Category: Trauma
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What Does It Mean To Heal?
“You have to accept the fact that this may never go away. That the best you can do is manage it.” I sat, stunned, unable to reply to my therapist. How could this be? I had a definite point in life where my brain had seemed to “break” and my trauma (eventually diagnosed as CPTSD)…
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Prince Harry Discusses Spare With Dr. Gabor Mate
“You were raised in deprivation.” That’s what Dr. Gabor Mate told Prince Harry he experienced, despite his material privilege. Just prior to this, Harry had been insisting that his childhood was overall a good one, but stopped when he saw the Dr. shaking his head. This moment happened during the early minutes of the conversation…
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How Trauma Affects Your Brain – And Your Magic
The 1990’s unleashed a neuroscience revolution, as novel brain-imaging techniques allowed scientists to process information in real time. For the first time in history, scientists watched human brains process memories, sensations and emotions. They were able to map the circuits of the mind and consciousness. Suddenly, they could show us images of our brains on…
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What Is Trauma?
Terror. Unbearable and intolerable pain. Your body releases a surge of adrenaline, causing your senses to be hyper sensitive, while other non-immediate bodily functions slow or stop. Your heart races, your muscles tense. Depending on what happens next, you will either fight, flee, or freeze. Whatever your system chooses in that moment, every cell of…
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Trauma Disorders: PTSD vs C-PTSD
You don’t have to be a military veteran to suffer from PTSD. As mentioned in the article What is Trauma? there are an infinite number of events that can lead our nervous systems to spark a trauma reaction. Sometimes, the reaction is temporary. Something horrible happens to us, and for a while we remain “on…
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Christian Trauma In The Face Of Rising Christian Fascism
Of all the decisions handed down by the Supreme Court in June, the one that gave me the worst panic attacks was Kennedy vs Bremerton School District. Surprised? I’ve certainly written a lot more about the overturning of Roe vs Wade in light of my own adoption trauma. But high school football coach Joseph Kennedy…
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How Sharing Trauma Can Make A Difference
Heartbreaking Stories of “Late Term Abortions” Helped Me See The Lies I’d Been Told By the “Pro-Life” Movement I was raised to believe abortion was murder. That as an adoptee, it was only because I was born before Roe v Wade that I was born at all. My mother told me often, when I complained…
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No, Love Doesn’t Win
It’s been a rough few days. A good friend of mine, venting rage and frustration about the general loss of bodily autonomy and civil rights we’re witnessing said something along the lines of, “I know love wins and all that, but right now I’m angry.” They were posting on social media to an audience that…
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It’s All Just Too Much
Two years ago I wrote about the Collective Trauma of George Floyd’s Murder. Since then, over a million Americans have died from Covid. We watched a violent insurrection take place at our Capitol. Police killings haven’t even slowed down, much less stopped. An insidious attack on books in libraries and classrooms has blossomed into an…
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The “Domestic Supply of Infants” and “Pro-Life” Thinking
I was adopted as an infant. Relinquished at birth and placed at 7 weeks. My family was open about this from the beginning, and one of my very earliest memories was being told that I was adopted. But I was also told that I was an only child because of Roe v Wade. “Your daddy…
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Why I Hate Mother’s Day. Also, Please Don’t Say This To Me
Mother’s Day is really painful for people with abusive childhoods. We try to avoid the day on social media, but it’s nearly impossible. Obviously lots of people have mother’s worth celebrating or that they miss, and they deserve to have a day. But there needs to be a way for those of us with trauma…
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This Was Always Gonna Happen
So SCOTUS is gonna overturn Roe v Wade, and a lot of folks out there are shocked. If I had $1 for everyone on Twitter who’s take was “bUt ThEy’Ll LoSe ThE FuNdRaIsInG IsSuE!” I could cancel student loans. This is clearly difficult for some left-of-center folks to understand, but the right wing doesn’t actually…
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Trauma Brain: What Living With CPTSD Looks Like
Trauma causes permanent changes to the brain. I wrote an actually coherent – articulate even – article about the science around it here: Your Brain On Trauma. This video is more of an explanation of what it’s like to live with those changes, and a real time demonstration to boot. I’m like a squirrel on…
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Donald Trump Shows Typical Abuser Behavior by Blaming Nancy Pelosi For Not Stopping J6
CW: Victim Blaming The events of January 6, 2021 are seared on the brains of many Americans. My household watched the carnage unfold via YouTube livestreams until it finally got picked up by mainstream media- well after the crowd had broken through the barricades, climbed the walls of the Capitol and forced the certification of…
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A Word About The Oscar’s Incident
My oldest was surfing Twitter when it happened, and soon the whole household was debating whether or not it was a bit. Then we saw Jada Pinkett Smith’s struggles with alopecia. And a closer look at the video of her reaction to the “joke” made it clear this was in no way staged. I realize…