We enjoy being with people who are calm and relaxed, interested in engaging with us, and are fun to be around. When we’re in fight/ flight/ freeze, we just aren’t that much fun to be with. We long for connection but when we don’t feel safe enough to relax, that doesn’t happen. When we disconnect from ourselves, we also lose connection with others.

Can I trust you with my body? Will you hurt me? Will I be safe?

Can I trust you with my heart? Are you mean at times, or are you reliably kind?

Can I trust you to not betray my confidences? To not gossip about me?

“I doThe Work that Reconnects so that when things fall apart, we won’t turn on each other. ” Joanna Macy

“The central question is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. Every day we could ask ourselves: Am I going to add to the aggression in the world? Am I going to practice peace or am I going to war?” Pema Chodron

When people around you are in an uproar, there has been a flood or school shooting and you are feeling heartsick with grief, when people close to you are anxious, try to not add to the chaos. Steady yourself. Come back into your body, breathe, and let yourself become still.

To develop a strong resilient nervous system, children need to be around adults who are grounded and well-regulated. Babies need to co-regulate in order to develop neural networks for trust and connection. Attachment parenting emphasizes empathy and responsiveness to the child, as well as bodily closeness and skin-to-skin touch with babies.

Objectification is when we use another person as a way to fill our needs. This isn’t the interaction with others that happens all the time. We are lonely, call a friend and feel better just by feeling understood. They do the same.

“Without a clear and present focus on the body, trauma cannot be addressed.” Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands. Like many others, I have been more deeply engaged in racial justice and anti-racism since the murder of George Floyd in May landed with a sickening thud in my body.

Don’t get between a mother bear and her cubs! Her protection is swift and merciless. If she sees you as a threat, she takes you out. Our fierce inner protector has more options than the mama bear standing on her hind legs and roaring her warning. How does safety work in modern life?

This study is one of the largest investigations ever conducted (mid 90’s) to assess associations between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being. It has since been studied in several states with similar results and they are continuing to follow the original participants.

I am a small-town girl from Saskatchewan, a prairie province in Canada that most people wouldn’t know how to pronounce let alone know where it is. I grew up in a home where I was well cared for physically. No one screamed at or ridiculed us. Neither of my parents struggled with addiction to alcohol or drugs. There was no physical or sexual abuse. I was never afraid for my physical safety and I never witnessed violence at home.

“I sit down to meditate and my mind explodes with catastrophic thinking. I don’t get a moment’s peace from my mean inner critic. What’s the matter with me? I even fail at sitting still with nothing to do.” Said by every traumatized meditation student I have ever worked with.

There are two things I say that people are skeptical about or outright don’t believe. The first is that looking at our lives through a trauma lens reveals that most of our reactivity, compulsive thinking, anxiety, depression, fear and dread of social interaction are trauma responses driven by our primitive brain and survival system.