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Knowing yourself
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of all wisdom.

Aristotle

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chele_yntema

Complex trauma & dissociation specialist | Trauma-focused, somatic, relational psychotherapy | Brisbane southside

Repost from @awakenwithally • Safety in adult rela

Repost from @awakenwithally
•
Safety in adult relationships grows from something much deeper than being regulated or not.

1. A clearer perception: The ability to see beyond the survival mind.

When we’re largely organized around survival, our perception narrows. There is little space between what happens and the story our survival mind creates.

A clearer perception creates that space. It allows us to see beyond the mental interpretation and the survival filter.

The more perspective you gain, the more safety you’ll feel.

2. Meeting and holding yourself differently while relating.

A different relational experience begins when you stop asking, “How do I change or heal more to feel safe while relating?”

and begin orienting toward,

“I’m learning to meet and hold myself without making myself wrong for being where I’m.”

Meeting your emotions without making them wrong. Including your body’s experience instead of constantly “regulating” it.

3. Self-connection.

As you’ve become highly skilled at recognizing your wounds, it’s just as important to recognize your natural expression.

Each of us has a natural, unique way of relating. When this natural way remains unknown, your relational blueprint continues to orient itself around survival rather than self-connection.

And no, you don’t need to heal more to reconnect with it.

4. Holding 2 relational truths

One of the greatest sources of relational safety is the capacity to know and hold your truth without dismissing someone else’s.

And to make space for someone else’s truth without abandoning your own.

“They’re upset with me.” ...and... “That doesn’t mean something is wrong with me.”

“They’re disappointed.” ...and... “I’m not responsible for fixing that.”

Holding two relational truths creates room for nuance, difference, and repair.

Love,
Ally.

#relationship #safe #connection #trauma #therapy

Repost from @sistersmovement • Your intuition does

Repost from @sistersmovement
•
Your intuition doesn’t need to make sense—it needs to be felt. Trust the knowing that lives beneath the noise.
The more you listen, the louder it speaks.✨🩷

#intuition #self #trust #knowledge #body

Repost from @catching_bees • One of the things I’v

Repost from @catching_bees
•
One of the things I’ve been reflecting on recently is how differently we treat the two people in the room after poor behaviour has happened.

The victim is expected to do the work. Assume positive intent. Prepare for a difficult conversation. Choose their words carefully. Bring examples. Stay calm. Think about the other person’s perspective. Deliver feedback in a way they’ll be able to hear it.

Meanwhile, we rarely expect the person who caused the harm to arrive with the same level of preparation, reflection or emotional labour. They aren’t usually asked to think through the impact in advance, anticipate difficult questions, or carefully rehearse how they’ll respond. The burden of making the conversation productive so often falls to the person who was already carrying the impact.

I’m not arguing against accountability conversations. Quite the opposite. I’m arguing that if we genuinely want people to learn and relationships to recover, we should stop expecting the victim to carry so much more of the emotional and practical workload than the person whose behaviour created the situation in the first place.

#impact #victimblaming #trauma #responsibility #therapy

Repost from @thefeelingexpert • Someone asks how y

Repost from @thefeelingexpert
•
Someone asks how you’re doing and before you’ve even thought about it, the answer is already out. “Good. Fine. Busy, but good.” And you move on. Because that’s the answer. That’s always the answer. The other answer, the real one, takes too long, requires too much explanation, risks making it weird. So fine it is. Again.

The pressure to always be on is relentless. And most of it isn’t coming from outside. It’s coming from the years of learning, in family systems, in relationships, in workplaces, that the version of you that was struggling was less welcome than the version that had it handled. So you got better at handling it. Or at least looking like you were. And the space between those two things quietly became enormous.

Here’s what I want people to understand about naming feelings, not as a therapy exercise, but as a neurological reality. When you move from “I feel terrible” to “I feel angry and scared and disappointed and exhausted,” something measurable happens in the brain. The prefrontal cortex re-engages. The emotional intensity decreases.

Why Naming What You Feel Actually Changes It.
What the science says
Naming an emotion, specifically, accurately, reduces its intensity in the brain. It’s called affect labeling. The act of finding the word re-engages your prefrontal cortex and begins to regulate the alarm.

What it does in the body
Moving from “I feel terrible” to “I feel angry and scared” gives the nervous system something specific to work with. Vague distress stays vague. Named feeling becomes something that can move.

What it doesn’t do
It doesn’t fix the situation. It doesn’t make the feeling disappear. It just gives you a relationship with it so you can be in it without being consumed by it.

#itsokaytonotbeokay #trauma #cptsd #therapy #emotion

Wisdom by @hollyhatamillustration • We spend so mu

Wisdom by @hollyhatamillustration
•
We spend so much time fighting ourselves. We treat our fears and our panic like enemies we have to conquer, instead of parts of us that are just... terrified.

What if we stopped trying to be fearless? What if the goal isn’t to get rid of the fear, but to just let your hands shake while you build your dream anyway? What if we let Fear sit in the passenger seat, but we don’t let it touch the steering wheel anymore?

It is entirely possible to feel the terror, to let your heart hammer against your ribs, and to step forward into the future with Fear and Brave.

#fear #brave #trauma #therapy #overwhelm

Repost from @enlightennedpath • Not every person w

Repost from @enlightennedpath
•
Not every person who speaks about healing is fully healed.
Not every person who shares hope feels hopeful every day.
Not every person who encourages others has mastered their own battles.

We are all works in progress.

Growth isn’t about becoming flawless—it’s about having the courage to be honest with yourself. It’s about recognizing your patterns, taking responsibility for your mistakes, forgiving yourself when you fall, and choosing to keep going anyway.

The most beautiful kind of strength is vulnerability. Admitting that you still struggle doesn’t make you a hypocrite—it makes you human. Every lesson you share is often one you’re still learning yourself, and that’s okay.

You don’t have to be perfectly healed to spread kindness, love, or light. Sometimes, the words we give others are the very reminders our own hearts need to hear.

Be gentle with yourself. Progress is rarely linear, but every moment of awareness is a step toward becoming the person you’re meant to be. 🌙✨

🤍 Save this for the days you forget that healing isn’t perfection—it’s persistence.

Via @victorianpoetry

#self #trauma #peace #mistakes #kindness

Repost from @cynyassy • I feel lighter when I shed

Repost from @cynyassy
•
I feel lighter when I shed my Should Be’s…

I wouldn’t be where I am if I had continued to listen to what I should be.
It’s an idealistic vision for my future, that perhaps served me once, but doesn’t anymore.

To build my future, I must let go of the ideal and work on what’s in front of me. The Real.

I hope this message finds you when you need it.

You can let go of what doesn’t serve you and lean into what’s calling you.
You got this!

#trauma #therapy #yougotthis #doubt #fear

Repost from @dene.logan • i think this has been o

Repost from @dene.logan
•
i think this has been
one of the major distortions

that this period in time
was meant to shine
a giant blacklight on.

the extent to which
we’re culturally conditioned
to trade in our truth for
the comfort of someone
else’s certainty.

we’ve been taught
to believe in what’s
‘healthy’ and ‘normal’

in societal contexts
that are designed to profit
from us being disconnected
from ourselves..

we’re taught to
defend against looking
foolish or being
exiled ..

by placing someone else’s
limitations on what’s possible for
our one wild and precious life.

but the world
is rapidly changing
and the “old rules”

are becoming less
relevant
by the second.

but I can promise
you this..

those who have
spent the time
reclaiming deep Trust
in themSelves..

it’s about to be
your time to shine ✨

#trauma #cptsd #fierce #compassion #self

Words by PTSD The war within Image by NeroPsycholo

Words by PTSD The war within
Image by NeroPsychology

One of the greatest misconceptions I had about healing was believing I had lost myself somewhere along the way.
I hadn’t.

The child I was... the dreams I carried... the compassion, curiosity, and authenticity I was born with—they never disappeared. They were simply buried beneath layer after layer of survival.

For years I thought I needed to create a new identity. What I eventually discovered was that healing wasn’t about becoming someone else. It was about gently uncovering the parts of me that had been hidden away because they weren’t safe to express.

Not because they were weak.

Because they were precious.

You can’t rush that process. You can’t force trust after a lifetime of fear. Those parts of us don’t respond to pressure—they respond to safety, patience, and compassion.

Sometimes healing is nothing more than sitting quietly with the pieces of yourself you’ve spent a lifetime avoiding... until they realize they’re finally safe enough to come home.
I don’t think we find ourselves.

I think we remember ourselves.

❤️ Matt

Repost from @thefeelingexpert • You’re at a family

Repost from @thefeelingexpert
•
You’re at a family dinner. Everyone is talking, laughing, passing food. From the outside it looks exactly the way it’s supposed to look. And you are right there in the middle of it nodding, smiling, saying the right things at the right moments and underneath all of that, there is an ache that you can’t explain to anyone in that room because they’re the reason it’s there.

You drive home alone and the silence in the car feels more honest than the entire evening did.

That’s one of the loneliest experiences a person can have, and it’s almost impossible to talk about because from the outside, you have everything you’re supposed to need.

Being surrounded by people and feeling genuinely connected to them are not the same thing. You can be loved by a room full of people and still feel completely unseen inside it because what they love is the version of you that learned to show up for them. The capable one. The funny one. The one who keeps things light and doesn’t bring the mood down and handles their own feelings privately. That version is real. But it isn’t all of you. And the parts that never make it into the room are the parts that carry the loneliness.

This is a very specific kind of aloneness — the kind that comes from having plenty of people and still not being truly known by any of them.

#lonely #trauma #cptsd #alone #therapy

This “Care deeply. Recover intentionally. Then com

This “Care deeply. Recover intentionally.
Then come back ready to make a difference.
The goal isnt to care less. Its to suffer less while still caring.”

Repost @dr.neurospicy

This has been coming up in sessions a lot lately. Maybe it’s because of everything happening in the world. Maybe it’s because more people finally have the language to describe it.

Either way, I’ve found myself thinking much more deeply about justice sensitivity and whether empathy alone explains why it can become so overwhelming.

Some of the ideas in this carousel come directly from research. Others are my own attempt to connect findings across different areas of psychology and neuroscience. They’re not established explanations, but rather one possible way of thinking about an experience many people have described to me over the years.

I’d love to know what resonated with you, what challenged you, and what other explanations you’ve come across.

Further reading:

-Van de Cruys, S., et al. (2014). Precise minds in uncertain worlds: Predictive processing in autism. Psychological Review, 121(4), 649-675.

-Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139-156.

-Boulter, C., Freeston, M., South, M., & Rodgers, J. (2014). Intolerance of uncertainty as a framework for understanding anxiety in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 44, 1391-1402.

-South, M., Rodgers, J., et al. (Multiple papers). Research on intolerance of uncertainty in autism.

-Schmitt, M., Baumert, A., Gollwitzer, M., & Maes, J. (2010). The Justice Sensitivity Inventory: Factorial validity, location in the personality facet space, demographic pattern, and normative data. Social Justice Research, 23, 211-238.

#justice #trauma #divergent #care #unresolved

Repost from @thefeelingexpert • Here’s what I see

Repost from @thefeelingexpert
•
Here’s what I see in adults who grew up this way. They are extraordinarily competent. Genuinely capable. The person everyone calls when something needs to be handled because they always handle it. They are the first to show up and the last to ask for anything. And underneath all of that capability is a child who never once got to be the one that was shown up for.

That child is still there. And that child is running a significant amount of the adult’s life specifically the parts that involve rest, receiving, and need.

The adult version of the parentified child doesn’t know how to rest without guilt attaching itself immediately. Somewhere in the wiring, stillness still registers as negligence. There’s always something that should be done, someone who needs something, a responsibility being avoided.

They also cannot receive.

Someone does something kind for them and the discomfort is immediate. There’s an urgent need to reciprocate, to minimize, to say “you really didn’t have to.” Being cared for triggers something that almost resembles anxiety because care was never the direction it flowed. They were the source. Never the recipient. And the body doesn’t know what to do when that reverses.

#parentification #trauma #cptsd #keepingthepeace #childhood

Repost from @theeqschool • It’s understandable to

Repost from @theeqschool
•
It’s understandable to want to know the outcome.

For many, our nervous systems learned to predict to maintain connection (and on a deeper level, to stay alive).

To stay present and open to whatever may come next without bracing, predicting, planning, or controlling is more than uncomfortable — it can feel downright unsafe.

And that’s the work.

In part, it’s getting to know the parts inside of you that brace and allowing ourselves to begin the slow and gentle process of meeting the pain beneath that tension that has never been safely seen, supported, and integrated.

And in part it’s learning to trust that you can hold yourself in the present moment.

To increase your capacity for discomfort by staying present and learning new ways of responding to uncertainty, difficulty, and disappointment.

By learning that asking for help is allowed, learning how to drop out of the head and into the body, by practicing letting waves of emotion move through you before making big decisions, by holding space for many things to be true at once and not needing to rush to a conclusion, and by trusting that whatever decision you make will yield something valuable, so you’re willing to move forward, step by step and day by day.

#trauma #courage #fear #presence #therapy

Repost from @traumatherapistinstitute • What if on

Repost from @traumatherapistinstitute
•
What if one of the most common phrases in trauma therapy is also one of the most oversimplified?

You’ve probably heard the phrase:
“Trauma lives in the body.”

There is an important truth behind that statement, but it’s not accurate. In fact it’s misleading.

Traumatic experiences are encoded in distributed brain networks. When those networks are activated, they influence the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, immune system, musculoskeletal system, and other physiological processes.

In other words, trauma is experienced and expressed through the body, but that doesn’t mean it is literally “stored” there.

Why does this distinction matter?

Because the way we conceptualize trauma shapes the way we treat it.

When we reduce trauma to bodily sensations alone, we risk overlooking the brain processes involved in prediction, memory, meaning-making, and learning. Conversely, when we focus only on cognition, we miss the profound physiological expression of traumatic stress.

Effective trauma therapy isn’t about choosing between the brain or the body.

It’s about understanding how they work together.

The more precise our understanding of trauma becomes, the more precise our interventions can be.

#trauma #body #cptsd #therapy

Repost from @rhythmsofhealth • This is not a rejec

Repost from @rhythmsofhealth
•
This is not a rejection of money.
It is a question of what directs our energy before money ever enters the equation.

Because when we are depleted, disconnected from our bodies, and moving too quickly to feel ourselves, we become easier to direct.

We may still be working, creating, achieving, earning, and building but no longer know whether the life we are building is one we were born to live.

This is why cultivating Yin and preserving Essence matters far beyond physical health.

We need enough substance within ourselves to feel our own nature. Enough stillness to recognize what is true beneath urgency. Enough connection to distinguish our desires from those we inherited. Enough Essence to remain in relationship with our original purpose, even while moving through a world constantly offering us another one.

Leading with Yin does not mean becoming passive. It means allowing our deepest knowing to direct our movement.
It means asking before we expend our energy

Does this belong to me?

Does this move me closer to life?

Is this building something my Essence recognizes?

And then allowing our Qi our time, labor, attention, creativity, and life-force to move in relationship with that knowing.

Not because every action will be easy. Not because we will never compromise. But because no life is sustainable when our energy is constantly being used to move us away from ourselves.

The goal is not to reject work, but to create work that remains connected to life.

Not as the purpose of life, but as a resource created through fully participating in it.

A life where we create from our nature. Where our work generates resources.
Where those resources return to nourish our bodies, families, communities, creativity, land, and the future we came here to build.

Where abundance is not something we sacrifice our lives to obtain, but something that grows from living in deeper relationship with who we are.

The most beautiful life we can imagine is not one where we finally accumulate enough to begin living.

It is one where the way we live becomes the source of abundance itself.

#purpose #money #self #live #life

Repost from @theeqschool • Showing up for yourself

Repost from @theeqschool
•
Showing up for yourself can feel foreign at first,
especially when you’ve lived a life where you believed your worth was dependent on making sure the people around you were happy.

So what does it look like to show up for you?

It looks like spending time with yourself in safe ways, maybe even just in little moments at first - getting to know your internal patterns, sensitivities, habits, and triggers.
Noticing how your body responds to events, people, spaces.
Noticing what draws you in and what you feel like you have to force yourself to do.

It’s allowing space for the messiness, and learning to bring in more compassion and curiosity when the answer isn’t immediately evident.
It’s accepting that whatever feeling is here is here for a reason,
and reminding yourself that you are inherently worthy and good.
It’s noticing what changes when you to turn toward discomfort when you trust that good people still feel guilty, shame, resentment, etc and that those feelings are information.

It’s noticing tension, stress, hurriedness, judgment — and inserting space between you and that feeling.
Just noticing. Breathing. Softening.
It’s okay that it’s here.
Maybe you even extend some appreciation to it for trying to keep you safe.

It’s letting go of trying to control how others see you.
Letting them have their version of the truth, because they will anyway.
It’s focusing on your own story and letting that be enough, and living your life from grounded presence instead of fear, protection, and control.

It’s hard to be a person.
Really hard sometimes.
But it’s also incredibly beautiful, joyful, and mindblowing at times, too.

You are really everything wrapped up in one body —
give yourself the grace, patience, love, and attunement to be present to all of your parts.

#trauma #healing #hurt #therapy #cptsd

Repost from @nadiaaddesi • I made this guide becau

Repost from @nadiaaddesi
•
I made this guide because internalized shame is the quiet thing running underneath so much of what feels wrong in our lives, and almost no one is taught what it actually is or how to heal it.

Most of us are carrying a voice in our heads that tells us we are too much, not enough, always wrong. We assume it is ours. It rarely is. Shame is learned, almost always inherited from adults who never healed their own. And it hides in perfectionism, people-pleasing, overworking, and staying small, so we spend years trying to fix things that were never really the problem.

This guide walks through what internalized shame actually is, how it lives in your body, why the tools you have been handed have not worked, and what actually helps according to the research ❤️

#shame #notgoodenough #hurt #trauma #betrayal

There are moments, sometimes seasons, where the sk

There are moments, sometimes seasons, where the skies begin to cloud over, where the wind begins to howl, our hearts begin to race, and our minds begin scanning, desperately seeking something sturdy to moor to.

Even before our minds can name it, our bodies know turbulence. Our ribs draw inward, our breath shortens, our jaw sets itself against the next wave. Sensation moves, and perception follows, carrying the older expectation that when the storm comes, we will have to face it alone. Something in us interpreting that with no land in sight this storm would be the storm that would surely destroy the boat, it would surely be the storm we cannot survive.

And yet, when the storm finally comes, as the thunder rumbles, as the rain pelts down, as the waters tumble and as the boat continues to fiercely toss about, we suddenly realise something is changing. The oars are being pulled by more than one pair of hands, we are no longer alone.

In that moment, though the fear remains, we realise for the first time there is an Other, a seemingly steadier presence rowing on, unhurried, attentive, willing to remain through the whole of the thunderous storm.
This is what co-regulated connection with an Other can offer our systems, when in the past we have never had such an offering.

In the company of someone who does not deny the ferocity of the storm, who does not leave on the first sight of the weather turning nasty, alarmed aloneness begins to loosen its grip.

For even amidst the most chaotic of storms, when we are met time and again by an Other who stays alongside us, we learn that though hard times still come, togetherness takes root where aloneness once was, and something in us begins to emerge with coherence: no storm, no matter its ferocity, can take our innate sense of Self with value, meaning, and worth.

#storm #regulation #together #trauma #therapy

Repost from @thefeelingexpert • What’s Happening i

Repost from @thefeelingexpert
•
What’s Happening in the Body and How to Move Through It
The amygdala has matched something in the present to an emotionally stored memory without images, without context, without a story. Just the raw feeling of the original wound flooding back in.

Why it has no image
Emotional memories are stored differently than narrative memories. The body holds the feeling without the story which is why it feels so disorienting. There’s nothing to point to. Just a state.

First: name it
“I think I’m in an emotional flashback right now.” That one sentence re-engages your prefrontal cortex and begins to create distance between you and the feeling.

Then orient
Feel your feet on the floor. Name five things you can see. Say the date out loud if you need to. You are here, now, in this moment, not back there. Your body needs that information.

Most people know what a visual flashback looks like. A combat veteran ducking at a car backfiring. A survivor flinching at a specific smell. There’s an image, a sound, a sensory detail that pulls them back. The connection is visible. The cause makes sense.

An emotional flashback works differently. There’s no image. No memory playing like a film behind your eyes. Just the raw emotional content of an old wound, the terror, the shame, the smallness, the worthlessness flooding back in without any of the context that originally created it.

The body stored the feeling without the story. And when something in the present moment resembles the origina

#cptsd #trauma #youarenotcrazy #flashback #body

Repost from rebelthriver • When the weight of the

Repost from rebelthriver
•
When the weight of the world gets to be too much, and lately it often does, it can feel almost absurd to notice something small and good. The first sip of coffee while the house is still quiet. A dog leaning into your leg. Light falling sideways through the trees in the late afternoon.

But those small things are not a distraction from grief. They are how we carry it.

Nobody survives the big sorrows by staring straight into them without ever looking away. We survive by letting small joys interrupt us, again and again, reminding us that the world is still worth staying in.

Notice one today.
Let it be enough for the moment it lasts.

꩜ Ella

#smallthings #trauma #pain #injustice #grief

Repost from @hannahfrasermoore • The belief that y

Repost from @hannahfrasermoore
•
The belief that you are behind changes the way you experience other people. It changes the way you experience time. It changes what feels possible. It changes the way you trust yourself.

Eventually, the distance between where you are and where you long to be feels so vast that beginning itself becomes futile. The belief deepens with every day you wait.

The work is to understand the history that gave this belief the authority to feel true.

At what point did you become so certain that you had already missed your life?

At what point did your future begin to feel unrecoverable?

#trauma #falling #notenough #fear #therapy

Repost from @hollyhatamillustration • This post is

Repost from @hollyhatamillustration
•
This post is for anyone who has been waking up feeling like a stranger to themselves.

We live in a world that demands constant certainty. We are told to always know the next step, to have the five-year plan, to pivot when something doesn’t go to plan. But human beings aren’t machines. When our lives shatter, when a relationship ends, when burnout strips us of our passion, or when a dream simply runs its course... we don’t just bounce back. We get lost. And that’s okay.

Feeling lost can be terrifying and lonely. It can feel like everyone else received the instruction manual for adulthood, while you’re standing in the dark and holding the broken pieces of a life you don’t even recognize anymore.

You’re grieving the version of yourself that you had to leave behind. I know that can be scary, but that’s also how we grow as humans.

Feeling lost isn’t your permanent home. It’s the rental house while you wait for your dream house to be built.

You are going to find your way back to yourself. But until then, be kind to yourself. Okay?

If you love these emotion artworks head over to Holly @the.yellow.jacket.girl

#burden #lost #unknown #together #notalone

Repost from @amythelifecoach • For a lot of trauma

Repost from @amythelifecoach
•
For a lot of trauma survivors, black-and-white conclusions feel safer than vague or nuanced ones.

This is because they allow you to trust yourself and take action - not necessarily because they’re truer.

Saying, “They lied, I’m done” can feel more stabilizing than sitting with “This felt confusing, disrespectful, or destabilizing, and I don’t want to participate in it.”

The first gives you certainty.
The second requires discernment.

Discernment doesn’t mean ignoring red flags or staying longer than you should. It means learning how to name what isn’t working without needing to prove intent or assign motive.

That’s a skill that many trauma survivors need to learn and one that makes boundaries clear, not weaker.

#boundaries #trauma #relationships #uncertainty #threat

Repost from @yourbeautifullife • Very few people r

Repost from @yourbeautifullife
•
Very few people remember every compliment they received or every piece of advice they were given. But almost everyone remembers how someone made them feel.

The people who change our lives aren’t always the loudest or the most accomplished. They’re the ones who make us feel seen when we feel overlooked, included when we feel out of place, and important when we’re starting to question our own worth. Those moments become part of someone’s story, even if we never realize the role we played.

You never really know what it means to someone that you noticed them. That’s why it’s always worth doing.

#kindness #connection #trauma #hope #invisible

Ooooph “The most convincing manipulators aren’t al

Ooooph “The most convincing manipulators aren’t always the best liars. They’re the best editors. They simply remove every part of the story that makes them accountable.”

Repost from @jessaltro
•
They’ll tell people how you reacted.

They won’t tell them what they did first.

The easiest way to control the narrative isn’t always to lie.

It’s to leave out the beginning of the story.

#manipulation #control #trauma #abuse #therapy

Repost from @matthewlicata • On Anger For sensiti

Repost from @matthewlicata
•
On Anger

For sensitive, empathic, spiritually oriented people, there is often a deep wound around anger.

Early on, the nervous system learned that our fire—our “no,” our intensity, our needs—disrupted connection.

Someone turned away. Froze. Shamed us. And the body made an intelligent but costly decision: this energy is dangerous.

The anger didn’t disappear. It went underground—a vital, embodied force many of us were never allowed to feel safely.

It became caretaking. Being “easy.” Chronic empathy. Spiritual language that avoids conflict, assertion of needs, and healthy boundaries. Compassion that is actually fear wearing soft clothing.

And when anger finally breaks through, it often appears distorted—as resentment, bitterness, or sudden explosions that feel out of character.

None of this is pathology. It is attachment history carried in the body.

From a somatic perspective, anger is simply activation seeking direction. It is life force rising to protect what matters. Heat gathers. The belly engages. The spine wants to lengthen. The body says, something is not okay here.

But without safety, that activation is confused with danger—and we shut down.

This is why anger is so misunderstood on the spiritual path. But anger is not the problem. An unconscious, avoidant relationship with it is.

Conscious anger is one of the foundations of mature spiritual life. Without it, meditation becomes dissociation, compassion becomes appeasement, and forgiveness becomes self-erasure.

Anger is the part of us that knows:
I matter.
This boundary matters.
Something sacred is being crossed.

The work, then, is not to suppress anger or explode with it—but to tend it. To create the internal safety that was missing early on.

Safety in the body. Safety in relationship. Enough safety for the nervous system to feel without collapse or shame.

When anger is met this way, it often reveals grief—grief for crossed boundaries, for the self that had to disappear in order to be loved.

Anger work is grief work.
And grief work is love work.

#Trauma #DepthPsychology #anger #Attachment

You will still be you - and that you, the one who

You will still be you - and that you, the one who has always been there and who will always remain, is filled with innate goodness and worth. Nothing can take that away. And nothing about that is earned.

That named - it can still be hard to believe sometimes… especially when the pressures from Others we trust and especially when the relentless pressures of the World come tumbling in.

Sometimes perhaps what we need to hold onto most is the truth: “Your worth and validity already exist within the you that is currently present.”

“because you are who got you to where you are and who will get you to where you’re going.”

Repost from @kat.eleftheriou
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Read the full essay in my Substack newsletter: For Those Who Are Uncertain

#trauma #doubt #truth #cptsd #therapy

Repost from @starnetworkfoundation • Some conversa

Repost from @starnetworkfoundation
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Some conversations deserve more than a scroll.

We’re grateful to @frankiestherapy for joining us in creating this reminder that healing starts with feeling seen, understood, and supported.

💛 If this resonated with you, save it for later or share it with someone who might need it today. Every share helps us reach more people with free trauma education and support.

#relationships #abuse #trauma #therapy #nomore

Alone in the quiet, the silence can be deafening.

Alone in the quiet, the silence can be deafening.

You are surviving, and still, deep within, there is a suffering that no one else can see. The emptiness beneath the mask.

The chasm of confusion and overwhelm.

The elusive spiral of self-criticism, self-doubt, and self-blame, of never-quite-enough or always-too-much.

This is the hidden heartache of seeking, and never quite finding, the something that would explain the pain. Often it lives on from a lifetime of emotional turmoil and neglect, a lost sense of Self that formed in the places where care was thin.

You do not have to keep carrying it alone.

I am a trauma-focused psychotherapist working alongside adults living with complex and developmental trauma, dissociation, and the protective patterns that form across a lifetime of surviving.

This is depth-orientated, relational work, unhurried and somatically aware, where together we make gentle sense of what formed and why. And as we do, something steadier begins to return. A fuller sense of Self, of connection with Others, and of your place in the World.

Brisbane Southside, and online.

Follow for reflections on trauma, dissociation, and the slow return toward connection.

#trauma #therapy #cptsd #dissociation #relationships

Repost from @youwanted.this • Your rant is safe he

Repost from @youwanted.this
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Your rant is safe here, always.

#friendship #motherhood #trauma #cptsd

Repost from @embodiedwithmichelle • I can always t

Repost from @embodiedwithmichelle
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I can always tell when someone is about to lose themselves in a relationship.

Not because of what they tolerate.

Because of how they talk.

They translate.

Constantly.

Every behavior gets run through a filter that makes it easier to hold.

“They’re just tired.”

“They didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s probably me.”

I did it for years.

I became so fluent in the kindest possible interpretation of everyone around me...

that I slowly stopped trusting my own.

Here’s what took me too long to understand:

Every translation buys you something.

A little more hope.

A little less conflict.

A reason to stay one more week.

That’s why it’s so hard to stop.

You’re not just giving up an explanation.

You’re giving up the version of the future that explanation was protecting.

And it works.

That’s the problem.

Because every translation makes reality a little easier to stay inside...

while making yourself a little harder to find.

You don’t wake up one day having abandoned yourself.

You get there one reasonable-sounding sentence at a time.

The work was never learning to think worse of people.

It was learning to stop translating away what you already saw.

💛

#relationships #trauma #connection #self #blame

This. 100% this. Repost from @jesssbaird • i’ve r

This. 100% this.

Repost from @jesssbaird
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i’ve realized something about healing: it doesn’t erase the person you used to be, it just gives you enough distance to finally look back at them with tenderness instead of becoming them again.

this poem belongs to a version of me who carried more than anyone around her realized. i’m sharing it now because i’ve been making my way through old work and letting it have somewhere to live outside of me. 🤍
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#death #trauma #mentalhealth #therapy #quotes

Though this be true I might name that it feels gen

Though this be true I might name that it feels gentler to me to say our nervous systems have adapted to survive.

Whilst others may say “deregulated” for is I feel it’s the only sort of regulated we have ever known…. Even at my most regulated my divergent system finds the world far too demanding…

Repost from @thefeelingexpert
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You’ve been staring at the same email for four days. The bill is still unpaid. The appointment you need to make has been on the mental list for three weeks and every time it surfaces, something in you just can’t do it. And then the feelings of shame move in right behind it. “It’s just a phone call. What is wrong with me?”

Nothing is wrong with you. But something is happening in you that most people don’t have a name for and not having a name for it means the shame fills the gap instead.

Here’s what’s actually going on. When the nervous system is dysregulated and running in a chronic state of low-grade threat, hypervigilance, or shutdown, it pulls resources from the part of the brain responsible for executive function. Planning. Initiating. Organizing. Following through. These are cognitive functions that require a regulated nervous system to operate properly.

When you’re operating from survival mode, your brain is doing something far more urgent than scheduling a dentist appointment. It is managing a threat. It is scanning. It is trying to keep you safe from something it can’t always name or locate. And there’s only so much bandwidth it can handle.

So the phone call that takes someone else thirty seconds can take you three weeks not because you’re incompetent or lazy, but because you are operating under an internal load that nobody else in the room can see.

What I want you to hear is this: the people who breeze through admin tasks and social logistics and self-care routines are not more disciplined than you. They are not more adult than you. They are not trying harder. They are operating from a regulated nervous system. They have available capacity.

Right now, yours is being used elsewhere on things that are invisible to everyone around you, and sometimes even to yourself.

#trauma #neurodiver

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Chele Yntema is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Trauma Specialist.

In the spirit of reconciliation I acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. I pay my respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. I am committed to inclusion across race, culture, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, religion, and ability. I recognise that people from diverse communities face systemic barriers and seek to challenge the current system and strive for change that makes mental health and wellbeing accessible to and inclusive for all.

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