwired into us.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the Katherine Anne Porter House to hear Deb Olin Unferth read (who is wickedly smart and darkly funny), I had to smile at my own error, once again. I wasn’t seeing the reading for what it was: another opportunity to experience awe. I was excited to go and wanted to spend more time with this author, but still, I didn’t fully understand that I was driving to a communal opportunity for awe. At the reading that night, we laughed as a group and experienced a brilliant mind at work. And indeed, there were many moments of vocal bursts—and awe.

I think the truth is that sometimes I expect too much. I can apply that statement to many activities in my life such as a dinner I’m hosting that evolves (or is it de-volves?) into a six-course tactical operation that the Pentagon would be proud of. But it also applies to how I was starting to think about awe. I was starting to feel as if the moments of awe had to be big as the view from the toe-rim of the Grand Canyon.

But it can be much smaller. Like marveling online at the face of this orchid, which had me wonderstruck just before writing this. Or laughing at Deb Olin Unferth’s description of futuristic sand once we have used up all the sand.

With all this in mind, I wanted to share a list of quick and easy actions that break the cycle of incessant doing and pause to enjoy the beauty around us, even on a work-day.

On a Five-Minute Break (Because You’re Not a Robot), Try One of These:

· Step outside and look up at the sky. Clouds are always doing their thing whether you notice or not.

· Find a window and watch how shadows move. (Yes, really. Just watch them.)

· Pull up a 60-second timelapse video of literally anything in nature—blooming flowers, moving glaciers, the northern lights.

· Close your eyes and listen to the most epic piece of music you can think of with your full attention.

· Look at a photo of Earth from space and remember that all of human drama is happening on that tiny blue dot.

· Google “electron microscope images” and prepare to have your mind blown by what dust mites actually look like. (Okay, maybe skip this one if you’re squeamish.)

· Watch birds doing bird stuff outside your window.

· Pull up images of the deep sea or outer space and let yourself feel appropriately tiny.

· Do a quick search for “amazing facts about [insert literally anything]” and fall down a brief rabbit hole of wonder.

None of these will fix your inbox. None of them will make the meetings less exhausting or the deadlines less real. But they might remind you why you’re doing any of this in the first place. And they will definitely give you sixty seconds where you’re not performing, not producing, not managing—just witnessing.

As many smarter people than I have said, we need energy to give energy. And awe, even the smallest dose of it, is how we refill the well.

So today, just once, look up. Look out. Let yourself be interrupted by something that has nothing to do with your obligations.

Awe isn’t a luxury. It’s a reset button. It’s the thing that reminds us we’re not just the sum of our task lists—but that we’re part of something larger, stranger, more beautiful.